rgotten more
gods than these agents displaced and had long ceased their own bloody
and nameless sacrifices to an elder Jupiter than ever Paul knew.
Etruscan galleys swarmed the sea, Etruscan bronze and gold were
weaving into lovely lines, Etruscan bowls were lifted to luxurious and
lovely lips at sumptuous feasts, in a gorgeous ritual, before the
natives of a certain foggy island had advanced to blue-woad
decoration! Her people's tombs lie calm and contemptuous under the
loose, friable soil of that tragic land that has suffered Roman,
Persian and Goth alike (wilt thou ever rise up again, O Mater
Dolorosa? Is the circle nearly complete? Would that I might see thee
in the rising!) they lie, too, under the angular and reclining forms
of many a British spinster tourist, panoplied in Baedeker and
stout-soled boots, large of tooth and long of limb, eating her
sandwiches over the cool and placid vaults where the stone seats and
biers, the black and red pottery, the inimitable golden jewelry, the
casques and shields of gold, the ivory and enamel, the amber and the
amulets, lie waiting the inevitable Teutonic antiquary. The very ashes
of the great Lucomo prince and chieftain lying below this worthy if
somewhat unseductive female would fade in horror away into the air, if
one of his gods, Vertumnus, perhaps, or one of the blessed Dioscuri,
should offer him such a companion or hint to him that the creature was
of the same species as the round-breasted lovelinesses that sport upon
the frescoes of his tomb, among the lotus flowers.

Poor Sarah--I can forgive her when I consider the pathos of her.

PART SEVEN

IN WHICH THE RIVER LEAPS A SUDDEN CLIFF
AND BECOMES A CATARACT

Ay cross your brow and cross your breast
For never again ye'll smile, Sir Hugh!
Ye flouted them that loved ye best,
Now ye must drink as ye did brew.

Syne she was warm against your side,
And now she's singing the rising moon,
She'll float in on the floating tide,
And ye'll hold her soon and ye'll lose her soon!

_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._

CHAPTER XXIII

FATE SPREADS HER NET

[FROM SUE PAYNTER]

PARIS, March 4th, 188--

JERRY DEAR:

Frederick died here a week ago. His heart, you know, was
never very good, and the strain of his last concerts was too
much for him. They were very successful, and just before