The evening brought no coolness, and when it was already quite dark, as her grandmother had not yet called her, Gorgo could no longer control her increasing anxiety, so, after knocking in vain at the door of the observatory, she went in.  Her old nurse preceded her with a lamp, and the two women stood dumb with consternation, for the old lady lay senseless on the ground.  Her head was thrown back against the seat of the chair off which she had slipped, and her pale face was lifeless and horrible to look at, with its half-closed eyes and dropped jaw.  Wine, water, and strong essences were all at hand, and they laid the unconscious woman on a couch intended for the occasional use of the wearied observer.  In a few minutes they had succeeded in reviving the old lady; but her eyes rested without recognition on the girl who knelt by her side, and she murmured to herself:  “The ravens—­where are they gone?  Ravens!”

Her glance wandered round the room, to the tablets and rolls which had been tossed off the couch and the table to make room for her, and for the lamps and medicaments.  They lay in disorder on the floor, and the sight of this confusion produced a favorable excitement and reaction; she succeeded in expressing herself in husky accents and broken, hardly intelligible sentences, so far as to scold them sharply for their irreverence for the precious documents, and for the disorder they had created.  The waiting-woman proceeded to pick them up:  but Damia again became unconscious.  Gorgo bathed her brow and tried to pour some wine between her teeth, but she clenched them too firmly, till the slave-woman came to her assistance and they succeeded in making Damia swallow a few drops.  The old woman opened her eyes, smacking her tongue feebly; but she took the cup into her own hand to hold it to her lips; and though she trembled so that half the contents were spilt, she drank eagerly till it was quite empty.  “More,” she gasped with the eagerness of intense thirst, “more—­I want drink !”

Gorgo gave her a second and a third draught which Damia drank with equal eagerness; then, with a deep breath, she looked up fully conscious, at her granddaughter.

“Thank you, child,” she said.  “Now I shall do very well for a little while.  The material world and all that belongs to it weighs us down and clings to us like iron fetters.  We may long and strive to be free, but it pursues us and holds us fast.  Only those who are content with their miserable humanity can enjoy it.  They laugh, as you know, at Praxilla, the poetess, because she makes the dying Adonis lament, when face to face with death, that he is forced to leave the apples and pears behind him.  But is not that subtly true?  Yes, yes; Praxilla is right!  We fast, we mortify ourselves—­I have felt it all myself—­to partake of divinity.  We almost perish of hunger and thirst, when we might be so happy if only we would be satisfied with apples and pears!  No man has ever yet succeeded in