“If Achilles cannot, my father,” said the boy, “he is fit neither to live nor to die.”
Yet the next moment, in dire anguish, he had made the discovery that his frame was so weak that it could not lift the massive volume from the shelf.
“It is as I feared,” he gasped; “I am fit neither to live nor to die.”
Three times he essayed to raise the mighty tome; three times he failed.
“I will raise it for thee, beloved one,” said his father.
“No, no, my father,” he cried wildly, “I am not fit to read in the book until I have the strength to bear it in my arms.”
Totally vanquished in mind and body, he crept up the dark stairs to his room. Without sufficient strength to remove his clothes he flung himself down, burying his eyes in the pillows of the bed; and the next day being Sunday, he slept deeply, dreamlessly, with entire abandonment until six o’clock in the evening. He was awakened by the metallic tinkling of bells.
When he awoke and walked down the stairs into the little room it seemed that a pall had been lifted from his spirit. He discovered his father to be reading in the mighty tome.
“First I will eat, my father,” he said, “and then I will try again.”
His father replaced the great book upon the shelf, and then set before him a basin of food he had prepared with his own hands.