monotonous and stiff-jointed song; and in my heart there was just
hunger.


2

Charteris had heard, one may presume, of my disastrous love-business;
and with all an author's relish of emotion, in others, chose his
gambit swiftly. "Mr. Townsend, is it not? Then may a murrain light
upon thee, Mr. Townsend,--whatever a murrain may happen to be,--since
you have disturbed me in the concoction of an ever-living and
entrancing fable."

"I may safely go as far," said I, "as to offer the proverbial penny."

"Done!" cried Mr. Charteris. He meditated for a moment, and then
began, in a low and curiously melodious voice, to narrate

_The Apologue of the First Conjugation_

"When the gods of Hellas were discrowned, there was a famous scurrying
from Olympos to the world of mortals, where each deity must
henceforward make shift to do without godhead:--Aphrodite in her
hollow hill, where the good knight Tannhauser revels yet, it may be;
Hephaestos, in some smithy; whilst Athene, for aught I know,
established a girls' boarding school, and Helios, as is notorious,
died under priestly torture, and Dionysos cannily took holy orders,
and Hermes set up as a merchant in Friesland. But Eros went to the
Grammarians. He would be a schoolmaster.