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When they arrived, Henry the Fourth summoned them into his presence. They stood before him, says an old writer, like river-gods of yore; for from head to foot they were clothed in shaggy skins, and beards of prodigious length hung from their swarthy faces. They had accumulated, on their island, a quantity of valuable furs.
And then he ordained on the spot, like a person of resolute character and beautiful judgment, that all that part should be covered with a vast canvas painted in chiaroscuro, with S. John the Baptist baptizing Christ, and the people standing all around to see them or to be baptized, some taking off their clothes, and others putting them on again, in various attitudes; and above this was to be a God the Father sending down the Holy Spirit, with two fountains in the guise of river-gods, representing the Jor and the Dan, which, pouring forth water, were to form the Jordan.
Another example of personification may be seen in the recumbent figures of river-gods notably that of the Nile, with his sixteen cubits, as babies, playing around him.
The epic deals with the history of the treasure of the Nibelungs, and tells how a certain Hreithmar had it given him by the god Loki as a weregild for the slaying of the formers son, Otur or Otter, who occasionally took the shape of that animal. Loki in his turn obtained the ransom from the dwarf Andwari, who had stolen it from the river-gods of the Rhine.
Which way soever we turned, our eyes met some remarkable edifice, or marble basin into which several groups of sculptured river-gods pour a profusion of waters.
Then, on another evening Pierre told Benedetta and Dario of his admiration for the Roman fountains, for in no other city of the world does water flow so abundantly and magnificently in fountains of bronze and marble, from the boat-shaped Fontana della Barcaccia on the Piazza di Spagna, the Triton on the Piazza Barberini, and the Tortoises which give their name to the Piazza delle Tartarughe, to the three fountains of the Piazza Navona where Bernini's vast central composition of rock and river-gods rises so triumphantly, and to the colossal and pompous fountain of Trevi, where King Neptune stands on high attended by lofty figures of Health and Fruitfulness.
A few impersonations of nature, such as river-gods, lingered on in the paintings of the Roman catacombs. And winged genii were common there, whether cupids or cherubs it would be hard to say. But there was no realm into which artistic fancy could stray, filling it with super-men and super-women.
"I am a married woman, and my own mistress, to such a degree, that in the morning, when Marneffe sets out for the office, if he takes it into his head to say good-bye and finds my door locked, he goes off without a word. He cares less for his boy than I care for one of the marble children that play at the feet of one of the river-gods in the Tuileries.
There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it commemorates some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in ponderous allegories nymphs, and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672.
The fish swimming close to the shore had talked to the Grass, of the mysterious race who lived in the shallows of the river, higher up, where it broadened into a lake; and played on their rude pipes as they rested in the flickering gloom of the water-weeds and rushes. "Everyone has seen the River-Gods but me!" said the white flower.
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