The Plagiarist
A Fable
I crafted a beautiful statue of gold. The eyes of the statue were made of the dust of crushed sapphires, its hair was of purest silver, and its lips were painted with the red of a berry which grows only at the summit of a far distant mountain.
I wished for all the world to see the beauty which I had created, and so I set the statue in the centre of the city and caused to be set by it a plaque which which bore my name and purpose.
Each evening as the sun was setting I gazed out from the window of my home and saw, gleaming in the midst of the city, the statue which I had fashioned, the sapphires of its eyes turning the the rays of the sun in a thousand directions and lighting the city with a brilliant blue.
One day a wealthy man passed through the city and looking upon the statue, his heart was filled with envy. Other men had been filled with envy at the sight of the statue, and they had gone to their houses and learned to fashion their own statues, and many had become renowned sculptors themselves, but this man had not the patience for learning.
He went to his house and called to him several ruffians, whom he swore and paid to secrecy. At midnight they crept into the city and cut the statue from its base and carried it away. The man paid his thugs well, and sent them on their ways, and they left that city and came to another where their deeds earned them fame and death, but that is another tale.
The wealthy man scraped the sapphires from the statues eyes and painted them with grey, over the silver of its hair he poured a dull yellow paint, and its lips he washed clean. He set it up in the courtyard of his house and invited select guests to look upon the statue, and he said to them, "behold, see the beauty which I have made!" and in his heart he thought that the garish paints with which he had covered it abetted its beauty.