“I was going to tell you of another point which occurred later on to Sir Herbert; a man, by the way, of unusual acumen.  We agreed that Locri was the indubitable place of origin both of the Demeter and of the Faun.  ‘Well,’ said he, ’granting this—­how came they to be unearthed up in the hills, on your property, twenty-five miles away?’ I confess I was at first nonplussed by this question.  For, to the best of my knowledge, there are no indications of any large Hellenic settlement up there.  But it struck me that there may well have been a villa or two—­indeed, there must have been, to judge by the miscellaneous ancient material found on my little place.  This is what makes me think that these two relics were deliberately carried there.”

“Carried?”

“Carried.  For although the summer season at Locri was undoubtedly more endurable then than it now is, yet the town must have been sufficiently hot in the dog-days; whereas my vineyard is situated among the cool uplands—­”

“A kind of climatic station, you mean?”

“Precisely.  Don’t you think that richer people had domiciles in both places?  The ancients, you know, were so sensitive in the matter of temperatures that in summer time they traveled only by night and some of their toughest generals had underground chambers built for them during their campaigns.  I can imagine, for instance, some young and ardent lover of art, in the days when Pythagoras taught under those glittering colonnades of Croton, when the fleets of Metapontum swept the blue Ionian and Sybaris taught the world how to live a life of ease—­I can almost see this youth,” he pursued enthusiastically, “flitting from a hot palace on the plain towards those breezy heights and, inflamed with an all-absorbing passion for the beautiful, carrying up with him one or two, just one or two, of those beloved bronzes from which he could not, and would not, be parted—­no, not even for a short summer month—­to be a joy to his eyes and an inspiration to h is soul among the mountain solitudes.  These men, I take it, had a sense in which we their descendants are wholly deficient—­the sense of the solace, of the pleasurable companionship, to be derived from works of art.  That sense has been destroyed.  The Japanese alone, of all moderns, still foster an ingenuous affection which prompts them to cling closely to these things of beauty, to press them to their hearts as loving friends; the rest of us, surrounded by a world of sordid ugliness, have become positively afraid of their fair but reproachful shapes.  Ah, Mr. van Koppen, that was the age of true refinement, the age of gold!  Nowadays—­nowadays we only carry our troubles about with us.”

The bishop was touched by these moving words.

Mr. van Koppen, wearing a benevolent twinkle in his eye, said to himself: 

“What a lordly liar!  Almost as good as myself.”

Luncheon was announced.

CHAPTER XXX