For the goddess, herself
turning ever kinder, and figuring more and more exclusively as the
tender nurse of all things, had transformed her young votary from a
hunter into a charioteer, a rearer and driver of horses, after the
fashion of his Amazon mothers before him. Thereupon, all the lad's
wholesome vanity had centered on the fancy of the world-famous games
then lately established, as, smiling down his mother's terrors, and
grateful to his celestial mother for many a hair-breadth escape, he
practised day by day, fed the animals, drove them out, amused though
companionless, visited them affectionately in the deserted stone
stables of the ancient king. A chariot and horses, as being the
showiest outward thing the world afforded, was like the pawn he moved
to represent the big demand he meant to make, honestly, generously,
on the ample fortunes of life. There was something of his old
miraculous kindred, alien from this busy new world he came to, about
the boyish driver with the fame of a scholar, in his grey fleecy
cloak and hood of soft [175] white woollen stuff, as he drove in that
morning. Men seemed to have seen a star flashing, and crowded round
to examine the little mountain-bred beasts, in loud, friendly
intercourse with the hero of the hour--even those usually somewhat
unsympathetic half-brothers now full of enthusiasm for the outcast
and his good fight for prosperity.
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