To-day, when Julian, after his lesson in theology, went out of the house and perceived the greenness of the trees, he breathed more freely. The two peaks of Mount Argæus, covered with snow, sparkled against blue sky. The neighbourhood of glaciers made the air refreshingly cool; garden alleys stretched hither and thither into the distance; glistening dark-green foliage of oaks formed thick vaultings; here and there a ray filtered through the branches of plane-trees. Only one side of the garden was not walled in, for in that direction lay a chasm. At the foot of the plateau on which the castle stood, a dead plain stretched as far as Anti-Taurus, and from this plain fierce heat rose in mist, while in the garden fresh streams were running and little waterfalls tinkling through thickets of oleanders.
A century before the date of which we are speaking Macellum had been the favourite domain and pleasure-house of the luxurious and half-mad Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia.
Julian took his way towards an isolated grotto, hard by the precipice, in which a statue of the god Pan, playing the flute, stood over a little sacrificial altar. Outside the grotto, a lion's mouth jetted water into a stone basin, and a curtain of roses masked the entrance while letting through its branches a view of the undulating hills and the plain, far down and drowned in misty blue. The perfume of roses filled the little cave, and the air there would have been oppressive had it not been cooled by a stream channelled in the rocky floor.
The wind scattered the turf with yellow petals of roses, and flung them floating on the water of the basin. From the dark and warm place of shelter could be heard the humming of bees. There Julian, stretched on the moss, used to read the _Banquet_ of Plato, understanding nothing of many of the passages; but their beauty had for him a double relish because it was a fruit forbidden.
When his reading was done, Julian wrapped the book anew in the binding of the "Epistles of the Apostle Paul," went up to the altar of Pan, gazed at the joyous god as at an old accomplice, and, thrusting his hand into a heap of dried leaves, drew from the interior of the altar, which was cracked and covered with a piece of board, a small object carefully enveloped in cloth. It was his own handiwork--a delightful little Liburnian trireme, or galley with three banks of oars. He set it swimming in the basin; the galley rocked on the miniature waves. The model was complete,--three masts, rigging, oars, gilded prow, and sails made of a fragment of purple silk, the gift of Labda. Nothing was wanting but to fix the rudder, and the boy began the task.