A Thorny Path | Page 3

or in Glaukias's work-room,
which is indeed your own. I know where the best is to be found, and
can bring it to you in any quantity. Scopas will lend me his wagon. I
can see it now, and you valiantly struggling with it till your mighty
arms ache. You will not whistle and hum over that, but sing out with all
your might, as you used when my mother was alive, when you and
your apprentices joined Dionysus's drunken rout. Then your brow will
grow smooth again; and if the model is a success, and you want to buy
marble, or pay the founder, then out with your gold, out of the coffer
and its hiding-place! Then you can make use of all your strength, and
your dream of producing an Atlas such as the world has not seen--your
beautiful dream-will become a reality!"
Heron had listened eagerly to his son's rhapsody, but he now cast a
timid glance at the table where the wax and tools lay, pushed the rough
hair from his brow, and broke in with a bitter laugh: "My dream, do
you say--my dream? As if I did not know too well that I am no longer
the man to create an Atlas! As if I did not feel, without your words, that
my strength for it is a thing of the past!"
"Nay, father," exclaimed the painter. "Is it right to cast away the sword
before the battle? And even if you did not succeed--"
"You would be all the better pleased," the sculptor put in. "What surer
way could there be to teach the old simpleton, once for all, that the time
when he could do great work is over and gone?"
"That is unjust, father; that is unworthy of you," the young man
interrupted in great excitement; but his father went on, raising his voice;
"Silence, boy! One thing at any rate is left to me, as you know--my
keen eyes; and they did not fail me when you two looked at each other
as the starling cried, 'My strength!' Ay, the bird is in the right when he
bewails what was once so great and is now a mere laughing-stock. But
you--you ought to reverence the man to whom you owe your existence
and all you know; you allow yourself to shrug your shoulders over your
own father's humbler art, since your first pictures were fairly
successful.--How puffed up he is, since, by my devoted care, he has
been a painter! How he looks down on the poor wretch who, by the

pinch of necessity, has come down from being a sculptor of the highest
promise to being a mere gem-cutter! In the depths of your soul--and I
know it--you regard my laborious art as half a handicraft. Well, perhaps
it deserves no better name; but that you--both of you--should make
common cause with a bird, and mock the sacred fire which still burns
in an old man, and moves him to serve true and noble art and to mold
something great--an Atlas such as the world has never seen on a heroic
scale; that--"
He covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud. And the strong
man's passionate grief cut his children to the heart, though, since their
mother's death, their father's rage and discontent had many a time ere
now broken down into childish lamentation.
To-day no doubt the old man was in worse spirits than usual, for it was
the day of the Nekysia--the feast of the dead kept every autumn; and he
had that morning visited his wife's grave, accompanied by his daughter,
and had anointed the tombstone and decked it with flowers. The young
people tried to comfort him; and when at last he was more composed
and had dried his tears, he said, in so melancholy and subdued a tone
that the angry blusterer was scarcely recognizable: "There--leave me
alone; it will soon be over. I will finish this gem to-morrow, and then I
must do the Serapis I promised Theophilus, the high-priest. Nothing
can come of the Atlas. Perhaps you meant it in all sincerity, Alexander;
but since your mother left me, children, since then--my arms are no
weaker than they were; but in here--what it was that shriveled, broke,
leaked away--I can not find words for it. If you care for me--and I know
you do--you must not be vexed with me if my gall rises now and then;
there is too much bitterness in my soul. I can not reach the goal I strive
after and was meant to win; I have lost what I loved best, and where am
I to find comfort or compensation?"
His children tenderly assured him of their affection, and he allowed
Melissa to kiss him, and