e queen to avoid that horrible
inconvenience."

Other anecdotes were recounted during our ride, and our opinion of his
Hellenic majesty's tact and taste did not become more favourable, when
it was discovered that his proceedings had utterly ruined the immense
quarries of Pentelicus--

"Still in its beam Pentele's marbles glow,"

can now only be said of the ruins, not of the quarries. In order to
obtain the few thousand blocks required for the royal palace at Athens,
millions of square feet of the purest statuary marble have been shivered
to atoms by the random process of springing mines with gunpowder. If
King Otho had done nothing worse in Greece than converting the marble
quarries of Pentelicus into a chaos of rubbish, when he found them
capable of supplying all Europe for ages with the most beautiful
material for the sculptor, he would have merited the reputation he so
justly bears, of caring as little about the real welfare of Greece as
Lord Palmerston himself. My companions quitted me at the quarries,
making pasquinades on the royal palace and its royal master; while I put
up my horse and walked slowly on to the ancient monastery of Pentele,
not Mendele, as Lord Byron has it.

I was soon sitting alone in the cell of Michael, and shall now recount
his history as I had it from his own mouth. Michael Kalliphournas was
left an orphan the year the Greek revolution broke out. He was hardly
fourteen years old, and yet he had to act as the guardian and protector
of a sister four years younger than himself. The storm of war soon
compelled him to fly to AEgina with the little Euphrosyne. The trinkets
and gold which his relations had taught him to conceal, enabled him to
place his sister in a Catholic monastery at Naxos, where she received
the education of a European lady. Michael himself served under Colonel
Gordon and General Fabvier with great distinction. In 1831, when the
Turks were about to cede Attica to Greece, Michael and Euphrosyne
returned to Athens, to take possession of their family property, which
promised to become of very great value. At that time I had very often
seen Phrossa, as she was generally called; indeed, from my intimacy with
her brother, I was a constant visitor in the house. Her appearance is
deeply impressed on my memory. I have rarely beheld greater beauty,
never a more elegant figure, nor a more graceful and dignified manner.
She was regarded as a fortune, and began to be sought in marri