"What are you looking at, Athenian? That clay? How you must laugh at me! I am convinced that I am worthless as an artist. Yet there are moments when I feel myself capable of a great work; I conceive it; I see it in my mind as clearly as if I had it erected before me; but when I put my hands to the clay I realize my lack of skill, and I am ready to weep. Ah! if only I could have gone to Greece!" His words sounded like a lament; he stared angrily at the pile of clay which had crudely begun to assume the outlines of Rhanto's form. "If you only knew how I had to urge her before she would consent to show the divine nudity of her body. Do not think it strange. She comes of a race of barbarians. She fears the club of her grandfather, the chief shepherd, that would fall upon her body if he should discover her as you did a few minutes ago. I explained to her about our sculptors, before whom the most famous hetæræ contended for the honor of disrobing; and the certainty that her mistress, Sónnica, had done the same in Athens was the only thing that decided her. But how can one copy her divine body? How imbue molded clay with the life which throbs beneath her skin?" In his despair he threatened the clay figurine as if he would crush it under his feet. Then he took courage, and said resolutely: "But I will be stronger than my untrained hands. I will work years and years if necessary, until I see the divine form of my Rhanto reproduced in all its beauty. I will not return to the pottery, although the old archer may kill me with blows. I began my statuette hoping that it might figure in the Panathenaic procession. Rhanto would carry it on her head, and the multitude would crowd around to see it. I only hope for a moment of inspiration, a fortunate moment. Who knows if to-morrow the muses may not breathe upon me, and that I shall arise with the skill in my hands to execute my dream?" Frankly hurling himself down from the pinnacle of his imagination he told the Athenian his ambition.