“Was I born at all?” replied Caliphronas, throwing himself back with a joyous laugh and letting the sun blaze on his uncovered head. “I do not know! I cannot tell. Perchance some nymph bore me to one of the old gods, who Heine says yet walk the earth in other forms.”
“What do you know of Heine?” asked the Rector in some surprise.
“Nothing!—absolutely nothing. I never heard his name till the other day, when some one told me a story of the Gods in Exile, and said one Heine had written it.”
“Are you fond of reading?”
“I never read. I care not for books—all my knowledge comes from the mouth of my fellow-men and from Nature. Such culture is enough for me.”
“You will get a sunstroke if you don’t cover your head,” said Maurice, somewhat tired of this pseudo-classicism.
“No! I am a friend of Apollo’s. He will hurl no darts at me, and your pale sun in England is but a shadow of the glorious Helios of our Greek skies.”
And, lying on his back, he began to sing a strange, wandering melody, of which the words (roughly translated) were as follows:—
“The sun is my father:
He kissed my mother the sea,