Behind them as they stood, and facing the statue of the faun, was a cave or hollow in the wood, half concealed by the pendant tendrils of creeping and flowering plants. It seemed the opening of a subterranean passage. The child pushed aside the hanging blossoms and drew Mark, still dazed and unresisting, after her. They went down into the dark cave.
* * * * *
Meanwhile from early dawn the palace had been noisy with pattering feet. For its bizarre population was augmented from many sources, and the great performance of the day taxed the exertions of all. As the morning advanced visitors began to arrive, and were marshalled to certain parts of the gardens where positions were allotted them, and refreshments served in tents. They were mostly masqued. Then strange groups began to form themselves before the garden front of the palace, and on the terraces. These were all masqued, and dressed in variety of incongruous and fantastic costumes, for though the play was supposed to be classical, yet the necessity of entertaining the Princess with something startling and lively was more exacting than artistic congruity. As we have seen, the Prince had always inclined more to the fairy and masqued comedy than to the serious opera, and on this occasion the result was more original and fantastic than had ever before been achieved.
As the morning went on, there gradually arranged itself, as if by fortuitous incident, as strange a medley of fairy mediæval legend and of classic lore as eye ever looked upon. As the Prince and Princess, surrounded by their principal guests, all masqued and attired in every shade of colour and diversity of form, stood upon the steps before the palace, the wide gardens seemed full of groups equally varied and equally brilliant with their own. From behind the green screens of the hedges, and from beneath the arcades, figures were constantly emerging and passing again out of sight, apparently accidentally, but in fact with a carefully-devised plan. Strains of delicate music filled the air.
Then a group of girls in misty drapery, and masqued across the eyes, the same indeed that had carried off Mark, appeared suddenly before the princely group. They had discovered in the deepest dell of their native mountain a deserted babe—the offspring doubtless of the loves of some wandering god. They were become its nurses, and fed it upon sacred honey and consecrated bread. Of immortal birth themselves, and untouched by the passing years, the boy became, as he grew up, the plaything, and finally the beloved of his beautiful friends. But the boy himself is indifferent to their attractions, and careless or averse to their caresses. He is often lost to them, and wanders in the mountain fastnesses with the fawns and kids.
All this and more was told in action, in song, and recitative, upon the palace lawns before this strange audience, themselves partly actors in the pastoral drama. Rural dances, and games and sacrifices were presented with delicately-conceived grouping and pictorial effect. Then the main action of the drama developed itself. The most lovely of the nymphs, the queen and leader of the rest, inspires a devoted passion in the heart of the priest of Apollo, before whose altar they offer sacrifice, and listen for guiding and response. She rejects his love with cruel contempt, pining always for the coy and errant boy-god, who thinks of nothing but the distant mountain summits and the divine whispers of the rustling woods. The priest, insulted and enraged, invokes the aid of his divinity, and a change comes over the gay and magic scene. A terrible pestilence strikes down the inhabitants of these sylvan lawns, and gloomy funerals, and the pathetic strains of dirges take the place of dances and lively songs.
The terrified people throw themselves before the altar of the incensed Apollo, and the god speaks again. His anger can be appeased only by the sacrifice of the contemptuous nymph who has insulted his priest, or of some one who is willing to perish in her place. Proclamation is made across the sunny lawns, inviting a victim who will earn the wreath of self-sacrifice and of immortal consciousness of a great deed, but there is no response.
The fatal day draws on; the altar of sacrifice is prepared; but there spreads a rumour among the crowd—fanned probably by hope—that at the last moment a god will interfere. Some even speak of the wandering boy, if he could only be found. Surely he—so removed from earthly and selfish loves, so strange in his simplicity, in his purity—surely he would lay down his guileless life without a pang. Could he only be found! or would he appear!
The herald's voice had died away for the third time amid a fanfare of trumpets. At the foot of the steps of the long terrace, by the Roman fountain, a delicate and lovely form stood on the grassy verge before the altar, by the leaping and rushing water's side; a little to the left, whence the road from Hades was supposed to come, stood the divine messenger, the lofty herald—clad in white, with a white wand; behind the altar stood the wretched priest, on whom the fearful task devolved, the passion of terror, of pity, and of love, traced upon his face; all sound of music had died away; a hush as of death itself fell upon the expectant crowd; from green arch and trellised walk the throng of masques, actors and spectators alike, pressed forward upon the lawn before the altar.... The priest tore the fillet from his brow and threw down his knife.
* * * * *