 Book II. CHAPTER XVII. It was best so for her and for us, said you meaties, after gazing long at Ledzka's touchingly beautiful, still, dead face. Then he ordered her to be buried at once, and shouted to the guards, Everything must be over on this strip of land early tomorrow morning. Let all who bear arms begin at once. Selene will light the men brightly, enough for the work. The terrible order given in mercy was fulfilled, and hunger and thirst were robbed of their numerous prey. When the new day dawned, the friends were still on deck, engaged in grave conversation. The cloudless sky now arched in radiant light above the Azure Sea. White seagulls came flying from the right across the ship, and sport of dolphins gambled around her keel. The flutes of the musicians, marking time for the rowers, echoed gaily up from the hold, and obedient to quick words of command, the seamen were spreading the sails. The voyage began with a favorable wind. As Herman looked back for the last time, the flat, desolate tongue of land appeared like a line of gray mist in the southeastern horizon. But over it hovered like a gloomy thundercloud, the flocks of vultures and ravens, whose numbers were constantly increasing. Their greedy screaming could still be heard, though but faintly, yet the eye could no longer distinguish anything, and the vast vanishing abode of horror saved the hovering whirl of dark spots, ravens and vultures, vultures and ravens. Whatever human life had moved there yesterday, now rested from bloody greed for booty after victory and defeat, mortal terror, fury, and despair. He's pointed out the quiet grave by the sea to his parents, saying, The king's command is fulfilled. Not even the one man who is usually spared to carry the news remains out of the four thousand. I thank you, exclaimed Alexander's gray-haired comrade, shaking his son's right hand. But Thione laid her hand on Herman's arm, saying, With the birds are darkening the air behind us, lies buried what incensed nemesis against you. You must leave the soil of Egypt. True it is said that to live in foreign lands, far from the beloved home, darkens the existence. Yet Pergamous, too, is Grecian soil, and there I see the two noblest of stars illumine your path, with their pure light, art and love. And his old friend's premonition was fulfilled. The story of Arachne has ended. It closed on the Nile. Herman's new life began in Pergamous. As Daphne's husband, under the same roof, with the wonderfully invigorated Myrtleis, his uncle Arceus, and faithful Bias, Herman found in the new home what had hovered before the blind man as the fairest gold of existence in our love and friendship. He did not long miss the gay varied life of Alexandria, because he had found a rich compensation for it, and because Pergamous, too, was a rapidly growing city, whose artistic decoration was inferior to no other in Greece. Of the numerous works which Herman completed in the service of the first three art-loving rulers of the new Pergomenian kingdom, Philoteris, Eumenes, and Adelaus, nothing was preserved except the head of a gall. This noble masterpiece proves how faithful Herman remained to truth, which he had early chosen for the guiding star of his art. It is the modest remnant of the group in which Herman perpetuated in Marble the two Gallic brothers whom he saw before his last meeting with Letzka, as they offered their breasts to the fatal shafts. One had gazed defiantly at the arrows of the conquerors. The others, whose head has been preserved, feeling the inevitable approach of death, anticipates with sorrowful emotion the end so close at hand. Philoteris had sent his touching work to King Ptolemy to thank him for the severity with which he had chastised, the daring of the barbarians, who had not spared his kingdom also. The gall's head was again found on Egyptian soil. Copied in Th. Scribers, the head of the gall in the Museum of Giza and Cairo, Lipsic, 1896, with appendix, by H. Kerskman. Herman also took other subjects in Pergomus from the domain of real life, though in most of his work he crossed the limits which he had formally imposed upon himself. But one barrier, often as he rushed forward to its outermost verge, he never dared to pass. Moderation, the noblest demand to which his liberty-loving race subjected themselves willingly in life as well as in art, the whole infinite, limitless world of the ideal had opened itself to the blind man. He made himself at home in it by remaining faithful to the rule which he had found in the desert for his creative work and the genuine happiness which he enjoyed through Daphne's love and the great fame his sculptures brought him, increased the strong individuality of his power. The fruits of his tireless industry, the much-admired God of Light, Phobos, Apollo, slaying the dragons of darkness as well as his bewitching arachne, gazing proudly at the fabric with which she thinks she has surpassed the skill of the goddess, were overtaken by destruction. In this statue, Bias recognized his countrywoman, Ledzka, and often gazed long at it with devout ecstasy. Even Hermon's works of colossal size vanished from the earth, the Battle of the Amazons, and the relief containing numerous figures, the sea gods, which the regent Eumenes ordered for the temple of Poseidon in Pergamos. The works of his grandson and grandson's pupils, however, are preserved on the great altar of victory in Pergamos. The power and energy natural to Hermon, the skill he had acquired in Rhodes, everything in the changeful life of Alexandria, which had induced him to consecrate his art to reality and to that alone, and whatever he had, finally in quiet seclusion, recognized as right in harmony with the Greek nature and his own, blend in those works of his successor, which a gracious dispensation of providence permits us still to admire at the present day, and which we call, in its entirety, the art of Pergamos. The city was a second beloved home to him, as well as to his wife and Bartolos. The rulers of the country took the old Alexandrian Archias into their confidence and knew how to honor him by many a distinction. He understood how to value the happiness of his only daughter, the beautiful development of his grandchildren, and the high place that Hermon and Myrtleis, whom he loved as if they were his own sons, attained among the artists of their time. Yet he struggled vainly against the longing for his dear old home. Therefore Hermon deemed it one of the best days of his life when his turn came to make Daphne's father a happy man. King Ptolemy Philadelphus had sent Laurel to the artist who had fallen under suspicion in Egypt, and his messenger invited him and Myrtleis, and with them also the exiled merchant, to return to his presence. In gratitude for the pleasure which Hermon's creation afforded him and his wife, the cause that kept the fugitive Archias from his home should be forgiven and forgotten. The grey-head son of the capital returned, with the Bafinian grass, to his beloved Alexandria, as if his lost youth was again restored. There he found unchanged the busy act of life, the Macedonian Council, the Bath, the Marketplace, the bewitching conversation, the biting wit, the exquisite feasts of the eyes. In short, everything for which his heart had longed, even amid the happiness and love of his dear ones in Pergamus. For two years he endeavored to enjoy everything as before, but when the works of the Pergamenian artists obtained by Ptolemy had been exhibited in the royal palaces, he returned home with a troubled mind. Like the rest of the world he thought that the reliefs of Myrtleis, representing scenes of rural life, were wonderful. The capture of Proserpina, a life-sized marble group by his son-in-law Hermon, seemed to him no less perfect. But it exerted a peculiar influence upon his paternal heart, for in the Demeter he recognized Daphne, in the Proserpina, her oldest daughter, Origini, who bore the name of Hermon's mother and resembled her in womanly charm. How lovely this budding girl, who was his granddaughter, seemed to the grandfather! How graceful, in spite of the womanly dignity peculiar to her, was the mother, encircling her imperiled child with her protecting arm. No work of sculpture had ever produced such an effect upon the old patron of art. Gras heard him in his bedroom, murmur the names Daphne and Origini, and therefore it did not surprise him when the next morning he received the command to prepare everything for the return to Pergamus. It pleased the Pothinian, for he cared more for Daphne, Hermon and their children than all the pleasures of the capital. A few weeks later Arceus found himself again in Pergamus with his family, and he never left it, though he reached extreme age, and was even permitted to gaze in wondering admiration at the first attempts of the oldest son of Hermon and Daphne, and to hear them praised by others. This grandson of the Alexandrian Arceus afterward became the master, who taught the generation of artists who created the Pergamanian works, in examining which the question forced itself upon the narrator of this story. How do these sculptures possess the qualities which distinguish them so strongly from the other statues of Hellenic antiquity? Did the great weaver imagination err when she blended them through the mighty wrestler Hermon with a tendency of Alexandrian science and art, which we see appearing again among us children of a period so much later? We will remain loyal servants of the truth, yet it alone does not hold the key to the holy of holies of art. To him for whom Apollo, the peer among the gods, and the Muses, friends of beauty, do not open it at the same time with truth, its gates will remain closed. No matter how much time passes by, it will be the most important thing to do, and it will be the most important Its gates will remain closed. No matter how strongly and persistently he shakes them.