The proclamation, the scene in the school-house, remained as the prelude to the many pictures which populated Julian's memory, interchangeably, of that day. He saw himself, speaking rarely, but, as he knew, to much purpose, seated at the head of a table in the village assembly-room, and, down each side of the table, the principal men of the Islands, Tsigaridis and Zapantiotis on his either hand, grave counsellors; he heard their speech, unreproducibly magnificent, because a bodyguard of facts supported every phrase; because, in the background, thronged the years of endurance and the patient, steadfast hope. He heard the terms of the new constitution, and the oath of resolution to which every man subscribed. With a swimming brain, and his eyes fixed upon the hastily-restored portrait of his grandfather, he heard the references to himself as head of the state--a state in which the citizens numbered perhaps five thousand. He heard his own voice, issuing orders whose wisdom was never questioned: no boat to leave the Islands, no boats to be admitted to the port, without his express permission, a system of sentries to be instantly instituted and maintained, day and night. As he delivered these orders, men rose in their places, assuming the responsibility, and left the room to execute them without delay. He saw himself later, still accompanied by Tsigaridis and Zapantiotis, but having rid himself of his two guards, in the interior of the island, on the slopes where the little rough stone walls retained the terraces, and where between the trunks of the olive-trees the sea moved, blue and glittering, below. Here the island was dry and stony; mule-paths, rising in wide, low steps, wandered up the slopes and lost themselves over the crest of the hill. A few goats moved restlessly among cactus and bramble-bushes, cropping at the prickly stuff, and now and then raising their heads to bleat for the kids that, more light-hearted because not under the obligation of searching for food amongst the vegetation, leapt after one another, up and down, in a happy chain on their little stiff certain legs from terrace to terrace. An occasional cypress rose in a dark spire against the sky. Across the sea, the town of Herakleion lay, white, curved, and narrow, with its coloured sunblinds no bigger than butterflies, along the strip of coast that Mount Mylassa so grudgingly allowed it.