No, it was all real- a reality he had never beforeexperienced.
  In the purple air gleamed the bright Star, and its beams fell uponhim and upon the marble Psyche. He trembled as he looked at thatpicture of immortality, and his glance seemed impure to him. Hethrew the cloth over the statue, and then touched it once more tounveil the form- but he was not able to look again at his own work.
  Gloomy, quiet, absorbed in his own thoughts, he sat therethrough the long day; he heard nothing of what was going on aroundhim, and no man guessed what was passing in this human soul.
  And days and weeks went by, but the nights passed more slowly thanthe days. The flashing Star beheld him one morning as he rose, paleand trembling with fever, from his sad couch; then he steppedtowards the statue, threw back the covering, took one long,sorrowful gaze at his work, and then, almost sinking beneath theburden, he dragged the statue out into the garden. In that place wasan old dry well, now nothing but a hole. Into this he cast the Psyche,threw earth in above her, and covered up the spot with twigs andnettles.
  "Away! begone!" Such was the short epitaph he spoke.
  The Star beheld all this from the pink morning sky, and its beamtrembled upon two great tears upon the pale feverish cheeks of theyoung man; and soon it was said that he was sick unto death, and helay stretched upon a bed of pain.
  The convent Brother Ignatius visited him as a physician and afriend, and brought him words of comfort, of religion, and spoke tohim of the peace and happiness of the church, of the sinfulness ofman, of rest and mercy to be found in heaven.
  And the words fell like warm sunbeams upon a teeming soil. Thesoil smoked and sent up clouds of mist, fantastic pictures, picturesin which there was reality; and from these floating islands helooked across at human life. He found it vanity and delusion- andvanity and delusion it had been to him. They told him that art was asorcerer, betraying us to vanity and to earthly lusts; that we arefalse to ourselves, unfaithful to our friends, unfaithful towardsHeaven; and that the serpent was always repeating within us, "Eat, andthou shalt become as God."
  And it appeared to him as if now, for the first time, he knewhimself, and had found the way that leads to truth and to peace. Inthe church was the light and the brightness of God- in the monk's cellhe should find the rest through which the tree of human life mightgrow on into eternity.
  Brother Ignatius strengthened his longings, and thedetermination became firm within him. A child of the world became aservant of the church- the young artist renounced the world, andretired into the cloister.
  The brothers came forward affectionately to welcome him, and hisinauguration was as a Sunday feast. Heaven seemed to him to dwell inthe sunshine of the church, and to beam upon him from the holypictures and from the cross. And when, in the evening, at the sunsethour, he stood in his little cell, and, opening the window, looked outupon old Rome, upon the desolated temples, and the great deadColiseum- when he saw all this in its spring garb, when the acaciasbloomed, and the ivy was fresh, and roses burst forth everywhere,and the citron and orange were in the height of their beauty, andthe palm trees waved their branches- then he felt a deeper emotionthan had ever yet thrilled through him. The quiet open Campagna spreaditself forth towards the blue snow-covered mountains, which seemedto be painted in the air; all the outlines melting into each other,breathing peace and beauty, floating, dreaming- and all appearing likea dream!