Thus dwelt the chiefs and merry men of mark.  The common sort, including serfs, and Helots, war-captives held in bondage, lived in secret places, hard to find.  Whence it came, that, to a stranger, the whole isle looked care-free and beautiful.  Deep among the ravines and the rocks, these beings lived in noisome caves, lairs for beasts, not human homes; or built them coops of rotten boughs—­living trees were banned them—­whose mouldy hearts hatched vermin.  Fearing infection of some plague, born of this filth, the chiefs of Odo seldom passed that way and looking round within their green retreats, and pouring out their wine, and plucking from orchards of the best, marveled how these swine could grovel in the mire, and wear such sallow cheeks.  But they offered no sweet homes; from that mire they never sought to drag them out; they open threw no orchard; and intermitted not the mandates that condemned their drudges to a life of deaths.  Sad sight! to see those round-shouldered Helots, stooping in their trenches:  artificial, three in number, and concentric:  the isle well nigh surrounding.  And herein, fed by oozy loam, and kindly dew from heaven, and bitter sweat from men, grew as in hot-beds the nutritious Taro.

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.  But when man toils and slays himself for masters who withhold the life he gives to them—­then, then, the soul screams out, and every sinew cracks.  So with these poor serfs.  And few of them could choose but be the brutes they seemed.

Now needs it to be said, that Odo was no land of pleasure unalloyed, and plenty without a pause?—­Odo, in whose lurking-places infants turned from breasts, whence flowed no nourishment.—­Odo, in whose inmost haunts, dark groves were brooding, passing which you heard most dismal cries, and voices cursing Media.  There, men were scourged; their crime, a heresy; the heresy, that Media was no demigod.  For this they shrieked.  Their fathers shrieked before; their fathers, who, tormented, said, “Happy we to groan, that our children’s children may be glad.”  But their children’s children howled.  Yet these, too, echoed previous generations, and loudly swore, “The pit that’s dug for us may prove another’s grave.”

But let all pass.  To look at, and to roam about of holidays, Odo seemed a happy land.  The palm-trees waved—­though here and there you marked one sear and palsy-smitten; the flowers bloomed—­though dead ones moldered in decay; the waves ran up the strand in glee—­though, receding, they sometimes left behind bones mixed with shells.