With a quick, deft blow on a marble console, she smote the top from the flask, and filled the six goblets with the rosy-golden wine. Each took one. Holding up the glass, her pale face lit with a dazzling smile, her fine nostrils quivering, and the long, bright locks flowing over her white vesture, her noble figure, in its debonair abandon, wore the old Greek Bacchanal grace and glow.
“The wine from the land of the Three Hundred is fit to pledge liberty’s defence,” she gaily said. “Come, let our first pledge be—In Liberty’s Defence!”
“Good!” he answered. “In Liberty’s Defence!”
The goblets clanged, the pledge was drank, and the glasses were flung down. They took up two more.
“And now?” she said.
He looked at her with a sweet and solemn face.
“And now,” he answered, “forgiveness and compassion. For all injuries, for all baseness, for all trampling of the rich upon the poor, for all trampling of the strong upon the weak—forgiveness and compassion!”
“With my whole soul,” she solemnly and gently replied. “For the sordid and the cruel—forgiveness and compassion!”
The goblets softly clanged, the tender pledge was drank, and the glasses were flung down.
“Now,” said he, as they took up the last two, “the first pledge was in wine from the land of Leonidas. But the second was in wine from the land of Socrates. Let the third be drank in wine from the land of both—the saint and the hero; for the pledge is mighty.”