enjoyment of which it was as full as a ripe grape is full of sweet
juice?"

"It was cut down and rooted up," replied the steward. "The emperor gave
the sanctuary over to Bishop Theophilus and he set to work at once to
destroy it. The temple was pulled down, the sacred vessels went into the
melting-pot, and the images were mutilated and insulted before they were
thrown into the lime-kiln. The place they are building now is to be a
Christian church. Oh! to think of the airy, beautiful colonnades that
once stood there, and then of the dingy barn that is to take their
place!"

"Why do the gods endure it? Has Zeus lost his thunderbolts?" cried
Orpheus clenching his hands, and paying no heed to Agne who sat pale and
sternly silent during this conversation.

"Nay, he only sleeps, to wake with awful power," said the old man.
"See those blocks of marble and ruins under the waves. Swift work is
destruction! And men lost their wits and looked on at the crime,
flinging the delight of the gods into the water and the kiln. They were
wise, very wise; fishes and flames are dumb and cannot cry to heaven.
One barbarian, in one hour can destroy what it has taken the sublimest
souls years, centuries, to create. They glory in destruction and ruin
and they can no more build up again such a temple as stood there than
they can restore trees that have taken six hundred years to grow. There
--out there, Herse, in the hollow where those black fellows are stirring
mortar--they have given them shirts too, because they are ashamed of the
beauty of men's bodies--that is where the grotto was where we found your
poor father."