You didn't notice that before! How difficult it must have been,
when amber is so friable! Here's one with a chessboard on his back, and
all his kings and queens and pawns slung round him. Here's another
with a torch, a flaming torch, its fire pouring out inverted. They are
grotesque enough;--but this, this is matchless: such a miniature woman,
one hand grasping the round rock behind, while she looks down into some
gulf, perhaps, beneath, and will let herself fall. Oh, you should see
_her_ with a magnifying-glass! You want to think of calm, satisfying
death, a mere exhalation, a voluntary slipping into another element?
There it is for you. They are all gods and goddesses. They are all here
but one; I've lost one, the knot of all, the love of the thing. Well!
wasn't it queer for a Catholic girl to have at prayer? Don't you wonder
where she got it? Ah! but don't you wonder where I got it? I'll tell
you.
Papa came in, one day, and with great mystery commenced unrolling,
and unrolling, and throwing tissue papers on the floor, and scraps of
colored wool; and Lu and I ran to him,--Lu stooping on her knees to look
up, I bending over his hands to look down.
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