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.