(This is the scene which M. Oliver Merson desired to represent upon one of the walls of Sylvie's pavilion; I do not dare to affirm that he rendered all its charm.)
Despite a very obscure and very pretentious mythological machinery, we may still enjoy the Tritons transformed into a troop of white deer by a single glance of Sylvie, and gamboling timidly among the thickets of the wood:
Their hearts, deprived of blood by fear,
Can only with timidity
Behold the sky or trample on the earth.
(Here is one of those pictures which abound in Théophile and disconcert the reader, even when the coolness of the charming grove disposes him to every indulgence.)
We will also discover an Albanesque grace in a combat of Loves and Nereids in the waters of the
Now together, now scattered,
They shine in this dark veil
And beneath the waves which they have pierced