Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/156

 tenderness, of kinship, of reverence, with which the lonely tombs moved her.

Musa in her utter ignorance would not for her life have robbed of an ounce of gold or a vase of clay these dead sleepers of a sleep of three thousand years.

She was jealous over them, she worshipped them, they were her idols; let others have their saints as they would, she had never cared for the saints; she cared for these ghostly hosts who filled the under chambers of the earth and waited so calmly, so patiently, with the oak and the thorn and the myrtle growing above their heads.

On all the earth there is in truth nothing so intensely sad, so intensely solemn, as the thought of the buried cities that he with their buried millions under the hurrying feet of living multitudes, or lost in the green silences where orchids bloom, and the thorn of Christ puts forth its golden flowers, and the dragon-flies spread gossamer wings above the fritillaria and fraxinella. As scholars know, she knew nothing of them; but as poets feel for them, she felt.

Whenever Musa had a day of freedom, fascinated by her very fear, she went to the spot on the moor where she had found the