The Perilous Seat

Synopsis

The background and details of this story have been carefully authenticated. The founding of the colony Inessa, however, is not an actual event. It is the union of a number of colony traditions. It is therefore correct in character and spirit. The tale was written at the MacDowell Colony at Peterborough, New Hampshire, and I am constantly mindful of the inspiration given to me by the beautiful and solitary surroundings in which I there worked.

How freely they talked, how happily gave themselves to laughter! The truce of God was upon them—that peace which Apollo imposed upon the passionate, warring Greeks at festival time. Delphi itself, forbidding amid its beetling cliffs, seemed to lose sternness at this festival. Out on the far-seen hillsides were the booths and bright-coloured tents of the visitors, the flash and glitter of things brought for sale. Even yet crowds of pilgrims were arriving, swarming up the steep winding roads as the bees were fabled of old to have swarmed thither to build the first temple in Delphi.

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