Explore "The Death of the Gods" by Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was at Athens that Julian was about to take his vows and finally become a monk. One fresh spring morning, before the sun was up, Julian, issuing from the church where he had officiated at matins, followed for a few miles the banks of the Ilissus, in the shadow of plane-trees and wild vine. Not far from Athens he had lighted upon a solitary place, on the edge of a torrent which poured, like a scarf of silver, upon a sandy bottom. Thence he used often to gaze with wonder through the mists at the ruddy cliff of the Acropolis and the haughty lines of the Parthenon, half-illumined by the dawn.
On this particular morning Julian took off his shoes and walked along the reaches of the Ilissus barefoot. The air was full of the smell of flowers and of the rich-scented muscat grape -- that aroma in which there is a foretaste of wine, faint as the promise of first love, stealing into the soul of youth.