Page:Colour studies in Paris.djvu/258

 Ammonaria is before the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria. It is a Christian martyr whom they are scourging: she writhes under the blows, in the cruel sunlight: one feels the anguish of the bent and tortured figure, suffering visibly. The other design renders that marvellous dialogue between the Sphinx and the Chimera. "C'est que je garde mon secret!" says the Sphinx. "Je songe et je calcule.… Et mon regarde que rien ne peut dévier, demeure tendu à travers les choses sur un horizon inaccessible. Moi," replies the Chimera, "je suis légère et joyeuse!" and it is a veritable hilarity that one discovers, looking at it rightly, in the regard of the strange creature: a spasm of ironic laughter in the blots of blackness which are its eyes, in the mouth that one divines, in the curl and coil of the whole figure. In the calm gaze and heavy placid pose of the Sphinx, lines of immeasurable age above its eyes, there is a crushing force which weighs on one like a great weight, something external. The power of the Chimera is of the mind and over souls. Vague, terrible, a mockery, a menace, it has the vertigo of