And vainly bright before us
The lustral fire shall beam.
For where is the charm expelling
Thy thought from its sacred dwelling?
Our griefs are thy funeral feast,
And Memory thy mourning priest.
Salve--salve!

III

Ilicet--ire licet!
The spark from the hearth is gone
Wherever the air shall bear it;
The elements take their own--
The shadows receive thy spirit.
It will soothe thee to feel our grief,
As thou glid'st by the Gloomy River!
If love may in life be brief,
In death it is fixed for ever.
Salve--salve!
In the hall which our feasts illume,
The rose for an hour may bloom;
But the cypress that decks the tomb--
The cypress is green for ever!
Salve--salve!

Chapter IX

IN WHICH AN ADVENTURE HAPPENS TO IONE.

WHILE some stayed behind to share with the priests the funeral banquet,
Ione and her handmaids took homeward their melancholy way. And now (the
last duties to her brother performed) her mind awoke from its
absorption, and she thought of her allianced, and the dread charge
against him. Not--as we have before said--attaching even a momentary
belief to the unnatural accusation, but nursing the darkest suspicion
against Arbaces, she felt that justice to her lover and to her murdered
relative demanded her to seek the praetor, and communicate her
impression, unsupported as it might be. Questioning her maidens, who
had hitherto--kindly anxious, as I have said, to save her the additional
agony--refrained from informing her of the state of Glaucus, she learned
that he had been dangerously ill: that he was in custody, under the roof
of Sallust; that the day of his trial was appointed.

'Averting gods,' she exclaimed; 'and have I been so long forgetful of
him? Have I seemed to shun him? O! let me hasten to do him justice--to
show that I, the nearest relative of the dead, believe him innocent of
the charge. Quick! quick! let us fly. Let me soothe--tend--cheer him!
and if they will not believe me; if they will not lead to my conviction;
if they sentence him to exile or to death, let me share the sentence
with him!'

Instinctively she hastened her pace, confused and bewildered, scarce
knowing whither she went; now designing first to seek the praetor, and
now to rush to the chamber of