He found
the situation trying nevertheless. It was as if Cupid had been set
by Jupiter to take a portrait of Io in her stall, while evermore he
heard his Psyche fluttering about among the peacocks in the yard.
For the girl had bewitched him at first sight. He thought it was
only as an artist, though to be sure a certain throb, almost of
pain, in the region of the heart, when first his eyes fell before
hers, might have warned, and perhaps did in vain warn him otherwise.
Sooner than usual he professed himself content with the sitting,
and then proceeded to show the ladies some of his sketches and
pictures. Florimel asked to see one standing as in disgrace with
its front to the wall. He put it, half reluctantly, on an easel,
and said it was meant for the unveiling of Isis, as presented in
a maehrchen of Novalis, introduced in Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, in
which the goddess of Nature reveals to the eager and anxious gaze
of the beholder the person of his Rosenbluethchen, whom he had left
behind him when he set out to visit the temple of the divinity.
But on the great pedestal where should have sat the goddess there
was no gracious form visible. That part of the picture was a
blank. The youth stood below, gazing enraptured with parted lips
and outstretched arms, as if he had already begun' to suspect what
had begun to dawn through the slowly thinning veil--but to the
eye of the beholder he gazed as yet only on vacancy, and the picture
had not reached an attempt at self explanation.
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