“A weariness! Where is this bad humour to end?” cried Aristo; “it has been a long fit; shake it off while you can, or it will be too much for you. What can you mean? a weariness! You are over young to bid youth farewell. Aching hearts for aching bones. So young and so perverse! We must take things as the gods give them. You will ask for them in vain when you are old. One day above, another day beneath; one while young, another while old. Enjoy life while you have it in your hand.” He had said this as he worked. Then he stopped, and turned round to her, with his graving-tool in his hand. “Recollect old Lesbia, how she used to squeak out to me, with her nodding head and trembling limbs”—here he mimicked the old crone—“ ‘My boy, take your pleasure while you can. I can’t take pleasure—my day is over; but I don’t reproach myself. I had a merry time of it while it lasted. Time stops for no one, but I did my best; I don’t reproach myself.’ There’s the true philosopher, though a slave; more outspoken than Æsop, more practical than Epictetus.”

Callista began singing to herself:—

“I wander by that river’s brink

Which circles Pluto’s drear domain;

I feel the chill night breeze, and think

Of joys which ne’er shall be again.

“I count the weeds that fringe the shore,

Each sluggish wave that rolls and rolls;

I hear the ever-splashing oar

Of Charon, ferryman of souls.

“Heigho!” she continued, “little regret, but much dread. The young have to fear more than the old have to mourn over. The future outweighs the past. Life is not so sweet as death is bitter. It is hard to quit the light, the light of heaven.”

“Callistidion!” he said, impatiently; “my girl, this is preposterous. How long is this to go on? We must take you to Carthage; there is more trade there, if we can get it; and it will be on the bright, far-resounding sea. And I will turn rhetorician, and you shall feed my classes.”

“O beautiful, divine light,” she continued, “what a loss! O, to think that one day I must lose you for ever! At home I used to lie awake at night longing for the morning, and crying out for the god of day. It was like choice wine to me, a cup of Chian, the first streaks of the Aurora, and I could hardly bear his bright coming, when he came to me like Semele, for rapture. How gloriously did he shoot over the hills! and then anon he rested awhile on the snowy summit of Olympus, as in some luminous shrine, gladdening the Phrygian plain. Fair, bright-haired god! thou art my worship, if Callista worships aught: but somehow I worship nothing now. I am weary.”