Despite their inherited and undisguised contempt for women, the sons of Hellas have sense and taste enough to know the value of an antique head on live young shoulders. It was now nearly two years since the mountaineers, meeting on the rocky pathways that scale the crags and precipices and fringe the torrent-beds, began to ask why Selaka delayed to choose a son-in-law. Each man regarded himself as the only proper choice. And down in the _cafés_ the townsfolk and fishermen wanted an answer to the same question. As a set-off against this suspense, there was the satisfactory knowledge that Selaka’s choice would find it no easy matter to bring home his bride. Indeed, a few young bloods, like Thomaso, the Mayor’s nephew, a quarrelsome fellow given to an undue consumption of raki, and Petrus Vitalis, whose father’s recent death left him the proud proprietor of three Caiques, openly spoke of abduction. Constantine Selaka was aware of all this, and was extremely anxious that Pericles should select a son-in-law from among his Athenian friends. Choice and preliminaries should, of course, be a matter of strict secrecy, as a preventive of warlike explosion, for he knew that Inarime’s suitors would prove as little amenable to reason and fair play as the graceless suitors of the unfortunate Penelope.
And if, by delay, his niece should be carried off by the desperate Thomaso or Petrus Vitalis, clack! Good-bye to the Athenian nephew-in-law.
“Idiots! how dare they aspire to her?” Pericles exclaimed, whenever such unsuitable proposal reached him.
“Well, Pericles, you must marry her to somebody, and you can’t expect a Phœbus Apollo, with the classics on the tip of his tongue. You would find him inconvenient enough,” the less exacting Constantine would explain.
“Leave Apollos, though I would have no objection if one were to be had. But do you seriously expect me to marry a girl like Inarime, as lovely as Artemis, as learned and wise as Athena, to a clown? A fellow who gets up at two of a summer morning to shoot inoffensive birds, and gets drunk upon abominable raki while prating in vile Romanic about politics and the Lord knows what, of which he understands nothing!”
“No, but there is Vitalis, the ‘member,’ who wants her.”