The gods be praised the end of all this wretchedness was at hand!  A thrill of ecstasy ran through her as she reflected that with herself and her children, every soul, everything that bore the name of Christian would be crushed, shattered and annihilated.  She could have laughed aloud but that her throat was so dry, her tongue so parched; but her scornful triumph was expressed in every feature, as her fancy showed her Marcus riding along the Canopic street with that little heathen hussy Dada, the singing girl, while her much-hated daughter-in-law looked after them, beating her forehead in grief and rage.

Quite beside herself with delight the old woman rocked backwards and forwards in her chair; not for long, however, for the black birds seemed to fill the whole room, describing swift, interminable spirals round her head.  She could not hear them, but she could see them, and the whirling vortex fascinated her; she could not help turning her head to follow their flight; she grew giddy and she was forced to try to recover her balance.

The old woman sat huddled in her chair, her hands convulsively clutching the arms, like a horseman whose steed has run away with him round and round the arena; till at length, worn out by excitement and exhaustion, she became unconscious, and sank in a heap on the ground, rigid and apparently lifeless.

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Christianity had ceased to be the creed of the poor
     He spoke with pompous exaggeration
     Whether man were the best or the worst of created beings

SERAPIS

By Georg Ebers

Volume 5.

CHAPTER XX.

Gorgo, when she had left her grandmother, could not rest.  Her lofty calmness of demeanor had given way to a restless mood such as she had always contemned severely in others, since she had ceased to be a vehement child and grown to be a woman.  She tried to beguile the alarm that made her pulses beat so quickly, and the heart-sickness that ached like a wound, by music and singing; but this only added to her torment.  The means by which she could usually recover her equanimity of mind had lost their efficacy, and Sappho’s longing hymn, which she began to sing, had only served to bring the fervid longing of her own heart to light—­to set it, as it were, in the full glare of the sun.  She had become aware that every fibre, every nerve of her being yearned for the man she loved; she would have thrown away her life like a hollow nut for one single hour of perfect joy with him and in him.  The faith in the old gods, the heathen world which contained the ideal of her young soul, her detestation of Christianity, her beautiful art—­everything, in short, that had filled the spiritual side of her life, was cast into the shade by the one absorbing passion that possessed her soul.  Every feeling,