We had read on Sunday the 28th of April, in the Siècle of Athens, of the complete defeat of "The King of the Mountains." The official reports stated that he had twenty men wounded, his camp burned, his band dispersed, and that the troops had pursued him as far as the marshes near Marathon. These reports, very agreeable to all strangers, did not appear to give much pleasure to the Greeks, and especially to our host and hostess. Christodule, for a lieutenant of troops, showed lack of enthusiasm, and Colonel Jean's daughter wept when the story of the brigand's defeat was read. Harris, who had brought in the paper, could not conceal his joy. As for me, I could roam about the country now, and I was enchanted. On the morning of the 30th, I set out with my box and my walking stick. Dimitri had awakened me at four o'clock. He was going to take orders from an English family, who had been staying for some days at the Hotel des Etrangers. I walked down the Rue d'Hèrmes to the Square, Belle-Gréce, and passed through the Rue d'Eole. Passing before the Place des Canons, I saluted the small artillery of the kingdom, who slept under a shed, dreaming of the taking of Constantinople; and with four strides I was in the Rue de Patissia. The honey-flowers, which bordered either side, had begun to open their odorous blossoms. The sky, of a deep blue, whitened imperceptibly between Hymettus and Pentelicus. Before me, on the horizon, the summit of Parnassus rose like broken turrets; there was the end of my journey. I descended a path which traversed the grounds of the Countess Janthe Théotoki, occupied by the French Legation; I passed through the gardens belonging to Prince Michael Soutzo, and the School of Plato, which a President of the Areopagus had put up in a lottery some years before, and I entered the olive groves. The morning thrushes and their cousins-germain, the black-birds, flew from tree to tree, and sang joyously above my head. At the end of the wood, I traversed the immense green fields where Attic horses, short and squat, like those in the frieze at the Parthenon, consoled themselves for the dry fodder and the heating food of winter. Flocks of turtle-doves flew away at my approach, and the tufted larks mounted vertically in the sky like rockets. Once in a while, an indolent tortoise crawled across the path, dragging his house. I turned him over on his back and left him to attend to his own affairs. After two hours' walking, I entered a barren waste. Cultivation ceased; one saw upon the arid soil tufts of sickly grass, the Star of Bethlehem, or Daffodils. The sun lifted itself above the horizon, and I distinctly saw the fir-trees which grew on the side of Parnassus. The path which I had taken was not a sure guide, but I directed my steps to a group of scattered houses on the mountain side, and which was called the village of Castia.