m of the Grove seemed plain to him; he was glad, and
determined to render himself one of the lost in Daphne. In charge
of the flowers and shrubs, and watching the growth of all the dumb
excellences everywhere to be seen, could not he, like the man with
the pruning-knife in his mouth, forego the days of his troubled
life--forego them forgetting and forgotten?

But by-and-by his Jewish nature began to stir within him.

The charm might be sufficient for some people. Of what kind were
they?

Love is delightful--ah! how pleasant as a successor to wretchedness
like his. But was it all there was of life? All?

There was an unlikeness between him and those who buried themselves
contentedly here. They had no duties--they could not have had;
but he--

"God of Israel!" he cried aloud, springing to his feet, with burning
cheeks--"Mother! Tirzah! Cursed be the moment, cursed the place,
in which I yield myself happy in your loss!"

He hurried away through the thicket, and came to a stream flowing
with the volume of a river between banks of masonry, broken at
intervals by gated sluiceways. A bridge carried the path he was
traversing across the stream; and, standing upon it, he saw other
bridges, no two of them alike. Under him the water was lying in a
deep pool, clear as a shadow; down a little way it tumbled with a
roar over rocks; then there was another pool, and another cascade;
and so on, out of view; and bridges and pools and resounding
cascades said, plainly as inarticulate things can tell a story,
the river was running by permission of a master, exactly as the
master would have it, tractable as became a servant of the gods.

Forward from the bridge he beheld a landscape of wide valleys and
irregular heights, with groves and lakes and fanciful houses linked
together by white paths and shining streams. The valleys were spread
below, that the river might be poured upon them for refreshment in
days of drought, and they were as green carpets figured with beds
and fields of flowers, and flecked with flocks of sheep white as
balls of snow; and the voices of shepherds following the flocks
were heard afar. As if to tell him of the pious inscription of
all he beheld, the altars out under the open sky seemed countless,
each with a white-gowned figure attending it, while processions in
white went slowly hither and thither between them; and the smoke
of the altars half-risen hung collected in pale clouds over the
devoted places.