" To the surprise of all he compounded his handsome
prize for the old wooden image taken from the chapel at home, lurking
now in an obscure shrine in the meanest quarter of the town. Sober
amid the noisy feasting which followed, unashamed, but travelling by
night to hide it from their mockery, warm at his bosom, he reached
the passes at twilight, and through the deep peace of the glens bore
it to the old resting-place, now more worthy than ever of the
presence of its mistress, his mother and all the people of the
village coming forth to salute her, all doors set mystically open, as
she advances.
Phaedra too, his step-mother, a fiery soul with wild strange blood in
her veins, forgetting her fears of this illegitimate rival of her
children, seemed now to have seen him for the first time, loved at
last the very touch of his fleecy cloak, and would fain have had him
of her own religion. As though the once neglected child had been
another, she tries to win him as a stranger in his manly perfection,
growing more than an affectionate mother to her husband's son. But
why thus intimate and congenial, she asks, always in the wrong
quarter? Why not compass two ends at once? Why so squeamishly
neglect the powerful, any power at all, in a city so full of
religion? He might find the image of her sprightly goddess
everywhere, to his [179] liking, gold, silver, native or stranger,
new or old, graceful, or indeed, if he preferred it so, in iron or
stone.
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