“Would you have been glad,” asked the amazed Nikander, “to go on pilgrimage to Hades?”
“No—no,” laughed Parmenides. “Too much to do here. Elea needs me. The city is now in my hands to govern quite as I will. I govern by philosophy. And, Nikander, we are happy in Elea! We are a little city and on a far-away coast, yet even Athens has not our justice and calm. Constantly I keep before the minds of our citizens the importance of right, the unimportance of this world’s goods. They know they are in the hands of The One.”
“I could not worship The One,” said Nikander seriously. “Think what a lonely god—an Only One, sitting sole and wordless in Olympos with no other god to speak to, to deal with, or to love. Or even to quarrel with,” he added whimsically.
“But the gods themselves worship my god. They know the One who is above them and controls.”
“Moira?” asked Nikander in a low voice. “Inexorable Fate?”
“No, Nikander, not Fate, but Love—creating all things—healing all things. Love—the First—the Source.”
Parmenides’s eyes shone with eerie light. He was fairly launched now. He began to recite his philosophy. It was—as was all literary expression in those days—a poem. Nikander listened entranced, laying it away in his retentive Greek memory which would give him back whole cantos of it almost entire.
Theria, crouched in the door corner wrapped in a dark cloak, was content to listen to the rhythm. Of the poem she understood not a word. Then she grew weary of her stolen pleasure, but she dared not move from her hiding place.
Presently Baltè began to call her through the house.
“Little mistress, little mistress, your mother asks for you. Little mistress, she is ill and needs you.”