next day by eleven gods and demigods, mostly Titans.  Elenko found it trying, and was really alarmed when by and by the Furies, having made over their functions to the Devil, strolled up to take the air, and dropped in for a chat, bringing Cerberus.  But they behaved exceedingly well, and took back a message from Elenko to Eurydice.  Ere long she was on most intimate terms with all the dethroned divinities, celestial, infernal, and marine.

Beautiful and blessed beyond most things is youthful enthusiasm, looking up to something it feels or deems above itself.  Beautiful, too, as autumn sunshine is maturity looking down with gentleness on the ideal it has surpassed, and reverencing it still for old ideas and associations.  The thought of beholding a Deity would once have thrilled Elenko with rapture, if this had not been checked by awe at her own presumption.  The idea that a Deity, other than some disgraced offender like Prometheus, could be the object of her compassion, would never have entered her mind.  And now she pitied the whole Olympian cohort most sincerely, not so much for having fallen as for having deserved to fall.  She could not conceal from herself how grievously they were one and all behind the age.  It was impossible to make Zeus comprehend how an idea could be a match for a thunderbolt.  Apollo spoke handsomely of Homer, yet evidently esteemed the Iliad and Odyssey but lightly in comparison with the blind bard’s hymn to himself.  Ceres candidly admitted that her mind was a complete blank on the subject of the Eleusinian mysteries.  Aphrodite’s dress was admirable for summer, but in winter seemed obstinate conservatism; and why should Pallas make herself a fright with her Gorgon helmet, now that it no longer frightened anybody?  Where Elenko would fain have adored she found herself tolerating, excusing, condescending.  How many Elenkos are even now tenderly nursing ancient creeds, whose main virtue is the virtue of their professors!

One autumn night all the principal gods were assembled under Prometheus’s roof, doing justice to the figs and mulberries, and wine cooled with Taygetan snow.  The guests were more than usually despondent.  Prometheus was moody and abstracted, his breast seemed labouring with thought.  “So looked my Pythoness,” whispered Apollo to his neighbour, “when about to deliver an oracle.”

And the oracle came—­in lyric verse, not to infringe any patent of Apollo’s—­

  When o’er the towers of Constantine
  An Orient Moon begins to shine,
  Waning nor waxing aught, and bright
  In daytide as in deep of night: 
  Then, though the fane be brought
  To wreck, the God shall find,
  Enthroned in human thought,
  A temple in the mind.

“And what becomes of us while this prodigious moonshine is concocting?” demanded Zeus, who had become the most sceptical of any of the gods.

“Go to Elysium,” suggested Prometheus.

“There’s an idea!” cried Zeus and Pallas together.