Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

By this time chaos had opened its gates. Thirty engines were roaring, their steel throats belching. Flame and smoke burst from them. A clamor of machinery smote the ear. Gears rattled shrilly, levers ground and rasped. A stench of oil assailed the nostrils. Now the bluish canopy, thickening, descended as a curtain. Through it Lescault saw the “Ninety” sliding like a great specter, creeping along until its front wheels almost touched the red tanks of the Saturn.

Above the crash of machinery he heard a man’s voice intoning the seconds from one to ten backward. He could not see the man, for the drifting smoke shrouded all; but he listened, and suddenly a voice shouted “Go!” Then came a rattling from the Saturn, a succession of sharp reports, a deep boom, a savage cry from Giron: the Vanderbilt was on.

Three minutes later the white “Ninety” loomed through the smoke, paused on the line, licked at the starter with thin tongues of yellow flame, and, snorting eagerly, crashed away.

Twenty-seven other cars followed, but upon none of them would Lescault deign to glance. With pad and pencil in hand he was busy figuring how fast Stevenson would have to go to lead Giron at the end of the first lap. He knew that the best Giron had done in practice was a circuit of the twenty-mile course in eighteen minutes. This was at the rate of sixty-seven miles an hour. And Lescault grinned, for he had told Stevenson to keep his speedometer at seventy-five miles an hour, gain a two-minute lead at the outset, and confound Giron when the race was only a lap old.

His figures verified, Lescault waited impatiently for the Saturn to appear. If it came just one minute ahead of the “Ninety,” his schedule was true. Time dragged; the crowd settled back; the tense vigil disintegrated into stretchings and yawnings. The stage of a Vanderbilt is not reset quickly, but long before the signal “Car coming!” passed for miles from mouth to mouth, grew from a murmur to a shout, and threw the grand stand into tumult, Lescault’s trained ear had caught the distant rumble of the Saturn. Giron was driving hard. Lescault saw that he passed the grand stand with the engine “wide open,” forcing the car to its utmost. Then the Saturn roared away, and out of the distance came another apparition that, flashing by in a blur of white, cast up dust and was gone. Down in the pits, Lescault, one of few who had recognized the white car, so great was its speed, drew his hideous features into a smile.

His stop-watch had told him that Stevenson’s first lap was at seventy-seven miles an hour, a gain of more than two minutes on the unbeaten Giron! And he grinned again when back of him men began to ask of one another in surprise:

“Who is this Stevenson? He’s beaten the life out of Giron. Who is he?”

No one knew anything but what the program had printed, and down in the pits the crippled little Frenchman was enjoying himself as he never had before. Each bewildered question was as music to his ears.

Quarter of an hour later the white “Ninety” and the red Saturn again crashed past, only this time Giron was behind. Even the advantage that his starting position had given him was gone, and Stevenson led by five minutes. So one lap followed another, a whirligig of blurred wheels and flaming hoods, sweeping round and round that oblong of Long Island country-side, strewing men and machines as it went.

Soon reports of accidents began to come in. In trying to keep up with the awful pace, the other drivers were overtaxing their machines. Already two cars had collapsed on the course, burying their crews beneath them. Others,--a score of them, with the Vegas, and the Germans, painted gray,--limping, had stopped at the repair pits, and Lescault had laughed. What chance had they with the white “Ninety” and his brain?

Complacently he saw Stevenson push his car past the Saturn a second time. Near Westbury he had driven wonderfully, and obtained a lead of more than a length of the course over the favorite. And this time, when the Saturn rushed by, Lescault saw that Giron had stopped his waving to the grand stand. Clever driver that he was, Giron now realized that the early lead of the “Ninety” was more than a fluke, more than sensational forcing of a car beyond its limits, only to have it collapse with the goal miles away. In Stevenson he had come to recognize a new driver of rare power, a rival worthy of his steel. All Giron’s attention was demanded on the wheel.

Another swift rimming of the course, and Lescault saw the “Ninety” slacken speed coming up the stretch. Stevenson would stop, probably for gasolene or water. And Lescault was glad. Indeed, fortune seemed to be favoring him that day. It was tremendously important that he have a word with Stevenson at this stage of the race. Lescault had remembered that it was at such a time in the Grand Prix that Giron had broken him--waited on a lonely stretch of road until he had tried to pass and then had ditched him.

“Don’t,” he told Stevenson, while mechanics swarmed about the throbbing “Ninety”--“don’t pass Giron again unless you can do it in front of the judges’ stand.”

Stevenson showed his amazement. A question was on his lips.

“Obey me!” snapped Lescault, anticipating him. “Remember you’re pledged to that--to carry out my commands. I’ve made you, and you must do just what I say,” he added.

And Stevenson, excited, abashed, regretting his moment of doubt, nodded, and turned to the men who were pouring gasolene down the thirsty throat of the “Ninety.” Then he swung into the seat, threw in his clutch, and went snorting away. Jean Lescault would be obeyed.

As though by telepathy, there came to Giron at this time the same thought that had made Lescault speak his warning. Stevenson must be done away with. As Giron had seen him draw steadily away lap by lap, displaying more and more daring and skill; as he had seen him manœuver as only a master could manœuver, put trick against trick, and, winning, outdo all who would cut him down; as he had watched the big “Ninety” roar by again and again, always about the same time, a “limited” on schedule, the keen Frenchman admitted finally that Stevenson’s was no half-charged sensation, but a decided menace.

Setting his mouth in a thin, cruel line, he made his plans. He would wait for this boy--wait as he had waited for Lescault years before. To him it was only an incident, a sweeping aside of an unforeseen obstacle that had risen between him and victory. That Stevenson might die, that a young and wonderfully brilliant driver might he maimed for life, did not interest him. The boy was in the way. He must go.

Giron waited patiently for the “Ninety” to draw near. Just as he was about to pass he would obey the law of the race--turn out and give room. Then he would veer in suddenly, and, to avoid collision, Stevenson would be forced into the ditch. In just that way he had disposed of Lescault and of others whose names do not matter. Snarling at his mechanician to warn him of the approach of the “Ninety,” Giron drove on. The wait, he felt, would not be long.

“ON IT CAME, FASTER THAN THE WIND” (SEE PAGE 213)]

But for some reason the “Ninety” never overtook him. It hung so close to his rear wheels that Giron could hear the crunch of the tires, the cries of its mechanician; but it came no nearer. Its front wheels were always just out of reach; but it never came farther. Stubbornly and tenaciously it hung like a shadow that would not shorten.

In his desperation Giron began jockeying. Slackening his speed almost imperceptibly, he waited grimly; but the “Ninety” slackened, too. For a moment Giron was puzzled; then, thinking it might be a coincidence, he lowered his pace even more, but the “Ninety” lowered, too. Suddenly suspicious, he tried again; but still the “Ninety” hung back. Then it burst upon Giron amazingly clear. How blind he had been! This was not Stevenson who refused to be tricked; this was no impetuous, lusty boy who couldn’t be tempted into the ditch. This was the cool mind of the master driver, the calm, scheming mind of Lescault--old Lescault back in the pits, the hideous cripple at whom he had spat, now pulling him down at the top of his career.

So they rushed into the straightaway, headed for the grand stand, and came booming and pounding until a report from one of the “Ninety’s” rear tires brought that car to a stop while the red Saturn whirled away in a screen of dust. Stevenson drove in on a flat tire, and, reaching the pits, shouted to his mechanics to hurry their work; and while he waited, chafing and fretting, Lescault clutched at his arm and said impressively:

“Remember, don’t pass Giron unless it’s in front of the judges’ stand. Remember you promised to obey.”

Then the “Ninety” rushed away. Somewhat nervous now, for the race was drawing to a close, Lescault saw the Saturn appear again and knew that Stevenson must come soon after. Impatiently he strained his ear, hoping to catch the rumble of the “Ninety” before it swung round the “Hairpin” into view of the stands. But no rumble came. Soon Stevenson was overdue. Concern and worry, then fear, followed upon impatience. Seconds grew into minutes, and to Lescault the minutes were as ages. He began to ask himself questions. What was wrong? Had Stevenson disobeyed orders?

Lescault feverishly jotted down some figures. Yes, the boy could have passed Giron over by Westbury; but Giron had swept by, and Stevenson--

The pitmen, now alarmed at the delay, had climbed out upon the side of the track. One of them, a little fellow, standing on the shoulders of the others, was trying to see far down the road. Lescault watched his face for some expression of relief, but the pitman’s worry seemed to grow.

“Stevenson’s hurt!”

In a trice the rumor had spread among the crowd. Wild stories spread. The minutes were now dragging on feet of lead--agonizing minutes to Lescault, who felt an overpowering weakness coming over him, a sickening of the heart, an overwhelming of conscience that undermined his iron nerve. Giron had beaten him again! His painstaking work, his self-denials, all the plans of years, had been for naught. And by using Stevenson,--God help him!--he had sent the boy to a fate perhaps worse than his own. Into the scarred face came sorrow.

Then he heard an exclamation; he saw the pitmen dancing about like children.

“He’s coming! He’s coming!” they cried.

Far down the road Lescault made out the white blur of the “Ninety.”

“Busted valve!” cried Stevenson as he jumped down. “Thought we’d never fix it.”

Lescault saw that the boyish face looked old, ages old, that his hands were moving nervously, his whole body tense with repressed eagerness.

“You’ve lost the lead,” a tireman shouted. “Giron’s a minute ahead!”

Lescault could have killed the speaker. The effect of his words was obvious. Stevenson’s nervousness increased.

“As bad as that!” he exclaimed. “Hurry it up, boys! Only two more laps--just enough to catch Giron.”

Swinging into the car, he threw on the engine, drowning the warning that Lescault was shouting, and rushed away. The grand stand was in an uproar as he swept past, but Stevenson did not hear. He heard only the words of the tireman, and kept repeating them:

“Giron’s a minute ahead. Giron’s a minute ahead.”

He now opened his engine to the limit, and driving faster than he had ever driven before, burst into the “S” turn and reeled round it on two wheels. Past Massapequa he whirled, dirt and oil flying in a trembling wall of brown. Downhill, over bridges, he rushed, the wind shrieking in his ears. Into the straight stretch of the Parkway he burst, the “Ninety” gathering momentum on the smooth road, faster and faster, until the front wheels, bending to the sonorous rhythm of the engine, jumped up and down in a weird dance.

“‘DON’T PASS GIRON AGAIN UNLESS YOU CAN DO IT IN FRONT OF THE JUDGES’ STAND’”]

Yes, no speck of red had taken shape on the road ahead. The lead of the Saturn was even greater than he had feared. It must be still miles away, and Giron, supreme again, driving like the wind. That streak of red! If he could only see it, just to know that it really was within reach.

Then Stevenson caught a glimpse of car far ahead. An exclamation escaped him, only to leave him more grimly silent; for the car was gray, one of the Germans. Then he made out other cars,--white, green, and blue cars, the Jupiter, the Vegas, and the Crowns,--and soon he had overtaken them, roared past them, with their crews appalled at the awful speed, the awful daring. Now he began to curse the “Ninety” for not bearing him more swiftly, for not bringing to him that red-painted goal. And so he crashed, skidded, and battered through mile after mile, forgot the perils of “the Jericho,” the “S,” and the “Hairpin,” and drove in the grip of a mania, a boyish giant on whom the race had laid its spell.

Out of the distance there finally came to him the speck of red, a vague, blurry shape that quickly took on the lines of the Saturn. It gave him a sense of fierce pleasure, an unnatural desire to laugh aloud; and then he thought of Lescault, of his warning:

“Don’t pass Giron unless it’s in front of the judges’ stand.”

But surely Lescault could not mean for him to wait now--now when he was behind, when he had caught the red car and in a trice could snatch back a race almost lost! Of course Lescault didn’t mean that. Stevenson compressed his lips, pressed down on the accelerator, leaned slightly forward, his eyes peering over the steering-wheel.

A minute of terrific driving, and the “Ninety” had come near enough for Giron to hear the thunder of its exhausts. Employing a signal that racing crews have, he ordered his mechanician to watch its approach. The mechanician, after craning his head, turned swiftly around.

“He’s coming like the wind,” he bawled in Giron’s ear. “He’s driving like a madman!”

And Giron, who had waited patiently for this moment, who knew even when he had gained the lead that he could not hold it, that the “Ninety” was faster, the brain guiding it craftier, parted his lips as a panther does before the leap; for he thought again that the soul of Lescault was no longer driving the “Ninety,” that lusty, unthinking youth, mad with speed, had risen, overwhelming caution and sending Stevenson down into the ditch, as it had another years before.

“I’ll get him,” he murmured, and bent lower over the wheel.

Past Hicksville came the two cars, the “Ninety” creeping up at every turn of the wheel.

“Not here,” Giron told himself; “the crowd might see.”

Round “Death Turn,” they shot, skidded, righted in a whirl of dust, bellowed, and were gone down a lonely road, narrow, slippery, black with oil, the “Crossover,” which the crowds had avoided because of the marshy land on each side. Half a mile away the road lay over a swamp, and the ditch was deep. Not a soul was there.

As the cars rushed toward it, Giron almost imperceptibly lowered his speed just enough for the “Ninety” to come up before the swamp was crossed. Listening carefully, his ears attuned by long practice, he read the thunder of the “Ninety’s” engine, calculated to a foot how much nearer Stevenson was being borne with each detonation. Louder and louder grew the clamor, the harsh shrieking and rasping of machinery, the booming of the exhausts, until it deafened him. Then Giron acted.

Bracing his feet, he sank lower in the seat, gripped the wheel, and made as though to turn out, to obey the law of the race. Up crept the “Ninety” closer and closer, until with a snarl Giron threw over the wheel suddenly, tugged sharply, and, shooting his own car back across the road, blocked the way.

But, hours before that, Fate had made a workman blunder. The workman had put on more oil than safety allowed. The oil had made the surface slippery and dangerous at just this place. No driver had noticed it because none had tried to turn in it. But now, catching the big Saturn veering suddenly under high speed, the treacherous mixture of dirt and oil slid away from under the front wheels. With all the power of inanimate things breaking loose, the huge red car careened across the road. As though possessed, it ran to destruction, dug its flat snout into the embankment, lifted slowly end on end, swayed a moment, and, as the “Ninety” shot by, lurched forward, somersaulting down into the swamp.

“WITH ALL THE POWER OF INANIMATE THINGS BREAKING LOOSE, THE HUGE RED CAR CAREENED ACROSS THE ROAD”]

No sooner had Stevenson crossed the finish-line than the Mercury Motor-Car Company’s representatives telephoned Garden City and arranged for a banquet. But banquets were not for Stevenson that night. The fate of Giron lay heavy upon him. It had shadowed his joy in winning. The strain of the race over, he had broken down; and in breaking down it seemed to him that he had rushed to success over another man’s body.

At the hospital, where he had gone to inquire as soon as he could tear himself away from the swarms at the finish-line, the day nurse had told him that Giron would be a cripple for life. She had added that, oddly enough, a crippled little Frenchman had been there an hour ago, and that he, too, had been anxious to know about Giron.

“Good old Lescault!” thought Stevenson as he drove back to Krugs. “Always the first to think of a man in danger.”

Then he found himself wishing that Lescault were at his side. Now more than ever before he felt the need of the strange little Frenchman, the man who had made him, the man to whom he could now turn in this time of depression, of worried conscience, and even of half-guilt, he thought with a start. Had not Giron gone into the ditch to avoid a collision, to save him? He wasn’t the hero, he thought bitterly. It was Giron--poor Giron!

Stevenson found Lescault in his room. The little fellow had his chair drawn up close to the old-fashioned fireplace, in which wood was burning. He was smoking a cigarette, and if he heard Stevenson enter, he gave no sign. Instead, he gazed steadily at some charred bits of cardboard strewn about the edges of the fire--thick cardboard, and one piece only partly burned appeared to be a photograph.

The red glow of the fire shone on the little man’s face as Stevenson drew a chair beside him. In the flickering light the boy thought he saw him grin; but it might have been only the play of the shadows.

“It’s terrible about Giron, isn’t it, Jean?” he said abruptly, unable to endure the silence. “Think of it--that man at the height of his power suddenly crippled, never able to drive again, a great career ended so terribly!”

The little man at his side looked up.

“No, he’ll never drive again,” said Lescault.

Stevenson wondered at his tone, the look that had come into his face, the queer burning of his eyes, eery, unholy.

“Léon Giron will never drive again,” Lescault repeated. “It’s sure? You’re certain of it?” he asked suddenly, clutching Stevenson’s sleeve. “It’s sure, isn’t it?” he begged.

Bewildered, Stevenson said that it was so. Then he felt his flesh creep, for the little Frenchman had begun to smile, a horrible smile, with a hideous face, changing expression in the fire’s glow; began to rub his one hand over his knee, to slide it up and down creepily and unpleasantly, like a snake at play; to leer, and gloat over disaster not like a man, but a beast.

Horrified, unable to understand, Stevenson slid silently from his chair and backed slowly from the room. At the door he stopped, hesitated, and, as though unwilling to believe, looked again at the hunched little figure in the chair. There came to him faintly the sound of a voice chuckling!

OFF CAPRI

BY SARA TEASDALE

When beauty grows too great to bear,
How shall I ease me of its ache?
For beauty, more than bitterness,
Makes the heart break.

O sunlight on the dreaming sea,
With isles like flowers against her breast!
Is there a voice in all the world
To give me rest?

SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA

FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE

FOURTH PAPER: DELPHI AND OLYMPIA

BY ROBERT HICHENS

Author of “The Spell of Egypt,” “The Holy Land,” “The Garden of Allah,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN (SEE FRONTISPIECE) AND PHOTOGRAPHS

There are two ways of going from Athens to Delphi: by sea from the Piræus to Itea and thence by carriage or by motor. Despite the rough surfaces of the roads and the terrors of dust, I chose the latter; and I was well rewarded. For the drive is a glorious one, though very long and fatiguing, and it enabled me to see a grand monument which many travelers miss--the Lion of Chæronea, which gazes across a vast plain in a solitary place between Thebes and Delphi.

Leaving Athens early one morning, I followed the Via Sacra, left Eleusis behind me, traversed the Thriasian plain, the heights of Mount Geraneia, and the rich cultivated plain of Bœotia, passed through the village of Kriekouki, and arrived at Thebes. There I halted for an hour. After leaving Thebes, the journey became continually more and more interesting as I drew near to Parnassus: over the plain of Livadia, through the village and khan of Gravia, where one hundred and eighty Greeks fought heroically against three thousand Turks in 1821, over the magnificent Pass of Amblema, across the delightful olive-covered plain of Krissa, and up the mountain to Delphi.

Throughout this wonderful journey, during which I saw country alternately intimate and wild, genial and majestic, and at one point almost savage, I had only one deception: that was on the Pass of Amblema, which rises to more than eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. Delphi, I felt, ought to be there. Delphi, I believed, must be there, hidden somewhere among the rocks and the fir-woods, where wolves lurk, and where the eagle circles and swoops above peaks which are cold and austere. Only when we began to descend in serpentine curves, when I saw far below me great masses of olive-trees, and, beyond, the shining of the sea, did I realize that I was mistaken, and that Delphi lay far beyond, in a region less tragically wild, more rustic, even more tender.

During this journey of, I believe, about three hundred kilometers or more, I realized fully the loneliness that happily shadows a great part of Greece. We seemed to be almost perpetually in the midst of a delightful desolation, gloriously alone with nature, now far up on bare flanks of the hills, now traveling through deserted pine-woods or olive-groves, now upon plains which extended to shadowy ranges of mountains, and which here and there reminded me of the plains of Palestine. Strange it seemed to come upon an occasional village of Greeks or Albanians, strayed, surely, and lost and forgotten in the wilderness; stranger still to see now and then some tiny Byzantine church, perhaps with a few cypresses about it, perched on a mountain height that looked as if it never had been trodden by foot of man. The breezes that met us were alive with a tingling purity of hilltop and sea, or sweet and wholesome with the resinous odor of pine. And the light that lay over the face of the land made nearly all things magical.

VIEW OF MOUNT PARNASSUS]

Again we met Turkish Gipsies. In Greece they have made the wild life their own. No longer one hears of brigands, though only a few years ago these highways were dangerous, and men traversed them armed and at their own peril. Now the Gipsies are in happy possession, and travel from place to place in small caravans, with their mules, donkeys, and dogs, and their tiny peaked tents, telling the _bonne aventure_ to the superstitious, and, so the Greeks declare, stealing whatever they can lay their dark hands on. They look wild and smiling, crafty rather than ferocious; and they greet you with loud cries in an unknown tongue, and with gestures expressive of the perpetual desire to receive which seems inherent in all true vagabonds. They pitch their tents usually on the outskirts of the villages, staying for days or weeks, as the luck serves them. And, so far as I could judge, people receive them with good nature, perhaps grateful for the excitement they bring into lives that know little variation as season follows season and year glides into year. Just outside Thebes I found eleven of their tents set upon some rough ground, the beasts tethered, the dogs on guard, the babies toddling and sprawling, while their mothers were cooking some mysterious compound, and the men were away perhaps on some nefarious errand among the excited Thebans. For that day Greek officers were visiting the town, and in front of the café, among the trees, and above the waterside, where we stopped to lunch, there was a parade of horses, mules, and donkeys from all the neighborhood. War was taking its toll of the live-stock, and the whole population was abroad to see the fun.

RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI]

As soon as I had descended from the car and begun to unpack my provisions, an elderly man came up, asked whether we were from Athens, and then put the question that is forever on the lips of the Greek, “What is the news?” Every Greek has a passion for the latest news. Often, when I was traveling through the country, people I passed on the way called out to me, “What is the news?” or, “Can you give us a newspaper?”

Thebes, where, according to legend, Hercules was born; where the stones gathered themselves together when Amphion struck his lyre; where blind Tiresias prophesied; and, seated upon a block of stone, the Sphinx asked her riddle of the passers-by and slew them; where Œdipus ruled and suffered his hideous fate; where the Epigoni took their vengeance; and Epaminondas showed how one man can lift a city and set it on a throne above all the cities of its fatherland--Thebes, where letters were first brought into use among the Greeks, and where weak-voiced Demosthenes by his eloquence persuaded the people to march to their glorious death against Philip of Macedon, is now just a busy village on the flank of a hill. Frequently devastated by earthquakes, which are the scourge of this region, it looks newly built, fairly clean and neat. It dominates the plain in which Plutarch was born, and the murmur of its waters is pleasant to the ear in a dry and thirsty land. But though Thebes is not specially interesting, below it, in that plain once celebrated for its flowers,--iris and lily, narcissus and rose,--beyond all sound of the voices of chattering peasants or determined soldiers, solitary in its noble rage and grief, is that most moving of monuments, the Lion of Chæronea.

I came upon it unexpectedly. If I had not happened to be looking toward the left my chauffeur would have driven me on without pause to Parnassus, the mighty flanks of which were already visible in the distance. When he pulled up we were already almost out of sight of the lion. And I was glad as I walked back alone, still more glad when I stood before it in solitude, surrounded by the great silence of the plain.

There where the lion sits, raised now on a high pedestal and with cypresses planted about him, was fought the great battle of Chæronea between the Greeks and Philip of Macedon; and there the Greeks lost much, but not their honor. Had it been otherwise, would the lion be there now after so many centuries, testifying to the grief of men long since dead, to their anger, even to their despair, but not to their cowardice or shame? I have heard people say that the face of the lion does express shame. It seems to me nobly passionate, loftily angry and sad, but not ashamed. The Thebans raised it to commemorate those of their comrades in arms who died on the battle-field. What shame can attach to such men? For long years the lion lay broken in pieces and buried in the earth. Only in 1902 were the fragments fitted together, though long before that they had lain above ground, where many noted travelers had seen them. The restoration has been splendidly successful, and has given to Greece one of the most memorable manifestations in marble of a state of soul that exists not merely in Greece, but in the world. Lion-hearted men are superbly commemorated by this lion.

The height of the statue from the top of the pedestal is about twenty feet. The material of which it is made, marble of Bœotia, was once, I believe, blue-gray. It is now gray and yellow. The lion is sitting, but in an attitude that suggests fierce vitality. Both the huge front paws seem to grasp the pedestal almost as if the claws were extended in an impulse of irresistible anger. The head is raised. The expression on the face is wonderful. There is in it a savage intensity of feeling that is rarely to be found in anything Greek. But the savagery is ennobled in some mysterious way by the sublime art of the sculptor, is lifted up and made ideal, eternal. It is as if the splendid rage in the souls of all men who ever have died fighting on a losing side had been gathered up by the soul of the sculptor, and conveyed by him whole into his work. The mysterious human spirit, breathed upon from eternal regions, glows in this divine lion of Greece.

Various writers on the scenery of Greece have described it as “alpine” in character. One has even used the word in connection with some of the mountain-ranges that may be seen from the plain of Attica. Such distracting visions of Switzerland did not beset my spirit as I traveled through a more beautiful and far more romantic land, absolutely different from the contented little republic which has been chosen by Europe as its playground. But there were moments, as we slowly ascended the Pass of Amblema, when I thought of the North. For the delicate and romantic serenity of the Greek landscape did here give way to something that was almost savage, almost spectacular. The climbing forests of dark and hardy firs made me think of snow, which lies among them deep in winter. The naked peaks, the severe uplands, the precipices, the dim ravines, bred gloom in the soul. There was sadness combined with wildness in the scene, which a premature darkness was seizing, and the cold wind seemed to go shivering among the rocks.

It was then that I thought of Delphi, and believed that we must be nearing the home of the oracle. As we climbed and climbed, and the cold increased, and the world seemed closing brutally about us, I felt no longer in doubt. We must be close to Delphi, old region of mysteries and terror, where the god of the dead was thought to be hidden, where Apollo fought with Python, where men came with fear in their hearts to search out the future.

But presently we began to descend, and I learned that we were still a long way from Delphi. The sun set, and evening was falling when we were once more down on the sea-level, traversing one of the most delightful and fertile regions of Greece, the lovely plain of Krissa, which extends to the sea. The great olive-gardens stretch away for miles on every hand, interspersed here and there with plane-trees, mulberry-trees, medlars, cypresses, and the wild oleander. Many battles have been fought in that sylvan paradise, which now looks the home of peace, a veritable Garden of Eden lying between mountains and sea. Pilgrims traveling to Delphi were forced to pay toll there, and eventually the extortion became so intolerable that it led to war. That evening, as we drove along a road cut straight through the heart of the olive-woods, the whole region seemed sunk in a dream. We met no one; we heard no traffic, no voices, no barking of dogs. The thousands of splendid trees, planted symmetrically, were moved by no breeze. Warmth and an odorous calm pervaded the shadowy alleys between them. Here and there a soft beam of light shone among the trees from the window of a guardian’s dwelling. And once we stopped to take Turkish coffee under a vine-trimmed arbor, solitary and lost in the sweet silence, in the silver dusk of the forest. A lodge in the wilderness! As I looked at the dark, bright-eyed man who served us, I, perhaps foolishly, envied him his life, his strange little home, remote, protected by his only companions, the trees.

In this plain camels are used for transport, and, I believe, for plowing and other work. They are to be found nowhere else in Greece. I saw none that night; but one morning, after leaving Delphi, I met a train of them pacing softly and disdainfully along the dusty road, laden with bales and with mysterious bundles wrapped round with sacking.

In the dark we began to climb up once more. At last we were actually on Parnassus, were approaching the “navel of the earth.” But I was not aware of any wildness, such as that of Amblema, about us. The little I could see of the landscape did not look savage. I heard goat-bells tinkling now and then not far off. Presently some lights beamed out above us, as if in welcome. We passed through a friendly village street, came out on the mountain-side, and drew up before a long house, which stood facing what was evidently a wide view, now almost entirely hidden, though a little horned moon hung in the sky, attended by the evening star. The village was Kastri; the long house was the “Hôtel d’Apollon Pythien.”

Delphi is memorable, but not because of wildness or terror. In retrospect it rises in my mind as a lonely place of light, gleaming on volcanic rocks and on higher rocks that are gray; of a few mighty plane-trees, pouring a libation of green toward olive-trees on the slopes beneath them; of a perpetual sweet sound of water. And beside the water travelers from the plain of Krissa, and travelers from Arachova, that wonderfully placed Parnassian village, renowned for its beautiful women, are pausing. They get down from their horses and mules to lave their hands and to drink. They cross themselves before the little Christian shrine under the trees by the roadside. They sit down in the shadows to rest.

It is very sweet to rest for long hours by the Castalian fountain of Delphi, remote from all habitations upon the great southern slope of Parnassus, under the tree of Agamemnon; to listen to the voice of the lustral wave. There, in the dead years, the pilgrims piously sprinkled themselves before consulting the oracle; there, now, the brown women of the mountains chatter gaily as they wash their clothes. The mountain is bare behind the shrine, where perhaps is a figure of Mary with Christ in her arms, or some saint with outspread wings. Its great precipices of rock are tawny. They bloom with strong reds and yellows, they shine with scars of gold. Among the rocks the stream is only a thread of silver, though under the bridge it flows down through the olive-gardens, a broad band of singing happiness.

Delphi has a mountain charm of remoteness, of lofty silence; it has also a seduction of pastoral warmth and gentleness and peace. Far up on the slope of gigantic Parnassus, it faces a narrow valley, or ravine, and a bare, calm mountain, scarred by zigzag paths, which look almost like lines sharply cut in the volcanic soil with an instrument. In the distance, away to the right, the defile opens out into the plain of Krissa, at the edge of which lies a section of sea, like a huge uncut turquoise lying in a cup of the land. Beyond are ranges of beautiful, delicate mountains.

The ruins of Delphi lie above the highroad to the left of it, between Kastri and the Castalian fountain, unshaded, in a naked confusion, but free from modern houses and in a fine loneliness. At one time, and not very long ago, the village of Kastri stood close to the ruins, and some of it actually above them. But when excavations were undertaken seriously, all the houses were pulled down, and set up again where they stand to-day. Like the ruins at Eleusis and Olympia, the remains at Delphi are fragmentary. The ancient Hellenes believed that the center of the earth was at a certain spot within the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the eagles of Zeus, flying from the two ends of the earth, had met. The foundations, and some portions of the walls of this celebrated shrine, in which two golden eagles stood, may be visited, but very little of it remains. On the foundation has been set up a large Roman column, upon which once stood a statue. The fallen blocks of Doric columns are gigantic, and from them it is possible to gain some faint idea of the temple’s immense size and massiveness. In the midst of a pit of stone, not far from the columns, I found a solitary fig-tree growing. It is interesting to notice that the huge outer wall of the temple was constructed of quantities of blocks, each one differing in shape from its neighbors. These were ingeniously fitted close together without the aid of any joining material. Although it is impossible not to wonder at and admire the cleverness shown in this wall, it produced on my mind an impression of confusion that was almost painful. The multitudes of irregular lines distressed my eyes. There is little repose in a puzzle, and this wall is like a mighty puzzle in stone.

Among the masses of broken fragments which cover much of the hillside stands out a small, solid building of Parian marble, very pure, very clean, almost shining under the rays of the sun. It resembles a great marble casket in which something very precious might be placed and sealed up. This is the treasury of the Athenians, which has been reconstructed since Kastri was moved from the fragments of the original temple. It is, in fact, a tiny Doric temple. The marble, of a beautiful yellow-white color, is mingled here and there with limestone. This little temple stands on a platform, with the clearly defined Sacred Way winding up the hill beside it. The front of it is approached by two steps, and it has two Doric columns, containing, however, only two blocks of the original marble, brown, with touches of old gold. The remaining blocks of these columns are of white Poros marble, brought from a distance, and they look rough and almost glaring. Poros marble may always be recognized by the minute shining grains, like specks of gold, that are scattered through it. Although a fine substance, it looks vulgar when placed beside Parian marble.

The semicircular places in which the priests of Delphi used to sit may still be seen, facing a fine view. The sea is hidden by a shoulder of the mountain, but the rolling slopes beyond the road are covered thickly with olive-trees, among which the goat-bells chime almost perpetually; and on the far side of the narrow valley the bare slopes, with their tiny, red paths, lead calmly toward rocky summits. To the left the highroad turns sharply round a rock in the direction of the Castalian fountain.

In the fairly well-preserved theater to the northwest, quantities of yellow flowers were growing, with some daisies. Among the gray limestone blocks of the orchestra I found a quantity of excellent blackberries. Where once was the stage, there are now brown grasses dried up by the sun. This theater is very steep, and above it towers a precipice. Near by, between the theater and the stadium, Parnassus gives back to your cry a swift and sharp echo. The gold, red-gold, and gray stadium, which lies farther up the mountain than the theater, is partly ruined, but in parts is well preserved. As I stood in it, thinking of the intellectual competitions that used to take place there, of the poems recited in it, of the music the lyre gave forth, and of the famous Pythian games, which, later, used to be celebrated in this strange mountain fastness, I saw eagles wheeling over me far up in the blue, above the wild gray and orange peaks.

In the museum, which stands in a splendid position on the mountain-side, with a terrace before it, there are many fine things. Delphi in the time of its greatness contained thousands of statues, great numbers of which were in bronze. Nero, Constantine, and others carried hundreds of them away. One which they left, a bronze charioteer in a long robe, faces you as you enter the museum. It is marvelously alive, almost seems to glow with vitality. The feet should be specially noticed. They are bare, and are miracles of sensitiveness. Farther on there is a splendid Antinous, robust, sensual, egoistic, a type of muscular beauty and crude determination, without heart or any sparkle of intellect. Two other statues which I thought exceptionally interesting are of a sturdy, smiling child and of a headless and armless woman. The latter, numbered in the catalogue 1817, is very gracious and lovely. The back of the figure and the drapery, especially that part of it which flows from under the left arm to the heel of the right foot, are exceptionally beautiful.

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN]

There is a very fine view from the terrace. Toward evening it becomes wonderfully romantic. Far off, the village of Arachova, perched on its high ridge, bounds the horizon. It is a view closed in by mountains yet not oppressive; for there is width between the two ranges, and the large volcanic slopes are splendidly spacious. Here and there on these slopes are large wine-colored splashes such as you see often on the mountains of Syria, and these splashes give warmth to the scene. Above the Castalian fountain the two peaks of the Phædriadæ, a thousand feet high, stand up magnificently. Between them is the famous cleft from which the cold stream issues, to flow down through the olive-groves.

When evening falls, follow the winding white road a little way toward Arachova. From the soft dusk of the defile that spreads out into the plain of Krissa the goat-bells still chime melodiously. I have heard them even very late in the night. The section of sea that was turquoise now looks like solid silver. Behind it the mountains, velvety and black, flow away in delicate shapes. They are dreamlike, but beyond them rise other ethereal ranges which seem to you, as you gaze on them, impalpable, fluid almost, like a lovely imagination of mountains summoned up in your mind. Black-green is the plain. Under the tree of Agamemnon glows a tiny light, like an earth-bound star. Where once the pilgrims gathered who knew only the gods, Christian hands have tended the lamp before the holy picture. And a little farther on, among the foliage of the olive-trees, shines another of these Christian stars, which, in the darkness of Delphi’s solitudes, shed their light, faintly perhaps, but faithfully, upon a way once often trodden by pagans who now sleep the last long sleep. To what changes in the human soul do these earth-bound stars bear witness! I sat beneath Agamemnon’s tree, listening to the cry of the fountain, watching the little lights, till the night was black about me.

I must always think of Olympia as the poetic shrine of one of the most poetic statues in the world. As the Parthenon seems to be the soul of Athens, so the Hermes of Praxiteles seems to be the soul of Olympia; gathering up and expressing its aloofness from all ugly things, its almost reflective tenderness, its profound calm, and its far-off freedom from any sadness. When I stayed there I was the only traveler. Never did I see any human being among the beautiful ruins or hear any voice to break their silence. Only the peasants of that region passed now and then on the winding track below the hill of Cronus, to lose themselves among the pine-trees. And I heard only at a distance the wonderful sound, like eternity’s murmur withdrawn, that the breeze makes among their branches, as I sat by the palace of Nero.

Nature has taken Olympia into her loving arms. She has shed her pine-needles and her leaves of the golden autumn upon the seats where the wrestlers reposed. She has set her grasses and flowers among the stones of the Temple of Zeus. Her vines creep down to the edge of that cup of her earth which holds gently, as a nurse holds a sleeping child, palaces, temples, altars, shrines of the gods and ways for the chariots. All the glory of men has departed, but something remains which is better than glory--peace, loveliness, a pervading promise of lasting things beyond.

Among the ruins of Nero’s palace I watched white butterflies flitting among feathery, silver grasses and red and white daisies. Lizards basked on the altar of Zeus. At the foot of the Heræum, the most ancient temple that may be seen in Greece at this time, a jackal whined in its dwelling. Sheep-bells were sounding plaintively down the valley beyond the arch leading to the walled way by which the great stadium, where the games took place, was entered. When I got up presently to stroll among the ruins, I set my foot on the tiny ruts of an uneven pavement, specially constructed so that the feet of contending athletes should not slip upon it.

The ruins lie in a sheltered and remote valley far away from the sea, and surrounded by gentle hills, woods, and delightful pastoral country. At some distance is the last railway-station of the Peloponnesian railway line, which connects with the main line at Pyrgos. Between the station and the low hill on which stand the hotel and the museum is strung out a small, straggling hamlet of peasants’ houses. It is very difficult to realize that this remote sanctuary, hidden away in the green glades and amid the pastures of Elis, where the waters of Cladeus and Alpheus glide among reeds and rushes, was ever crowded with people from all parts of Greece; that emperors dwelled there; that there the passions of the mob were roused to intense expression; that there men gained the desire of their hearts or were exposed to the sneers and opprobrium of their fellows. For Olympia to-day looks like an ideal home for the great god Pan.

I have called the ruins beautiful, and I think them so, partly because of their situation, with which they seem to me to combine harmoniously, and partly because of nature’s collaboration with them, which is lacking from the ruins at Eleusis and even at Delphi. At Olympia many trees grow among the remains of the temples. A river runs by them. Excavations, though usually interesting, are often both dusty and ugly. At Olympia they are pastoral. Dryads might love them. Pan might sit happily on almost any bit of the walls and play his pipe. They form a unique sylvan paradise, full of wonderful associations, in which one is tempted to rest for hours, whereas from many ruins one wishes only to get away once they have been examined. And yet Olympia is so fragmentary that many persons are bitterly disappointed with what they find there, as the visitors’ book in the little hotel bears witness.

In all the mass of remains, and they cover a very large extent of ground, I think I saw only four complete columns standing. Two of these were columns of the Heræum, in which the Hermes of Praxiteles was found lying among the remnants. They are golden-brown in color, and are of course Doric, very massive and rather squat. The temple, the base of which is very clearly marked, must have looked very powerful, but, I should think, heavy rather than really majestic. I cannot imagine the wonderfully delicate Hermes standing within it. It is believed that the original columns of the Heræum were of wood, and that when they began to rot away the stone columns were put up in their places. Much of the temple was made of brick. The Hermes stood between two of the columns.

It will be evident to any one who examines carefully all that is left of the Temple of Zeus that it must have been very grand. Fragments of the shafts of its columns, which are heaped in confusion on the ground, are enormous. One block, which I found poised upright on its rounded edge, was quite six feet high. This temple was made of limestone, which is now of a rather dreary, almost sinister, gray color. Exposure to the weather has evidently darkened it. The foundations are terrific. They suggest titanic preparations for the bearing up of a universe of stone. It seems to me that from what is left of this celebrated building, which stands in the middle of the sacred precinct, and which once contained Phidias’s statue of Zeus, about forty feet high, one can gather something of what was the builder’s conception of the chief of all the gods of Olympus. To them he must surely have been simply the Thunderer, a deity terrific and forbidding, to whose worship must be raised a temple grand but probably almost repellent. Legend relates that when Phidias had completed his great statue of Zeus, and it had been placed in position, Zeus sent down a thunderbolt which struck the ground close to the statue. The Greeks considered the thunderbolt to be the god’s characteristic expression of content. Instead of the eagles of Zeus, I saw hovering over, and perching upon, this ruin black and white birds, with long tails, not unlike magpies. The statue of Zeus disappeared. It is known to have been taken to Constantinople, and in that tempestuous city it vanished, like so much else. In the time of Olympia’s glory the temple was elaborately decorated, with stucco, painting, gilding, marble tiles, shields, and vases, as well as with many statues. But despite this, I think it must have been far less satisfying than the calm and glorious Parthenon, in which seems to dwell rather the spirit of a goddess than the spirit of any human builders.

Earthquakes are frequent at Olympia, and have been so since the most ancient times. One destroyed the greater part of Zeus’s temple about four hundred years after Christ. By that time the Olympic games had ceased to be held, and no doubt the place was beginning to fall into the neglect which, with the lapse of the centuries, has become so romantic. After it was forgotten by men, nature began to remember and love it. Very little of the famous stadium has been excavated. I found flocks of sheep and goats feeding peacefully above it, and near by a small, barefooted boy, with a little gun, out after quail.

On the first day of my visit to Olympia, after spending a few hours alone among the ruins I crossed the river, where I saw some half-naked men dragging for fish with hand-nets, and mounted the hill to the museum, which looks out over the delicious valley, and is attended by some umbrella-pines. It was closed, but the keeper came smiling from his dwelling close by to let me in. He did not follow me far, but sat down in the vestibule among the Roman emperors.