temples and private villas gleamed among the green, and
the slanting rays of the low sun, shining on the drops that fell from the
never-resting wheels and buckets that irrigated the land, turned them
into showers of diamonds. These water-works, of the most ingenious
construction, many of them invented and contrived by scientific
engineers, were the weapons with which man had conquered the desert that
originally surrounded this lake, forcing it into green fertility and
productiveness of grain and fruit. Nay, the desert had, for many
centuries, here ceased to exist. Dionysus the generous, and the kindly
garden-gods had blest the toil of men, and yet, now, in many a plot--in
all which belonged to Christian owners--their altars lay scattered and
overthrown.

During the last thirty years much indeed was changed, and nothing to the
satisfaction of old Karnis; Herse, too, shook her head, and when the
rowers had pulled them about half-way across, she pointed to a broad
vacant spot on the bank where a new building was just rising above the
soil, and said sadly to her husband:

"Would you know that place again? Where is our dear old temple gone? The
temple of Dionysus." Karnis started up so hastily that he almost upset
the boat, and their conductor was obliged to insist on his keeping quiet;
he obeyed but badly, however, for his arms were never still as he broke
out:

"And do you suppose that because we are in Egypt I can keep my living
body as still as one of your dead mummies? Let others keep still if they
can! I say it is shameful, disgraceful; a dove's gall might rise at it!
That splendid building, the pride of the city and the delight of men's
eyes, destroyed--swept away like dust from the road! Do you see? Do you
see, I say? Broken columns, marble capitals, here, there and everywhere
at the bottom of the lake--here a head and there a torso! Great and noble
masters formed those statues by the aid of the gods, and they--they,
small and ignoble as they are, have destroyed them by the aid of evil
daemons. They have annihilated and drowned works that were worthy to live
forever! And why? Shall I tell you? Because they shun the Beautiful as an
owl shuns light. Aye, they do! There is nothing they hate or dread so
much as beauty; wherever they find it, they deface and destroy it, even
if it is the work of the Divinity. I accuse them before the
Immortals--for where is the grove even, not the work of man but the
special work of He