nspicuous about him, nothing aggressive. His rather pale face,
furrowed brow, and meditative attitude were marks of a quiet, retiring,
modest man. Do traitors then look so human? From the end of the
colonnade, I watched him carefully until he turned away and entered the
building. Then I followed him and walked up to the same entrance; on the
wall, an inscription was scratched in heavy pencil strokes:

"Down with Palamas! the bought one! the traitor!"

At last my humanity was aroused, and the first rays of sympathy began to
dispel my hatred. That remorseless inscription could not be true of this
man, I thought, and I hurried to the library to read some of his work
for the first time that I might form an opinion about him myself.
Unfortunately, the verses on which I happened to come were too deep for
my intellect, and I had not the patience to read them twice. I was so
absolutely sure of the power of my mind that I ascribed my lack of
understanding to the poet. Then his poems were so different from the
easy, rhythmic, oratorical verses on which I had been brought up. In
Palamas, I missed those pleasant trivialities which attract a boy's mind
in poetry. One thing, however, was clear to me even then. Dark and
unintelligible though his poems appeared, they were certainly full of a
deep, passionate feeling, a feeling that haunted my thoughts long after
I had closed his book in despair. From that day, I condescended to think
of him as of a sincere follower of a wrong cause, as of a sheep that had
been led astray.

Years went by. I was no more in Greece. I had come to another country,
where a new language, a new history, a new literature opened before me.
Here, at last, I began to assume a reasonable attitude towards the
question of the language of my old country, and here first I could read
Palamas with understanding. Gradually, his greatness began to dawn on
me, and, finally, my admiration for him had grown so much that when on
April, 1914, I reached Greece as a travelling fellow from Harvard
University, I had decided to concentrate my studies during the five
months I was planning to spend there upon him and his work. With his
work, I did spend many long and pleasant hours. But him I visited only
once. The man from whom I had once shrunk as from a monster of evil, now
I shunned for fear I had not yet learned to admire in accordance with
his greatness. Owing to the urgent demand of an old classmate, Dr. Ch.
N. Lambrakis,