It was so late when I arrived home that the garden was filled with moonlight. I walked there a long time, absorbed in my reflections, and sincerely endeavoring to strengthen a resolution whose fulfilment I did not yet dare to consider. I trembled as I asked myself if it was necessary to utter the decisive word before another day, or if I could wait till after the soirée organized by Lando, when it would be no longer possible to defer it.
I still hesitated as to this point. Though I had come to a decision, I did not cease to suffer, but I ceased to be weak. I was very far [pg 460] from the summit, but I resolved to attain it, instead of remaining as far below as I now stood. A circumstance, insignificant in itself, now occurred to confirm the change in my mind.
The door of Lorenzo's studio was open, and, wishing to shorten the way to my chamber, I entered it, and was proceeding towards the other door when I found myself face to face with the vestal of which I was the model. The moon threw so brilliant a light over it as to produce a striking effect. I stopped to look at it, and, while doing so, it seemed as if this statue of myself spoke to me in its own way, and in a language similar to that I had so recently been listening to.
And what was the idea which Lorenzo really intended to express in this vestal—the finest of his productions?
One of those ideas which, under the inspiration of genius, sometimes sprang from his soul, and seemed for an instant to show a sense of the good equal to that he had of the beautiful. This was, alas! only a transitory gleam of light, but it was sufficient to justify the ambitious hopes I once felt for a day—hopes so fatally illusory at the very time they were conceived!
Lorenzo's idea in choosing the ancient guardians of the sacred fire as his subjects was to represent under these two figures the woman who was true to her highest mission, and the woman who was untrue to it; the latter making use of the holy fire under her charge to kindle a flame that would end in destruction and woe; the other striving to keep this very fire alive, diffusing its clear, brilliant, beneficent light, not only over herself, but over everything around her.
Such was the idea he had not been able to embody, he said, till he had me for his model. All this was doubtless the dream of an artist; but while I stood contemplating what had resulted from it, the effect I experienced was so strange, the thoughts that came to my mind were so vivid, that they could only have been the whisperings of the voice that for an hour had spoken more and more clearly to my heart.
The statue, however idealized it might be by the genius of the sculptor, resembled me sufficiently for me to recognize the likeness. Flooded as it now was by a brilliant, unearthly light, I looked at it with an attention I had never done before. I observed its simple, dignified attitude; the head slightly inclined towards the symbolic flame that rose from the lamp she bore in her hands with so much ease, and yet with care and vigilance; and, finally, the mouth and eyes, in which it seemed to me no artist had ever expressed so clearly the gentleness, firmness, and purity he wished to depict. It was thus Lorenzo imagined the guardian of the divine fire which not only burned on the sacred altar, but kindled and fed the noblest inspirations of genius....
Yes, the conception was a beautiful one, and I felt proud and gratified that he had found me worthy of being the model to realize it!
All at once I was struck with a kind of terror, as it occurred to me, Shall this resemblance be merely external? Are not many things wanting in my nature which this statue seeks to express, and of which its beauty is only the reflection?...