me his utterance was rapid but not more so than that of many quick thinkers with whom I had conversed.
“What wouldst thou?” said he, in a low but strangely sweet, mild voice.
I unfolded to him the object of my coming.
I went back to the finding of the Roman newspaper and my departure from home.
All, all; I told him all; how I had come into the home of the Slow Movers, how I had mistaken them for marble like the rest of the figures about the island, how I longed to have the mystery cleared up.
All that day Antonius and I sat by the sea in most delightful converse.
Only once, at high noon, did he set a brief limit to his tale while we passed into his cavern to partake of food and drink.
With a high-bounding heart, I listened to his story of the landing of the Seven Sculptors upon the isle. Their first task had been to rear the glorious temple with its long flight of marble steps leading down to the sea. Then they, and, later, their sons, and their sons’ sons, had set to work to people this beautiful island with almost countless figures of the rarest grace and finish.
In the forests, by the river’s banks, through the valley, on the hillside, adown the terraces, to the very water’s edge, rose the faultless statues in wondrous beauty and profusion.
Here, there and everywhere, forms of matchless grace gleamed, snow-white amid the leafy bowers or tangled underwood.
A mysterious ardor burned within the hearts of these exiled artists. It would seem that theirs was a wild sort of hope to rear on that far-distant isle another Rome—an infant daughter, but fairer and whiter in her marble magnificence than the glorious mother who sate upon her seven hills!
Times and times again, aye, thrice three score and ten, the wretched Paula arose out of the quarried blocks, ever fair and ever fairer, now bent in awful grief, now putting the very skies to shame with the entrancing beauty of her upturned, pleading, sweet and pitiful face.
Here and there, too, stood great Cæsar, never to be forgotten for his godlike clemency in snatching the sculptors from terrible death.
As the second century of the exile dawned upon the little Roman Kingdom, far away beneath the Southern skies, at the very moment when the colony was waxing strong and vigorous a strange and mysterious thing happened to the dwellers in this island home of sweet content.
No more male children were born!
The seven sculptors, now bent with age, and their faces hollowed by the sharp chisels of remorse, went, one after the other to the dark realm of Death.
Their sons, too, came into ripe manhood. And their sons grew up, happy in the possession of that glorious talent which had peopled the isle with such matchless forms of beauty.
But now the race had reached the end of its long reign in the world of art.
Decade after decade slipped away, and still there came not one male child to gladden a sculptor’s home.
A sort of blank despair sank upon the colony.
The elder sculptors laid their chisels down in utter hopelessness.
Even the younger wrought less and less.
Still there came no boy to wake the old-time song and laughter of that once joyous island home.
Fingers cunning in art grew stiff with age.
Hearts full of glorious inspiration waxed dull and spiritless! One by one they all went the way which mortal feet must tread.
A terrible, a wonderful change came over the people.
Weighed down by this leaden grief, surrounded day and night by these speechless, motionless marble forms, which, although silent as the very clod itself, yet cried out unceasingly: “Give us more companions in these solitudes!” these unfortunate people almost turned to marble itself.
They became, in good sooth, brothers and sisters to the marble dwellers on this island.
At length the end came!
The last sculptor was laid upon the carved bier of the great white temple by the sea!
A silence so long, so deep, so dreadful, fell upon the people that it almost seemed their speech was lost forever.
Within the dark grottoes and bosky underwood, they crawled to hide away from the very light of day.
Their limbs, once so supple and elastic, ever ready to bear their owners over hill and across plain, delighting in the dance, inured to the race, now became heavy and slow.
They seemed almost about to turn to stone, and join the silent company around them.
In good sooth, such a fate was imminent, when the happening of a joyful event averted it.
A year had passed since the last sculptor had gone to join the shadowy caravan which moves forever across the desert of Eternal Silence, when his seven sad-faced daughters were fairly startled by an infant’s cry.
But look!
Their widowed mother stands before them with a babe nestled in her arms.
It is a son!
The joyful tidings can only creep from family to family.
Alas! it was too late to call them back to old-time customs and habits, too late to start their blood again in old-time bounding, leaping course through their veins.
They were a changed people!
True, their happiness came again, but it was not the same. They could smile and laugh, but it was scarcely more than faces of marble moved by some mysterious power. They could talk, but so slowly fell the words that it almost seemed some statue spoke amid the leafy coverts of the island. They could move, but snail or tortoise outstripped them with ease.
REMARKABLE BEHAVIOR OF A BUST OF CÆSAR IN THE LAND OF THE SLOW MOVERS.
Ay, they were changed indeed; fated henceforth to people their beautiful island home with living statues.
For years in long flight sped away, till one century followed another, and yet the wondrous talent came back no more.
It was lost forever!
Long, long ago, too, the people forgot the story of their fathers.
It is kept alive in the hearts of a few chosen ones, and they hand it down, each quarter century, to younger keepers selected for the purpose.
To Antonius the secret had been thus confided.
And such was the tale he told to me!
With a light heart, now that its weight of doubt and uncertainty had been lifted from it, I bade Antonius farewell, and, followed by Bulger wended my way back to the abodes of the Slow Movers.
As
