254 THE VITAL FORCE 



Among the paintings was one which was immediately re- 

 cognised as the companion or pendent of the Ilhodian Ge- 

 nius : the dimensions were the same, and the colouring 

 similar, but in a better state of preservation : the Genius 

 was still the central figure, but the butterfly was no longer 

 on his shoulder ; his head was drooping, and his torch ex- 

 tinguished and inverted. The youths and maidens pressing 

 around him had met and embraced ; their glance, no longer 

 subdued or sad, announced, on the contrary, emancipation 

 from restraint, and the fulfilment of long-cherished desires. 



The Syracusan antiquaries were already seeking to modify 

 the explanations they had previously proposed, so as to 

 adapt them to the newly-arrived picture, when Dionysius 

 commanded the latter to be carried to the house of Epichar- 

 mus, a philosopher of the Pythagorean school, who dwelt in 

 a remote part of Syracuse called Tyche. Epicharmus rarely 

 presented himself at the court of Dionysius, for although 

 the latter was fond of calling around him the most distin- 

 guished men from all the Greek colonial cities, yet the phi- 

 losopher found that the proximity of princes takes even 

 from men of the greatest intellectual power part of their 

 spirit and their freedom. He devoted himself unceasingly 

 to the study of natural tilings, their forces or powers, the 

 origin of animals and plants, and the harmonious laws in 

 accordance with which the heavenly bodies, as well as the 

 grains of hail and the flakes of snow, assume their distinc- 

 tive forms. Oppressed with age, and unable to proceed far 

 without assistance, he caused himself to be conducted daily 

 to the Pcecile, and thence to the entrance of the port, where, 



