here
was something hard in his tone, and very unlike him, which Melissa did
not like.

They breathed more freely as they got out into the open air, and her
efforts to change the subject of their conversation were happily
seconded; for at the door they met the family of their neighbor Skopas,
the owner of a stone-quarry, whose grave-plot adjoined theirs, and
Melissa was happy again as she heard her brother laughing as gayly as
ever with Skopas's pretty daughter. The mania had not taken such deep
hold of the light-hearted young painter as of Philip, the poring and
gloomy philosopher; and she was glad as she heard her friend Ino call
Alexander a faithless butterfly, while her sister Helena declared that he
was a godless scoffer.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Man, in short, could be sure of nothing
Misfortunes commonly come in couples yoked like oxen

A THORNY PATH

By Georg Ebers

Volume 2.

CHAPTER V.

The crowds on the road were now homeward bound, and they were all in such
wild, high spirits that, from what was to be seen and heard, it could
never have been supposed that they had come from so mournful a scene.
They took the road by the sea leading from the Nekropolis to Eleusis,
wandering on in the glowing moonlight.

A great procession of Greeks had been to Eleusis, to celebrate the
mysteries after the manner of the Greek Eleusis, on which that of
Alexandria was modeled. The newly initiated, and the elder adepts, whose
duty it was to superintend their reception, had remained in the temple;
but the other mystics now swelled the train of those who were coming from
the city of the dead.

Here, indeed, Serapis took the place of Pluto, and much that was Greek
had assumed strange and Egyptian forms: even the order of the ceremonies
had been entirely changed; still, on the African, as on the Attic shore,
the Greek cry went up, "To the sea, O mystics!" and the bidding to
Iakchos: "Be with us, O Iakchos!"

It could be heard from afar, but the voices of the shouters were already
weary, and most of the torches had burned low. The wreaths of ivy and
myrtle in their hair were limp; the singers of the hymn no longer kept
their ranks; and even Iambe, whose jests had cheered the mourning
Demeter, and whose lips at Eleusis had overflowed with witticisms, was
exhausted and silent. She still held in her hand the jar from which she
had given the bereaved goddess a reviving draught, but it was e