gainst the window, shook the iron bar frantically; and one desperate
cry seemed to tear its way through her clinched teeth, over her ashy
lips:

"Oh, Mother! Mother--Mother! You are nailing me to a cross."

CHAPTER IX.

Nowhere in the vast vista of literature is there an episode more
exquisitely pathetic than that serene picture of the Grove at Colonus,
sacred to the "Semnai Theai;" where the dewy freshness, the floral
loveliness, the spicery, and all the warbling witchery of nature pay
tribute to the Avenging Goddesses.

Twenty-two centuries have sifted their dust over the immortal figures
seated on the marble bench within the precincts consecrated to the
Eumenides, but in deathless tenacity, the rich aroma of Sophocles'
narcissus, and the soft crocus light linger there still; while from
thickets of olive, nightingales break their hearts in song, as
thrilling as the melody that smote the ears of doomed and dying Oedipus.

So in all ages, we, born thralls of grief, lift streaming eyes, and
chant elegies to stony-hearted Mother-Earth, but her starry orbs shine
on, undimmed by sympathetic tears; her smiling lips show only sunshine
in their changeless dimples, and her myriad fingers sweeping the keys
of the Universal Organ, drown our De Profundis in the rhythmic thunders
of her Jubilate. Wailing children of Time, we crouch and tug at the
moss-velvet, daisy-sprinkled skirts of the mighty Mater, praying some
lullaby from her to soothe our pain; but human woe frets not her
sublime serenity, as deaf as desert sphinx, she fronts the future.

Some echo of this maddening mystery sounded in the ears of the lonely
woman, who clutched the bars of her dungeon, and stared through its
iron lattice, at the peaceful, happy, outside world. At her feet lay
X---, divided by the silvery river, which, here rushed with arrowy
swiftness under the gray stone arches of the bridge, and there widened
into glassy lakelets, as if weary from the mad plunge over a distant
rocky ledge in mid-stream, whence the dull steady roar of the "falls"
thrilled the atmosphere, like the "tremolo" in a dim cathedral, where
fading daylight dies on painted apse and gilded pipes. As a chessboard
the squares of buildings were spread out, defined by wide streets,
where humanity and its traffic sped, busy as ants. In a green plot, the
sombre facade of the court-house surmounted by an eyeless stone statue
of Justice, frowned on the frivolous throng below; and