t
of the impending war, had summoned him back to the capital.

On the third day after his arrival he left Tennis and sailed from Tanis
for Alexandria. He had had little time to attend to Thyone and her
guests.

Proclus, too, could not devote himself to them until after the departure
of the epistrategus, since he had gone immediately to Tanis, where, as
head of the Dionysian artists of all Egypt, he had been occupied in
attending to the affairs of the newly established theatre.

On his return to Tennis he had instantly requested to be conducted to the
Temple of Demeter, to inspect the blinded Hermon's rescued work.

He had entered the cella of the sanctuary with the expectation of finding
a peculiar, probably a powerful work, but one repugnant to his taste, and
left it fairly overpowered by the beauty of this noble work of art.

What he had formerly seen of Hermon's productions had prejudiced him
against the artist, whose talent was great, but who, instead of
dedicating it to the service of the beautiful and the sublime, chose
subjects which, to Proclus, did not seem worthy of artistic treatment,
or, when they were, sedulously deprived them of that by which, in his
eyes, they gained genuine value. In Hermon's Olympian Banquet he--who
also held the office of a high priest of Apollo in Alexandria--had even
seen an insult to the dignity of the deity. In the Street Boy Eating
Figs, the connoisseur's eye had recognised a peculiar masterpiece, but he
had been repelled by this also; for, instead of a handsome boy, it
represented a starving, emaciated vagabond.

True to life as this figure might be, it seemed to him reprehensible, for
it had already induced others to choose similar vulgar subjects.

When recently at Althea's performance he had met Hermon and saw how
quickly his beautiful travelling companion allowed herself to be induced
to bestow the wreath on the handsome, black-bearded fellow, it vexed him,
and he had therefore treated him with distant coldness, and allowed him
to perceive the disapproval which the direction taken by his art had
awakened in his mind.

In the presence of Hermon's Demeter, the opinion of the experienced man
and intelligent connoisseur had suddenly changed.

The creator of this work was not only one of the foremost artists of his
day, nay, he had also been permitted to fathom the nature of the deity
and to bestow upon it a perfect form.

This Demeter was the most successful personific