far as my things are not positively beautiful, you may set them down as
failures. For me, it 's either that or nothing. It 's against the taste
of the day, I know; we have really lost the faculty to understand beauty
in the large, ideal way. We stand like a race with shrunken muscles,
staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted. But I
don't hesitate to proclaim it--I mean to lift them again! I mean to go
in for big things; that 's my notion of my art. I mean to do things
that will be simple and vast and infinite. You 'll see if they won't be
infinite! Excuse me if I brag a little; all those Italian fellows in the
Renaissance used to brag. There was a sensation once common, I am sure,
in the human breast--a kind of religious awe in the presence of a marble
image newly created and expressing the human type in superhuman purity.
When Phidias and Praxiteles had their statues of goddesses unveiled in
the temples of the AEgean, don't you suppose there was a passionate
beating of hearts, a thrill of mysterious terror? I mean to bring it
back; I mean to thrill the world again! I mean to produce a Juno that
will make you tremble, a Venus that will make you swoon!"

"So that when we come and see you," said Madame Grandoni, "we must be
sure and bring our smelling-bottles. And pray have a few soft sofas
conveniently placed."

"Phidias and Praxiteles," Miss Blanchard remarked, "had the advantage
of believing in their goddesses. I insist on believing, for myself, that
the pagan mythology is not a fiction, and that Venus and Juno and Apollo
and Mercury used to come down in a cloud into this very city of Rome
where we sit talking nineteenth century English."

"Nineteenth century nonsense, my dear!" cried Madame Grandoni. "Mr.
Hudson may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno--that 's you and
I--arrived to-day in a very dirty cab; and were cheated by the driver,
too."

"But, my dear fellow," objected Gloriani, "you don't mean to say you
are going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded Apollos and
Hebes."

"It won't matter what you call them," said Roderick. "They shall be
simply divine forms. They shall be Beauty; they shall be Wisdom; they
shall be Power; they shall be Genius; they shall be Daring. That 's all
the Greek divinities were."

"That 's rather abstract, you know," said Miss Blanchard.

"My dear fellow," cried Gloriani, "you 're delightfully young."

"I hope you 'll not grow any older,"