Selene

“ If the moon rode high in heaven, as he passed through the outlying gardens he might catch a glimpse of some deserted girl shredding the magical herbs into the burning brazier, and sending upward to the ‘lady Selene’ the song which was to charm her lover home. The magical image melted in the burning, the herbs smouldered, the tale of love was told, and slowly the singer ‘drew the quiet night into her blood.’ Her lay ended with a passage of softened melancholy—
‘Do thou farewell, and turn thy steeds to Ocean, lady, and my pain I will endure, even as I have declared. ”

“ First I cast my eyes on Selene. She need not be ashamed to show herself either, and she is a pattern for girls; but then as Arsinoe grew older, whenever she passed this way I thought to myself: ‘that girl is growing up for my boy,’ and now that you have won her I feel as if I were once more as young as your sweetheart herself. My old heart beats as happily as if the little Loves were touching it with their wings and rosy fingers. ”

“ The children would call Selene when they wanted her, but would fly to Arsinoe as soon as they saw her. Their hearts were hers, and Selene felt this bitterly; it seemed to her to be unjust, for she saw clearly that her sister could reap, from mere frivolous play in her idle hours, a sweeter reward than she could earn by the anxiety, trouble and exhausting toil, in which she often spent her nights.
But children are not unjust in this way. It is true that they keep an account in their heart and not in their head. Those who give them the warmth of affection they pay back most honestly. ”

“ The pleasant voice must have hurt poor Selene acutely for she drew up her shoulders, and her fair features were stamped with an expression of keen suffering, and she pressed both hands over her heart as she went on past the screen and her handsome flirting playfellow, limping across the courtyard and into the road. ”

“ What had the world to offer her but new torment and new misery? But the sea—the blue dark sea was wide, and cold, and deep, and its waves promised her in insidious tones to relieve her at once of the rage of her fever, and of the burden of her life. Selene did not pause, did not reflect; she remembered neither the children whom she had so long cared for as a mother, nor her father, whose comfort and support she was—vague voices in her brain seemed to be whispering to her that the world was evil and cruel, and the abode of all the torment and care that gnawed at her heart. ”

“ A large gulf, too, stood near, whose waters flowed into a shimmering sea beyond. Here Princess Selene, having chosen hundreds of companions, took up her abode. She planted trees for shade and sowed grass for a quiet, restful color, and then she laid out her garden according to a well-thought-out plan. ”

“ Beautiful on the hills is the light of starry Selené,
Beautiful, cruel, and cold is the glance of starry Selene;
Chilled to the heart by her kiss, Endymion slumbers on Latmos,
Never again to awake, ah, me! to the glory of living.
⁠Ai, that the gifts of the gods should be so fatal to mortals!
Year follows year, and race follows race, but Endymion wakes not.
⁠Maids in the Latmian valleys bewailed for the beautiful shepherd,
Wept for his golden hair, and his ready foot in the Choros,
Wept for the summer eves when they wandered with him on the hillside. ”

“ You could not touch your eye more gently than the good woman handles Selene's foot."
"Go back, she is looking straight this way."
"What a wonderful face! It would do for a Penelope, but there is something singular in her eyes. Now if I had to make another star-gazing Urania, or a Sappho full of the deity, and with eyes fixed on the heavens in poetic rapture, that is what I would put into her! She is no longer young, but how pure her face is! It is like a sky when the wind has swept it clear of clouds."
"Seriously you must go now," said Arsinoe drawing away her hand, which he had again taken. ”

“ This thought gave her an interest in the next world, and dame Hannah fanned the spark of hope in her soul into flame.
Selene had seen and suffered much misery, and was accustomed to call the gods cruel. Helios told her that God and the Saviour were good and kind, and loved human beings as their children. ”

“ Selene laughed drily, and her lips curled scornfully as she said:
"That is the way! go on! two days before you are turned out of house and home you ride in a chariot and pair!"
"You always see the worst side," said Arsinoe with annoyance. "I tell you it will all turn out far better and nicer and more happily than we expect. As soon as we are a little richer we will buy back the old man, and keep him and feed him till he dies." ”

“ Horowitz die beneath her tremendous recollection and appreciation of all the triumph had cost. The outcome is satisfying: she died in a high moment. Shila is not too much to blame, and consolation for her is at hand. And Selene, being right from her angle of youth and life, is both happy and sufficiently rebuked.
The story, then, has both an opposing and an assisting line. The climax at which all meet and the forces balance is the Revolution news. It is not the deciding moment in the Selene story: that is over. ”

“ But no girl of nineteen can pass a night altogether without sleeping, however sadly she may turn and turn over and over again in her bed. So slumber overmastered Selene every now and then for a quarter of an hour, and each time she dreamed of her sister.
Once she saw Arsinoe dressed out like a queen, followed by beggar children and pelted with bad words—then she saw her on the rotunda below the balcony romping with Pollux, and in their bold sport they broke her mother's bust. ”

“ Enter Phyllon.
Oh, Phyllon! picture to thyself a town
Peopled with men and women! At each turn,
Men—wicked men—then, farther on, more men,
Then women—then again more men—more men—
Men, women, everywhere—all ripe for crime,
All ghastly in the lurid light of sin! Enter Selene.
Phyl. In truth, dear sister, if man’s face and form
Were a true index to his character,
He were a hideous thing to look upon;
But man, alas! is formed as we are formed.
False from the first, he comes into the world
Bearing a smiling lie upon his face,
That he may cheat ere he can use his tongue. ”

“ Selene shrugged her shoulders, and her sister jumped up from her seat with her eyes full of tears. She had been so happy in telling how happy she was that she firmly believed that her story must bring brightness into the gloom of the sick girl's soul, like sunshine after a dark night; and Selene had nothing to give her but scornful words and looks. If a friend refuses to share in joys it is hardly less wounding than if he were to abandon us in trouble.
"How you always contrive to embitter my happiness!" cried Arsinoe. "I know very well that nothing that I can do can ever be right in your eyes ”

“ When Selene was passing by the screen which concealed her playfellow and his work from her gaze, the worthy matron had fallen gently asleep on a couch, and the sculptor was exerting all his zeal to convince the noble damsel that the size to which her hair was dressed was an exaggeration, and that the super-incumbence of such a mass must disfigure the effect of the delicate features of her face. ”

“ Selene stammered.
"If you saw that it hurt me to stoop when the wind blows the strips of papyrus on to the floor, would you not willingly pick them up for me?" continued the woman. "What we are doing for you is neither less nor yet much more than that. In a few minutes we shall have finished and then we can follow the others, for every one else has left. I am the overseer of the room, as you know, and must in any case remain here till the last work-woman has gone." ”

“ Eth.On Selene?
Dar.Yes,
Thou lovest her—and dost thou think that I
Will save thy life for her?
Eth.Selene? Bah!
True, she is fair. Well, thou art also fair.
What does it matter—her fair face or thine?
What matters either face—or hers or thine— [Pg 56]
When weighed against this outrage on my fame?
Dar. Give me this ring, and thou shalt have the charm.
Eth. ’Tis thine. And now, Sir Phyllon, take good heed! Enter Selene from bower.
Sel. Darine! Thou here, alone with Ethais!
No, no. I will not doubt—
Dar.Doubt whom thou wilt! ”

“ What, little Arsinoe! Why, how long then is it since your mother died?"
"Four years and eight months."
"You remember the date very exactly; such a mother is not easily forgotten, indeed. She was a good woman and a kinder I never met. I know, too, that she tried to mollify your father's feeling, but she could not succeed, and then she need must die!"
"Yes," said Selene gloomily. "How could the gods decree it! They are often more cruel than the hardest hearted man." ”

“ Mankind, for whom He—the Son of God—had come down upon earth, to save from misery and guilt, had rewarded His loving kindness by hanging Him on the cross. In Him she could see a companion in suffering and she asked the widow to tell her all about Him. Selene had made many sacrifices to her family—she could never forget her walk to the papyrus-factory—but He had let them mock Him and had shed His blood for His own. ”

“ Then Selene asked some people who were passing by to tell her the name of the hill, and they told her that it was called the hill of Latmos. On she went, under the tall trees, whose branches waved over her in the clear evening light, till at last she reached the top, and looked down on the valley which lay beneath her. Then Selene was indeed astonished, for she had never seen anything so [516] beautiful before, even in a dream. ”

“ When the young man slept, she was for ever waking him with her gossip and tunes and merriment, till he lost patience, and Selene in wrath turned her to what she now is. And therefore it is that she still, in memory of Endymion, grudges all sleepers their rest, and most of all the young and tender. Her very bite and blood-thirst tell not of savagery, but of love and human kindness; she is but enjoying mankind as she may, and sipping beauty. ”

“ The next rooms, in which men stripped the green sheath from the pith, and the long galleries where the more skilled hands split the pith with sharp knives into long moist strips about a finger wide, and of different degrees of fineness, seemed to Selene to grow longer the farther she went, and to be absolutely interminable. ”

“ And how about curling my hair? And your new frock? And poor little Helios?—No child, you are only just to see Selene and then come back again. Early in the morning too the holiday will have begun, and you know what goes on then; the old woman would be of no use to you in the throng. Go and see how Selene is, you are not to stay.”
“I will see—”
“Not a word about seeing—you come home again. I desire it; in two hours you are to be in bed.”
Arsinoe shrugged her shoulders, and two minutes after she was standing with the old slave-woman in front of the gate-house. ”

“ Only recently have archæologists accepted the title, Antoninus Pius as Endymion and it seems probable that the Selene of Villa Albani portrayed the Empress Faustina, and that this group was a tribute of the Emperor's to his beautiful wife, his "Diva Faustina," who stooped to him like the moon-goddess from the sky. Is it not equally possible that he caused the symbols of Selene to be cut upon her signet that she might use it in her intimate correspondence, that the charm of this wonderful woman was associated in his mind with the magic of moonlight, gentle, love-compelling, and pure? ”

“ Seek Him and you will find Him, for of all His children He loves them best who suffer."
"Those who suffer?" asked Selene, in surprise. "What has a God in his
Olympian joys to do with those who suffer?"
"Be quiet, child," interrupted Hannah, patting the sick girl with a soothing hand, "you soon will learn how God takes care of you and that Another loves you."
"Another," muttered Selene, and her cheeks turned crimson.
She thought at once of Pollux, and asked herself why the story of her sufferings should have moved him so deeply if he were not in love with her. ”

“ Coblenz’s is a big crisis, though not the big plot crisis; especially is this true if you regard the story as a character story. Shila’s devotion to her mother: her devotion to her daughter—which will win? Will her sense of duty triumph over her indulgence? The girl’s reasoning, the impracticability of her mother’s desire assist to “play up” the struggle. Selene is dominant with Shila. She is a great-hearted woman, but she has a weakness. If she had not had, Selene might have been a less self-centred girl. ”

“ A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars if it costs a cent. [Pg 345] Selene, mamma will make for you every sacrifice she can afford, but she ain't got the money."
"You—have got the money!"
"So help me God, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what business has been. You know how—sometimes even to make ends meet, it is a pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do for you. A child like you that's been indulged, that I ain't even asked ever in her life to help a day down in the store. ”

“ At Elis there was a statue of Selene, her head surmounted by a crescent. Later, she was identified with Artemis, and as such called Phoebe, the sister of Phoebus Apollo. She was worshipped on the days of the new and the full moon. Another name for Selene was Mēnē, in reference to the monthly changes of the moon. The existence of a male moon-god (Mēn) , whose cult probably came to Attica from Asia Minor, is attested by inscriptions. The Roman goddess of the moon was Luna, who possessed sanctuaries on the Aventine and Palatine hills. ”