Angelic beauty
Once Lygia was vividly imagining herself as a martyr “with wounds on her feet and hands, white as snow, beautiful with a beauty not of earth, and borne by equally white angels into the azure sky; and her imagination admired such a vision.” Using the imagery, the author shows Lygia’s soul, her character more vividly and clearly: she was true Christian, who was ready to suffer for her Teacher. At the same time she stands here as a selfish woman – she puts not God, but herself on the first place in her dreams.
Gold of the emperor’s feast
The author brightly describes the Caesar’s feast: “It was sunset; the last rays were falling on the yellow Numidian marble of the columns, which shone like gold in those gleams and changed into rose color also. Among the columns, at the side of white statues of the Danaides and others, representing gods or heroes, crowds of people flowed past… resembling statues also, for they were draped in togas, pepluses, and robes, falling with grace and beauty toward the earth in soft folds, on which the rays of the setting sun were expiring.” The author intentionally portrays the scene in yellow, gold, white, rose tones; counts the elements of palace, details on the people’s clothes. Thus, he helps as if to see to feel and to touch all the grandeur and splendor of the Caesars life and his pomposity at the same time.
Expressive picture of a dance
When the author describes the scene when the court mime Paris represented in dance the story about the adventures of Io, he shows the reader the power of this dance: the motions of the mime’s hands and body were able to express “things apparently impossible in a dance. His hands dimmed the air, creating a cloud, bright, living, quivering, voluptuous, surrounding the half-fainting form of a maiden shaken by a spasm of delight. That was a picture, not a dance; an expressive picture, disclosing the secrets of love, bewitching and shameless.” Here the reader feels the scene so neatly, as if he is present there. And imagery helps to create this presence.
Impressive prayer
Acte was so impressed by Lygia praying that that moment seemed a miracle for her: “She began to think that something uncommon would happen, that some aid would come…; that some winged army would descend from the sky to help that maiden, or that the sun would spread its rays beneath her feet and draw her up to itself.” Using the oddness of the moment for Acte, the author shows the depth of her soul, her ability to believe in miracles, in uncommonness, thus – in God.
