It was in the winter of the second year after his retirement that his melancholy increased to a pitch of almost intolerable heaviness.  That winter was an extraordinarily mild one, and even during the coldest month he strolled every evening after he had supped on the terrace walk which was before the portico.  He was strolling one night on the terrace pondering on the fate of mankind, and more especially on the life—­if there was such a thing—­beyond the grave.  He was not a superstitious man, but, saturated with tradition, he was a scrupulous observer of religious feast, custom, and ritual.  He had lately been disturbed by what he considered to be an ill-favoured omen.  One night—­it was twelve nights ago he reckoned—­the statues of Pan and Apollo, standing in his dining-room, which was at the end of the portico, had fallen to the ground without any apparent cause and had been shattered into fragments.  And it had seemed to him that the crash of this accident was immediately followed by a low and prolonged wail, which appeared to come from nowhere in particular and yet to fill the world; the noise of the moan had seemed to be quite close to him, and as it died away its echo had seemed to be miles and miles distant.  He thought it had been a hallucination, but that same night a still stranger thing happened.  After the accident, which had wakened the whole household, he had been unable to go to sleep again and he had gone from his sleeping chamber into an adjoining room, and, lighting a lamp, had taken down and read out of the “Iliad” of Homer.  After he had been reading for about half an hour he heard a voice calling him very distinctly by his name, but as soon as the sound had ceased he was not quite certain whether he had heard it or not.  At that moment one of his slaves, who had been born in the East, entered the room and asked him what he required, saying that he had heard his master calling loudly.  What these signs and portents signified he had no idea; perhaps, he mused, they mean my own death, which is of no consequence; or perhaps—­which may the Fates forfend—­some disaster to an absent friend or even to the State.  But so far—­and twelve days had passed since he had seen these strange manifestations—­he had received no news which confirmed his fears.

As he was thus musing he looked up at the sky, and he noticed the presence of a new and unfamiliar star, which he had never seen before.  He was a close observer of the heavens and learned in astronomy, and he felt quite certain that he had never seen this star before.  It was a star of peculiar radiance, large and white—­almost blue in its whiteness—­it shone in the East, and seemed to put all the other stars to shame by its overwhelming radiance and purity.  While he was thus gazing at the star it seemed to him as though a great darkness had come upon the world.  He heard a low muttering sound as of a distant earthquake, and this was quickly followed by the tramping of innumerable