sails swept over the rippling lake like flights of birds across a cornfield, and every inch of the shore was covered with stores or buildings.  Far away to the south long trellices of vine covered the slopes, broken by the silvery glaucous tones of the olive-groves, and by clumps of towering palms whose crowns mingled to form a lofty canopy.  White walls, gaudily-painted temples and private villas gleamed among the green, and the slanting rays of the low sun, shining on the drops that fell from the never-resting wheels and buckets that irrigated the land, turned them into showers of diamonds.  These water-works, of the most ingenious construction, many of them invented and contrived by scientific engineers, were the weapons with which man had conquered the desert that originally surrounded this lake, forcing it into green fertility and productiveness of grain and fruit.  Nay, the desert had, for many centuries, here ceased to exist.  Dionysus the generous, and the kindly garden-gods had blest the toil of men, and yet, now, in many a plot—­in all which belonged to Christian owners—­their altars lay scattered and overthrown.

During the last thirty years much indeed was changed, and nothing to the satisfaction of old Karnis; Herse, too, shook her head, and when the rowers had pulled them about half-way across, she pointed to a broad vacant spot on the bank where a new building was just rising above the soil, and said sadly to her husband: 

“Would you know that place again?  Where is our dear old temple gone?  The temple of Dionysus.”  Karnis started up so hastily that he almost upset the boat, and their conductor was obliged to insist on his keeping quiet; he obeyed but badly, however, for his arms were never still as he broke out: 

“And do you suppose that because we are in Egypt I can keep my living body as still as one of your dead mummies?  Let others keep still if they can!  I say it is shameful, disgraceful; a dove’s gall might rise at it!  That splendid building, the pride of the city and the delight of men’s eyes, destroyed—­swept away like dust from the road!  Do you see?  Do you see, I say?  Broken columns, marble capitals, here, there and everywhere at the bottom of the lake—­here a head and there a torso!  Great and noble masters formed those statues by the aid of the gods, and they—­ they, small and ignoble as they are, have destroyed them by the aid of evil daemons.  They have annihilated and drowned works that were worthy to live forever!  And why?  Shall I tell you?  Because they shun the Beautiful as an owl shuns light.  Aye, they do!  There is nothing they hate or dread so much as beauty; wherever they find it, they deface and destroy it, even if it is the work of the Divinity.  I accuse them before the Immortals—­for where is the grove even, not the work of man but the special work of Heaven itself?  Where is our grove, with its cool grottos, its primaeval trees, its shady nooks, and all the peace and enjoyment of which it was as full as a ripe grape is full of sweet juice?”