without waking Petrus, who seemed to be sleeping. She obeyed her
motherly impulse to encourage Polykarp with some loving words, and
climbing up the narrow stair that led to the roof, she went into his
room. Surprised, irresolute, and speechless she stood for some time
behind the young man, and looked at the strongly illuminated and
beautiful features of the newly-formed bust, which was only too like its
well-known prototype. At last she laid her hand on her son's shoulder,
and spoke his name. Polykarp stepped back, and looked at his mother in
bewilderment, like a man roused from sleep; but she interrupted the
stammering speech with which he tried to greet her, by saying, gravely
and not without severity, as she pointed to the statue, "What does this
mean?"

"What should it mean, mother?" answered Polykarp in a low tone, and
shaking his head sadly. "Ask me no more at present, for if you gave me
no rest, and even if I tried to explain to you how to-day--this very day
--I have felt impelled and driven to make this woman's image, still you
could not understand me--no, nor any one else."

"God forbid that I should ever understand it!" cried Dorothea. "'Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,' was the commandment of the Lord on
this mountain. And you? You think I could not understand you? Who
should understand you then, if not your mother? This I certainly do not
comprehend, that a son of Petrus and of mine should have thrown all the
teaching and the example of his parents so utterly to the wind. But what
you are aiming at with this statue, it seems to me is not hard to guess.
As the forbidden-fruit hangs too high for you, you degrade your art, and
make to yourself an image that resembles her according to your taste.
Simply and plainly it comes to this; as you can no longer see the Gaul's
wife in her own person, and yet cannot exist without the sweet presence