Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/217

 brethren and sons; the sunlit towns now level with the dust, then strong with colossal bastions and ramparts, graceful with temples and with statues, stately with religious feasts and princely banquets; the son of Atys setting sail with his famished Lydians from Smyrna; the Tyrrhene pirates capturing Dionysos, and changed for their sin into water-spouting dolphins; the Persian faith brought with the Persian eagles to the Italiote soil; the great Etruscan confederations gathering in harmony at the temple of Voltumna; the oxen drawing the fair Carrara marbles into the port of Luna, to make the altars of the beloved orchard-god, or the likeness of the divine Cytharœdus—all these things he set before her in vivid language, and as she followed his words she saw all that they portrayed; she heard the brazen bray of the Lydian trumpets, she saw the purple glow of the Lydian robes; when she went down to the edge of the sea, she thought of the Navigium of Isis, as the people had gathered for it on those very shores with their torches flaming against the daffodil light of a March morning; when she collected the broken boughs of the sea-