r admiration, their hopes, or sent assurances of them to him.
The Rhodian Chrysippus, despatched by the Queen, delivered the wreath
which the monarch bestowed, and informed Hermon, with her greetings,
that Arsinoe deemed his Demeter worthy of the laurel.

The most famous masters of his art, the great scholars from the Museum,
the whole priesthood of Demeter, which included Daphne, the servants
of Apollo, his dear Ephebi, the comrades of his physical exercises--all
whom he honoured, admired, loved-loaded him with praises and good
wishes, as well as the assurance of their pride in numbering him among
them.

No form, no colour from the visible world, penetrated the darkness
surrounding him, not even the image of the woman he loved. Only his ears
enabled him to receive the praises, honours, congratulations lavished
here and, though he sometimes thought he had received enough, he again
listened willingly and intently when a new speaker addressed him in warm
words of eulogy. What share compassion for his unprecedentedly sorrowful
fate had in this extravagantly laudatory and cordial greeting, he did
not ask; he only felt with a throbbing heart that he now stood upon a
summit which he had scarcely ventured to hope ever to attain. His dreams
of outward success which had not been realized, because he deemed it
treason to his art to deviate from the course which he believed right
and best adapted to it, he now, without having yielded to the demands of
the old school, heard praised as his well-earned possessions.

He felt as if he breathed the lighter, purer air of the realms of the
blessed, and the laurel crown which the Queen's envoy pressed upon his
brow, the wreaths which his fellow-artists presented to him by hands
no less distinguished than those of the great sculptor Protogenes, and
Nicias, the most admired artist after the death of Apelles, seemed,
like the wings on the hat and shoes of Hermes, messenger of the gods, to
raise him out of himself and into the air.

Darkness surrounded him, yet a bright dazzling light issued from his
soul and illuminated his whole being with the warm golden radiance of
the sun.

Not even the faintest shadow dimmed it until Soteles, his fellow-student
at Rhodes, who sustained him with ardent earnestness in the struggle to
prefer truth to beauty, greeted him.

He welcomed him and wished that he might recover his lost sight as
warmly as his predecessors. He praised the Demeter, too, but add