His hunger was exasperated by the taste,
and the delay. Suddenly there arose much tumult. Turning round in
the old woman's bosom who had received me from Xanthus, I saw my
beloved father struggling on the ground, livid and speechless. The
more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried me away; and
many were soon between us.
"Little was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of famine
long before: alas! and he had suffered them for me. Do I weep
while I am telling you they ended? I could not have closed his
eyes; I was too young; but I might have received his last breath,
the only comfort of an orphan's bosom. Do you now think him
blameable, O AEsop?"
"_AEsop_. It was sublime humanity; it was forbearance and
self-denial which even the immortal gods have never shown us."
The _Dream of Petrarca_ is, I think, more famous but not more
beautiful than this narrative of Rhodope; it lacks the deep human
tragedy and infinite charity of the winsome child, and the
self-contained father silently perishing of hunger for her; but if the
_AEsop and Rhodope_ had never been written, the _Dream of Petrarca_
would secure its author a place among the immortals:--
"... Wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains, and
finding a soft molehill, covered with grey moss, by the wayside, I
laid my head upon it and slept.
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