st like a cap
his round head; under large eyebrows, two dark eyes laughed pleasantly
on the world; the naked feet and arms showed a fine shape, but little
strength; only in the right arm powerful muscles raised themselves; the
brown skin apron was sprinkled white with marble dust, he shook it off,
and cried again louder, "Felicitas!"

Then appeared on the threshold of the house a white figure, who,
drawing back the dark-yellow curtain, which was fastened to rings
running on a bronze rod, was framed like a picture in the two pilasters
of the entrance--a quite young girl--or was it a young wife? Yes, she
must be already a wife, this child of hardly seventeen years, for she
is without doubt the mother of the infant which, with her left arm, she
nestles to her bosom: only the mother holds a child with such
expression in the movements and countenance. Two fingers of the right
hand, the inner surface turned outwards, the young mother laid on her
lips: "Be quiet!" said she, "our child sleeps." And now the hardly
full-ripe form glided down the four stone steps which led from the
house into the garden, with the left arm carefully raising the child
higher and pressing it closer, with the right gently lifting the hem of
her plaited robe as high as her well-formed ankles. It was a spectacle
of perfect grace: young and childlike, like Raphael's Madonna, but not
humble and at the same time mystically glorious, as the mother of the
Christ-child; there was nothing incomprehensible, nothing miraculous,
only a noble simplicity and yet royal loftiness in her unconscious
dignity and innocence. There floated, as it were, a sweet-sounding
music round the figure of this Hebe, every movement being in perfect
harmony; wife and yet maiden; entirely human, perfectly at rest and
contented in the love of her young husband and of the child at her
breast. Lovely, touching, and dignified at the same time, in all the
perfect beauty of her figure, her face and her complexion so modest,
that in her presence, as before a beautiful statue, every wish was
silent.

She wore no ornament; her light-brown hair, shining with a golden
lustre when the sun kissed it, flowed back in natural waves from the
open, well-formed temples, leaving the rather low forehead free, and
was fastened at her neck in a loose knot. A milk-white robe of the
finest wool, fastened on the left shoulder with a beautifully shaped,
but simple silver brooch, hung in folds down to her ankle