“I am a young disputant,” answered Theon, “and very unfit to engage with such a master.”
“That does not follow; a bad logician may have a good understanding; and a young mind may be an acute one. If my argument have truth in it, less than a philosopher will see it; and if it have not, less than a logician may refute it.”
“I think I could urge some objections,” replied Theon; “but they are so confused and indistinct, I almost fear to bring them forth.”
“I dare say I could forestall the most of them,” said the Master. “But I had rather leave your mind to its own exercise. Think over the matter at leisure, and you shall start your questions some evening or morning among my scholars. Knowledge is better imparted in a dialogue than a lecture; and a dialogue is not the worse for having more than two interlocutors. So! our walk has well ended with our subject. Let us see what friends are here. There are surely voices.”
Their route had been circular, and had brought them again in front of the temple. “This is a favorite lodgment of mine,” said the Sage, ascending the noble flight of steps and entering the open door. The apartment, spacious, vaulted, and circular, occupied the whole of the building. The walls were adorned with fine copies of the best pieces of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, and some beautiful originals of Appelles. A statue, the only one in the apartment, was raised on a pedestal in the centre. It was a Venus Urania, by the hand of Lysippus, well chosen as the presiding deity in the gardens of virtuous pleasure. The ceiling, rising into a noble dome, represented the heavens—a ground of deep blue; the stars, sun, and planets in raised gold. But two living figures soon fixed the attention of Theon. In one he recognized Metrodorus, though he had not the evening before much observed his countenance. He stood at a painter’s easel. His figure was more graceful than dignified, his face more expressive than handsome. The eyes, dark, piercing and brilliant, were bent in a painter’s earnest gaze on his living study. The forehead was short, raised much at the temples and singularly over the brows. The hair of a dark glossy brown, short and curled. The cheeks at the moment deeply flushed with the eagerness and, perhaps, the impatience, of an artist. The mouth curled voluptuously, yet not without a mixture of satire; the chin curved upwards, slightly Grecian, assisted this expression. His study was Leontium. She stood, rather than leaned, against a pilaster of the wall; one arm supported on a slab of marble, an unrolled book half lying on the same, and half in her opened hand. The other arm, partly hid in the drapery, dropped loosely by her side. Her fine face turned a little over the left shoulder, to meet the eye of the painter. Not a muscle played; the lips seemed not to breathe: so calm, so pale, so motionless—she looked a statue; so noble, so severely beautiful—she looked the Minerva of Phidias.
“I cannot do it!” cried Metrodorus, flinging down his pencil. “I had need be Appelles, to take that face.” He pushed back his easel in disgust.
“What!” said Leontium, her fine features relaxing into a heavenly smile, “and is all my patience to go for nothing?”
“I am a blundering blind Bœotian! a savage Spartan!” continued the disappointed artist. “There!” and seizing a brush, was about to demolish his work.
“For your life!” cried Leontium; and starting forward, pulled aside his hand. “Oh! the mad ill-temper of a genius! Why, friend, if my face were half so fine as that, Juno would be jealous of it.”
“And who knows that she is not? A daub! a vile daub!” still muttered the impatient scholar, yet his face gradually relaxing its anger, as in spite of itself, till it turned to meet Leontium’s with a smile.