“Well, we are accustomed to the old-fashioned Turk, cross-legged, on a pile of cushions, in flowing garb and turban, smoking a narghile, with a lovely Fatima or two by his side, and exclaiming frequently in sepulchral tones, ‘Allah be praised!’ It will doubtless take us some time to grow used to the newer picture presented by you.”
“Is it not aggravating to be kept here in a darkened room, while near me are ruined porticoes and columns, where once my people built their Moslem forts and turrets, and the voice of the muezzin broke the lone silence after the Pagan days? There is not even a glimpse from my window of that mass of broken pillars that stood out so plainly against the sky when we entered the Piraeus. I feel like a child waiting for the play, when suddenly comes a hitch which keeps the curtain down. I want to walk with the poets and philosophers, read Plato in the groves of the Academe, stand with Œdipus and Antigone at Colonneus, and look towards the towers and temples of Athens, walk with Pericles and Phidias through the marbles of the Acropolis, with none but the voices of glorious spirits to break the silence of the universe,—those spirits who have burned into history the clear gold of their unapproachable intellects, seeing with eyes that have served for centuries, feeling with hearts that have beaten for all time, speaking with lips upon which the noblest words are everlastingly carven.”
“Gad, I see you are an enthusiast like our friend, Miss Winters, who goes into fits when we inform her of some fresh rascality on the part of the modern Greeks,” cried young Warren, marvelling to hear a Turk talk in this fashion.
“She is a charming old lady, and you youngsters downstairs should not quiz her as you do. She engaged, if I were better, to carry me with her on Sunday to read Paul’s sermon to the men of Athens on the hill of Mars aloud. I have since been informed that it is customary for the Athenians to take their Sunday airing along the foot of the hill of Mars. Fancy the sensation we should have created, standing in a respectful attitude beside the little American lady, piously reading aloud the words of St. Paul.”
Reineke laughed softly, while young Warren exploded in a burst of loud merriment.
“Do you know, when she discovered that the ruffian of a head-waiter is called Demosthenes, she looked so horribly like embracing him, that, seriously alarmed, I exclaimed, ‘Madam, I beseech you, pause in your rash career.’ I don’t think she quite realised the extent of my service, for she very nearly quarrelled with me when I mentioned that Demosthenes is in the habit of defrauding our poor Jehus of at least half their profits.”
“Amiable enthusiast! But don’t class me with her. I have no illusions about the modern Greeks. I have seen in the East how they take advantage of our good-nature and our dislike to trade. I know them to cheat and bargain and deceive, and grow fat upon the kindness of those who trust them. But what have they in common with the ancients? They have not the intellect, the unerring taste, the exquisite restraint of language and bearing, the sunny gravity of temperament, the simplicity and keen love of the beautiful. If they were really the descendants of the old race, there would be some signs whereby we should recognise their glorious heritage.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps, if we knew the opinion held by the Persians and the barbarians of the old Hellenes—it would be probably very different from their own.”
“We don’t need any opinion with the works they have left. Such eloquence as that is incontrovertible, and in the face of it, their representatives to-day are as much out of place here as were the Franks, the Italians and the Turks. It was a desecration to have built on these immortal shores a nation sprung from slavery and the refuse of the Middle Ages—without tradition or any right to believe in its own destiny. What do they care for? Money, trade! They have no real reverence for knowledge, except that it helps in the acquirement of wealth and power. You will find no Greek ready to consecrate his days, aye, and his nights, to the disinterested dispersion of the clouds of ignorance by as much as a rushlight of knowledge, capable of the unglorified, untrumpeted, unrecognised patience and labour of the scholar. Nor would he willingly choose poverty and obscurity that he might live the life of the spirit.”
“Well, I am afraid there are not many of us who would,” said Warren, good-naturedly. “And these people have their virtues. They are sober and moral.”