CHAPTER IV
I returned upon horseback to my own place going through Attica. During my five years of absence creditors had sold the few poor goods I possessed, and I put up very simply at a hostelry of Athens for many weeks. Parrhasius followed after an interval of a few days. Hearing of my modest lodging, he at once offered me hospitality. I went to him at once to thank him and decline. He then lived near the Academy, in a palace of marble and metal, near to the little house that Plato lived in.
The gardens extended to the river, and the house was surrounded by much pomp of trees.
By some feebleness of the intellect that is difficult to understand in a man of such strength and value, Parrhasius positively adored ostentation and every show of wealth. His fortune was immense, and he did not permit any one to think otherwise. With marble, silk, gold, and beauteous women, his abode had the air of a palace of Artaxerxes. He greeted me upon the threshold of the chamber that served him for a studio. Standing robed in red silk and crowned like an Olympian god, he opened his large arms to me. I then penetrated by his side into the famous salon that had been the matrix of so many masterpieces.
“My Prometheus?” he said, in answer to my question. “No; I am yet meditating upon that. In a few days I shall see it all clearer. Come; look at this little thing. It is wonderful. I have never done a more beautiful thing.”
It was a picture of a sleeping nymph and two satyrs. I saw, near, the lovely Artemidora and two of the Sarmatians, and at once divined that they had posed for the picture.
He ordered the pose to be again taken, and continued the painting before me.