The face of Parrhasius did not alter one line. He said to a Sarmatian slave: “Upon his right; touch lightly, without penetrating.” Nicostratus saw the man advance, and soon his eyes swooned and a sweat of agony came to his temples. Moans came to the lips; then a sob, like that of a child. Parrhasius, impassible, studied the face; then suddenly cried out: “The imbecile! He has died too soon.” * * * * * When it was known how Parrhasius had painted his Prometheus the people stormed his house, crying out for death to the murderer. At last Parrhasius appeared in all his pomp and faced the crowd and all its cries. Then, slowly lifting his painting, as though offering something sacrosanct, he showed the Athenian people the Prometheus. An awesome shudder of amazement, of wonderment at its highest, came to the populace who saw the great picture--the picture of human anguish and final defeat by death. The summit, the uttermost, of tragic grandeur seemed to be unveiled there for the first time.... Silence, as of a temple, held the people for a time; then some hostile cries broke out afresh. But they were futile, and died, lost in the splendid thunder of glory. THE HILL OF HORSEL In the month of August eighteen ninety-one, shortly after I had heard, at Bayreuth, _Tannhäuser_, _Tristan_ and _Parsifal_, for the ninth time, I spent a fortnight in the verdant Marienthal near the ancient city of Essenach. The room I occupied looked out on the west upon the lofty Wartburg, and on the east upon Mount Horsel, that peak which used to be called by priests and poets the Venusberg. The star of Wolfram appeared in the bright sky of this land of Wagner. I was then so prone to sun that after leaning my elbows once upon the sill of the western window before Luther’s towers I determined never to return there even in my dreams. The Venusberg attracted me to it. Alone, among all the neighbouring peaks which with their coverings of black firs or fertile meadows formed a garment for the earth, the Venusberg was bare and like a woman’s swelling breast. Sometimes the rosy dawn cast purple flesh-like tints upon it. It palpitated; truly at certain hours of the evening it seemed to live, and then it appeared as if Thuringia, like a divinity reclining in a green and black tunic, allowed the blood of her desires to mount to the summit of her bare breast. Throughout the long evenings of each day I watched the transfiguration of the hill of Venus. I gazed at it from afar. I did not approach it. It pleased me not to believe in its natural existence, for exquisite is the pleasure of simplifying realities into the pure aspect of their symbols, and remaining at such a distance that the eye is not forced to see things as they are. I was afraid that once for all the illusion would vanish never to return on the day when I set my foot upon the mountain itself.