your concerns as well as if you were my own son--and better, a deal. You
have your troubles before you, brought upon you by your own headiness--
your own insufferable piety and crass conceit. And I, young sir, and I
am one of them. That you will find out."

"I bid you farewell, sir," says I very stiff.

"But I say, To our next meeting!" he cried, and plunged down the
hillside. I heard him for a long time shouting songs at the top of his
voice.

Resting no more on the road, I pressed my way southward, descending
through chestnut woods to the olives, the garlanded vines, the wonderful
husbandry of a generous land, amazed and enchanted by the profusion I
beheld. The earth seemed to well forth rich blood at the mere tread of a
foot. Boys and girls, young men and women, half naked but glowing with
beauty and vigour, watched their beasts on the woody slopes or drove the
plough through the deep soil, following after great oxen, singing as
they toiled. The ground sent up heat intoxicating to the blood of a
northern wanderer. It was the Land of Promise indeed, flowing with milk
and honey, a pastoral land of easy love and laughter, where man clove to
woman and she yielded to him at the flutter of desire, yet all was
sanctioned by the Providence which fashioned the elements and taught the
very ivy how to cling. Was there not deep-seated truth, methought, in
those old fables which told of the Loves of the Nymphs, the Loves of the
Fauns? Was there not some vital well-spring within our natures, some
conduit of the heart which throbbed yet at the call of such instincts? I
was more sure of it than I had ever been before. The Loves of the
Nymphs--the clinging ivy, the yielding reed! The Loves of the Fauns--
buffeting wind and kissing rain! These shy brown girls who peered at me