WHILE Arbaces had been thus employed, Sorrow and Death were in the house of Ione. It was the night preceding the morn in which the solemn funeral were to be decreed to the of the murdered Apaecides. The had been removed from the temple of Isis to the house of the nearest surviving relative, and Ione had heard, in the same breath, the death of her brother and the against her . That first violent which blunts the sense to all but itself, and the forbearing silence of her slaves, had prevented her learning minutely the circumstances attendant on the fate of her lover. His illness, his , and his approaching trial, were unknown to her. She learned only the accusation against him, and at once indignantly rejected it; , on hearing that Arbaces was the accuser, she required no more to induce her firmly and solemnly to believe that the Egyptian himself was the criminal. But the vast and absorbing importance attached by the ancients to the performance of every ceremonial connected with the death of a relation, had, as yet, confined her and her convictions to the of the deceased. ! it was not for her to perform that tender and office, which obliged the nearest relative to endeavor to catch the last breath—the parting soul—of the beloved one: but it was hers to close the straining eyes, the distorted lips: to watch by the clay, as, fresh bathed and anointed, it lay in robes upon the ivory bed; to the couch with leaves and flowers, and to renew the solemn -branch at the threshold of the door. And in these sad offices, in and in prayer, Ione forgot herself. It was among the loveliest customs of the ancients to bury the young at the morning ; for, as they strove to give the softest to death, so they imagined that , who loved the young, had stolen them to her embrace; and though in the instance of the murdered priest this could not appropriately cheat the fancy, the general custom was still preserved.  
The stars were fading one by one from the grey heavens, and night slowly before the approach of morn, when a dark group stood motionless before Ione's door. High and slender torches, made paler by the unmellowed dawn, cast their light over various , hushed for the moment in one solemn and intent expression. And now there arose a slow and music, which accorded sadly with the , and floated far along the and breathless streets; while a chorus of female voices (the Praeficae so often cited by the Roman poets), accompanying the Tibicen and the Mysian , woke the following strain:
 
               THE FUNERAL
 
      O'er the sad threshold, where the cypress
         Supplants the rose that should thy home,
       On the last pilgrimage on earth that now
         Awaits thee, wanderer to Cocytus, come!
       Darkly we woo, and weeping we invite—
        Death is thy host—his banquet asks thy soul,
       Thy garlands hang within the House of Night,
         And the black stream alone shall fill thy bowl.
 
      No more for thee the laughter and the song,
         The night—the glory of the day!
       The Argive daughters' at their labours long;
         The hell-bird on its Titan prey—
 
      The false AEolides upheaving slow,
         O'er the eternal hill, the eternal stone;
       The crowned Lydian, in his woe,
         And green Callirrhoe's monster-headed son—
 
      These shalt thou see, dim shadowed through the dark,
         Which makes the sky of Pluto's shore;
       Lo! where thou stand'st, pale-gazing on the bark,
          That waits our rite to bear thee trembling o'er!
       Come, then! no more delay!—the pines
         Amidst the Unburied for its latest home;
       O'er the grey sky the torch impatient shines—
        Come, mourner, !—the lost one bids thee come.
As the died away, the group parted in twain; and placed upon a couch, spread with a purple , the corpse of Apaecides was carried forth, with the feet foremost. The designator, or marshal of the sombre ceremonial, accompanied by his torch-bearers, clad in black, gave the signal, and the procession moved dreadly on.
 
First went the musicians, playing a slow march—the solemnity of the lower instruments broken by many a louder and wilder burst of the funeral : next followed the hired mourners, chanting their to the dead; and the female voices were with those of boys, whose tender years made still more striking the contrast of life and death—the fresh leaf and the one. But the players, the , the archimimus (whose duty it was to personate the dead)—these, the customary attendants at ordinary funerals, were from a funeral attended with so many terrible associations.
 
The priests of Isis came next in their snowy garments, barefooted, and supporting sheaves of corn; while before the corpse were carried the images of the deceased and his many Athenian . And behind the bier followed, amidst her women, the sole surviving relative of the dead—her head bare, her locks disheveled, her face paler than marble, but composed and still, save ever and anon, as some tender thought—awakened by the music, flashed upon the dark lethargy of woe, she covered that with her hands, and unseen; for hers were not the noisy sorrow, the , the ungoverned gesture, which characterized those who honored less faithfully. In that age, as in all, the channel of deep grief flowed hushed and still.
 
And so the procession swept on, till it had traversed the streets, passed the city gate, and gained the Place of Tombs without the wall, which the traveler yet .
 
Raised in the form of an altar—of unpolished pine, amidst whose interstices were placed preparations of matter—stood the funeral pyre; and around it the dark and gloomy so consecrated by song to the tomb.
 
As soon as the bier was placed upon the pile, the attendants parting on either side, Ione passed up to the couch, and stood before the unconscious clay for some moments motionless and silent. The features of the dead had been composed from the first expression of violent death. Hushed for ever the terror and the doubt, the contest of passion, the of religion, the struggle of the past and present, the hope and the horror of the future!—of all that racked and the breast of that young to the Holy of Life, what trace was visible in the awful of that impenetrable brow and unbreathing lip? The sister gazed, and not a sound was heard amidst the crowd; there was something terrible, yet , also, in the silence; and when it broke, it broke sudden and abrupt—it broke, with a loud and cry—the of long-smothered despair.
 
'My brother! my brother!' cried the poor , falling upon the couch; 'thou whom the worm on thy path feared not—what enemy couldst thou provoke? Oh, is it in truth come to this? Awake! awake! We grew together! Are we thus torn ? Thou art not dead—thou sleepest. Awake! awake!'
 
The sound of her piercing voice aroused the sympathy of the mourners, and they broke into loud and rude lament. This startled, this recalled Ione; she looked up hastily and confusedly, as if for the first time sensible of the presence of those around.
 
'Ah!' she murmured with a shiver, 'we are not then alone!' With that, after a brief pause, she rose; and her pale and beautiful countenance was again composed and . With fond and trembling hands, she unclosed the lids of the deceased; but when the dull eye, no longer beaming with love and life, met hers, she aloud, as if she had seen a spectre. Once more recovering herself she kissed again and again the lids, the lips, the brow; and with mechanic and unconscious hand, received from the high priest of her brother's temple the funeral torch.
 
The sudden burst of music, the sudden song of the mourners announced the birth of the sanctifying flame.
 
           HYMN TO THE WIND
 
                I
 
       On thy couch of cloud reclined,
        Wake, O soft and sacred Wind!
  ............