barians had not swept away every trace of
the structures that Pausanias and Pliny described: you will take those
great writers as your models; and such contribution of criticism and
suggestion as my riper mind can supply shall not be wanting to you.
There will be much to tell; for you have travelled, you said, in the
Peloponnesus?"

"Yes; and in Boeotia also: I have rested in the groves of Helicon, and
tasted of the fountain Hippocrene. But on every memorable spot in
Greece conquest after conquest has set its seal, till there is a
confusion of ownership even in ruins, that only close study and
comparison could unravel. High over every fastness, from the plains of
Lacedaemon to the straits of Thermopylae, there towers some huge
Frankish fortress, once inhabited by a French or Italian marquis, now
either abandoned or held by Turkish bands."

"Stay!" cried Bardo, whose mind was now too thoroughly preoccupied by
the idea of the future book to attend to Tito's further narration. "Do
you think of writing in Latin or Greek? Doubtless Greek is the more
ready clothing for your thoughts, and it is the nobler language. But,
on the other hand, Latin is the tongue in which we shall measure
ourselves with the larger and more famous number of modern rivals. And
if you are less at ease in it, I will aid you--yes, I will spend on you
that long-accumulated study which was to have been thrown into the
channel of another work--a work in which I myself was to have had a
helpmate."

Bardo paused a moment, and then added--

"But who knows whether that work may not be executed yet? For you, too,
young man, have been brought up by a father who poured into your mind
all the long-gathered stream of his knowledge and experience. Our aid
might be mutual."

Romola, who had watched her father's growing excitement, and divined
well the invisible currents of feeling that determined every question
and remark, felt herself in a glow of strange anxiety: she turned her
eyes on Tito continually, to watch the impression her father's words
made on him, afraid lest he should be inclined to dispel these visions
of co-operation which were lighting up her father's face with a new
hope. But no! He looked so bright and gentle: he must feel, as she
did, that in this eagerness of blind age there was piteousness enough to
call forth inexhaustible patience. How much more strongly he would feel
this if he knew about her brother! A girl of eighteen imag