he green, and the slanting rays of the low sun, shining on the drops
that fell from the never-resting wheels and buckets that irrigated the
land, turned them into showers of diamonds. These water-works, of the
most ingenious construction, many of them invented and contrived by
scientific engineers, were the weapons with which man had conquered
the desert that originally surrounded this lake, forcing it into green
fertility and productiveness of grain and fruit. Nay, the desert had,
for many centuries, here ceased to exist. Dionysus the generous, and the
kindly garden-gods had blest the toil of men, and yet, now, in many
a plot--in all which belonged to Christian owners--their altars lay
scattered and overthrown.

During the last thirty years much indeed was changed, and nothing to
the satisfaction of old Karnis; Herse, too, shook her head, and when
the rowers had pulled them about half-way across, she pointed to a broad
vacant spot on the bank where a new building was just rising above the
soil, and said sadly to her husband:

"Would you know that place again? Where is our dear old temple gone? The
temple of Dionysus." Karnis started up so hastily that he almost upset
the boat, and their conductor was obliged to insist on his keeping
quiet; he obeyed but badly, however, for his arms were never still as he
broke out:

"And do you suppose that because we are in Egypt I can keep my living
body as still as one of your dead mummies? Let others keep still if they
can! I say it is shameful, disgraceful; a dove's gall might rise at it!
That splendid building, the pride of the city and the delight of men's
eyes, destroyed--swept away like dust from the road! Do you see? Do you
see, I say? Broken columns, marble capitals, here, there and everywhere
at the bottom of the lake--here a head and there a torso! Great
and noble masters formed those statues by the aid of the gods, and
they--they, small and ignoble as they are, have destroyed them by the
aid of evil daemons. They have annihilated and drowned works that were
worthy to live forever! And why? Shall I tell you? Because they shun
the Beautiful as an owl shuns light. Aye, they do! There is nothing they
hate or dread so much as beauty; wherever they find it, they deface and
destroy it, even if it is the work of the Divinity. I accuse them before
the Immortals--for where is the grove even, not the work of man but
the special work of Heaven itself? Where is our grove, with its c