so
merrily, the boatmen singing so lustily and happily, the shores of the
Nile bloomed in such gay, variegated beauty, and were so thickly peopled,
the palm-trees, sycamores, bananas and acacias were so luxuriant in
foliage and blossom, and over the whole landscape the rarest and most
glorious gifts seemed to have been poured out with such divine
munificence, that a passer-by must have pronounced it the very home of
joy and gladness, a place from which sadness and sorrow had been forever
banished.

How often we fancy, in passing a quiet village hidden among its orchards,
that this at least must be the abode of peace, and unambitious
contentment! But alas! when we enter the cottages, what do we find?
there, as everywhere else, distress and need, passion and unsatisfied
longing, fear and remorse, pain and misery; and by the side of these, Ah!
how few joys! Who would have imagined on coming to Egypt, that this
luxuriant, laughing sunny land, whose sky is always unclouded, could
possibly produce and nourish men given to bitterness and severity? that
within the charming, hospitable house of the fortunate Rhodopis, covered
and surrounded, as it was, with sweet flowers, a heart could have been
beating in the deepest sadness? And, still more, who among all the guests
of that honored, admired Thracian woman, would have believed that this
sad heart belonged to her? to the gracious, smiling matron, Rhodopis
herself?

She was sitting with Phanes in a shady arbor near the cooling spray of a
fountain. One could see that she had been weeping again, but her face was
beautiful and kind as ever. The Athenian was holding her hand and trying
to comfort her.

Rhodopis listened patiently, and smiled the while; at times her smile was
bitter, at others it gave assent to his words. At last however she
interrupted her well-intentioned friend, by saying:

"Phanes, I thank you. Sooner or later this last disgrace must be
forgotten too. Time is clever in the healing art. If I were weak I should
leave Naukratis and live in retirement for my grandchild alone; a whole
world, believe me, lies slumbering in that young creature. Many and many
a time already I have longed to leave Egypt, and as often have conquered
the wish. Not because I cannot live without the homage of your sex; of
that I have already had more than enough in my life, but because I feel
that I, the slave-girl and the despised woman once, am now useful,
necessary, almost indispensabl