Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/185

 'You know who they were?' she said under her breath, as she spoke of her lost people. 'Tell me of them? When first I entered here, there was a king in golden armour, and with a golden helmet, lying there, just there; and as the light touched him the gold melted and he fled'

'They were a great people, and they perished,' he answered her; 'their clay vases survive, but they are gone, obliterated, passed into nothingness. Now and then men find a wall of huge stones; a gateway hard and black as iron; a sepulchre full of gold and pottery. Then they say these were Etrusean. But when that is said, it is but a word; we know but little.'

'They were greater than the men that live now,' she said, with a solemn tenderness.

'Perhaps; why think you so?'

'Because they were not afraid of their dead; they built them beautiful houses and gave them beautiful things. Now, men are afraid or ashamed, or they have no remembrance. Their dead are huddled away in dust or mud as though they were hateful or sinful. That is what I think so cowardly, so thankless. If they will not bear the sight of death, it were better to let great