that, but those sort of things can't be tolerated. The bishop told me
that he had set his face against processions."

"Quite right: the bishop is perfectly right. Processions are
unscriptural."

"It's the thin end of the wedge, you know, Dixon."

"Exactly. I have always resisted anything of the kind here."

"Right. _Principiis obsta_, you know. Martin is so _imprudent_.
There's a _way_ of doing things."

The "scriptural" procession led by Lord Beamys broke up when the stalls
were reached, and gathered round the nobleman as he declared the bazaar
open.

Lucian was sitting on a garden-seat, a little distance off, looking
dreamily before him. And all that he saw was a swarm of flies clustering
and buzzing about a lump of tainted meat that lay on the grass. The
spectacle in no way interrupted the harmony of his thoughts, and soon
after the opening of the bazaar he went quietly away, walking across the
fields in the direction of the ancient mounds he desired to inspect.

All these journeys of his to Caermaen and its neighborhood had a peculiar
object; he was gradually leveling to the dust the squalid kraals of
modern times, and rebuilding the splendid and golden city of Siluria. All
this mystic town was for the delight of his sweetheart and himself; for
her the wonderful villas, the shady courts, the magic of tessellated
pavements, and the hangings of rich stuffs with their intricate and
glowing patterns. Lucian wandered all day through the shining streets,
taking shelter sometimes in the gardens beneath the dense and gloomy ilex
trees, and listening to the plash and trickle of the fountains. Sometimes
he would look out of a window and watch the crowd and color of the
market-place, and now and again a ship came up the river bringing
exquisite silks and the merchandise of unknown lands in the Far East. He
had made a curious and accurate map of the town he proposed to inhabit,
in which every villa was set down and named. He drew his lines to scale
with the gravity of a surveyor, and studied the plan till he was able to
find his way from house to house on the darkest summer night. On the
southern slopes about the town there were vineyards, always under a
glowing sun, and sometimes he ventured to the furthest ridge of the
forest, where the wild people still lingered, that he might catch the
golden gleam of the city far away, as the light quivered and scintillated
on the glittering tiles. And there were gardens outside th