and
performances before strangers as well as before their own family, had
often seemed to him embarrassing. And now? She had indeed reason to blame
him, for Sirona was the wife of another, she had never even noticed his
admiration, and now, they all said, had committed a crime for the sake of
a stranger. It must seem both a mad and a sinful thing in the eyes of men
that he of all others should sacrifice the best he had--his Art--and how
little could Dorothea, who usually endeavored to understand him,
comprehend the overpowering impulse which had driven him to his task.

He loved and honored his mother with his whole heart, and feeling that
she was doing herself an injustice by her false and low estimate of his
proceedings, he interrupted her eager discourse, raising his hands
imploringly to her.

"No, mother, no!" he exclaimed. "As truly as God is my helper, it is not
so. It is true that I have moulded this head, but not to keep it, and
commit the sin of worshipping it, but rather to free myself from the
image that stands before my mind's eye by day and by night, in the city
and in the desert, whose beauty distracts my mind when I think, and my
devotions when I try to pray. To whom is it given to read the soul of
man? And is not Sirona's form and face the loveliest image of the Most
High? So to represent it, that the whole charm that her presence
exercises over me might also be felt by every beholder, is a task that I
have set myself ever since her arrival in our house. I had to go back to
the capital, and the work I longed to achieve took a clearer form; at
every hour I discovered something to change and to improve in the pose of
the head, the glance of the eye or the expression of the mouth. But still
I lacked courage to put the work in hand, for it seemed too audacious to
attempt to give reality to the glorious image in my soul, by the aid of
gray clay and pale cold marble; to reproduce it so that the perfect work
should delight the eye of sense, no less than the image enshrined in my
breast delights my inward eye. At the same time I was not idle, I gained
the prize for the model of the lions, and if I have succeeded with the
Good Shepherd blessing the flock, which is for the sarcophagus of Comes,
and if the master could praise the expression of devoted tenderness in
the look of the Redeemer, I know--nay, do not interrupt me, mother, for
what I felt was a pure emotion and no sin--I know that it was because I
was mys