you succeeded in doing so, it forces your work out of the sphere of
reality, whose boundary I never before saw you cross by a single inch.
Whether this occurred unconsciously to you in an hour of mental ecstasy,
or whether you felt that you still lacked the means to represent the
divine, and therefore returned to the older methods, I do not venture
to decide. But at the first examination of your work I was conscious
of one thing: It means for you a revolution, a rupture with your former
aspirations; and as--I willingly confess it--you had been marvellously
successful, it would have driven you, had your sight been spared, out of
your own course and into the arms of the ancients, perhaps to your
material profit, but scarcely to the advantage of art, which needs a
renewal of its vital energies."

"Let me assure you, my lord," Hermon protested, "that had I remained able
to continue to create, the success of the Demeter would never, never have
rendered me faithless to the conviction and method of creation which I
believed right; nay, before losing my sight, my whole soul was absorbed
in a new work which would have permitted me to remain wholly and
completely within the bounds of reality."

"The Arachne?" asked the King.

"Yes, my lord," cried Hermon ardently. "With its completion I expected
to render the greatest service, not only to myself, but to the cause of
truth."

Here Ptolemy interrupted with icy coldness: "Yet you were certainly
wrong; at least, if the Thracian Althea, who is the personification of
falsehood, had continued to be the model." Then he changed his tone, and
with the exclamation: "You are protected from the needs of life, unless