ave the soil of Egypt. True, it
is said that to live in foreign lands, far from the beloved home, darkens
the existence; yet Pergamus, too, is Grecian soil, and there I see the
two noblest of stars illumine your path with their pure light-art and
love."

And his old friend's premonition was fulfilled.

.......................

The story of Arachne is ended. It closed on the Nile. Hermon's new life
began in Pergamus.

As Daphne's husband, under the same roof with the wonderfully invigorated
Myrtilus, his Uncle Archias, and faithful Bias, Hermon found in the new
home what had hovered before the blind man as the fairest goal of
existence in art, love, and friendship.

He did not long miss the gay varied life of Alexandria, because he found
a rich compensation for it, and because Pergamus, too, was a rapidly
growing city, whose artistic decoration was inferior to no other in
Greece.

Of the numerous works which Hermon completed in the service of the first
three art-loving rulers of the new Pergamenian kingdom, Philetaerus,
Eumenes, and Attalus, nothing was preserved except the head of a Gaul.
This noble masterpiece proves how faithful Hermon remained to truth,
which he had early chosen for the guiding star of his art. It is the
modest remnant of the group in which Hermon perpetuated in marble the two
Gallic brothers whom he saw before his last meeting with Ledscha, as they
offered their breasts to the fatal shafts.

One had gazed defiantly at the arrows of the conquerors; the other, whose
head has been preserved, feeling the inevitable approach of death,
anticipates, with sorrowful emotion, the end so close at hand.
Philetaerus had sent this touching work to King Ptolemy to thank him for
the severity with which he had chastised the daring of the barbarians,
who had not spared his kingdom also. The Gaul's head was again found on
Egyptian soil.

[Copied in Th. Schrieber's The Head of the Gaul in the Museum of
Ghizeh in Cairo. Leipsic, 1896. With appendix. By H. Curschmann.]

Hermon also took other subjects in Pergamus from the domain of real life,
though, in most of his work he crossed the limits which he had formerly
imposed upon himself. But one barrier, often as he rushed forward to its
outermost verge, he never dared to pass--moderation, the noblest demand,
to which his liberty-loving race subjected themselves willingly in life
as well as in art. The whole infinite, limitless world of the ideal