life that it was sweet to treasure, to recall.  As the butterfly, allured by the winter sun, basks for a little in the sudden light, ere yet the wind awakes and the frost comes on, which shall blast it before the eve—­she rested beneath a beam, which, by contrast with the wonted skies, was not chilling; and the instinct which should have warned her of its briefness, bade her only gladden in its smile.

‘Thou hast beautiful locks,’ said Glaucus.  ’They were once, I ween well, a mother’s delight.’

Nydia sighed; it would seem that she had not been born a slave; but she ever shunned the mention of her parentage, and, whether obscure or noble, certain it is that her birth was never known by her benefactors, nor by any one in those distant shores, even to the last.  The child of sorrow and of mystery, she came and went as some bird that enters our chamber for a moment; we see it flutter for a while before us, we know not whence it flew or to what region it escapes.

Nydia sighed, and after a short pause, without answering the remark, said:  ’But do I weave too many roses in my wreath, Glaucus?  They tell me it is thy favorite flower.’

’And ever favored, my Nydia, be it by those who have the soul of poetry:  it is the flower of love, of festival; it is also the flower we dedicate to silence and to death; it blooms on our brows in life, while life be worth the having; it is scattered above our sepulchre when we are no more.’

‘Ah! would,’ said Nydia, ’instead of this perishable wreath, that I could take thy web from the hand of the Fates, and insert the roses there!’

’Pretty one! thy wish is worthy of a voice so attuned to song; it is uttered in the spirit of song; and, whatever my doom, I thank thee.’

’Whatever thy doom! is it not already destined to all things bright and fair?  My wish was vain.  The Fates will be as tender to thee as I should.’

’It might not be so, Nydia, were it not for love!  While youth lasts, I may forget my country for a while.  But what Athenian, in his graver manhood, can think of Athens as she was, and be contented that he is happy, while she is fallen?—­fallen, and for ever?’

‘And why for ever?’

’As ashes cannot be rekindled—­as love once dead can never revive, so freedom departed from a people is never regained.  But talk we not of these matters unsuited to thee.’

’To me, oh! thou errest.  I, too, have my sighs for Greece; my cradle was rocked at the foot of Olympus; the gods have left the mountain, but their traces may be seen—­seen in the hearts of their worshippers, seen in the beauty of their clime:  they tell me it is beautiful, and I have felt its airs, to which even these are harsh—­its sun, to which these skies are chill.  Oh! talk to me of Greece!  Poor fool that I am, I can comprehend thee! and methinks, had I yet lingered on those shores, had I been a Grecian maid whose happy fate it was to love and to be loved, I myself could have armed my lover for another Marathon, a new Plataea.  Yes, the hand that now weaves the roses should have woven thee the olive crown!’