that the eternal wanderers above were no longer soulless forms, that he
again saw in the pure silver disk above friendly Selene, in the rolling
salt waves the kingdom of Poseidon! To-morrow, when the deep blue water
was calm, he would greet the sea-god Glaucus, and when snowy foam crowned
the crests of the waves, white-armed Thetis. The wind was no longer an
empty sound to him; no, it, too, came from a deity. All Nature had
regained a new, divine life. Doubtless he felt much nearer to his
childhood than before, but he was infinitely less distant from the
eternal divinity. And all the forms, so full of meaning, which appeared
to him from Nature, and from every powerful emotion of his own soul, were
waiting to be represented by his art in the noblest of forms, those of
human beings. There were few with whose nature he had not become
familiar in the darkness and solitude that once surrounded him.

When he began to create again, he had only to summon them, and he
awaited, with the suspense of the general who is in command of new
troops on the eve of battle, the success of his own work after the
great transformation which had taken place in him.

What a stress and tumult!

He had controlled it since the first hour when he regained his full
vision. He would fain have transformed the moon into the sun, the ship
into the studio, and begun to model.

He knew, too, what he desired to create.

He would model an Apollo trampling under foot the slain dragon of
darkness.