In appearance she was little changed; she had the same face, untouched by grief or joy—impassive as the faces of the ancient statues; the same broad low forehead, straight fine eyebrows, firm unsmiling lips, and amber eyes. Yet now her face, refined by illness, or perhaps by the over-insistence of a single thought, had taken an expression calmer and more austere than it had worn in her girlhood. Her dark hair, twined and wreathed like Medusa's snakes, still gave the impression of having a life of its own, still formed a frame for her pale face, and enhanced the brilliance of her eyes, the scarlet of her lips. The charm of the girl attracted Giovanni irresistibly as of old, and renewed in his soul the old feelings of curiosity, compassion, and fear.
In her journey across the land of Hellas she had visited her mother's native place, the lonely little town of Mistra, near the ruins of Sparta, among the bare hills where, half a century before, had died Gemistus Pletho, last teacher of the Hellenic philosophy. Telling Giovanni of her visit to his grave, she repeated Pletho's prophecy that after a few years the world would return to a single faith, not differing from the ancient paganism.
'The prophecy is not fulfilled,' said Giovanni, 'though more than fifty years have passed. Have you still faith in him, Monna Cassandra?'
'There was not perfect truth in Pletho,' she replied calmly, 'for there was much he did not know.'
'What?' asked Giovanni; and under the intentness of her glance he felt his heart sink.
She took a parchment from the shelf, and read to him certain lines from the Prometheus, in which the Titan, having enumerated his gifts to men, more especially that fire which he had stolen from heaven, and which would make them equal with the gods, goes on to prophesy the fall of Zeus.
'Giovanni, have you never heard of the man who, ten centuries ago, dreamed, like Pletho, of reviving the dead gods—the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julian?'
'Julian the Apostate?'
'Ay, so they called him.'
'He gave his life in vain for the Olympians.' She hesitated, then continued in a lower voice: 'If I were to tell you all, Giovanni! But for to-day I will say only this. Among the Olympians is a god nearer than all others to his brethren below; a god both bright and dark; fair as the dawn, yet pitiless as death; who came to earth and gave to mortals—as Prometheus had done—the forgetting of death and the boon of fire—new fire—in his own blood, in the intoxicating juice of the vine; and, my brother, who is there among men who will understand? who will go boldly forth and say to the world, "The love of him who is crowned with the vine is like the love of Him who is crowned with thorns (who said, 'I am the true vine'); of Him who, no less than Dionysus, makes the world drunk with his blood?" Have you understood, Giovanni, of whom I speak? If not, ask me nothing, for here is a secret which we may not, as yet, reveal.'