led to banish that face. She saw the dead woman
as she had seen her on the last fateful occasion in her short life. A
solemn and festal procession was passing out through the door of their
house, headed by flute-players and singing-girls; then came a white
bull; a garland of the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate--[This tree
was regarded as the symbol of fertility, on account of its many-seeded
fruit.]--hung round its massive neck, and its horns were gilt. By its
side walked slaves, carrying white baskets full of bread and cakes and
heaps of flowers, and these were followed by others, bearing light-blue
cages containing geese and doves. The bull, the calves, the flowers and
the birds were all to be deposited in the temple of Eileithyia, as
a sacrifice to the protecting goddess of women in child-birth. Close
behind the bull came Gorgo's mother, dressed with wreaths, walking
slowly and timidly, with shy, downcast eyes-thinking perhaps of the
anguish to come, and putting up a silent prayer.

Damia followed with the female friends of the house, the clients and
their wives and some personal attendants, all carrying pomegranates in
the right hand, and holding in the left a long wreath of flowers which
thus connected the whole procession.

In this order they reached the ship-yard; but at that spot they were met
by a band of crazy monks from the desert monasteries, who, seeing the
beast for sacrifice, abused them loudly, cursing the heathen. The slaves
indignantly drove them off, but then the starveling anchorites fell upon
the innocent beast which was the chief abomination in their eyes. The
bull tossed his huge head, snuffing and snorting to right and left,
stuck out his tail and rushed away from the boy whose guidance he had
till now meekly followed, flung a monk high in the air with his huge
horns, and then turned in his fury on the women who were behind.

They fled like a flock of doves on which a hawk comes swooping down;
some were driven quite into the lake and others up against the paling of
the shipyard, while Damia herself--who was going through it all again
in the midst of her efforts to rise to the divinity--and the young wife
whom she had vainly tried to shelter and support, were both knocked
down. To that hour of terror Gorgo owed her birth, while to her mother
it was death.

On the following day Alexandria beheld a funeral ceremony as solemn,
as magnificent, and as crowded as though a conquering hero were bein