an to whom you owe your existence
and all you know; you allow yourself to shrug your shoulders over your
own father's humbler art, since your first pictures were fairly
successful.--How puffed up he is, since, by my devoted care, he has been
a painter! How he looks down on the poor wretch who, by the pinch of
necessity, has come down from being a sculptor of the highest promise to
being a mere gem-cutter! In the depths of your soul--and I know it--you
regard my laborious art as half a handicraft. Well, perhaps it deserves
no better name; but that you--both of you--should make common cause with
a bird, and mock the sacred fire which still burns in an old man, and
moves him to serve true and noble art and to mold something great--an
Atlas such as the world has never seen on a heroic scale; that--"

He covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud. And the strong man's
passionate grief cut his children to the heart, though, since their
mother's death, their father's rage and discontent had many a time ere
now broken down into childish lamentation.

To-day no doubt the old man was in worse spirits than usual, for it was
the day of the Nekysia--the feast of the dead kept every autumn; and he
had that morning visited his wife's grave, accompanied by his daughter,
and had anointed the tombstone and decked it with flowers. The young
people tried to comfort him; and when at last he was more composed and
had dried his tears, he said, in so melancholy and subdued a tone that
the angry blusterer was scarcely recognizable: "There--leave me alone; it
will soon be over. I will finish this gem to-morrow, and then I must do
the Serapis I promised Theophilus, the high-priest. Nothing can come of
the Atlas. Perhaps you meant it in all sincerity, Alexander; but since
your mother left me, children, since then--my arms are no weaker than
they were; but in here--what it was that shriveled, broke, leaked away--I
can not find words for it. If you care for me--and I know you do--you
must not be vexed with me if my gall rises now and then; there is too
much bitterness in my soul. I can not reach the goal I strive after and
was meant to win; I have lost what I loved best, and where am I to find
comfort or compensation?"

His children tenderly assured him of their affection, and he allowed
Melissa to kiss him, and stroked Alexander's hair.

Then he inquired for Philip, his eldest son and his favorite; and on
learning that he, the only person