So they parted, and Alkibiades entered his father’s house by the large heavy doorway, and went into the courtyard, where the fountain was splashing still as though he had never been away, just as it splashed when he used to sit and watch it in his dreamy boyhood, yearning for knowledge, or in more ardent mood when he looked upon it from his room at night, longing for adventures and glory, and eager to leave that quiet place where his mother lived; as it splashed when he had gazed up at the mysterious Akropolis, with the moonlight over it making dark shadows on the walls of its silent temples; as it splashed when he brought his young wife joyfully to her new home, and when he returned there, on that guilty morning, and found her gone; and as it splashed when he came back from Ephesos and saw her lying still and silent on her couch. This was the day he had lived for, and fought for, and schemed for; now it was here. He had come home to Athens in greater triumph than he had ever dreamed of Glory, that he had followed after all his life, had come to meet him, as she had seldom come to meet anyone, and more splendidly than he, even in his highest hopes, had been able to imagine. He had got more than glory; he had got justice. As he passed through the Agora, or market-place, that day, he had seen men with hammers breaking down and beating into dust, so that they might take and scatter it into the sea, the record of the false and cruel sentence which had been passed upon him. He had broken down injustice. He was going with his strong will, and with all his might, to deserve more than ever his country’s gratitude, so that when he died, fighting for her some day perhaps, the abhorred sentence which had been graven on the shattered stone might be forgotten, and it might be writ of him upon the eternal brass that he, more fully than any other of her children, had loved, and lived for Athens. And yet, even at the ending of that day—a day the like of which few men have ever known—even at the end of that glorious day he heard the words of Sokrates above the echo of the cheers and cries of joy that were still ringing in his ears, and he was somewhat sad. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXIV ‘You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was that ambition?’ _Julius Cæsar._ THE friends who had known the strategos in old days thought that he would, for some time at least, enjoy his hard-earned rest, and spend his time in such pursuits as they knew he loved, and take his fill of the intellectual and sensuous delights of Athens.