Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/151

 purity. When Phidias and Praxiteles had their statues of goddesses unveiled in the temples of the Ægean, don't you suppose there was something more than a cold-blooded, critical flutter? The thing that there was is the thing I want to bring back. I want to thrill you, with my cold marble, when you look. I want to produce the sacred terror; a Hera that will make you turn blue, an Aphrodite that will make you turn—well, faint."

"So that when we come and see you," said Madame Grandoni, "we must be sure and bring our smelling-bottles. And pray have a few sofas conveniently placed."

"Phidias and Praxiteles," Miss Blanchard remarked, "had the advantage of believing in their goddesses. I insist on believing, for myself, that the pagan mythology is n't to be explained away by a ruthless analysis, and that Venus and Juno and Apollo and Mercury used to come down in a cloud into this very city of Rome where we sit talking nineteenth-century English."

"Nineteenth-century nonsense, my dear!" cried Madame Grandoni. "Mr. Hudson may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno—that 's you and I—arrived to-day in a very dirty cab; and were cheated by the driver too."

"But, my dear fellow," objected Gloriani, "you don't mean to say you are going to make over in cold blood those poor old academic bugbears, the prize bores of Olympus. 'Turn blue'?—they may make us indeed! Only Canova has so thoroughly shown them how that there 's nothing left for you."

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