The air that
came to my lips was warm and fragrant as the ambrosial breath of
the goddess, infecting me, not (of course) with a faith in the old
religion of the isle, but with a sense and apprehension of its
mystic power--a power that was still to be obeyed--obeyed by ME,
for why otherwise did I toil on with sorry horses to "where, for
HER, the hundred altars glowed with Arabian incense, and breathed
with the fragrance of garlands ever fresh"? {13}
I passed a sadly disenchanting night in the cabin of a Greek
priest--not a priest of the goddess, but of the Greek Church; there
was but one humble room, or rather shed, for man, and priest, and
beast. The next morning I reached Baffa (Paphos), a village not
far distant from the site of the temple. There was a Greek
husbandman there who (not for emolument, but for the sake of the
protection and dignity which it afforded) had got leave from the
man at Limasol to hoist his flag as a sort of deputy-provisionary-
sub-vice-pro-acting-consul of the British sovereign: the poor
fellow instantly changed his Greek headgear for the cap of consular
dignity, and insisted upon accompanying me to the ruins. I would
not have stood this if I could have felt the faintest gleam of my
yesterday's pagan piety, but I had ceased to dream, and had nothing
to dread from any new disenchanters.
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