“Gently, my young friend,” Proclus interrupted the artist.  “I know that you, too, sat at the feet of some of the philosophers in the Museum, and still uphold the teachings of Straton, which your fellow-pupil, King Ptolemy, outgrew long ago.  Yet he, also, recognised in philosophy, first of all, the bond which unites the widely sundered acquisitions of the intellect, the vital breath which pervades them, the touchstone which proves each true or false.  If the praise of Alexandria is to be sung, we must not forget the library to which the most precious treasures of knowledge of the East and West are flowing, and which feeds those who thirst for knowledge with the intellectual gains of former ages and other nations.  Honour, too, to our King, and, that I may be just, to his illustrious wife; for wherever in the Grecian world a friend of the Muses appears, whether he is investigator, poet, architect, sculptor, artist, actor, or singer, he is drawn to Alexandria, and, that he may not be idle, work is provided.  Palaces spring from the earth quickly enough.”

“Yet not like mushrooms,” Hermon interrupted, “but as the noblest, most carefully executed creations of art-sculpture and painting provide for their decoration both without and within.”

“And,” Proclus went on, “abodes are erected for the gods as well as for men, both Egyptian and Hellenic divinities, each in their own style, and so beautiful that it must be a pleasure for them to dwell under the new roof.”

“Go to the gardens of the Paneum, friends!” cried young Philotas; and Hermon, nodding to Thyone, added gaily:  “Then you must climb the mountain and keep your eyes open while you are ascending the winding path.  You will find enough to do to look at all the new sights.  You will stand there with dry feet, but your soul will bathe in eternal, imperishable, divine beauty.”

“The foe of beauty!” exclaimed Proclus, pointing to the sculptor with a scornful glance; but Daphne, full of joyous emotion, whispered to Hermon as he approached her:  “Eternal, divine beauty!  To hear it thus praised by you makes me happy.”

“Yes,” cried the artist, “what else should I call what has so often filled me with the deepest rapture?  The Greek language has no more fitting expression for the grand and lofty things that hovered before me, and which I called by that chameleon of a word.  Yet I have a different meaning from what appears before you at its sound.  Were I to call it truth, you would scarcely understand me, but when I conjure before my soul the image of Alexandria, with all that springs from it, all that is moving, creating, and thriving with such marvellous freedom, naturalness, and variety within it, it is not alone the beauty that pleases the eye which delights me; I value more the sound natural growth, the genuine, abundant life.  To truth, Daphne, as I mean it.”

He raised his goblet as he spoke and drank to her.