THE morning sun shone over the small and odorous garden enclosed within the peristyle of the house of the Athenian. He lay reclined, sad and listlessly, on the smooth grass which intersected the viridarium; and a slight stretched above, broke the fierce rays of the summer sun.  
When that fairy was first disinterred from the earth they found in the garden the shell of a tortoise that had been its . That animal, so strange a link in the creation, to which Nature seems to have denied all the pleasure of life, save life's passive and dream-like perception, had been the guest of the place for years before Glaucus purchased it; for years, indeed which went beyond the memory of man, and to which tradition assigned an almost incredible date. The house had been built and rebuilt—its possessors had changed and fluctuated—generations had flourished and decayed—and still the tortoise dragged on its slow and unsympathizing existence. In the earthquake, which sixteen years before had many of the public buildings of the city, and scared away the amazed inhabitants, the house now inhabited by Glaucus had been terribly shattered. The possessors it for many days; on their return they cleared away the ruins which the viridarium, and found still the tortoise, unharmed and unconscious of the surrounding destruction. It seemed to bear a charmed life in its languid blood and imperceptible motions; yet it was not so inactive as it seemed: it held a regular and course; inch by inch it traversed the little orbit of its , taking months to accomplish the whole . It was a restless voyager, that tortoise!—patiently, and with pain, did it perform its self-appointed journeys, evincing no interest in the things around it—a philosopher concentrated in itself. There was something grand in its selfishness!—the sun in which it basked—the waters poured daily over it—the air, which it insensibly , were its sole and unfailing luxuries. The mild changes of the season, in that lovely clime, it not. It covered itself with its shell—as the saint in his piety—as the in his wisdom—as the lover in his hope.
 
It was to the shocks and mutations of time—it was an of time itself: slow, regular, perpetual; unwitting of the passions that themselves around—of the wear and tear of mortality. The poor tortoise! nothing less than the bursting of volcanoes, the convulsions of the riven world, could have its spark! The inexorable Death, that spared not pomp or beauty, passed unheedingly by a thing to which death could bring so a change.
 
For this animal the and vivid Greek felt all the wonder and affection of contrast. He could spend hours in surveying its creeping progress, in moralizing over its . He despised it in joy—he envied it in sorrow.
 
Regarding it now as he lay along the sward—its dull mass moving while it seemed motionless, the Athenian murmured to himself:
 
'The eagle dropped a stone from his , thinking to break thy shell: the stone crushed the head of a poet. This is the allegory of Fate! Dull thing! Thou hadst a father and a mother; perhaps, ages ago, thou thyself hadst a mate. Did thy parents love, or didst thou? Did thy slow blood circulate more gladly when thou didst creep to the side of thy one? Wert thou capable of affection? Could it thee if she were away from thy side? Couldst thou feel when she was present? What would I not give to know the history of thy mailed breast—to gaze upon the mechanism of thy faint desires—to mark what hair—breadth difference separates thy sorrow from thy joy! Yet, methinks, thou wouldst know if Ione were present! Thou wouldst feel her coming like a happier air—like a gladder sun. I envy thee now, for thou knowest not that she is absent; and I—would I could be like thee—between the of seeing her! What doubt, what , haunts me! why will she not admit me? Days have passed since I heard her voice. For the first time, life grows flat to me. I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead, and the flowers faded. Ah! Ione, couldst thou dream how I adore thee!'
 
From these enamoured reveries, Glaucus was interrupted by the entrance of Nydia. She came with her light, though cautious step, along the marble tablinum. She passed the , and paused at the flowers which bordered the garden. She had her water-vase in her hand, and she sprinkled the thirsting plants, which seemed to brighten at her approach. She to their odor. She touched them timidly and . She felt, along their stems, if any leaf or creeping insect their beauty. And as she from flower to flower, with her earnest and youthful and motions, you could not have imagined a fitter handmaid for the goddess of the garden.
 
'Nydia, my child!' said Glaucus.
 
At the sound of his voice she paused at once—listening, blushing, breathless; with her lips parted, her face upturned to catch the direction of the sound, she laid down the vase—she hastened to him; and wonderful it was to see how unerringly she threaded her dark way through the flowers, and came by the shortest path to the side of her new lord.
 
'Nydia,' said Glaucus, tenderly stroking back her long and beautiful hair, 'it is now three days since thou hast been under the protection of my household gods. Have they smiled on thee? Art thou happy?'
 
'Ah! so happy!' sighed the slave.
 
'And now,' contin............