The most costly were covered with fine red linen, wound about with
strings of beads and gold ornaments, and with the name of the dead
painted on the upper side. In a long, narrow room apart hung the
portraits, waiting to be attached to the upper end of the mummy-cases of
those lately deceased, and still in the hands of embalmers. Here, too,
most of the lamps were out, and the upper end of the room was already
dark. Only in the middle, where the best pictures were on show, the
lights had been renewed.

The portraits were painted on thin panels of sycamore or of cypress, and
in most of them the execution betrayed that their destiny was to be
hidden in the gloom of a tomb.

Alexander's portrait of Korinna was in the middle of the gallery, in a
good light, and stood out from the paintings on each side of it as a
genuine emerald amid green glass. It was constantly surrounded by a
crowd of the curious and connoisseurs. They pointed out the beautiful
work to each other; but, though most of them acknowledged the skill of
the master who had painted it, many ascribed its superiority to the
magical charm of the model. One could see in those wonderfully
harmonious features that Aristotle was right when he discerned beauty
in order and proportion; while another declared that he found there the
evidence of Plato's doctrine of the identity of the good and the
beautiful--for this face was so lovely because it was the mirror of a
soul which had been disembodied in the plenitude of maiden purity and
virtue, unjarred by any discord; and this gave rise to a vehement
discussion as to the essential nature of beauty and of virtue.

Others longed to know more about the early-dead original of this
enchanting portrait. Korinna's wealthy father and his brothers were