Gustav Klimt The Kiss

Gustav Klimt The Kiss
He thought he would rather die than touch it again. But he thought this false thought because he did not know the immortal strength of human curiosity. In no long time his hand was tremblingly groping again-against his judgment, and without his consent-but groping persistently on, just the same. It encountered a bunch of long hair; he shuddered, but followed up the hair and found what seemed to be a warm rope; followed up the rope and found an innocent calf; for the rope was not a rope at all, but the calf's tail.
Gustav Klimt The Kiss
The king was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened him but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and any other boy, in those old superstitous times, would have acted and suffered just as he had done.
Gustav Klimt The Kiss