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The sight of these things continually brought up visions of the loving and beautiful child, who for so many years had slept nestling in her arms, and made the days tuneful with her songs. Then there was Gerald's silent flute, and the silken cushion she had embroidered for him, on which she had so often seen him reposing, and thought him handsome as a sleeping Adonis.
By little and little he had played the dangerous game that made such an appeal to his vanity. The poets were true in their psychology when they pictured the distress of mortal men beloved of goddesses: Tithonus and Aurora, Venus and Adonis, Diana and Endymion. How could aught but tragedy result from such loves as these? How could a mortal have dared to lift his eyes to such a height unbidden?
Of all these deities, stories were no doubt current that formed so many variations of one and the same theme, symbolizing their disappearance and the hoped-for return, the same story that we encounter in the myth of Venus and Adonis, in the myth of Osiris, and, in some guise or other, among many other nations of the ancient world.
From Venice, likewise, have come many most beautiful engravings on wood and on copper; on wood, after Tiziano, many landscapes, a Nativity of Christ, a S. Jerome, and a S. Francis; and on copper the Tantalus, the Adonis, and many other plates, which have been engraved by Giulio Bonasone of Bologna, together with some others by Raffaello, by Giulio Romano, by Parmigiano, and by all the other masters whose drawings he has been able to obtain.
"Still, it must be a pleasant variation," I observed, forgetting that it is bad form to converse with a servant, and remembering only that I was addressing an old flame of Madame Venus. "Hades isn't a bad place for a little while, I should fancy." "True," sighed Adonis. "But the society there is very mixed. It's full of self-made immortals, whereas we are all immortals by birth."
Now, although the dog is big, it is not by his size that he is to become famous, or we might call him Hercules or Goliath; neither is it by his beauty, or Adonis would not be unsuitable. It is by his superior sagacity and wisdom. And there I am puzzled to find his prototype amongst mortals; for, perhaps, it may be my ignorance of history " "You ignorant, indeed, Grandfather!"
The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances. He had a dark brown adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of five yards.
Many ages afterwards, when the Emperor Julian made his first entry into Antioch, he found in like manner the gay, the luxurious capital of the East plunged in mimic grief for the annual death of Adonis; and if he had any presentiment of coming evil, the voices of lamentation which struck upon his ear must have seemed to sound his knell.
The lady was fair, as we have said, and delicate; everything about her was fine and refined; her hand in his looked like a rose lying among carrots, and when he kissed it, he looked as a cow might do on finding such a flower among her food. She was graceful as a couchant goddess and, moreover, as self-possessed as Venus must have been when courting Adonis.
The practice is not confined to Sicily, for it is observed also at Cosenza in Calabria, and perhaps in other places. The whole custom sepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grain may be nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the worship of Adonis. Nor are these Sicilian and Calabrian customs the only Easter ceremonies which resemble the rites of Adonis.
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