I had divined them--so completely did they realize
an aesthetic ideal I had always felt.
I had often, as I walked the London streets, peopled an imaginary world
of my own with a few hundreds of such beings, made flesh and blood, and
pictured them as a kind of beneficent aristocracy seven feet high, with
minds and manners to match their physique, and set above the rest of the
world for its good; for I found it necessary (so that my dream should
have a point) to provide them with a foil in the shape of millions of
such people as we meet every day. I was egotistic and self-seeking
enough, it is true, to enroll myself among the former, and had chosen
for my particular use and wear just such a frame as that of the Theseus,
with, of course, the nose and hands and feet (of which time has bereft
him) restored, and all mutilations made good.
And for my mistress and companion I had duly selected no less a person
than the Venus of Milo (no longer armless), of which Lintot possessed a
plaster-cast, and whose beauties I had foreseen before I ever beheld
them with the bodily eye.
"Monsieur n'est pas degoute!" as Ibbetson would have remarked.
But most of all did I pant for the music which is divine.
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