"What an intelligent priest it is! O Peronella, you are a true daughter of Aphrodite."
"Tell me about her, Normano. She was the goddess of Love!"
"Yes, and she has a son called Cupid and is drawn in a chariot by violet-throated doves. Also, Peronella, she has a little silver broom, with which she drives away the cobwebs from a man's soul when he has read too many books."
"And when did she wear the shining black?"
"O! this book is not about Aphrodite, it is about Isis, an Egyptian goddess."
"Egyptian? That must be interesting. Was she as beautiful as Aphrodite? Tell me all about her."
"There are different sorts of beauty. Aphrodite was a graceful, careless and happy woman, rather like you to look at, and very much like you in character."
"While Isis had all Nature to manage, and the moon and the sea. She was a terrible goddess, with snakes in her hair, and a great disc between her breasts. Men loved her none the less; she was the spirit of all Nature, and required purity and endurance from her worshippers."
"Purity and endurance! And snakes in her hair! Aphrodite must have been far more pleasant, especially if she was like me. She was the patroness of our city, the Father said; and Dr Sforelli wrote to the papers once to say that the image of the Virgin in the Cathedral Church was a heathen statue that some King put up there and that clothes had been made for it later. I know that because Father Algio was so furious at the time that he preached three sermons against the Jews. But why do you read such rubbish?"
Norman was irritated by the naïveness of the remark, and still more irritated with himself for being irritated.
"What an ass I am," he said to himself, "to talk to a pretty girl about the Classics, and what a much larger ass to trouble what she thinks!"
Norman had to learn that education makes prigs of all of us, whether we will or no. Of wise and learned men only the truly great can keep their characters free of priggishness, and even then, what of Marcus Aurelius and William Wordsworth and John Ruskin? What even of Olympian Goethe?
"You mean," said Norman, "why do I read such rubbish when I have you to look at?"
"The book of your eyes is the best book," said Norman.
Romance even in her moment could not so fool him that he did not wish he could have said "the book of your soul."