Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/141

 now flourished and built a green wall between them and the world.

Youth laughed and kissed; ships went and came over the sunny sea; street crowds still met for sale and barter; and marble walls still towered up to heaven in man's pretence of majesty and mockery of the imperishable; in cities, and ports, human life was still the same as in the days of pride of Telamon and Populonia, but little changed in substance and in temper, if altered in mere outward form.

Yet, though all living mankind were his brethren, like unto him as one white bean of the fields is like another, unimproved, unpurified—nay, in some senses far more ignorant and unlovely than he—the Etrurian noble had no friend or remembrance amongst modern multitudes, and all his pomp and elegance in death, and all his tenderness for those he loved, had failed to keep him a place upon the earth; and the weeds and the wild shrubs had covered him, even as they covered the empty hole of a dead snake.

The child, who knew nothing of the great Lydian nation that had once reigned in her Maremma, stood silent and immovable