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He seemed to partake of those obscure forces of nature which the Greeks personified in shapes part human and part beast, the satyr and the faun. I thought of Marsyas, whom the god flayed because he had dared to rival him in song. Strickland seemed to bear in his heart strange harmonies and unadventured patterns, and I foresaw for him an end of torture and despair.
Antinous, you are wiser than I. Let us leave the future to the future. The feast-day is ours too; let us take advantage of this day of freedom. We too will throw ourselves into the holiday whirlpool disguised, I as a satyr, and you as a young faun or something of the kind; we will drain cups, wander round the city and enjoy all that is enjoyable."
In the middle stood a dancing faun in blood red marble, also esteemed a precious work of art. Light entered by an arched window, once glazed, now only barred with ornamental iron, too high in the wall to allow of any view; below this, serving as table, was an old marble sarcophagus carved with the Calydonian hunt. Here, one day of spring, Decius sat over his studies.
This Faun is of Pentelic marble: it was found in 1701, near Civita Lavinia, and placed in the Capitol by Benedict XIV. ARIADNE, known by the name of CLEOPATRA. In this beautiful figure, Ariadne is represented asleep on a rock in the Isle of Naxos, abandoned by the faithless Theseus, and at the moment when Bacchus became enamoured of her, as described by several ancient poets.
The Faun proudly pointed out a picture of other Fauns dancing with Nymphs. The Phoenix gazed very thoughtfully at some scenes of a bird building and sitting in a nest of flames. But the last pictures of this story had been broken up by roots, so they could not see how it ended.
The group was in wonderful preservation: the figure of Bacchus intact, that of the young faun lacking only the arm, which had evidently been freely extended. It exists in many repetitions and variations in most of our museums; a work originally of the school of Praxiteles, but in none of the copies handed to us of excellence sufficient to display the hand of the original sculptor.
His first conception of the story of The Marble Faun had been as a novelette; but he now decided to expand it so as to contain a large amount of descriptive matter; and although the strict rules of artistic construction may have been somewhat relaxed in order to admit these passages, there is no doubt that the book gained thereby in value as a permanent addition to literature, the plot, powerful though it is, being of importance secondary to the creation of an atmosphere which should soften the outlines and remove the whole theme into a suitable remoteness from the domain of matter-of-fact.
Booty was a slender, agile youth with an innocent, sanguine face, the face of a beardless faun, finished off with a bush of blond hair that stood up from his forehead like a monumental flame. He read very slowly, in a voice that had in it both an adolescent croak and an engaging Cockney tang.
So she would question her beauty, and, looking in her glass, see not herself but the demon love that possessed her; and again in another mirror she found a devil, she said, like a faun prick-eared and with goat's feet, peering at her with frightening eyes.
David stood up and said in a puzzled voice, "I don't hear anything." He noticed that the Phoenix had also got up, and was listening uncomfortably to whatever it was. "Listen! Oh, listen!" cried the Faun. There was a joyous light in his eyes as he leaned forward with his lips slightly parted, straining toward the mysterious silence.
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