The Air That
Came To My Lips Was Warm And Fragrant As The Ambrosial Breath Of
The Goddess, Infecting Me,
Not (of course) with a faith in the old
religion of the isle, but with a sense and apprehension of
Its
mystic power - a power that was still to be obeyed - obeyed by ME,
for why otherwise did I toil on with sorry horses to "where, for
HER, the hundred altars glowed with Arabian incense, and breathed
with the fragrance of garlands ever fresh"? {13}
I passed a sadly disenchanting night in the cabin of a Greek
priest - not a priest of the goddess, but of the Greek Church; there
was but one humble room, or rather shed, for man, and priest, and
beast. The next morning I reached Baffa (Paphos), a village not
far distant from the site of the temple. There was a Greek
husbandman there who (not for emolument, but for the sake of the
protection and dignity which it afforded) had got leave from the
man at Limasol to hoist his flag as a sort of deputy-provisionary-
sub-vice-pro-acting-consul of the British sovereign: the poor
fellow instantly changed his Greek headgear for the cap of consular
dignity, and insisted upon accompanying me to the ruins. I would
not have stood this if I could have felt the faintest gleam of my
yesterday's pagan piety, but I had ceased to dream, and had nothing
to dread from any new disenchanters.
The ruins (the fragments of one or two prostrate pillars) lie upon
a promontory, bare and unmystified by the gloom of surrounding
groves. My Greek friend in his consular cap stood by, respectfully
waiting to see what turn my madness would take, now that I had come
at last into the presence of the old stones. If you have no taste
for research, and can't affect to look for inscriptions, there is
some awkwardness in coming to the end of a merely sentimental
pilgrimage; when the feeling which impelled you has gone, you have
nothing to do but to laugh the thing off as well as you can, and,
by-the-bye, it is not a bad plan to turn the conversation (or
rather, allow the natives to turn it) towards the subject of hidden
treasures. This is a topic on which they will always speak with
eagerness, and if they can fancy that you, too, take an interest in
such matters, they will not only think you perfectly sane, but will
begin to give you credit for some more than human powers of forcing
the obscure earth to show you its hoards of gold.
When we returned to Baffa, the vice-consul seized a club with the
quietly determined air of a brave man resolved to do some deed of
note. He went into the yard adjoining his cottage, where there
were some thin, thoughtful, canting cocks, and serious, low-church-
looking hens, respectfully listening, and chickens of tender years
so well brought up, as scarcely to betray in their conduct the
careless levity of youth.
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