Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/109

 “It is actually Bertel!” said he.

I withdrew my gaze from that poor chamber—I can see so far around me! I looked at that very moment into the hall of the Vatican where the marble gods stand. I illumined the group of the Laocoon; the stone seemed to sigh. I pressed my quiet kiss upon the muses’ breast; I fancy it heaved. But my beams tarried longest upon the group of the Nile, upon the colossal god. He lay full of thought, supporting himself upon sphinxes: dreaming there as if he were thinking of the fleeting year; little loves played around him with crocodiles. In the horn of plenty sate, with folded arms, and gazing upon the great river-god, a very little love, a true picture of the little boy with the wheel; it was the same expression. Living and charming, here stood the little marble child; and yet more than a thousand times had the wheel of the year gone round since it stood forth in stone. Just so many times as the boy in the poor chamber turned the wheel has the great wheel of time hummed round, and still shall hum, before the age creates another marble-god like this.