He approaches,--throw flowers before him.
Throw poppy and lily and rose;
Blow faster, gay pipers, faster,
Till your mad music throbs and flows,
For his glory and ours flies through Hellas,
Wherever the Sun-King goes.

Io! Io, paean! crown with laurel and myrtle and pine,
Io, paean! haste to crown him with olive, Athena's dark vine.
He is with us, he shines in his beauty;
Oh, joy of his face the first sight;
He has shed on us all his bright honour,
Let High Zeus shed on him his light,
And thou, Pallas, our gray-eyed protectress,
Keep his name and his fame ever bright!"

Matching action to the song, they threw over the victor crowns and chains
beyond number, till the parsley wreath was hidden from sight. Near the
gate of Hermippus the jubilant company halted. The demarch bawled long for
silence, won it at last, and approached the chariot. He, good man, had
been a long day meditating on his speech of formal congratulation and
enjoyed his opportunity. Glaucon's eyes still roved and questioned, yet
the demarch rolled out his windy sentences. But there was something
unexpected. Even as the magistrate took breath after reciting the victor's
noble ancestry, there was a cry, a parting of the crowd, and Glaucon the
Alcmaeonid leaped from the chariot as never on the sands at Corinth. The
veil and the violet wreath fell from the head of Hermione when her face
went up to her husband's. The blossoms that had covered the athlete shook
over her like a cloud as his face met hers. Then even the honest demarch
cut short his eloquence to swell the salvo.

"The beautiful to the beautiful! The gods reward well. Here is the fairest
crown!"

For all Eleusis loved Hermione, and would have forgiven far greater things
from her than this.

* * * * * * *

Hermippus feasted the whole company,--the crowd at long tables in the
court, the chosen guests in a more private chamber. "Nothing to excess"
was the truly Hellenic maxim of the refined Eleusinian; and he obeyed it.
His banquet was elegant without gluttony. The Syracusan cook had prepared
a lordly turbot. The wine was choice old Chian but well diluted. There was
no vulgar gorging with meat, after the Boeotian manner; but the great
Copaic eel, "such as Poseidon might have sent up to Olympus," made every
gourmand clap his hands. The aromatic honey was the choicest from Mt.
Hymettus.

Since the small