After this semester's schoolwork I have completed an astonishing caricature for Amelia. She is depicted as Marianne, the embodiment of French Republicanism, in the pose of La Liberté from the painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. In her right arm (left) Amelia clutches the coat of the French Existentialist novelist Albert Camus. In her left hand (right) Amelia hoists a silver candlestick, which glows with masonic imagery, stolen from the altar at the rear. The setting is the Cathedral of Lyon where the Bishop Myriel, a character in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables, generously offers Amelia this silver candlestick in exchange for a promise a moral and honest life. Pink, blue and gold light streams through the brilliant Gothic stained glass windows, as medievalism is allegorically synthesized with modern French Republicanism in a stupendous exhibition of Amelia's charm, literary interests, and personal brilliance.
