“Get me a carriage and send me up a guide--anybody who can speak English
and who is big enough to carry a sketch trap.”
He must have been outside, so quickly did he answer the call. He was
two-thirds the size of William, one-half the length of Luigi, and
one-third the age of Bob.
“What is your name?”
“Vlassopoulos.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes--Panis.”
“Then we'll drop the last half. Put those traps in the carriage--and
take me to the Parthenon.”
I never left it for fourteen consecutive days--nor did I see a square
inch of Athens other than the streets I drove through up and back on my
way to work. Nor have I in all my experience ever had a more competent,
obliging, and companionable guide--always excepting my beloved Luigi,
who is not only my guide, but my protector and friend as well.
It was then that I blessed the dust. Green things, wet things, soggy
things--such as mud and dull skies--have no place in the scheme of the
Parthenon and its contiguous temples and ruins. That wonderful tea-rose
marble, with its stains of burnt sienna marking the flutings of endless
broken columns, needs no varnishing of moisture to enhance its beauty.
That will do for the façade of Burlington House with its grimy gray
statues, or the moss-encrusted tower of the Groote Kirk, but never here.
It was this fear, perhaps, that kept me at work, haunted as I was by the
bogy of “Rain to-morrow. It always comes, and keeps on for a month when
it starts in.” Blessed be the weather clerk! It never started in--not
until I reached Brindisi on my way back to Paris; then, if I remember,
there was some falling weather--at the rate of two inches an hour.
And yet I might as well confess that my fourteen days of consecutive
study of the Acropolis, beginning at the recently uncovered entrance
gate and ending in the Museum behind the Parthenon, added nothing to my
previous historical or other knowledge--meagre as it had been.
Where the Venetians wrought the greatest havoc, how many and what
columns were thrown down; how high and thick and massive they were; what
parts of the marvellous ruin that High Robber Chief Lord Elgin stole
and carted off to London, and still keeps the British Museum acting as
“fence”; how wide and long and spacious was the superb chamber that held
the statue the gods loved--none of these things interested me--do not
now. What I saw was an epoch in stone; a chronicle telling the story
of civilization; a glove thrown down to posterity, challenging the
competition of the world.
And with this came a feeling of reverence so profound, so awe-inspiring,
so humbling, that I caught myself speaking to Panis in whispers--as one
does in a temple when the service is in progress. This, as the sun sped
its course and the purple shadows of the coming night began to creep up
the steps and columns of the marvellous pile, its pediment bathed in the
rose-glow of the fading day, was followed by a silence that neither of
us cared to break. For then the wondrous temple took on the semblance
of some old sage, the sunlight on his forehead, the shadow of the future
about his knees.