Alexandre Cabanel The Birth of Venus painting

Alexandre Cabanel The Birth of Venus paintingSandro Botticelli The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti paintingSandro Botticelli The Cestello Annunciation painting
black hair that is as long as she is high. A powerful woman, his enemy, his other: he keeps her close. Just as, far away in the palaces of her omnipotence she will be clutching his portrait beneath her royal cloak or hiding it in a locket at her throat. She is the Empress, and her name is -- what else? -- Ayesha. On this island, the exiled Imam, and at in Desh, She. They plot each other's deaths.
The curtains, thick golden velvet, are kept shut all day, because otherwise the evil thing might creep into the apartment: foreignness, Abroad, the alien nation. The harsh fact that he is here and not There, upon which all his thoughts are fixed. On those rare occasions when the Imam goes out to take the Kensington air, at the centre of a square formed by eight young men in sunglasses and bulging suits, he folds his hands before him and fixes his