dead at the belief that she is about to die.
With her head resting on her shoulder, she has glided before the smoking
altar. Her body has lost all rigidity on her bending legs, her arms hang
down at her side; her glance is distracted; she has lost all volition in
the use of her limbs; and she is there, sinking motionless, her throat
scarcely distending with a breath, turning white under her crown of
roses, which the painter's brush has made to pale in sympathy. Between
her body and the altar a young priest is leaning in horrified curiosity.
Another, upon one knee, perfectly terrified, with fixed gaze and parted
lips, holds before the young girl the basin used to receive the blood of
the victims. In the background are visible figures of old grey-bearded
priests, aghast at the horrible spectacle. Above them the smoke of the
temple, the flames, the perfumes, and the incense of the altar mingle
with the cloudy sky, a sky of a night of miracles and hell, wild and
rolling, a sky of fiery and sombre whirlwind, in which a genie
brandishing a torch and dagger bears Love away in sombre flight
enveloped in a black mantle. From that shadow, let us go to the shadow
at the base of the picture: two women, writhing with fear, shrink back
veiling their faces; a little boy clings about their knees and holds
fast to them, and a ray of sunlight, falling across the arm of one of
the women, illumines the hair and the little rosy hands of the child.

Such is Fragonard's great composition, that striking unexpected
production, for which he must have taken the idea, and, perhaps, even
the effect from one of the revivals of _Callirhoe_ by the poet Roy;[27]
a painting of the opera, and demanding from the opera its soul and its
light. But what a magnificent illusion this picture presents! It must be
seen in the Louvre so that the eyes may feast upon the clear and warm
splendour of the canvas, the milky radiance of all those white priestly
robes, the virginal light inundating the centre of the scene,
palpitating and dying away on _Callirhoe_, enveloping her fainting body
like the fading of day, and caressing that failing throat. The rays of
light and the smoke all melt into one another; the temple smokes and the
mists of incense ascend everywhere. Night is rolling above the day. The
sun falls into the gloom and casts a reflected glare. The gleams of
sulphur flames illuminate the faces and the throng. Fragonard lavishly
threw the lights of fairyland u