He looked again around the room. Was it fancy, now? Perhaps it was. It was not likely the Madonna was winking in a heretic's parlor. Besides, it was the same sort of no-motion he had watched many a time in the twilight, when the door seemed to swing backward and forward in the dusky air, following the dilation and contraction of his own eyes. He tried it now on the Madonna. He opened his eyes as widely as possible, and the drooping lids of the picture evidently half-raised themselves from the dark, soft orbs. He nearly closed his own, and hers bent again in serenest contemplation. He looked at the bronze figure of the "Dying Stork," which was placed below the picture, and started to see that it moved also, and with a strange, unnatural, galvanic sort of movement, like the "animated oat," which moves when placed on the hand after being warmed a moment in the mouth. The legs sprung against the reeds and flags, in the same way. Lastly, he looked at the bas-relief which stood near, leaning against the wall. It was very, very strange. Had the old fable of Pygmalion a truth in it, then? And could the same genius that created also give life and warmth to its productions? Beneath the marble he could see the soft, living pulse, distinctly; and the wind that blew over the mountains, beyond the river, ruffled the waves about the tiny boat. Even the star above the child's head sparkled in the depths of the sky. Fred was delighted. "It is enchantment!" he said. But no,--it was one of those miracles that have not yet become commonplace. The poetic life that his perceptions were now able to enjoy, in inanimate nature, would be such a perpetual gratification to his taste,--such an incentive to explorations and discoveries! He could not felicitate himself enough. "A thousand times better than the microscope," said he to himself again. "Atoms are annoying and disgusting to look at, with their incomprehensible and frightful minuteness, and their horrible celerity. One does not like to think that everything is composed of myriads, be they ever so beautiful,--which they are not, that ever I could see, but chiefly all head or a wriggling tail. Bah! This is much better. Hark! I can hear the waves dash,--the hope-song of the child,--and the breeze moving against the delicate sails! "How delightful it will be to travel, with this new-found faculty! Whenever I choose, I can have the talking bird, the singing tree, and the laughing water! I always thought those peeps into irrational nature the chief charm of the Arabian tales. How little did I dream of ever being able to read with my own eyes the riddle of the world! By-the-way, let me look at my Graces, and see if they, too, are conscious forms of beauty."