s is
leaning over it_].

ACIS. I am no great judge of sculpture. Art is not my line. What is
wrong with the busts?

ECRASIA. Wrong with them! Instead of being ideally beautiful nymphs and
youths, they are horribly realistic studies of--but I really cannot
bring my lips to utter it.

_The Newly Born, full of curiosity, runs to the temple, and peeps in._

ACIS. Oh, stow it, Ecrasia. Your lips are not so squeamish as all that.
Studies of what?

THE NEWLY BORN [_from the temple steps_] Ancients.

ACIS [_surprised but not scandalized_] Ancients!

ECRASIA. Yes, ancients. The one subject that is by the universal consent
of all connoisseurs absolutely excluded from the fine arts. [_To
Arjillax_] How can you defend such a proceeding?

ARJILLAX. If you come to that, what interest can you find in the statues
of smirking nymphs and posturing youths you stick up all over the place?

ECRASIA. You did not ask that when your hand was still skilful enough to
model them.

ARJILLAX. Skilful! You high-nosed idiot, I could turn such things out by
the score with my eyes bandaged and one hand tied behind me. But what
use would they be? They would bore me; and they would bore you if you
had any sense. Go in and look at my busts. Look at them again and yet
again until you receive the full impression of the intensity of
mind that is stamped on them; and then go back to the pretty-pretty
confectionery you call sculpture, and see whether you can endure its
vapid emptiness. [_He mounts the altar impetuously_] Listen to me, all
of you; and do you, Ecrasia, be silent if you are capable of silence.

ECRASIA. Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Scorn! That is
what I feel for your revolting busts.

ARJILLAX. Fool: the busts are only the beginning of a mighty design.
Listen.

ACIS. Go ahead, old sport. We are listening.

_Martellus stretches himself on the sward beside the altar. The Newly
Born sits on the temple steps with her chin on her hands, ready to
devour the first oration she has ever heard. The rest sit or stand at
ease._

ARJILLAX. In the records which generations of children have rescued from
the stupid neglect of the ancients, there has come down to us a fable
which, like many fables, is not a thing that was done in the past, but a
thing that is to be done in the future. It is a legend of a supernatural
being called the Archangel Michael.

THE NEWLY BORN. Is this a story? I want to hear a story. [_She runs do