Frank Dicksee La Belle Dame Sans Merci painting

It's one flunking goat-boy or all of us," he appealed to the Chief Librarian; "and maybe the stacks too -- some of them have torches."
If any scruple on my behalf lingered in the elder man's mind, it gave way before the notion of fire in the stacks. He clutched Bray's arm and said, "They mustn't even light cigarettes in here! That settles it!"
I perspired. Bray, on the other hand, smiled, not apparently ruffled by the danger. For once our relative fragrances were perhaps reversed.
"No one's going to be lynched," he declared. Quickly then, but calmly, he issued orders for dealing with the crisis: word was to be spread that the crowd should reassemble at the impregnable Belly-exit at the rear of Tower Hall basement, whence very shortly the EATen impostor must issue with the true Grand Tutor. Thus they would see justice accomplished, and be safely outside the building. To reach the Belly-lift itself would require my cooperation in another stratagem, which he sincerely hoped I would find less repugnant than being dismembered:

Caravaggio The Supper at Emmaus painting

from the principals, who too had separated, or been separated by their respective aides. There was much excited talk of "insults," "loss of face," "torpedoed negotiation." Having got me out of reach of their leaders, no one knew what to do with me, for though their distress and indignation were evident, they had gathered I enjoyed some special status in the Chancellor's party.
"Founder help you if you're the one who upset X," snarled a forelocked fellow. "You've shot down the whole flunking Boundary Conference!"
Until that moment, distracted by my sympathy for Leonid Alexandrov and the ideological exchanges with him and his stepfather, I hadn't realized the significance of my achievement.
"By George, you're right!" I exclaimed. "I guess I've ended the Boundary Dispute!"
The aide conjectured disagreeably that it might prove the end of the University as well. Now the Chancellor's party came by, still waving

William Blake The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun painting

Dr. Eierkopf made a high sound. "Very good! That's very good. Indeed, I might be lying. But suppose everybody's telling the truth; so your keeper is potent but sterile, and I'm fertile but impotent. Now what's left? Maybe Virginia Hector's telling the truth, how WESCAC was the father? How one night she goes into the Cum Laude Room to meet a boyfriend, and WESCAC grabs hold and fertilizes her with the GILES, yes?"
I was up off my stool. "Is that true? Is that why the project was stopped?"
Dr. Eierkopf raised the skin where eyebrows usually are. "So Miss Hector said. Andja, that's what made her poppa so angry he stopped the Cum Laude Project. A very great pity, when we were so close to success. A greater pity than any of those dumbsticks in Tower Hall can understand."
I demanded to know whether Miss Hector had been telling the truth. Dr. Eierkopf's tone suggested that he knew more than he cared to tell at the moment -- and he openly acknowledged that many details of the Cum Laude Project were still secret, for various reasons -- but certain facts, he maintained, were beyond doubt and could be spoken of: the GILES, he would stake on it,had been successfully developed, at least in prototypical

Guido Reni St Joseph painting

ministrations of Miss Sally Ann's could turn the trick. She had better betake her to some callous stud, he had told her bitterly, who being less confounded by the architecture of her naked flesh could possess it like a master instead of trembling like a truant freshman before the Chancellor's Mansion. So saying -- despite her protests that she was no Frumentian doxy who measured her lovers by the road, as it were; that for all her willingness to yield love's fruits to him she was content enough to sleep in his arms as on the previous night; that on the other hand if his pride would but permit him to see himself as curator instead of conqueror of that same Mansion, she was confident they could open its gate as well with a pass-key as with a batter -- despite all this he cursed himself back to his room and drank himself into a solitary stupor.
On the third and final day of the Spring Carnival he'd groused about, uncertain whether to destroy himself or merely break their engagement. They watched the ritual Dance of the Freshman Co-eds around the shaft; the ceremonial Expulsion and Reinstatement of the Chancellor, commemorating Enos Enoch's weekend in the Nether Campus; the coronation of a new Miss University in white gown and mortarboard and

Eric Wallis Girls at the Beach painting

her, touching now her shoulder, now her hair, and with an arm slipped around her waist led her up to us. Dr. Sear hastened to add his sympathy to his wife's, catching Anastasia's hand briefly in both of his and brushing gracefully with his lips her forehead. For a long moment her eyes were on me, questioning, appraising, and I endeavored to give back a gaze equally intense; but though my mind and flesh were most passionately stirred, there was no clearness left in me, and I swayed on my feet. She flashed a blaming look at Stoker, who was regarding us as usual with huge amusement.
"He'sdrunk!" she said bitterly.
I pointed my stick at her. "Come here to me, Anastasia." She turned her face away as I approached. "I love you," I said sternly.
"You don't know what you're saying."
Stoker explained to the Sears that I'd made thefaux pas of declaring I loved all studentdom equally.
Hedwig purred. "Of course he does, dear: he'ssupposed to."

Thomas Kinkade San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf painting

Maybe she can tell us where another bridge is," Max said. "Hush up, G. Herrold, George can ask once."
But G. Herrold, so far from obeying, cried out"Hal-looyer!" and stepped to the water's edge. The woman looked from him to us; then she cupped her hands to her mouth and called out something over our heads. Two syllables, a long and a short, over and over; a plaintive sweet appeal:
"Croa-ker!"she seemed to cry."Croa-ker!"
"What's it about?" I asked my advisor. But couldn't stay to hear his opinion, inasmuch as G. Herrold shouted again "Hallooyer!" and commenced to wade into the shallows, heedless of socks and sandals. I called him to stop and hobbled after, but was arrested by a further astonishment: quite daintily, as who should raise her skirt-hem from the mud, upon her next clear cry the lady girl fetched up her shift -- nor halted at knee, but hoist it high as would go. Sturdy she stood there, feet apart and privates bare as milch-nan's to the breeze, sweetly calling, "Croaker, croaker!" From so striking a picture nothing less

Frida Kahlo The Broken Column painting

Yes,sir ." George Herrold readily put down his sweeper and supported me under one arm. "Y'all want to lay down," he scolded cheerfully, "you do it in the dormitory where you s'posed to, not in my stacks."
"I will from now on," I said.
His face still anxious, Max braced me from the other side, and I stood off from the table. The most difficult thing was to straighten my knees, which fourteen years of my former gait had crooked. But it was they, and my inner thighs, that Tom had struck, and I choose still to believe his blow was like a hammer's on a rusted hinge, to free the action. In any case I got them straight.
"You can let go now."
George Herrold did at once, with a chuckle, and stepped back. Max hesitated, stayed it may be by the sweat of excitement on my face; yet I had only to glance at him, and he too released me. As I had twice with Lady Creamhair and once alas before Redfearn's Tommy, I stood erect -- but this time I didn't fall. A very paroxysm of unsteadiness shook me, surely I must keel; Max stood ready to spring to my aid. I so far compromised

Gustav Klimt Goldfish (detail) painting

At that penultimate hiss the female made a little cry and wrenched away. For some seconds she lay as if stricken, while her mate, hard respiring, drained off his drink and flung away the can. I too felt emptied.
Presently in a new voice he said, "Cigarette." She shook her head, then changed her mind and sat up to smoke, as Lady Creamhair often did. They smoked in silence, neither looking at the other, until the male asked her, almost brusquely, how she felt.
"How do you think I feel?" she muttered. "You knew what you were doing."
He drew her down with him on the blanket. "Are you sorry we said the poem?"
No, she said, she didn't suppose she was sorry. "I'm still a little mid-percentile about first dates, I guess. When two people start off with something likethat - - what does it leave for later?"
I had moved some paces back lest my heart, still pounding with their late excitement, betray me. But at these words I crept close again. They were kissing now, of their hands gave me to question my original surmise. I barely heard him swear to her that it was not any girl he'd share thatsonnet with: she mustn't fear he'd disrespect her

William Bouguereau The Song of the Angels painting

short rounds down in Third Batt?"
"I don't know from nothing, O'Leary. I just read the papers." Another truck came by, loaded with corpsmen, followed by a jeep in which sat the helmeted Major Lawrence, a look of sulky arrogance on his face, his arms folded at his chest like a legionnaire riding through a conquered city. "But from what I understand," Culver went on, turning back, "quite a few guys got hurt."
"That's tough," O'Leary said. "I'll bet you they were using that old stuff they've had stored on Guam ever since '45. Jesus, you'd think they'd have better sense. Why, I seen those shells stacked up high as a man out there just last year, getting rained on every day and getting the jungle rot and Jesus, they put tarps over 'em but five years is one hell of a long time to let 81-shells lay around. I remember once . . ." Culver let him talk, without hearing the words, and drowsed. O'Leary was an old-timer (though only a few years older than Culver), a regular who had just signed over for four more years, and it was impossible to dislike him. On Guadalcanal he had been only a youngster, but in the intervening years the Marine Corps had molded him—perhaps by his own unconscious choice—in its image, and he had become as inextricably grafted to the system as any piece of flesh surgically laid on to arm

Gustave Courbet Woman with a Parrot painting

Done!" the skull cried instantly. "Done, for a dram, but give it to me now! I am more thirsty with thinking of wine than ever I , when I had a throat to be dry. Only give me a single swig now, and I'll tell you anything you want to know." The rusted jaws were beginning to grindThrough the clock." The magician turned to peer into a far corner of the great hall, where the clock stood. It was tall and black and thin, the sundown shadow of a clock. The glass over its face was
sideways on each other. The skull's slaty teeth were trembling and splitting.
"Give it to him," Molly whispered to Schmendrick. She was terrified that the naked eyesockets might start to fill up with tears. But Schmendrick shook his head again.
"I will give it all to you," he said to the skull. "After you tell us how we may find the Bull."
The skull sighed, but never hesitated. "The way is through the clock," it said. "You simply walk through the clock and there you are. Now can I have the wine?"

Paul Gauguin Hail Mary painting

'Share his feast and share his fall,'" Schmendrick murmured. "I see, I see." He gulped another glass of the black wine, and laughed. "But old King Haggard still rules, and will until the sea overflows. You don't know what a real curse is. Let me tell you my troubles." Easy tears suddenly glittered in his eyes. "To begin with, my mother never liked me. She pretended, but I knew—"
Drinn interrupted him, and just then Molly realized what was strange about the folk of Hagsgate. Every one of them was well and warmly dressed, but the faces that peered out of their fine clothes were the faces of poor people, cold as ghosts and too hungry to eat. Drinn said, " 'Yet none but one of Hagsgate town may bring the castle swirling down.' How can we delight in our good fortune when we know that it must end, and that one of us will end it? Every day makes us richer, and brings us one day nearer to our doom. Magician, for fifty years we have lived leanly, avoided attachments, untied all habits, readying ourselves for the sea. We have taken not a else —for joy is just one more thing to lose. Pity Hagsgate, strangers, for in all the wretched world there can be no town more unhappy."
"Lost, lost, lost," the

Thomas Kinkade Cannery Row Sunset painting

Well, I'm doing the best I can," the princess cried. "I've never called one of these things before." But after a little silence, she began to sing.
"I am a king's daughter, And if I cared to care, The moon that has no mistress Would flutter in my hair. No one dares to cherish What I choose to crave. Never have I hungered, That I did not have.
"I am a king's daughter, And I grow old within The prison of my person, The shackles of my skin. And I would run away And beg from door to door, Just to see your shadow Once, and never more."
So she sang, and sang again, and then she called, "Nice unicorn, pretty, pretty, pretty," for a little longer, and then she said angrily, "Well, I've done as much as I'll do. I'm ."
The prince yawned and folded his magazine. "You satisfied custom well enough," he told her, "and no one expected more than that. It was just a formality. Now we can be married."
"Yes," the princess said, "now we can be married." The servants began to pack everything away again, while the two with the lutes . The princess's voice was a little sad and defiant as she said, "If there really were such things as unicorns,

Claude Monet Houses of Parliament London painting

All the paths finally have to surmount the cliffs at the edge of the plateau. As the stone farers come up onto the level after that terrible last grade, they stop and gaze to the southeast. One after another the long, flat carts laden with dusty stone buck and jerk up over the rim and stop. The haulers stand in harness, gazing silent at the Building.

AFTER HUNDREDS OF YEARS of the slow recovery of the shattered ecosystem, enough Aq began to have enough food to have enough energy for activities beyond forage and storage. It was then, when bare survival was still chancy, that they began the stone faring.
So few of them, in such an inimical world, the atmosphere damaged, the great cycles of life not yet reestablished in the poisoned and despoiled oceans, the lands full of bones, ghosts, ruins, dead forests, deserts of salt, of sand, of chemical waste— how did the inhabitants of such a world think of undertaking such a task

Tamara de Lempicka La bella Rafaela painting

Since then the rivalry between Meyun and Huy has been intense but nonexplosive. Having no more cows or pastures, they live off tourists. Perched on the very brink of the West Rim of the Grand Canyon, what is left of Meyun has the advantage of a dramatic and picturesque site, which attracts thousands of visitors every year. But most of the visitors actually stay in Huy, where the food is better, and which is only a very short stroll from the East Rim with its marvelous views of the canyon and the half-buried ruins of Old Meyun.
Each city maintains on its respective side a winding path for tourists riding donkeys to descend among the crags and strange, towering mud formations of the canyon to the little River Alуn that flows, clear again, though cowless and trout-less, in the depths. There the tourists have a picnic on the grassy banks. The guides from Huy tell their tourists the amusing legend of the Hundred Daughters of Bult, and the guides from Meyun tell their tourists the entertaining myth of the Starry Cloak of Tarv. Then they all ride their donkeys slowly back up to the light.

Julius LeBlanc Stewart paintings

She was promptly returned to her family, who for three years had mourned her, believing she had wandered off and been lost on a glacier. They received her with tears of joy I EXPECT PEOPLE WHO don't look like me not to be like me, a reasonable expectation, as expectations go; but it makes my mind slow to admit that people who look like me may not be like me.
The Hennebet look remarkably like me. That is to say, not only are they the same . Her condition since then is not known, because the Inter-planary Agency closed the entire area to all visitors, tourist or scientist, at the time she was brought back. No foreigner has been up in the Asonu mountains since. We may well imagine that her people were resentful; but nothing was ever said.

Frida Kahlo Self Portrait with Necklace painting

Lupin said they would," said Ron.
There was a pause.
"So?" said Ron in a very low voice, as though he thought the furniture might be listening in. "Did you find one? Did you get it? A - a Horcrux?"
Harry shook his head. All that had taken place around that black lake seemed like an old nightmare now; had it really happened, and only hours ago?
"You didn't get it?" said Ron, looking crestfallen. "It wasn't there?"
"No," said Harry. "Someone had already taken it and left a fake in its place."
"Already taken - ?"
Wordlessly, Harry pulled the fake locket from his pocket, opened it, and passed it to Ron. The full story could wait. ... It did not matter tonight. . . nothing mattered except the end, the end of their pointless adventure, the end of Dumbledore's life. . . .
"R.A.B.," whispered Ron, "but who was that?"

Salvador Dali Ascension painting

earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form ..."
Slughorn's face crumpled and Harry found himself remember-ing words he had heard nearly two years before: "I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost. . . but still, I was alive."
"... few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable."
But Riddle's hunger was now apparent; his expression was greedy, he could no longer hide his longing.
"How do you split your soul?"
"Well," said Slughorn uncomfortably, "you must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting n it I an act of violation, it is against nature."

Guido Reni Angel of the Annunciation painting

Wish that would happen with me and Lavender," said Ron gloomily, watching Hermione silently tapping each of his mis-spelled words with the end of her wand, so that they corrected themselves on the page. "But the more I hint I want to finish it, the tighter she holds on. It's like going out with the giant squid."
"There," said Hermione, some twenty minutes later, handing back Ron's essay.
"Thanks a million," said Ron. "Can I borrow your quill for the conclusion?" Harry, who had found nothing useful in the Half-Blood Prince's notes so far, looked around; the three of them were now the only ones left in the common room, Seamus having just gone up to bed cursing Snape and his essay. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and Ron scratching out one last paragraph on dementors using Hermione's quill. Harry had just closed the Half-Blood Prince's book, yawning, when —

Vincent van Gogh The Bedroom painting

>Severus —" And to Harry's horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and seemed to scoop Snape out of thin air toward them. "Stop skulking and come and join us, Severus!" hiccuped Slughorn happily. "I was just talking about Harry's exceptional po-tion-making! Some credit must go to you, of course, you taught him for five years!"
Trapped, with Slughorns arm around his shoulders, Snape looked down his hooked nose at Harry, his black eyes narrowed. "Funny, I never had the impression that I managed to teach Potter anything at all."
"Well, then, it's natural ability!" shouted Slughorn. "You should have seen what he gave me, first lesson, Draught of Living Death — never had a student produce finer on a first attempt, I don't think even you, Severus —"
"Really?" said Snape quietly, his eyes still boring into Harry, who felt a certain disquiet. The last thing he wanted was for Snape to start investigating the source of his newfound brilliance at Potions.

Guido Reni Girl with a Rose painting

It is unusual," said Dumbledore, after a moment's hesitation, "but not unheard of."
His tone was casual but his eyes moved curiously over Riddle's face. They stood for a moment, man and boy, staring at each other. Then the handshake was broken; Dumbledore was at the door.
"Good-bye, Tom. I shall see you at Hogwarts."
"I think that will do," said the white-haired Dumbledore at Harry's side, and seconds later, they were soaring weightlessly through darkness once more, before landing squarely in the present-day office.
"Sit down," said Dumbledore, landing beside Harry.
Harry obeyed, his mind still full of what he had just seen.
"He believed it much quicker than I did — I mean, when you told him he was a wizard," said Harry. "I didn't believe Hagrid at first, when he told me."
"Yes, Riddle was perfectly ready to believe that he was — to use his word — 'special,'" said