not see the copy, beautiful as it is, but sees Praxiteles's work through it. He sees the goddess herself through all these copies responding to Praxiteles' original conjuring. He even briefly lets himself imagine that the world has changed so much that we couldn't recognize any new discoveries about this dead god. Chaivagne's worries disappear overnight, in the fourth sentence, and he resumes his post in the corner of the room with the Venus, unmoving like the statue itself. He looks at the visitors, and looks at the goddess's eyes, not where she's looking, thinking of Praxiteles. 377. Private Passion This chapter, with few exceptions of audience reaction, is an unnamed architect giving a lecture called "A Century and a Half of Heaven" to six old women and two old men at a village library. He describes how he first fell in love with Baroque music: "Si Piangete Pupille Dolente" by Caldara was playing over a coworker's radio. To him, Baroque music is the peak of all music, which has only been attacked in the intervening years by Romantic sensibilities which take away its perfection. His bombastic style mesmerizes and exhausts the curious audience as he vacillates between obscure reviews of individual pieces to grand statements about Bach and St. Matthew's Passion. He leaves them in a daze, shouting a line from the Passion as he leaves: "mein Jesu, gute Nacht!" 610. Just a Dry Strip in the Blue Oswald Kienzl, a Swiss landscape painter, is standing in line for a train ticket to visit his lover Valentine the morning after learning of the death of his ex-lover and model Augustine. He is extremely agitated, wild, and intimidating to the other passengers in line, who all know of Augustine's death because of Kienzl's fame. He ruminates on the universality of death for everyone, including himself and his lovers. He protests that he is a painter of life, not death. His paintings show and celebrate life, not mere landscapes. He is brought back to an untitled painting he finished yesterday, and its simplicity and beauty. He would like to change and alter it to make it more perfect. Still he rages against the line and elderly ticket clerk who delays him. When he finally gets on the train, he is positioned to look at Lake Geneva, and he realizes that out there is the expanse containing everything within it, and he