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These two angels had jujube yellow aureoles tilted to the back like sailors' hats; and this ragged attire, the feathers folded over the breast, the hat of glory, with their general expression of refractory wilfulness, suggested the idea that these beings were at once paupers, Apaches or Mohicans, and seamen.
We have shut off every light in the house itself; the reef runs no longer beneath the sea like a vein of golden light, nor do the windows cast aureoles upon the sleeping water. What breeze there is comes in hot gusts like breath from heated waters.
What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like a luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation, which reminds us of Milton's definition of light: "Bright effluence of bright essence increate"?
These little colored patches are stains upon the windows of a human soul; stand on the outside, they are but dull and meaningless spots of color; seen from within, they are glorified shapes with empurpled wings and sunbright aureoles. My hand trembles when I offer you this.
Vouchsafe me Thy mercy, O my God, for I was weak! My sin is loathsome; I prostrate myself before Thee, I cry aloud for mercy!" Then seeing Christ amid His white million of youths, beautiful singing saints, gold curls and gold aureoles, lifted throats, and form of harp and dulcimer, he fell prone in great bitterness on the misery of earthly life.
The mystery which resides in all greatness, in all charm, is not violated by the cynical explanations of decay. They remain fortunate as those whom the gods loved, wearing the aureoles of immortal promise. Few artists have been wise in this respect; poets, for example, very seldom. Thus we find the works of most of them encumbered with the débris of their senility.
But these seductive pictures belonged to a class of art with which the moneyed public had become since '73 unhappily too familiar. They had to jostle, in the gallery of the stock-market, a vast and various collection exhaustive of the whole field of allegory, mythological and technical, and framed in the most bewitching aureoles of blue, red and green printer's ink.
They seem to live in the fire of stained glass, borrowing from the flaming whirlwind of the rose-windows the circles of their aureoles.
Therefore the vision lasted as long as the sun stayed yet above the Alps; and the images with their aureoles shrank and dilated with the undulations of the mist.
The two oldest wore blue dresses and red mantles, and their heads were covered with felt caps encircled by bands of gilt paper in imitation of aureoles. A smaller one wore a gray dress, upon which were painted black devils and inverted torches.
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