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Title: Hypatia
       or, New Foes with an Old Face

Author: Charles Kingsley

Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6308]
Posting Date: April 8, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HYPATIA ***




Produced by P. J. Riddick









HYPATIA

or

NEW FOES WITH AN OLD FACE


By Charles Kingsley





PREFACE


A picture of life in the fifth century must needs contain much which
will be painful to any reader, and which the young and innocent will
do well to leave altogether unread. It has to represent a very hideous,
though a very great, age; one of those critical and cardinal eras in
the history of the human race, in which virtues and vices manifest
themselves side by side--even, at times, in the same person--with the
most startling openness and power. One who writes of such an era labours
under a troublesome disadvantage. He dare not tell how evil people were;
he will not be believed if he tells how good they were. In the present
case that disadvantage is doubled; for while the sins of the Church,
however heinous, were still such as admit of being expressed in words,
the sins of the heathen world, against which she fought, were utterly
indescribable; and the Christian apologist is thus compelled, for the
sake of decency, to state the Church's case far more weakly than the
facts deserve.

Not, be it ever remembered, that the slightest suspicion of immorality
attaches either to the heroine of this book, or to the leading
philosophers of her school, for several centuries. Howsoever base and
profligate their disciples, or the Manichees, may have been, the great
Neo-Platonists were, as Manes himself was, persons of the most rigid and
ascetic virtue.

For a time had arrived, in which no teacher who did not put forth the
most lofty pretensions to righteousness could expect a hearing. That
Divine Word, who is 'The Light who lighteth every man which cometh into
the world,' had awakened in the heart of mankind a moral craving never
before felt in any strength, except by a few isolated philosophers or
prophets. The Spirit had been poured out on all flesh; and from one end
of the Empire to the other, from the slave in the mill to the emperor
on his throne, all hearts were either hungering and thirsting after
righteousness, or learning to do homage to those who did so. And He who
excited the craving, was also furnishing that which would satisfy
it; and was teaching mankind, by a long and painful education, to
distinguish the truth from its innumerable counterfeits, and to find,
for the first time in the world's life, a good news not merely for the
select few, but for all mankind without respect of rank or race.

For somewhat more than four hundred years, the Roman Empire and the
Christian Church, born into the world almost at the same moment, had
been developing themselves side by side as two great rival powers, in
deadly struggle for the possession of the human race. The weapons of
the Empire had been not merely an overwhelming physical force, and a
ruthless lust of aggressive conquest: but, even more powerful still, an
unequalled genius for organisation, and an uniform system of external
law and order. This was generally a real boon to conquered nations,
because it substituted a fixed and regular spoliation for the fortuitous
and arbitrary miseries of savage warfare: but it arrayed, meanwhile,
on the side of the Empire the wealthier citizens of every province, by
allowing them their share in the plunder of the labouring masses below
them. These, in the country districts, were utterly enslaved; while
in the cities, nominal freedom was of little use to masses kept from
starvation by the alms of the government, and drugged into brutish good
humour by a vast system of public spectacles, in which the realms of
nature and of art were ransacked to glut the wonder, lust, and ferocity
of a degraded populace.

Against this vast organisation the Church had been fighting for now four
hundred years, armed only with its own mighty and all-embracing message,
and with the manifestation of a spirit of purity and virtue, of love
and self-sacrifice, which had proved itself mightier to melt and weld
together the hearts of men, than all the force and terror, all the
mechanical organisation, all the sensual baits with which the Empire
had been contending against that Gospel in which it had recognised
instinctively and at first sight, its internecine foe.

And now the Church had conquered. The weak things of this world
had confounded the strong. In spite of the devilish cruelties of
persecutors; in spite of the contaminating atmosphere of sin which
surrounded her; in spite of having to form herself, not out of a race
of pure and separate creatures, but by a most literal 'new birth' out
of those very fallen masses who insulted and persecuted her; in spite of
having to endure within herself continual outbursts of the evil passions
in which her members had once indulged without cheek; in spite of
a thousand counterfeits which sprang up around her and within her,
claiming to be parts of her, and alluring men to themselves by that very
exclusiveness and party arrogance which disproved their claim; in spite
of all, she had conquered. The very emperors had arrayed themselves
on her side. Julian's last attempt to restore paganism by imperial
influence had only proved that the old faith had lost all hold upon the
hearts of the masses; at his death the great tide-wave of new opinion
rolled on unchecked, and the rulers of earth were fain to swim with the
stream; to accept, in words at least, the Church's laws as theirs; to
acknowledge a King of kings to whom even they owed homage and obedience;
and to call their own slaves their 'poorer brethren,' and often, too,
their 'spiritual superiors.'

But if the emperors had become Christian, the Empire had not. Here and
there an abuse was lopped off; or an edict was passed for the visitation
of prisons and for the welfare of prisoners; or a Theodosius was
recalled to justice and humanity for a while by the stern rebukes of
an Ambrose. But the Empire was still the same: still a great tyranny,
enslaving the masses, crushing national life, fattening itself and its
officials on a system of world-wide robbery; and while it was paramount,
there could be no hope for the human race. Nay, there were even those
among the Christians who saw, like Dante afterwards, in the 'fatal gift
of Constantine,' and the truce between the Church and the Empire, fresh
and more deadly danger. Was not the Empire trying to extend over the
Church itself that upas shadow with which it had withered up every
other form of human existence; to make her, too, its stipendiary
slave-official, to be pampered when obedient, and scourged whenever she
dare assert a free will of her own, a law beyond that of her tyrants; to
throw on her, by a refined hypocrisy, the care and support of the masses
on whose lifeblood it was feeding? So thought many then, and, as I
believe, not unwisely.

But if the social condition of the civilised world was anomalous at the
beginning of the fifth century, its spiritual state was still more so.
The universal fusion of races, languages, and customs, which had gone
on for four centuries under the Roman rule, had produced a corresponding
fusion of creeds, an universal fermentation of human thought and faith.
All honest belief in the old local superstitions of paganism had
been long dying out before the more palpable and material idolatry of
Emperor-worship; and the gods of the nations, unable to deliver those
who had trusted in them, became one by one the vassals of the 'Divus
Caesar,' neglected by the philosophic rich, and only worshipped by
the lower classes, where the old rites still pandered to their grosser
appetites, or subserved the wealth and importance of some particular
locality.

In the meanwhile, the minds of men, cut adrift from their ancient
moorings, wandered wildly over pathless seas of speculative doubt, and
especially in the more metaphysical and contemplative East, attempted to
solve for themselves the questions of man's relation to the unseen by
those thousand schisms, heresies, and theosophies (it is a disgrace to
the word philosophy to call them by it), on the records of which the
student now gazes bewildered, unable alike to count or to explain their
fantasies.

Yet even these, like every outburst of free human thought, had their use
and their fruit. They brought before the minds of churchmen a thousand
new questions which must be solved, unless the Church was to relinquish
for ever her claims as the great teacher and satisfier of the human
soul. To study these bubbles, as they formed and burst on every wave of
human life; to feel, too often by sad experience, as Augustine felt,
the charm of their allurements; to divide the truths at which they aimed
from the falsehood which they offered as its substitute; to exhibit the
Catholic Church as possessing, in the great facts which she proclaimed,
full satisfaction, even for the most subtle metaphysical cravings of a
diseased age;--that was the work of the time; and men were sent to do
it, and aided in their labour by the very causes which had produced the
intellectual revolution. The general intermixture of ideas, creeds,
and races, even the mere physical facilities for intercourse between
different parts of the Empire, helped to give the great Christian
fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries a breadth of observation,
a depth of thought, a large-hearted and large-minded patience and
tolerance, such as, we may say boldly, the Church has since beheld but
rarely, and the world never; at least, if we are to judge those great
men by what they had, and not by what they had not, and to believe, as
we are bound, that had they lived now, and not then, they would have
towered as far above the heads of this generation as they did above the
heads of their own. And thus an age, which, to the shallow insight of
a sneerer like Gibbon, seems only a rotting and aimless chaos of
sensuality and anarchy, fanaticism and hypocrisy, produced a Clement and
an Athanase, a Chrysostom and an Augustine; absorbed into the sphere of
Christianity all which was most valuable in the philosophies of Greece
and Egypt, and in the social organisation of Rome, as an heirloom for
nations yet unborn; and laid in foreign lands, by unconscious agents,
the foundations of all European thought and Ethics.

But the health of a Church depends, not merely on the creed which
it professes, not even on the wisdom and holiness of a few great
ecclesiastics, but on the faith and virtue of its individual members.
The _mens sana_ must have a _corpus sanum_ to inhabit. And even for the
Western Church, the lofty future which was in store for it would have
been impossible, without some infusion of new and healthier blood into
the veins of a world drained and tainted by the influence of Rome.

And the new blood, at the era of this story, was at hand. The great tide
of those Gothic nations, of which the Norwegian and the German are the
purest remaining types, though every nation of Europe, from Gibraltar to
St. Petersburg, owes to them the most precious elements of strength,
was sweeping onward, wave over wave, in a steady south-western current,
across the whole Roman territory, and only stopping and recoiling when
it reached the shores of the Mediterranean. Those wild tribes were
bringing with them into the magic circle of the Western Church's
influence the very materials which she required for the building up of
a future Christendom, and which she could find as little in the Western
Empire as in the Eastern; comparative purity of morals; sacred respect
for woman, for family life, law, equal justice, individual freedom, and,
above all, for honesty in word and deed; bodies untainted by hereditary
effeminacy, hearts earnest though genial, and blessed with a strange
willingness to learn, even from those whom they despised; a brain equal
to that of the Roman in practical power, and not too far behind that of
the Eastern in imaginative and speculative acuteness.

And their strength was felt at once. Their vanguard, confined with
difficulty for three centuries beyond the Eastern Alps, at the expense
of sanguinary wars, had been adopted wherever it was practicable, into
the service of the Empire; and the heart's core of the Roman legion
was composed of Gothic officers and soldiers. But now the main body had
arrived. Tribe after tribe was crowding down to the Alps, and trampling
upon each other on the frontiers of the Empire. The Huns, singly their
inferiors, pressed them from behind with the irresistible weight of
numbers; Italy, with her rich cities and fertile lowlands, beckoned them
on to plunder; as auxiliaries, they had learned their own strength and
Roman weakness; a _casus belli_ was soon found. How iniquitous was the
conduct of the sons of Theodosius, in refusing the usual bounty, by
which the Goths were bribed not to attack the Empire!--The whole pent-up
deluge burst over the plains of Italy, and the Western Empire became
from that day forth a dying idiot, while the new invaders divided Europe
among themselves. The fifteen years before the time of this tale had
decided the fate of Greece; the last four that of Rome itself. The
countless treasures which five centuries of rapine had accumulated
round the Capitol had become the prey of men clothed in sheepskins and
horse-hide; and the sister of an emperor had found her beauty, virtue,
and pride of race worthily matched by those of the hard-handed Northern
hero who led her away from Italy as his captive and his bride, to found
new kingdoms in South France and Spain, and to drive the newly-arrived
Vandals across the Straits of Gibraltar into the then blooming
coast-land of Northern Africa. Everywhere the mangled limbs of the Old
World were seething in the Medea's caldron, to come forth whole, and
young, and strong. The Longbeards, noblest of their race, had found a
temporary resting-place upon the Austrian frontier, after long southward
wanderings from the Swedish mountains, soon to be dispossessed again by
the advancing Huns, and, crossing the Alps, to give their name for ever
to the plains of Lombardy. A few more tumultuous years, and the Franks
would find themselves lords of the Lower Rhineland; and before the hairs
of Hypatia's scholars had grown gray, the mythic Hengist and Horsa would
have landed on the shores of Kent, and an English nation have begun its
world-wide life.

But some great Providence forbade to our race, triumphant in every other
quarter, a footing beyond the Mediterranean, or even in Constantinople,
which to this day preserves in Europe the faith and manners of Asia. The
Eastern World seemed barred, by some stern doom, from the only influence
which could have regenerated it. Every attempt of the Gothic races to
establish themselves beyond the sea, whether in the form of an organised
kingdom, as the Vandals attempted in Africa; or of a mere band of
brigands, as did the Goths in Asia Minor, under Gainas; or of a
praetorian guard, as did the Varangens of the middle age; or as
religious invaders, as did the Crusaders, ended only in the corruption
and disappearance of the colonists. That extraordinary reform in
morals, which, according to Salvian and his contemporaries, the Vandal
conquerors worked in North Africa, availed them nothing; they lost more
than they gave. Climate, bad example, and the luxury of power degraded
them in one century into a race of helpless and debauched slave-holders,
doomed to utter extermination before the semi-Gothic armies of
Belisarius; and with them vanished the last chance that the Gothic
races would exercise on the Eastern World the same stern yet wholesome
discipline under which the Western had been restored to life.

The Egyptian and Syrian Churches, therefore, were destined to labour not
for themselves, but for us. The signs of disease and decrepitude
were already but too manifest in them. That very peculiar turn of the
Graeco-Eastern mind, which made them the great thinkers of the then
world, had the effect of drawing them away from practice to speculation;
and the races of Egypt and Syria were effeminate, over-civilised,
exhausted by centuries during which no infusion of fresh blood had
come to renew the stock. Morbid, self-conscious, physically indolent,
incapable then, as now, of personal or political freedom, they afforded
material out of which fanatics might easily be made, but not citizens of
the kingdom of God. The very ideas of family and national life-those two
divine roots of the Church, severed from which she is certain to wither
away into that most godless and most cruel of spectres, a religious
world-had perished in the East from the evil influence of the universal
practice of slaveholding, as well as from the degradation of that Jewish
nation whichhad been for ages the great witness for those ideas; and
all classes, like their forefather Adam--like, indeed, 'the old Adam'
in every man and in every age--were shifting the blame of sin from their
own consciences to human relationships and duties--and therein, to the
God who had appointed them; and saying as of old, '_The woman whom thou
gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat._' The
passionate Eastern character, like all weak ones, found total abstinence
easier than temperance, religious thought more pleasant than godly
action; and a monastic world grew up all over the East, of such vastness
that in Egypt it was said to rival in numbers the lay population,
producing, with an enormous decrease in the actual amount of moral
evil, an equally great enervation and decrease of the population. Such
a people could offer no resistance to the steadily-increasing tyranny of
the Eastern Empire. In vain did such men as Chrysostom and Basil oppose
their personal influence to the hideous intrigues and villainies of the
Byzantine court; the ever-downward career of Eastern Christianity went
on unchecked for two more miserable centuries, side by side with the
upward development of the Western Church; and, while the successors
of the great Saint Gregory were converting and civilising a new-born
Europe, the Churches of the East were vanishing before Mohammedan
invaders, strong by living trust in that living God, whom the
Christians, while they hated and persecuted each other for arguments
about Him, were denying and blaspheming in every action of their lives.

But at the period whereof this story treats, the Graeco-Eastern mind
was still in the middle of its great work. That wonderful metaphysic
subtlety, which, in phrases and definitions too often unmeaning to
our grosser intellect, saw the symbols of the most important spiritual
realities, and felt that on the distinction between homoousios and
homoiousios might hang the solution of the whole problem of humanity,
was set to battle in Alexandria, the ancient stronghold of Greek
philosophy, with the effete remains of the very scientific thought to
which it owed its extraordinary culture. Monastic isolation from family
and national duties especially fitted the fathers of that period for the
task, by giving them leisure, if nothing else, to face questions with
a lifelong earnestness impossible to the more social and practical
Northern mind. Our duty is, instead of sneering at them as pedantic
dreamers, to thank Heaven that men were found, just at the time when
they were wanted, to do for us what we could never have done for
ourselves; to leave to us, as a precious heirloom, bought most truly
with the lifeblood of their race, a metaphysic at once Christian and
scientific, every attempt to improve on which has hitherto been found a
failure; and to battle victoriously with that strange brood of theoretic
monsters begotten by effete Greek philosophy upon Egyptian symbolism,
Chaldee astrology, Parsee dualism, Brahminic spiritualism-graceful and
gorgeous phantoms, whereof somewhat more will be said in the coming
chapters.

I have, in my sketch of Hypatia and her fate, closely followed authentic
history, especially Socrates' account of the closing scene, as given
in Book vii. Para 15, of his _Ecclesiastical History_. I am inclined,
however, for various historical reasons, to date her death two years
earlier than he does. The tradition that she was the wife of Isidore,
the philosopher, I reject with Gibbon, as a palpable anachronism of at
least fifty years (Isidore's master, Proclus, not having been born till
the year before Hypatia's death), contradicted, moreover, by the very
author of it, Photius, who says distinctly, after comparing Hypatia and
Isidore, that Isidore married a certain 'Domna.' No hint, moreover, of
her having been married appears in any contemporary authors; and the
name of Isidore nowhere occurs among those of the many mutual friends
to whom Synesius sends messages in his letters to Hypatia, in which,
if anywhere, we should find mention of a husband, had one existed. To
Synesius's most charming letters, as well as to those of Isidore, the
good Abbot of Pelusium, I beg leave to refer those readers who wish for
further information about the private life of the fifth century.

I cannot hope that these pages will be altogether free from anachronisms
and errors. I can only say that I have laboured honestly and
industriously to discover the truth, even in its minutest details,
and to sketch the age, its manners and its literature, as I found
them-altogether artificial, slipshod, effete, resembling far more the
times of Louis Quinze than those of Sophocles and Plato. And so I
send forth this little sketch, ready to give my hearty thanks to any
reviewer, who, by exposing my mistakes, shall teach me and the public
somewhat more about the last struggle between the Young Church and the
Old World.



CHAPTER I: THE LAURA


In the four hundred and thirteenth year of the Christian Era, some three
hundred miles above Alexandria, the young monk Philammon was sitting on
the edge of a low range of inland cliffs, crested with drifting sand.
Behind him the desert sand-waste stretched, lifeless, interminable,
reflecting its lurid glare on the horizon of the cloudless vault of
blue. At his feet the sand dripped and trickled, in yellow rivulets,
from crack to crack and ledge to ledge, or whirled past him in tiny jets
of yellow smoke, before the fitful summer airs. Here and there, upon the
face of the cliffs which walled in the opposite side of the narrow
glen below, were cavernous tombs, huge old quarries, with obelisks
and half-cut pillars, standing as the workmen had left them centuries
before; the sand was slipping down and piling up around them, their
heads were frosted with the arid snow; everywhere was silence,
desolation-the grave of a dead nation, in a dying land. And there he
sat musing above it all, full of life and youth and health and beauty--a
young Apollo of the desert. His only clothing was a ragged sheep-skin,
bound with a leathern girdle. His long black locks, unshorn from
childhood, waved and glistened in the sun; a rich dark down on cheek and
chin showed the spring of healthful manhood; his hard hands and sinewy
sunburnt limbs told of labour and endurance; his flashing eyes and
beetling brow, of daring, fancy, passion, thought, which had no sphere
of action in such a place. What did his glorious young humanity alone
among the tombs?

So perhaps he, too, thought, as he passed his hand across his brow, as
if to sweep away some gathering dream, and sighing, rose and wandered
along the cliffs, peering downward at every point and cranny, in search
of fuel for the monastery from whence he came.

Simple as was the material which he sought, consisting chiefly of the
low arid desert shrubs, with now and then a fragment of wood from some
deserted quarry or ruin, it was becoming scarcer and scarcer round Abbot
Pambo's Laura at Scetis; and long before Philammon had collected his
daily quantity, he had strayed farther from his home than he had ever
been before.

Suddenly, at a turn of the glen, he came upon a sight new to him....a
temple carved in the sandstone cliff; and in front a smooth platform,
strewn with beams and mouldering tools, and here and there a skull
bleaching among the sand, perhaps of some workman slaughtered at his
labour in one of the thousand wars of old. The abbot, his spiritual
father--indeed, the only father whom he knew, for his earliest
recollections were of the Laura and the old man's cell-had strictly
forbidden him to enter, even to approach any of those relics of ancient
idolatry: but a broad terrace-road led down to the platform from the
table-land above; the plentiful supply of fuel was too tempting to be
passed by.... He would go down, gather a few sticks, and then return, to
tell the abbot of the treasure which he had found, and consult him as to
the propriety of revisiting it.

So down he went, hardly daring to raise his eyes to the alluring
iniquities of the painted imagery which, gaudy in crimson and blue,
still blazed out upon the desolate solitude, uninjured by that rainless
air. But he was young, and youth is curious; and the devil, at least in
the fifth century, busy with young brains. Now Philammon believed most
utterly in the devil, and night and day devoutly prayed to be delivered
from him; so he crossed himself, and ejaculated, honestly enough,
'Lord, turn away mine eyes, lest they behold vanity!'.... and looked
nevertheless....

And who could have helped looking at those four colossal kings, who sat
there grim and motionless, their huge hands laid upon their knees in
everlasting self-assured repose, seeming to bear up the mountain on
their stately heads? A sense of awe, weakness, all but fear, came over
him. He dare not stoop to take up the wood at his feet, their great
stern eyes watched him so steadily.

Round their knees and round their thrones were mystic characters
engraved, symbol after symbol, line below line--the ancient wisdom of
the Egyptians, wherein Moses the man of God was learned of old--why
should not he know it too? What awful secrets might not be hidden there
about the great world, past, present, and future, of which he knew only
so small a speck? Those kings who sat there, they had known it all;
their sharp lips seem parting, ready to speak to him.... Oh that they
would speak for once!.... and yet that grim sneering smile, that seemed
to look down on him from the heights of their power and wisdom, with
calm contempt.... him, the poor youth, picking up the leaving and rags
of their past majesty .... He dared look at them no more.

So he looked past them into the temple halls; into a lustrous abyss of
cool green shade, deepening on and inward, pillar after pillar, vista
after vista, into deepest night. And dimly through the gloom he could
descry, on every wall and column, gorgeous arabesques, long lines of
pictured story; triumphs and labours; rows of captives in foreign and
fantastic dresses, leading strange animals, bearing the tributes of
unknown lands; rows of ladies at feasts, their heads crowned with
garlands, the fragrant lotus-flower in every hand, while slaves brought
wine and perfumes, and children sat upon their knees, and husbands by
their side; and dancing girls, in transparent robes and golden girdles,
tossed their tawny limbs wildly among the throng.... What was the
meaning of it all? Why had it all been? Why had it gone on thus, the
great world, century after century, millennium after millennium, eating
and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and knowing nothing
better.... how could they know anything better? Their forefathers had
lost the light ages and ages before they were born.... And Christ had
not come for ages and ages after they were dead.... How could they
know?.... And yet they were all in hell.... every one of them. Every one
of these ladies who sat there, with her bushy locks, and garlands, and
jewelled collars, and lotus-flowers, and gauzy dress, displaying all her
slender limbs-who, perhaps, when she was alive, smiled so sweetly, and
went so gaily, and had children, and friends, and never once thought of
what was going to happen to her--what must happen to her.... She was in
hell.... Burning for ever, and ever, and ever, there below his feet. He
stared down on the rocky floors. If he could but see through them....
and the eye of faith could see through them.... he should behold her
writhing and twisting among the flickering flame, scorched, glowing....
in everlasting agony, such as the thought of enduring for a moment made
him shudder. He had burnt his hands once, when a palm-leaf but caught
fire.... He recollected what that was like.... She was enduring ten
thousand times more than that for ever. He should hear her shrieking
in vain for a drop of water to cool her tongue.... He had never heard a
human being shriek but once.... a boy bathing on the opposite Nile bank,
whom a crocodile had dragged down.... and that scream, faint and distant
as it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable in his ears
for days.... and to think of all which echoed through those vaults of
fire-for ever! Was the thought bearable!--was it possible! Millions
upon millions burning forever for Adam's fall .... Could God be just in
that?....

It was the temptation of a fiend! He had entered the unhallowed
precincts, where devils still lingered about their ancient shrines; he
had let his eyes devour the abominations of the heathen, and given place
to the devil. He would flee home to confess it all to his father. He
would punish him as he deserved, pray for him, forgive him. And yet
could he tell him all? Could he, dare he confess to him the whole
truth--the insatiable craving to know the mysteries of learning--to see
the great roaring world of men, which had been growing up in him slowly,
month after month, till now it had assumed this fearful shape? He
could stay no longer in the desert. This world which sent all souls to
hell--was it as bad as monks declared it was? It must be, else how could
such be the fruit of it? But it was too awful a thought to be taken on
trust. No; he must go and see.

Filled with such fearful questionings, half-inarticulate and vague, like
the thoughts of a child, the untutored youth went wandering on, till
he reached the edge of the cliff below which lay his home. It lay
pleasantly enough, that lonely Laura, or lane of rude Cyclopean cells,
under the perpetual shadow of the southern wall of crags, amid its grove
of ancient date-trees. A branching cavern in the cliff supplied the
purposes of a chapel, a storehouse, and a hospital; while on the sunny
slope across the glen lay the common gardens of the brotherhood, green
with millet, maize, and beans, among which a tiny streamlet, husbanded
and guided with the most thrifty care, wandered down from the cliff
foot, and spread perpetual verdure over the little plot which voluntary
and fraternal labour had painfully redeemed from the inroads of the
all-devouring sand. For that garden, like everything else in the Laura,
except each brother's seven feet of stone sleeping-hut, was the common
property, and therefore the common care and joy of all. For the common
good, as well as for his own, each man had toiled up the glen with his
palm-leaf basket of black mud from the river Nile, over whose broad
sheet of silver the glen's mouth yawned abrupt. For the common good,
each man had swept the ledges clear of sand, and sown in the scanty
artificial soil, the harvest of which all were to share alike. To
buy clothes, books, and chapel furniture for the common necessities,
education, and worship, each man sat, day after day, week after week,
his mind full of high and heavenly thoughts, weaving the leaves of their
little palm-copse into baskets, which an aged monk exchanged for goods
with the more prosperous and frequented monasteries of the opposite
bank. Thither Philammon rowed the old man over, week by week, in a light
canoe of papyrus, and fished, as he sat waiting for him, for the common
meal. A simple, happy, gentle life was that of the Laura, all portioned
out by rules and methods, which were held hardly less sacred than those
of the Scriptures, on which they were supposed (and not so wrongly
either) to have been framed. Each man had food and raiment, shelter on
earth, friends and counsellors, living trust in the continual care of
Almighty God; and, blazing before his eyes, by day and night, the hope
of everlasting glory beyond all poets' dreams.... And what more would
man have had in those days? Thither they had fled out of cities,
compared with which Paris is earnest and Gomorrha chaste,--out of a
rotten, infernal, dying world of tyrants and slaves, hypocrites and
wantons,--to ponder undisturbed on duty and on judgment, on death and
eternity, heaven and hell; to find a common creed, a common interest,
a common hope, common duties, pleasures, and sorrows.... True, they had
many of them fled from the post where God had placed them, when they
fled from man into the Thebaid waste.... What sort of post and what
sort of an age they were, from which those old monks fled, we shall see,
perhaps, before this tale is told out.

'Thou art late, son,' said the abbot, steadfastly working away at his
palm-basket, as Philammon approached.

'Fuel is scarce, and I was forced to go far.'

'A monk should not answer till he is questioned. I did not ask the
reason. Where didst thou find that wood?'

'Before the temple, far up the glen.'

'The temple! What didst thou see there?'

No answer. Pambo looked up with his keen black eye.

'Thou hast entered it, and lusted after its abominations.'

'I--I did not enter; but I looked--'

'And what didst thou see? Women?'

Philammon was silent.

'Have I not bidden you never to look on the face of women? Are they not
the firstfruits of the devil, the authors of all evil, the subtlest of
all Satan's snares? Are they not accursed for ever, for the deceit of
their first mother, by whom sin entered into the world? A woman first
opened the gates of hell; and, until this day, they are the portresses
thereof. Unhappy boy! What hast thou done?'

'They were but painted on the walls.'

'Ah!' said the abbot, as if suddenly relieved from a heavy burden. 'But
how knewest thou them to be women, when thou hast never yet, unless thou
liest--which I believe not of thee--seen the face of a daughter of Eve?'

'Perhaps--perhaps,' said Philammon, as if suddenly relieved by a new
suggestion--'perhaps they were only devils. They must have been, I
think, for they were so very beautiful.'

'Ah! how knowest thou that devils are beautiful?'

'I was launching the boat, a week ago, with Father Aufugus; and on the
bank,....not very near,....there were two creatures....with long hair,
and striped all over the lower half of their bodies with black, and
red, and yellow....and they were gathering flowers on the shore. Father
Aufugus turned away; but I.... I could not help thinking them the most
beautiful things that I had ever seen....so I asked him why he turned
away; and he said that those were the same sort of devils which tempted
the blessed St. Anthony. Then I recollected having heard it read aloud,
how Satan tempted Anthony in the shape of a beautiful woman.... And
so.... and so.... those figures on the wall were very like.... and I
thought they might be....'

And the poor boy, who considered that he was making confession of a
deadly and shameful sin, blushed scarlet, and stammered, and at last
stopped.

'And thou thoughtest them beautiful? Oh utter corruption of the
flesh!--oh subtilty of Satan! The Lord forgive thee, as I do, my poor
child; henceforth thou goest not beyond the garden walls.'

'Not beyond the walls! Impossible! I cannot! If thou wert not my father,
I would say, I will not!--I must have liberty!--I must see for myself--I
must judge for myself, what this world is of which you all talk so
bitterly. I long for no pomps and vanities. I will promise you this
moment, if you will, never to re-enter a heathen temple--to hide my
face in the dust whenever I approach a woman. But I must--I must see
the world; I must see the great mother-church in Alexandria, and the
patriarch, and his clergy. If they can serve God in the city, why not
I? I could do more for God there than here .... Not that I despise this
work--not that I am ungrateful to you--oh, never, never that!--but I
pant for the battle. Let me go! I am not discontented with you, but with
myself. I know that obedience is noble; but danger is nobler still.
If you have seen the world, why should not I? If you have fled from it
because you found it too evil to live in, why should not I, and return
to you here of my own will, never to leave you? And yet Cyril and his
clergy have not fled from it....'

Desperately and breathlessly did Philammon drive this speech out of his
inmost heart; and then waited, expecting the good abbot to strike him
on the spot. If he had, the young man would have submitted patiently;
so would any man, however venerable, in that monastery. Why not? Duly,
after long companionship, thought, and prayer, they had elected Pambo
for their abbot--Abba--father--the wisest, eldest-hearted and headed of
them--if he was that, it was time that he should be obeyed. And obeyed
he was, with a loyal, reasonable love, and yet with an implicit,
soldier-like obedience, which many a king and conqueror might envy. Were
they cowards and slaves? The Roman legionaries should be good judges on
that point. They used to say that no armed barbarian, Goth or Vandal,
Moor or Spaniard, was so terrible as the unarmed monk of the Thebaid.

Twice the old man lifted his staff to strike; twice he laid it down
again; and then, slowly rising, left Philammon kneeling there, and moved
away deliberately, and with eyes fixed on the ground, to the house of
the brother Aufugus.

Every one in the Laura honoured Aufugus. There was a mystery about him
which heightened the charm of his surpassing sanctity, his childlike
sweetness and humility. It was whispered--when the monks seldom and
cautiously did whisper together in their lonely walks--that he had been
once a great man; that he had come from a great city--perhaps from Rome
itself. And the simple monks were proud to think that they had among
them a man who had seen Rome. At least, Abbot Pambo respected him. He
was never beaten; never even reproved--perhaps he never required it; but
still it was the meed of all; and was not the abbot a little partial?
Yet, certainly, when Theophilus sent up a messenger from Alexandria,
rousing every Laura with the news of the sack of Rome by Alaric, did
not Pambo take him first to the cell of Aufugus, and sit with him there
three whole hours in secret consultation, before he told the awful story
to the rest of the brotherhood? And did not Aufugus himself give letters
to the messenger, written with his own hand, containing, as was said,
deep secrets of worldly policy, known only to himself? So, when the
little lane of holy men, each peering stealthily over his plaiting
work from the doorway of his sandstone cell, saw the abbot, after his
unwonted passion, leave the culprit kneeling, and take his way toward
the sage's dwelling, they judged that something strange and delicate had
befallen the common weal, and each wished, without envy, that he were as
wise as the man whose counsel was to solve the difficulty.

For an hour or more the abbot remained there, talking earnestly and
low; and then a solemn sound as of the two old men praying with sobs and
tears; and every brother bowed his head, and whispered a hope that He
whom they served might guide them for the good of the Laura, and of His
Church, and of the great heathen world beyond; and still Philammon knelt
motionless, awaiting his sentence; his heart filled-who can tell how?
'The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not
with its joy.' So thought he as he knelt; and so think I, too, knowing
that in the pettiest character there are unfathomable depths, which the
poet, all-seeing though he may pretend to be, can never analyse, but
must only dimly guess at, and still more dimly sketch them by the
actions which they beget.

At last Pambo returned, deliberate, still, and slow, as he had gone, and
seating himself within his cell, spoke--

'And the youngest said, Father, give me the portion of goods that
falleth to my share.... And he took his journey into a far country, and
there wasted his substance with riotous living. Thou shalt go, my son.
But first come after me, and speak with Aufugus.'

Philammon, like everyone else, loved Aufugus; and when the abbot
retired and left the two alone together, he felt no dread or shame about
unburdening his whole heart to him. Long and passionately he spoke, in
answer to the gentle questions of the old man, who, without the rigidity
or pedantic solemnity of the monk, interrupted the youth, and let
himself be interrupted in return, gracefully, genially, almost
playfully. And yet there was a melancholy about his tone as he answered
to the youth's appeal--

'Tertullian, Origen, Clement, Cyprian--all these moved in the world;
all these and many more beside, whose names we honour, whose prayers
we invoke, were learned in the wisdom of the heathen, and fought and
laboured, unspotted, in the world; and why not I? Cyril the patriarch
himself, was he not called from the caves of Nitria to sit on the throne
of Alexandria?'

Slowly the old man lifted his band, and putting back the thick locks of
the kneeling youth, gazed, with soft pitying eyes, long and earnestly
into his face.

'And thou wouldst see the world, poor fool? And thou wouldst see the
world?'

'I would convert the world!'

'Thou must know it first. And shall I tell thee what that world is like,
which seems to thee so easy to convert? Here I sit, the poor unknown old
monk, until I die, fasting and praying, if perhaps God will have mercy
on my soul: but little thou knowest how I have seen it. Little thou
knowest, or thou wouldst be well content to rest here till the end. I
was Arsenius.... Ah! vain old man that I am! Thou hast never heard
that name, at which once queens would whisper and grow pale. Vanitas
vanitatum! omnia vanitas! And yet he, at whose frown half the world
trembles, has trembled himself at mine. I was the tutor of Arcadius.'

'The Emperor of Byzantium?'

'Even so, my son, even so. There I saw the world which thou wouldst see.
And what saw I? Even what thou wilt see. Eunuchs the tyrants of their
own sovereigns. Bishops kissing the feet of parricides and harlots.
Saints tearing saints in pieces for a word, while sinners cheer them on
to the unnatural fight. Liars thanked for lying, hypocrites taking pride
in their hypocrisy. The many sold and butchered for the malice, the
caprice, the vanity of the few. The plunderers of the poor plundered in
their turn by worse devourers than themselves. Every attempt at reform
the parent of worse scandals; every mercy begetting fresh cruelties;
every persecutor silenced, only to enable others to persecute him in
their turn: every devil who is exorcised, returning with seven others
worsethan himself; falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusion
seven times confounded, Satan casting out Satan everywhere--from the
emperor who wantons on his throne, to the slave who blasphemes beneath
his fetters.'

'If Satan cast out Satan, his kingdom shall not stand.'

'In the world to come. But in this world it shall stand and conquer,
even worse and worse, until the end. These are the last days spoken of
by the prophets,--the beginning of woes such as never have been on
the earth before--"On earth distress of nations with perplexity, men's
hearts failing them for fear, and for the dread of those things which
are coming on the earth." I have seen it long. Year after year I have
watched them coming nearer and ever nearer in their course like the
whirling sand-storms of the desert, which sweep past the caravan, and
past again, and yet overwhelm it after all--that black flood of the
northern barbarians. I foretold it; I prayed against it; but, like
Cassandra's of old, my prophecy and my prayers were alike unheard.
My pupil spurned my warnings. The lusts of youth, the intrigues of
courtiers, were stronger than the warning voice of God; then I ceased
to hope; I ceased to pray for the glorious city, for I knew that her
sentence was gone forth; I saw her in the spirit, even as St. John saw
her in the Revelations; her, and her sins, and her ruin. And I fled
secretly at night, and buried myself here in the desert, to await the
end of the world. Night and day I pray the Lord to accomplish His elect,
and to hasten His kingdom. Morning by morning I look up trembling, and
yet in hope, for the sign of the Son of man in heaven, when the sun
shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, and the stars
shall fall from heaven, and the skies pass away like a scroll, and the
fountains of the nether fire burst up around our feet, and the end of
all shall come. And thou wouldst go into the world from which I fled?'

'If the harvest be at hand, the Lord needs labourers. If the times be
awful, I should be doing awful things in them. Send me, and let that
day find me, where I long to be, in the forefront of the battle of the
Lord.'

'The Lord's voice be obeyed! Thou shalt go. Here are letters to Cyril
the patriarch. He will love thee for my sake: and for thine own sake,
too, I trust. Thou goest of our free will as well as thine own. The
abbot and I have watched thee long, knowing that the Lord bad need of
such as thee elsewhere. We did but prove thee, to see by thy readiness
to obey, whether thou wert fit to rule. Go, and God be with thee. Covet
no man's gold or silver. Neither eat flesh nor drink wine, but live as
thou hast lived--a Nazarite of the Lord. Fear not the face of man; but
look not on the face of woman. In an evil hour came they into the world,
the mothers of all mischiefs which I have seen under the sun. Come; the
abbot waits for us at the gate.'

With tears of surprise, joy, sorrow, almost of dread, Philammon hung
back.

'Nay--come. Why shouldst thou break thy brethren's hearts and ours by
many leave-takings! Bring from the storehouse a week's provision of
dried dates and millet. The papyrus boat lies at the ferry; thou shalt
descend in it. The Lord will replace it for us when we need it. Speak
with no man on the river except the monks of God. When thou hast
gone five days' journey downward, ask for the mouth of the canal
of Alexandria. Once in the city, any monk will guide thee to the
archbishop. Send us news of thy welfare by some holy mouth. Come.'

Silently they paced together down the glen to the lonely beach of the
great stream. Pambo was there already, his white hair glittering in the
rising moon, as with slow and feeble arms he launched the light canoe.
Philammon flung himself at the old men's feet, and besought, with many
tears, their forgiveness and their blessing.'We have nothing to forgive.
Follow thou thine inward call. If it be of the flesh, it will avenge
itself; if it be of the Spirit, who are we that we should fight against
God? Farewell.' A few minutes more, and the youth and his canoe were
lessening down the rapid stream in the golden summer twilight. Again a
minute, and the swift southern night had fallen, and all was dark but
the cold glare of the moon on the river, and on the rock-faces, and on
the two old men, as they knelt upon the beach, and with their heads upon
each other's shoulders, like two children, sobbed and prayed together
for the lost darling of their age.



CHAPTER II: THE DYING WORLD


In the upper story of a house in the Museum Street of Alexandria, built
and fitted up on the old Athenian model, was a small room. It had been
chosen by its occupant, not merely on account of its quiet; for though
it was tolerably out of hearing of the female slaves who worked, and
chattered, and quarrelled under the cloisters of the women's court on
the south side, yet it was exposed to the rattle of carriages and the
voices of passengers in the fashionable street below, and to strange
bursts of roaring, squealing, trumpeting from the Menagerie, a short way
off, on the opposite side of the street. The attraction of the situation
lay, perhaps, in the view which it commanded over the wall of the Museum
gardens, of flower-beds, shrubberies, fountains, statues, walks, and
alcoves, which had echoed for nearly seven hundred years to the wisdom
of the Alexandrian sages and poets. School after school, they had all
walked, and taught, and sung there, beneath the spreading planes and
chestnuts, figs and palm-trees. The place seemed fragrant with all
the riches of Greek thought and song, since the days when Ptolemy
Philadelphus walked there with Euclid and Theocritus, Callimachus and
Lycophron.

On the left of the garden stretched the lofty eastern front of
the Museum itself, with its picture galleries, halls of statuary,
dining-halls, and lecture-rooms; one huge wing containing that famous
library, founded by the father of Philadelphus, which hold in the time
of Seneca, even after the destruction of a great part of it in Caesar's
siege, four hundred thousand manuscripts. There it towered up, the
wonder of the world, its white roof bright against the rainless blue;
and beyond it, among the ridges and pediments of noble buildings, a
broad glimpse of the bright blue sea.

The room was fitted up in the purest Greek style, not without an
affectation of archaism, in the severe forms and subdued half-tints of
the frescoes which ornamented the walls with scenes from the old myths
of Athene. Yet the general effect, even under the blazing sun which
poured in through the mosquito nets of the courtyard windows, was one
of exquisite coolness, and cleanliness, and repose. The room had neither
carpet nor fireplace; and the only movables in it were a sofa-bed, a
table, and an arm-chair, all of such delicate and graceful forms as may
be seen on ancient vases of a far earlier period than that whereof we
write. But, most probably, had any of us entered that room that morning,
we should not have been able to spare a look either for the furniture,
or the general effect, or the Museum gardens, or the sparkling
Mediterranean beyond; but we should have agreed that the room was
quite rich enough for human eyes, for the sake of one treasure which it
possessed, and, beside which, nothing was worth a moment's glance. For
in the light arm-chair, reading a manuscript which lay on the table, sat
a woman, of some five-and-twenty years, evidently the tutelary goddess
of that little shrine, dressed in perfect keeping with the archaism of
the chamber, in simple old snow-white Ionic robe, falling to the feet
and reaching to the throat, and of that peculiarly severe and graceful
fashion in which the upper part of the dress falls downward again from
the neck to the waist in a sort of cape, entirely hiding the outline of
the bust, while it leaves the arms and the point of the shoulders bare.
Her dress was entirely without ornament, except the two narrow purple
stripes down the front, which marked her rank as a Roman citizen, the
gold embroidered shoes upon her feet, and the gold net, which looped
back, from her forehead to her neck, hair the colour and gloss of which
were hardly distinguishable from that of the metal itself, such as
Athene herself might heaven vied for tint, and mass, and ripple. Her
features, arms, and hands were of the severest and grandest type of old
Greek beauty, at once showing everywhere the high development of the
bones, and covering them with that firm, round, ripe outline, and waxy
morbidezza of skin, which the old Greeks owed to their continual use
not only of the bath and muscular exercise, but also of daily unguents.
There might have seemed to us too much sadness in that clear gray eye;
too much self-conscious restraint in those sharp curved lips; too much
affectation in the studied severity of her posture as she read, copied,
as it seemed, from some old vase or bas-relief. But the glorious grace
and beauty of every line of face and figure would have excused, even
hidden those defects, and we should have only recognised the marked
resemblance to the ideal portraits of Athene which adorned every panel
of the walls.

She has lifted her eyes off her manuscript; she is looking out with
kindling countenance over the gardens of the Museum; her ripe curling
Greek lips, such as we never see now, even among her own wives and
sisters, open. She is talking to herself. Listen!

'Yes. The statues there are broken. The libraries are plundered. The
alcoves are silent. The oracles are dumb. And yet--who says that the old
faith of heroes and sages is dead? The beautiful can never die. If the
gods have deserted their oracles, they have not deserted the souls who
aspire to them. If they have ceased to guide nations, they have not
ceased to speak to their own elect. If they have cast off the vulgar
herd, they have not cast off Hypatia. ...............

'Ay. To believe in the old creeds, while every one else is dropping away
from them.... To believe in spite of disappointments.... To hope against
hope.... To show oneself superior to the herd, by seeing boundless
depths of living glory in myths which have become dark and dead
to them.... To struggle to the last against the new and vulgar
superstitions of a rotting age, for the faith of my forefathers, for
the old gods, the old heroes, the old sages who gauged the mysteries of
heaven and earth--and perhaps to conquer--at least to have my reward!
To be welcomed into the celestial ranks of the heroic--to rise to the
immortal gods, to the ineffable powers, onward, upward ever, through
ages and through eternities, till I find my home at last, and vanish in
the glory of the Nameless and the Absolute One!....

And her whole face flashed out into wild glory, and then sank again
suddenly into a shudder of something like fear and disgust, as she saw,
watching her from under the wall of the gardens opposite, a crooked,
withered Jewish crone, dressed out in the most gorgeous and fantastic
style of barbaric finery.

'Why does that old hag haunt me? I see her everywhere--till the last
month at least--and here she is again! I will ask the prefect to find
out who she is, and get rid of her, before she fascinates me with that
evil eye. Thank the gods, there she moves away! Foolish!--foolish of me,
a philosopher. I, to believe, against the authority of Porphyry himself,
too, in evil eyes and magic! But there is my father, pacing up and down
in the library.'

As she spoke, the old man entered from the next room. He was a Greek,
also, but of a more common, and, perhaps, lower type; dark and fiery,
thin and graceful; his delicate figure and cheeks, wasted by meditation,
harmonised well with the staid and simple philosophic cloak which he
wore as a sign of his profession. He paced impatiently up and down the
chamber, while his keen, glittering eyes and restless gestures betokened
intense inward thought.... 'I have it.... No; again it escapes--it
contradicts itself. Miserable man that I am! If there is faith in
Pythagoras, the symbol should be an expanding series of the powers of
three; and yet that accursed binary factor will introduce itself. Did not
you work the sum out once, Hypatia?'

'Sit down, my dear father, and eat. You have tasted no food yet this
day.'

'What do I care for food! The inexpressible must be expressed, the work
must be done if it cost me the squaring of the circle. How can he, whose
sphere lies above the stars, stoop every moment to earth?

'Ay,' she answered, half bitterly, 'and would that we could live without
food, and imitate perfectly the immortal gods. But while we are in this
prison-house of matter, we must wear our chain; even wear it gracefully,
if we have the good taste; and make the base necessities of this body
of shame symbolic of the divine food of the reason. There is fruit, with
lentils and rice, waiting for you in the next room; and bread, unless
you despise it too much.'

'The food of slaves!' he answered. 'Well, I will eat, and be ashamed of
eating. Stay, did I tell you? Six new pupils in the mathematical school
this morning. It grows! It spreads! We shall conquer yet!'

She sighed. 'How do you know that they have not come to you, as Critias
and Alcibiades did to Socrates, to learn a merely political and mundane
virtue? Strange! that men should be content to grovel, and be men, when
they might rise to the rank of gods! Ah, my father! That is my bitterest
grief! to see those who have been pretending in the morning lecture-room
to worship every word of mine as an oracle, lounging in the afternoon
round Pelagia's litter; and then at night--for I know that they do
it--the dice, and the wine, and worse. That Pallas herself should be
conquered every day by Venus Pandemos! That Pelagia should have more
power than I! Not that such a creature as that disturbs me: no created
thing, I hope, can move my equanimity; but if I could stoop to hate--I
should hate her--hate her.'

And her voice took a tone which made it somewhat uncertain whether, in
spite of all the lofty impassibility which she felt bound to possess,
she did not hate Pelagia with a most human and mundane hatred.

But at that moment the conversation was cut short by the hasty entrance
of a slave girl, who, with fluttering voice, announced--

'His excellency, madam, the prefect! His chariot has been at the gate
for these five minutes, and he is now coming upstairs.'

'Foolish child!' answered Hypatia, with some affectation of
indifference. 'And why should that disturb me? Let him enter.'

The door opened, and in came, preceded by the scent of half a dozen
different perfumes, a florid, delicate-featured man, gorgeously dressed
out in senatorial costume, his fingers and neck covered with jewels.

'The representative of the Caesars honours himself by offering at the
shrine of Athene Polias, and rejoices to see in her priestess as lovely
a likeness as ever of the goddess whom she serves.... Don't betray me,
but I really cannot help talking sheer paganism whenever I find myself
within the influence of your eyes.'

'Truth is mighty,' said Hypatia, as she rose to greet him with a smile
and a reverence.

'Ah, so they say--Your excellent father has vanished. He is really too
modest--honest, though--about his incapacity for state secrets. After
all, you know, it was your Minervaship which I came to consult. How
has this turbulent Alexandrian rascaldom been behaving itself in my
absence?'

'The herd has been eating, and drinking, and marrying, as usual, I
believe,' answered Hypatia, in a languid tone.

'And multiplying, I don't doubt. Well, there will be less loss to the
empire if I have to crucify a dozen or two, as I positively will, the
next riot. It is really a great comfort to a statesman that the masses
are so well aware that they deserve hanging, and therefore so careful to
prevent any danger of public justice depopulating the province. But how
go on the schools?'

Hypatia shook her head sadly.

'Ah, boys will be boys.... I plead guilty myself. Video meliora
proboque, deteriora sequor. You must not be hard on us.... Whether we
obey you or not in private life, we do in public; and if we enthrone you
queen of Alexandria, you must allow your courtiers and bodyguards a
few court licences. Now don't sigh or I shall be inconsolable. At all
events, your worst rival has betaken herself to the wilderness, and gone
to look for the city of the gods above the cataracts.'

'Whom do you mean?' asked Hypatia, in a tone most unphilosophically
eager.

'Pelagia, of course. I met that prettiest and naughtiest of humanities
half-way between here and Thebes, transformed into a perfect Andromache
of chaste affection.'

'And to whom, pray?'

'To a certain Gothic giant. What men those barbarians do breed! I was
afraid of being crushed under the elephant's foot at every step I took
with him!'

'What!' asked Hypatia, 'did your excellency condescend to converse with
such savages?'

'To tell you the truth, he had some forty stout countrymen of his with
him, who might have been troublesome to a perplexed prefect; not to
mention that it is always as well to keep on good terms with these
Goths. Really, after the sack of Rome, and Athens cleaned out like a
beehive by wasps, things begin to look serious. And as for the great
brute himself, he has rank enough in his way,--boasts of his descent
from some cannibal god or other,--really hardly deigned to speak to a
paltry Roman governor, till his faithful and adoring bride interceded
for me. Still, the fellow understood good living, and we celebrated our
new treaty of friendship with noble libations--but I must not talk about
that to you. However, I got rid of them; quoted all the geographical
lies I had ever heard, and a great many more; quickened their appetite
for their fool's errand notably, and started them off again. So now the
star of Venus is set, and that of Pallas in the ascendant. Wherefore
tell me--what am I to do with Saint Firebrand?'

'Cyril?'

'Cyril.'

'Justice.'

'Ah, Fairest Wisdom, don't mention that horrid word out of the
lecture-room. In theory it is all very well; but in poor imperfect
earthly practice, a governor must be content with doing very much what
comes to hand. In abstract justice, now, I ought to nail up Cyril,
deacons, district visitors, and all, in a row, on the sandfill out
side. That is simple enough; but, like a great many simple and excellent
things, impossible.'

'You fear the people?'

'Well, my dear lady, and has not the villainous demagogue got the whole
mob on his side? Am I to have the Constantinople riots re-enacted here?
I really cannot face it; I have not nerve for it; perhaps I am too lazy.
Be it so.'

Hypatia sighed. 'Ah, that your excellency but saw the great duel which
depends on you alone! Do not fancy that the battle is merely between
Paganism and Christianity--'

'Why, if it were, you know, I, as a Christian, under a Christian and
sainted emperor, not to mention his august sister--'

'We understand,' interrupted she, with an impatient wave of her
beautiful hand. 'Not even between them; not even between philosophy and
barbarism. The struggle is simply one between the aristocracy and the
mob,--between wealth, refinement, art, learning, all that makes a nation
great, and the savage herd of child-breeders below, the many ignoble,
who were meant to labour for the noble few. Shall the Roman empire
command or obey her own slaves? is the question which you and Cyril have
to battle out; and the fight must be internecine.'

'I should not wonder if it became so, really,' answered the prefect,
with a shrug of his shoulders. 'I expect every time I ride, to have my
brains knocked out by some mad monk.'

'Why not? In an age when, as has been well and often said, emperors and
consulars crawl to the tombs of a tent-maker and a fisherman, and kiss
the mouldy bones of the vilest slaves? Why not, among a people whose
God is the crucified son of a carpenter? Why should learning, authority,
antiquity, birth, rank, the system of empire which has been growing up,
fed by the accumulated wisdom of ages,--why, I say, should any of
these things protect your life a moment from the fury of any beggar who
believes that the Son of God died for him as much as for you, and that
he is your equal if not your superior in the sight of his low-born and
illiterate deity!' [Footnote: These are the arguments and the language
which were commonly employed by Porphyry, Julian, and the other
opponents of Christianity.]

'My most eloquent philosopher, this may be--and perhaps is--all very
true. I quite agree that there are very great practical inconveniences
of this kind in the new--I mean the Catholic faith; but the world is
full of inconveniences. The wise man does not quarrel with his creed for
being disagreeable, any more than he does with his finger for aching: he
cannot help it, and must make the best of a bad matter. Only tell me how
to keep the peace.'

'And let philosophy be destroyed?'

'That it never will be, as long as Hypatia lives to illuminate the
earth; and, as far as I am concerned, I promise you a clear stage and--a
great deal of favour; as is proved by my visiting you publicly at this
moment, before I have given audience to one of the four hundred bores,
great and small, who are waiting in the tribunal to torment me. Do help
me and advise me. What am I to do?'

'I have told you.'

'Ah, yes, as to general principles. But out of the lecture-room I prefer
a practical expedient for instance, Cyril writes to me here--plague on
him! he would not let me even have a week's hunting in peace-that there
is a plot on the part of the Jews to murder all the Christians. Here is
the precious document--do look at it, in pity. For aught I know or care,
the plot may be an exactly opposite one, and the Christians intend to
murder all the Jews. But I must take some notice of the letter.'

'I do not see that, your excellency.'

'Why, if anything did happen, after all, conceive the missives which
would be sent flying off to Constantinople against me!'

'Let them go. If you are secure in the consciousness of innocence, what
matter?'

'Consciousness of innocence? I shall lose my prefecture!'

'Your danger would just be as great if you took notice of it. Whatever
happened, you would be accused of favouring the Jews.'

'And really there might be some truth in the accusation. How the
finances of the provinces would go on without their kind assistance,
I dare not think. If those Christians would but lend me their money,
instead of building alms-houses and hospitals with it, they might burn
the Jews' quarter to-morrow, for aught I care. But now....'

'But now, you must absolutely take no notice of this letter. The very
tone of it forbids you, for your own honour, and the honour of
the empire. Are you to treat with a man who talks of the masses at
Alexandria as "the flock whom the King of kings has committed to his
rule and care"? Does your excellency, or this proud bishop, govern
Alexandria?'

'Really, my dear lady, I have given up inquiring.'

'But he has not. He comes to you as a person possessing an absolute
authority over two-thirds of the population, which he does not scruple
to hint to you is derived from a higher source than your own. The
consequence is clear. If it be from a higher source than yours, of
course it ought to control yours'; and you will confess that it ought
to control it--you will acknowledge the root and ground of every
extravagant claim which he makes, if you deign to reply.'

'But I must say something, or I shall be pelted in the streets. You
philosophers, however raised above your own bodies you may be, must
really not forget that we poor worldlings have bones to be broken.'

'Then tell him, and by word of mouth merely, that as the information
which he sends you comes from his private knowledge and concerns not
him as bishop, but you as magistrate, you can only take it into
consideration when he addresses you as a private person, laying a
regular information at your tribunal.'

'Charming! queen of diplomatists as well as philosophers! I go to obey
you. Ah! why were you not Pulcheria? No, for then Alexandria had been
dark, and Orestes missed the supreme happiness of kissing a hand which
Pallas, when she made you, must have borrowed from the workshop of
Aphrodite.'

'Recollect that you are a Christian,' answered Hypatia, half smiling.

So the prefect departed; and passing through the outer hall, which was
already crowded with Hypatia's aristocratic pupils and visitors, bowed
his way out past them and regained his chariot, chuckling over the
rebuff which he intended to administer to Cyril, and comforting himself
with the only text of Scripture of the inspiration of which he was
thoroughly convinced--'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'

At the door was a crowd of chariots, slaves with their masters'
parasols, and the rabble of onlooking boys and market-folk, as usual in
Alexandria then, as in all great cities since, who were staring at the
prefect, and having their heads rapped by his guards, and wondering what
sort of glorious personage Hypatia might be, and what sort of glorious
house she must live in, to be fit company for the great governor of
Alexandria. Not that there was not many a sulky and lowering face
among the mob, for the great majority of them were Christians, and
very seditious and turbulent politicians, as Alexandrians, 'men of
Macedonia,' were bound to be; and there was many a grumble among them,
all but audible, at the prefect's going in state to the heathen woman's
house--heathen sorceress, some pious old woman called her--before he
heard any poor soul's petition in the tribunal, or even said his prayers
in church.

Just as he was stepping into his curricle a tall young man, as
gorgeously bedizened as himself, lounged down the steps after him, and
beckoned lazily to the black boy who carried his parasol.

'Ah, Raphael Aben-Ezra! my excellent friend, what propitious
deity--ahem! martyr--brings you to Alexandria just as I want you? Get up
by my side, and let us have a chat on our way to the tribunal.'

The man addressed came slowly forward with an ostentatiously low
salutation, which could not hide, and indeed was not intended to
hide, the contemptuous and lazy expression of his face; and asked in a
drawling tone--

'And for what kind purpose does the representative of the Caesars bestow
such an honour on the humblest of his, etc. etc.--your penetration will
supply the rest.'

'Don't be frightened; I am not going to borrow money of you,' answered
Orestes, laughingly, as the Jew got into the curricle.

'I am glad to hear it. Really one usurer in a family is enough. My
father made the gold, and if I spend it, I consider that I do all that
is required of a philosopher.'

'A charming team of white Nisaeans, is not this? And only one gray foot
among all the four.'

'Yes.... horses are a bore, I begin to find, like everything else.
Always falling sick, or running away, or breaking one's peace of mind in
some way or other. Besides, I have been pestered out of my life there
in Cyrene, by commissions for dogs and horses and bows from that old
Episcopal Nimrod, Synesius.'

'What, is the worthy man as lively as ever?'

'Lively? He nearly drove me into a nervous fever in three days. Up at
four in the morning, always in the most disgustingly good health and
spirits, farming, coursing, shooting, riding over hedge and ditch
after rascally black robbers; preaching, intriguing, borrowing money;
baptizing and excommunicating; bullying that bully, Andronicus;
comforting old women, and giving pretty girls dowries; scribbling one
half-hour on philosophy, and the next on farriery; sitting up all night
writing hymns and drinking strong liquors; off again on horseback at
four the next morning; and talking by the hour all the while about
philosophic abstraction from the mundane tempest. Heaven defend me
from all two-legged whirlwinds! By the bye, there was a fair daughter of
my nation came back to Alexandria in the same ship with me, with a cargo
that may suit your highness.'

'There are a great many fair daughters of your nation who might suit me,
without any cargo at all.'

'Ah, they have had good practice, the little fools, ever since the days
of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. But I mean old Miriam--you know. She has
been lending Synesius money to fight the black fellows with; and really
it was high time. They had burnt every homestead for miles through the
province. But the daring old girl must do a little business for herself;
so she went off, in the teeth of the barbarians, right away to the
Atlas, bought all their lady prisoners, and some of their own sons and
daughters, too, of them, for beads and old iron; and has come back with
as pretty a cargo of Lybian beauties as a prefect of good taste could
wish to have the first choice of. You may thank me for that privilege.'

'After, of course, you had suited yourself, my cunning Raphael?'

'Not I. Women are bores, as Solomon found out long ago. Did I never tell
you? I began, as he did, with the most select harem in Alexandria. But
they quarrelled so, that one day I went out, and sold them all but one,
who was a Jewess--so there were objections on the part of the Rabbis.
Then I tried one, as Solomon did; but my "garden shut up," and my
"sealed fountain" wanted me to be always in love with her, so I went to
the lawyers, allowed her a comfortable maintenance, and now I am as free
as a monk, and shall be happy to give your excellency the benefit of any
good taste or experience which I may possess.'

'Thanks, worthy Jew. We are not yet as exalted as yourself, and will
send for the old Erictho this very afternoon. Now listen a moment to
base, earthly, and political business. Cyril has written to me, to say
that you Jews have plotted to murder all the Christians.'

'Well--why not? I most heartily wish it were true, and think, on the
whole, that it very probably is so.'

'By the immortal--saints, man! you are not serious?'

'The four archangels forbid! It is no concern of mine. All I say is,
that my people are great fools, like the rest of the world; and have,
for aught I know or care, some such intention. They won't succeed, of
course; and that is all you have to care for. But if you think it worth
the trouble--which I do not--I shall have to go to the synagogue on
business in a week or so, and then I would ask some of the Rabbis.'

'Laziest of men!--and I must answer Cyril this very day.'

'An additional reason for asking no questions of our people. Now you can
honestly say that you know nothing about the matter.'

'Well, after all, ignorance is a stronghold for poor statesmen. So you
need not hurry yourself.'

'I assure your excellency I will not.'

'Ten days hence, or so, you know.'

'Exactly, after it is all over.'

'And can't be helped. What a comfort it is, now and then, that Can't be
helped!'

'It is the root and marrow of all philosophy. Your practical man, poor
wretch, will try to help this and that, and torment his soul with ways
and means, and preventives and forestallings; your philosopher quietly
says--It can't be helped. If it ought to be, it will be--if it is, it
ought to be. We did not make the world, and we are not responsible for
it.--There is the sum and substance of all true wisdom, and the epitome
of all that has been said and written thereon from Philo the Jew to
Hypatia the Gentile. By the way, here's Cyril coming down the steps of
the Caesareum. A very handsome fellow, after all, though lie is looking
as sulky as a bear.'

'With his cubs at his heels. What a scoundrelly visage that tall
fellow-deacon, or reader, or whatever he is by his dress--has!'

'There they are--whispering together. Heaven give them pleasant thoughts
and pleasanter faces!'

'Amen!' quoth Orestes, with a sneer: and he would have said Amen in
good earnest, had he been able to take the liberty--which we shall--and
listen to Cyril's answer to Peter, the tall reader.

'From Hypatia's, you say? Why, he only returned to the city this
morning.'

'I saw his four-in-hand standing at her door, as I came down the Museum
Street hither, half an hour ago.'

'And twenty carriages besides, I don't doubt?'

'The street was blocked up with them. There! Look round the corner
now.--Chariots, litters, slaves, and fops.--When shall we see such a
concourse as that where it ought to be?'

Cyril made no answer; and Peter went on--'Where it ought to be, my
father--in front of your door at the Serapeium?'

'The world, the flesh, and the devil know their own, Peter: and as long
as they have their own to go to, we cannot expect them to come to us.'

'But what if their own were taken out of the way?'

'They might come to us for want of better amusement.... devil and all.
Well--if I could get a fair hold of the two first, I would take the
third into the bargain, and see what could be done with him. But
never, while these lecture-rooms last--these Egyptian chambers of
imagery--these theatres of Satan, where the devil transforms himself
into an angel of light, and apes Christian virtue, and bedizens his
ministers like ministers of righteousness, as long as that lecture-room
stands and the great and the powerful flock to it, to learn excuses for
their own tyrannies and atheisms, so long will the kingdom of God be
trampled under foot in Alexandria; so long will the princes of this
world, with their gladiators, and parasites, and money-lenders, be
masters here, and not the bishops and priests of the living God.'

It was now Peter's turn to be silent; and as the two, with their little
knot of district-visitors behind them, walk moodily along the great
esplanade which overlooked the harbour, and then vanish suddenly up some
dingy alley into the crowded misery of the sailors' quarter, we will
leave them to go about their errand of mercy, and, like fashionable
people, keep to the grand parade, and listen again to our two
fashionable friends in the carved and gilded curricle with four white
blood-horses.

'A fine sparkling breeze outside the Pharos, Raphael--fair for the
wheat-ships too.'

'Are they gone yet?

'Yes--why? I sent the first fleet off three days ago; and the rest are
clearing outwards to-day.'

'Oh!--ah--so!--Then you have not heard from Heraclian?'

'Heraclian? What the-blessed saints has the Count of Africa to do with
my wheat-ships?'

'Oh, nothing. It's no business of mine. Only he is going to rebel ....
But here we are at your door.'

'To what?' asked Orestes, in a horrified tone.

'To rebel, and attack Rome.'

'Good gods--God, I mean. A fresh bore! Come in, and tell a poor
miserable slave of a governor--speak low, for Heaven's sake!--I hope
these rascally grooms haven't overheard you.'

'Easy to throw them into the canal, if they have,' quoth Raphael, as he
walked coolly through hall and corridor after the perturbed governor.

Poor Orestes never stopped till he reached a little chamber of the inner
court, beckoned the Jew in after him, locked the door, threw himself
into an arm-chair, put his hands on his knees, and sat, bending forward,
staring into Raphael's face with a ludicrous terror and perplexity.

'Tell me all about it. Tell me this instant.'

'I have told you all I know,' quoth Raphael, quietly seating himself on
a sofa, and playing with a jewelled dagger. 'I thought, of course, that
you were in the secret, or I should have said nothing. It's no business
of mine, you know.'

Orestes, like most weak and luxurious men, Romans especially, had a
wild-beast vein in him--and it burst forth.

'Hell and the furies! You insolent provincial slave--you will carry
these liberties of yours too far! Do you know who I am, you accursed
Jew? Tell me the whole truth, or, by the head of the emperor, I'll twist
it out of you with red-hot pincers!'

Raphael's countenance assumed a dogged expression, which showed that
the old Jewish blood still heat true, under all its affected shell of
Neo-Platonist nonchalance; and there was a quiet unpleasant earnest in
his smile, as he answered--

'Then, my dear governor, you will be the first man on earth who ever yet
forced a Jew to say or do what he did not choose.'

'We'll see!' yelled Orestes. 'Here, slaves!' And he clapped his hands
loudly.

'Calm yourself, your excellency,' quoth Raphael, rising. 'The door
is locked; the mosquito net is across the window; and this dagger
is poisoned. If anything happens to me, you will offend all the Jew
money-lenders, and die in about three days in a great deal of pain,
having missed our assignation with old Miriam, lost your pleasantest
companion, and left your own finances and those of the prefecture in a
considerable state of embarrassment. How much better to sit down, hear
all I have to say philosophically, like a true pupil of Hypatia, and not
expect a man to tell you what he really does not know.'

Orestes, after looking vainly round the room for a place to escape, had
quietly subsided into his chair again; and by the time that the slaves
knocked at the door he had so far recovered his philosophy as to ask,
not for the torturers, but for a page and wine.

'Oh, you Jews!' quoth he, trying to laugh off matters. 'The same
incarnate fiends that Titus found you!'

'The very same, my dear prefect. Now for this matter, which is really
important-at least to Gentiles. Heraclian will certainly rebel. Synesius
let out as much to me. He has fitted out an armament for Ostia, stopped
his own wheat-ships, and is going to write to you to stop yours, and to
starve out the Eternal City, Goths, senate, emperor, and all. Whether
you will comply with his reasonable little request depends of course on
yourself.'

'And that again very much on his plans.'

'Of course. You cannot be expected to--we will euphemise-unless it be
made worth your while.'

Orestes sat buried in deep thought.

'Of course not,' said he at last, half unconsciously. And then, in
sudden dread of having committed himself, he looked up fiercely at the
Jew.

'And how do I know that this is not some infernal trap of yours? Tell me
how you found out all this, or by Hercules (he had quite forgotten his
Christianity by this time)--by Hercules and the Twelve Gods, I'll--'

'Don't use expressions unworthy of a philosopher. My source of
information was very simple and very good. He has been negotiating a
loan from the Rabbis at Carthage. They were either frightened, or loyal,
or both, and hung back. He knew--as all wise governors know when they
allow themselves time--that it is no use to bully a Jew; slid applied to
me. I never lend money--it is unphilosophical: but I introduced him to
old Miriam, who dare do business with the devil himself; and by that
move, whether he has the money or not, I cannot tell: but this I can
tell, that we have his secret--and so have you now; and if you want more
information, the old woman, who enjoys an intrigue as much as she does
Falernian, will get it you.'

'Well, you are a true friend, after all.'

'Of course I am. Now, is not this method of getting at the truth much
easier and pleasanter than setting a couple of dirty negroes to pinch
and pull me, and so making it a point of honour with me to tell you
nothing but lies? Here comes Ganymede with the wine, just in time to
calm your nerves, and fill you with the spirit of divination.... To the
goddess of good counsels, my lord. What wine this is!'

'True Syrian--fire and honey; fourteen years old next vintage, my
Raphael. Out, Hypocorisma! See that he is not listening. The impudent
rascal! I was humbugged into giving two thousand gold pieces for him
two years ago, he was so pretty--they said he was only just rising
thirteen--and he has been the plague of my life ever since, and is
beginning to want the barber already. Now, what is the count dreaming
of?'

'His wages for killing Stilicho.'

'What, is it not enough to be Count of Africa?'

'I suppose he sets off against that his services during the last three
years.'

'Well, he saved Africa.'

'And thereby Egypt also. And you too, as well as the emperor, may be
considered as owing him somewhat.'

'My good friend, my debts are far too numerous for me to think of paying
any of them. But what wages does he want?'

'The purple.'

Orestes started, and then fell into thought. Raphael sat watching him a
while.

'Now, most noble lord, may I depart? I have said all I have to say; and
unless I get home to luncheon at once, I shall hardly have time to find
old Miriam for you, and get through our little affair with her before
sunset.'

'Stay. What force has he?'

'Forty thousand already, they say. And those Donatist ruffians are with
him to a man, if he can but scrape together wherewith to change their
bludgeons into good steel.'

'Well, go.... So. A hundred thousand might do it,' said he, meditating,
as Raphael bowed himself out. 'He won't get them. I don't know,
though; the man has the head of a Julius. Well--that fool Attalus talked
of joining Egypt to the Western Empire.... Not such a bad thought either.
Anything is better than being governed by an idiot child and three
canting nuns. I expect to be excommunicated every day for some offence
against Pulcheria's prudery.... Heraclian emperor at Rome.... and I
lord and master on this side the sea. The Donatists pitted again fairly
against the orthodox, to cut each other's throats in peace.... no more
of Cyril's spying and tale-bearing to Constantinople.... Not such a
baddish of fare.... But then-it would take so much trouble!'

With which words, Orestes went into his third warm bath for that day.



CHAPTER III: THE GOTHS


For two days the young monk held on, paddling and floating rapidly down
the Nile-stream, leaving city after city to right and left with longing
eyes, and looking back to one villa after another, till the reaches of
the banks hid them from his sight, with many a yearning to know what
sort of places those gay buildings and gardens would look like on a
nearer view, and what sort of life the thousands led who crowded the
busy quays, and walked and drove, in an endless stream, along the great
highroads which ran along either bank. He carefully avoided every
boat that passed him, from the gilded barge of the wealthy landlord or
merchant, to the tiny raft buoyed up with empty jars, which was floating
down to be sold at some market in the Delta. Here and there he met and
hailed a crew of monks, drawing their nets in a quiet bay, or passing
along the great watery highway from monastery to monastery: but all the
news he received from them was, that the canal of Alexandria was still
several days' journey below him. It seemed endless, that monotonous
vista of the two high clay banks, with their sluices and water-wheels,
their knots of palms and date-trees; endless seemed that wearisome
succession of bars of sand and banks of mud, every one like the one
before it, every one dotted with the same line of logs and stones strewn
along the water's edge, which turned out as he approached them to be
basking crocodiles and sleeping pelicans. His eye, wearied with the
continual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundless
expanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills,
which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out of
the eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyond
which dwelt a whole world of wonders, elephants and dragons, satyrs and
anthropophagi,--ay, and the phoenix itself. Tired and melancholy, his
mind returned inward to prey on itself, and the last words of Arsenius
rose again and again to his thoughts. 'Was his call of the spirit or of
the flesh?' How should he test that problem? He wished to seethe world
that might be carnal. True; but, he wished to convert the world.... was
not that spiritual? Was he not going on a noble errand?.... thirsting
for toil, for saintship, for martyrdom itself, if it would but come and
cut the Gordian knot of all temptations, and save him-for he dimly
felt that it would save him--a whole sea of trouble in getting safe and
triumphant out of that world into which he had not yet entered .... and
his heart shrank back from the untried homeless wilderness before
him. But no! the die was cast, and he must down and onward, whether in
obedience to the spirit or the flesh. Oh, for one hour of the quiet of
that dear Laura and the old familiar faces!

At last, a sudden turn of the bank brought him in sight of a
gaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth and
foreign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object in
the water. In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature, brandishing a
harpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the line of a second,
the head of which was fixed in the huge purple sides of a hippopotamus,
who foamed and wallowed a few yards down the stream. An old grizzled
warrior at the stern, with a rudder in either hand, kept the boat's
head continually towards the monster, in spite of its sudden and frantic
wheelings; and when it dashed madly across the stream, some twenty oars
flashed through the water in pursuit. All was activity and excitement;
and it was no wonder if Philammon's curiosity had tempted him to drift
down almost abreast of the barge ere he descried, peeping from under a
decorated awning in the afterpart, some dozen pairs of languishing
black eyes, turned alternately to the game and to himself. The
serpents!--chattering and smiling, with pretty little shrieks and
shaking of glossy curls and gold necklaces, and fluttering of muslin
dresses, within a dozen yards of him! Blushing scarlet, he knew not
why, he seized his paddle, and tried to back out of the snare.... but
somehow, his very efforts to escape those sparkling eyes diverted his
attention from everything else: the hippopotamus had caught sight of
him, and furious with pain, rushed straight at the unoffending canoe;
the harpoon line became entangled round his body, and in a moment he
and his frail bark were overturned, and the monster, with his huge white
tusks gaping wide, close on him as he struggled in the stream.

Luckily Philammon, contrary to the wont of monks, was a bather, and swam
like a water-fowl: fear he had never known: death from childhood had
been to him, as to the other inmates of the Laura, a contemplation too
perpetual to have any paralysing terror in it, even then, when life
seemed just about to open on him anew. But the monk was a man, and a
young one, and had no intention of dying tamely or unavenged. In an
instant he had freed himself from the line; drawn the short knife which
was his only weapon; and diving suddenly, avoided the monster's rush,
and attacked him from behind with stabs, which, though not deep, still
dyed the waters with gore at every stroke. The barbarians shouted with
delight. The hippopotamus turned furiously against his new assailant,
crushing, alas! the empty canoe to fragments with a single snap of his
enormous jaws; but the turn was fatal to him; the barge was close upon
him, and as he presented his broad side to the blow, the sinewy arm of
the giant drove a harpoon through his heart, and with one convulsive
shudder the huge blue mass turned over on its side and floated dead.

Poor Philammon! He alone was silent, amid the yells of triumph;
sorrowfully he swam round and round his little paper wreck.... it would
not have floated a mouse. Wistfully be eyed the distant banks, half
minded to strike out for them and escape,.... and thought of the
crocodiles,.... and paddled round again,.... and thought of the
basilisk eyes;.... he might escape the crocodiles, but who could escape
women?.... and he struck out valiantly for shore.... when he was brought
to a sudden stop by finding the stem of the barge close on him, a noose
thrown over him by some friendly barbarian, and himself hauled on
board, amid the laughter, praise, astonishment, and grumbling of the
good-natured crew, who had expected him, as a matter of course, to avail
himself at once of their help, and could not conceive the cause of his
reluctance.

Philammon gazed with wonder on his strange hosts, their pale
complexions, globular heads and faces, high cheek-bones, tall and sturdy
figures; their red beards, and yellow hair knotted fantastically above
the head; their awkward dresses, half Roman or Egyptian, and half
of foreign fur, soiled and stained in many a storm and fight, but
tastelessly bedizened with classic jewels, brooches, and Roman coins,
strung like necklaces. Only the steersman, who had come forward to
wonder at the hippopotamus, and to help in dragging the unwieldy brute
on board, seemed to keep genuine and unornamented the costume of his
race, the white linen leggings, strapped with thongs of deerskin, the
quilted leather cuirass, the bears'-fur cloak, the only ornaments of
which were the fangs and claws of the beast itself, and a fringe of
grizzled tufts, which looked but too like human hair. The language which
they spoke was utterly unintelligible to Philammon, though it need not
be so to us.

'A well-grown lad and a brave one, Wulf the son of Ovida,' said the
giant to the old hero of the bearskin cloak; 'and understands wearing
skins, in this furnace-mouth of a climate, rather better than you do.'

'I keep to the dress of my forefathers, Amalric the Amal. What did to
sack Rome in, may do to find Asgard in.'

The giant, who was decked out with helmet, cuirass, and senatorial
boots, in a sort of mongrel mixture of the Roman military and civil
dress, his neck wreathed with a dozen gold chains, and every finger
sparkling with jewels, turned away with an impatient sneer.

'Asgard--Asgard! If you are in such a hurry to get to Asgard up this
ditch in the sand, you had better ask the fellow how far it is thither.'

Wulf took him quietly at his word, and addressed a question to the young
monk, which he could only answer by a shake of the head.

'Ask him in Greek, man.'

'Greek is a slave's tongue. Make a slave talk to him in it, not me.'

'Here--some of you girls! Pelagia! you understand this fellow's talk.
Ask him how far it is to Asgard.'

'You must ask me more civilly, my rough hero,' replied a soft voice from
underneath the awning. 'Beauty must be sued, and not commanded.'

'Come, then, my olive-tree, my gazelle, my lotus-flower, my--what was
the last nonsense you taught me?--and ask this wild man of the sands how
far it is from these accursed endless rabbit-burrows to Asgard.'

The awning was raised, and lying luxuriously on a soft mattress,
fanned with peacock's feathers, and glittering with rubies and topazes,
appeared such a vision as Philammon had never seen before.

A woman of some two-and-twenty summers, formed in the most voluptuous
mould of Grecian beauty, whose complexion showed every violet vein
through its veil of luscious brown. Her little bare feet, as they
dimpled the cushions, were more perfect than Aphrodite's, softer than a
swan's bosom. Every swell of her bust and arms showed through the thin
gauze robe, while her lower limbs were wrapped in a shawl of orange
silk, embroidered with wreaths of shells and roses. Her dark hair lay
carefully spread out upon the pillow, in a thousand ringlets entwined
with gold and jewels; her languishing eyes blazed like diamonds from
a cavern, under eyelids darkened and deepened with black antimony; her
lips pouted of themselves, by habit or by nature, into a perpetual kiss;
slowly she raised one little lazy hand; slowly the ripe lips opened; and
in most pure and melodious Attic, she lisped her huge lover's question
to the monk, and repeated it before the boy could shake off the spell,
and answer....

'Asgard? What is Asgard?'

The beauty looked at the giant for further instructions.

'The City of the immortal Gods,' interposed the old warrior, hastily and
sternly, to the lady.

'The city of God is in heaven,' said Philammon to the interpreter,
turning his head away from those gleaming, luscious, searching glances.

His answer was received with a general laugh by all except the leader,
who shrugged his shoulders.

'It may as well be up in the skies as up the Nile. We shall be just
as likely, I believe, to reach it by flying, as by rowing up this big
ditch. Ask him where the river comes from, Pelagia.'

Pelagia obeyed.... and thereon followed a confusion worse confounded,
composed of all the impossible wonders of that mythic fairyland with
which Philammon had gorged himself from boyhood in his walks with the
old monks, and of the equally trustworthy traditions which the Goths had
picked up at Alexandria. There was nothing which that river did not do.
It rose in the Caucasus. Where was the Caucasus? He did not know. In
Paradise--in Indian Aethiopia--in Aethiopian India. Where were they? He
did not know. Nobody knew. It ran for a hundred and fifty days' journey
through deserts where nothing but flying serpents and satyrs lived, and
the very lions' manes were burnt off by the heat....

'Good sporting there, at all events, among these dragons,' quoth Smid
the son of Troll, armourer to the party.

'As good as Thor's when he caught Snake Midgard with the bullock's
head,' said Wulf.

It turned to the east for a hundred days' journey more, all round Arabia
and India, among forests full of elephants and dog-headed women.

'Better and better, Smid!' growled Wulf, approvingly.

'Fresh beef cheap there, Prince Wulf, eh?' quoth Smid; 'I must look over
the arrow-heads.'

--To the mountains of the Hyperboreans, where there was eternal night,
and the air was full of feathers.... That is, one-third of it came from
thence, and another third came from the Southern ocean, over the Moon
mountains, where no one had ever been, and the remaining third from the
country where the phoenix lived, and nobody knew where that was. And
then there were the cataracts, and the inundations-and-and-and above the
cataracts, nothing but sand-hills and ruins, as full of devils as they
could hold.... and as for Asgard, no one had ever heard of it.... till
every face grew longer and longer, as Pelagia went on interpreting and
misinterpreting; and at last the giant smote his hand upon his knee, and
swore a great oath that Asgard might rot till the twilight of the gods
before he went a step farther up the Nile.

'Curse the monk!' growled Wulf. 'How should such a poor beast know
anything about the matter?'

'Why should not he know as well as that ape of a Roman governor?' asked
Smid.

'Oh, the monks know everything,' said Pelagia. 'They go hundreds and
thousands of miles up the river, and cross the deserts among fiends and
monsters, where any one else would be eaten up, or go mad at once.'

'Ah, the dear holy men! It's all by the sign of the blessed cross!'
exclaimed all the girls together, devoutly crossing themselves, while
two or three of the most enthusiastic were half-minded to go forward and
kneel to Philammon for his blessing; but hesitated, their Gothic lovers
being heathenishly stupid and prudish on such points.

'Why should he not know as well as the prefect? Well said, Smid! I
believe that prefect's quill-driver was humbugging us when he said
Asgard was only ten days' sail up.'

'Why?' asked Wulf.

'I never give any reasons. What's the use of being an Amal, and a son
of Odin, if one has always to be giving reasons like a rascally Roman
lawyer? I say the governor looked like a liar; and I say this monk looks
like an honest fellow; and I choose to believe him, and there is an end
of it.'

'Don't look so cross at me, Prince Wulf; I'm sure it's not my fault; I
could only say what the monk told me,' whispered poor Pelagia.

'Who looks cross at you, my queen?' roared the Amal. 'Let me have him
out here, and by Thor's hammer, I'll--'

'Who spoke to you, you stupid darling?' answered Pelagia, who lived in
hourly fear of thunderstorms. 'Who is going to be cross with any one,
except I with you, for mishearing and misunderstanding, and meddling,
as you are always doing? I shall do as I threatened, and run away with
Prince Wulf, if you are not good. Don't you see that the whole crew are
expecting you to make them an oration?'

Whereupon the Amal rose.

'See you here, Wulf the son of Ovida, and warriors all! If we want
wealth, we shan't find it among the sand-hills. If we want women, we
shall find nothing prettier than these among dragons and devils. Don't
look angry, Wulf. You have no mind to marry one of those dog-headed
girls the monk talked of, have you? Well, then, we have money and women;
and if we want sport, it's better sport killing men than killing beasts;
so we had better go where we shall find most of that game, which we
certainly shall not up this road. As for fame and all that, though I've
had enough, there's plenty to be got anywhere along the shores of that
Mediterranean. Let's burn and plunder Alexandria: forty of us Goths
might kill down all these donkey-riders in two days, and hang up that
lying prefect who sent us hereon this fool's errand. Don't answer, Wulf.
I knew he was humbugging us all along, but you were so open-mouthed to
all he said, that I was bound to let my elders choose for me. Let's
go back; send over for any of the tribes; send to Spain for those
Vandals--they have had enough of Adolf by now, curse him!--I'll warrant
them; get together an army, and take Constantinople. I'll be Augustus,
and Pelagia, Augusta; you and Smid here, the two Caesars; and we'll make
the monk the chief of the eunuchs, eh?--anything you like for a quiet
life; but up this accursed kennel of hot water I go no farther. Ask your
girls, my heroes, and I'll ask mine. Women are all prophetesses, every
one of them.'

'When they are not harlots,' growled Wulf to himself.

'I will go to the world's end with you, my king!' sighed Pelagia; 'but
Alexandria is certainly pleasanter than this.'

Old Wulf sprang up fiercely enough.

'Hear me, Amalric the Amal, son of Odin, and heroes all! When my fathers
swore to be Odin's men, and gave up the kingdom to the holy Annals, the
sons of the Aesir, what was the bond between your fathers and mine? Was
it not that we should move and move, southward and southward ever, till
we came back to Asgard, the city where Odin dwells for ever, and gave
into his hands the kingdom of all the earth? And did we not keep our
oath? Have we not held to the Amals? Did we not leave Adolf, because we
would not follow a Balth, while there was an Amal to lead us? Have we
not been true men to you, son of the Aesir?'

'No man ever saw Wulf, the son of Ovida, fail friend or foe.'

'Then why does his friend fail him? Why does his friend fail himself? If
the bison-bull lie down and wallow, what will the herd do for a leader?
If the king-wolf lose the scent, how will the pack hold it? If the
Yngling forgets the song of Asgard, who will sing it to the heroes?'

'Sing it yourself, if you choose. Pelagia sings quite well enough for
me.'

In an instant the cunning beauty caught at the hint, and poured forth a
soft, low, sleepy song:--

'Loose the sail, rest the oar, float away down, Fleeting and gliding by
tower and town; Life is so short at best! snatch, while thou canst, thy
rest, Sleeping by me!'

'Can you answer that, Wulf?' shouted a dozen voices.

'Hear the song of Asgard, warriors of the Goths! Did not Alaric the king
love it well? Did I not sing it before him in the palace of the Caesars,
till he swore, for all the Christian that he was, to go southward in
search of the holy city? And when he went to Valhalla, and the ships
were wrecked off Sicily, and Adolf the Balth turned back like a lazy
hound, and married the daughter of the Romans, whom Odin hates, and went
northward again to Gaul, did not I sing you all the song of Asgard in
Messina there, till you swore to follow the Amal through fire and water
until we found the hall of Odin, and received the mead-cup from his own
hand? Hear it again, warriors of the Goths!'

'Not that song!' roared the Amal, stopping his ears with both his hands.
'Will you drive us blood-mad again, just as we are settling down into
our sober senses, and finding out what our lives were given us for?'

'Hear the song of Asgard! On to Asgard, wolves of the Goths!' shouted
another; and a babel of voices arose.

'Haven't we been fighting and marching these seven years?'

'Haven't we drunk blood enough to satisfy Odin ten times over? If he
wants us lot him come himself and lead us!'

'Let us get our winds again before we start afresh!'

'Wulf the Prince is like his name, and never tires; he has a
winter-wolf's legs under him; that is no reason why we should have.'

'Haven't you heard what the monk says?-we can never get ever those
cataracts.'

'We'll stop his old wives' tales for him, and then settle for
ourselves,' said Smid; and springing from the thwart where he had been
sitting, he caught up a bill with one hand, and seized Philammon's
throat with the other.... in a moment more, it would have been all over
with him....

For the first time in his life Philammon felt a hostile gripe upon him,
and a new sensation rushed through every nerve, as he grappled with the
warrior, clutched with his left hand the up-lifted wrist, and with his
right the girdle, and commenced, without any definite aim, a fierce
struggle, which, strange to say, as it went on, grew absolutely
pleasant.

The women shrieked to their lovers to part the combatants, but in vain.

'Not for worlds! A very fair match and a very fair fight! Take your long
legs back, Itho, or they will be over you! That's right, my Smid, don't
use the knife! They will be overboard in a moment! By all the Valkyrs,
they are down, and Smid undermost!'

There was no doubt of it; and in another moment Philammon would have
wrenched the bill out of his opponent's hand, when, to the utter
astonishment of the onlookers, he suddenly loosed his hold, shook
himself free by one powerful wrench, and quietly retreated to his seat,
conscience-stricken at the fearful thirst for blood which had suddenly
boiled up within him as he felt his enemy under him.

The onlookers were struck dumb with astonishment; they had taken for
granted that he would, as a matter of course, have used his right of
splitting his vanquished opponent's skull--an event which they would
of course have deeply deplored, but with which, as men of honour, they
could not on any account interfere, but merely console themselves for
the loss of their comrade by flaying his conqueror alive, 'carving him
into the blood-eagle,' or any other delicate ceremony which might serve
as a vent for their sorrow and a comfort to the soul of the deceased.

Smid rose, with a bill in his hand, and looked round him-perhaps to
see what was expected of him. He half lifted his weapon to strike ....
Philammon, seated, looked him calmly in the face.... The old warrior's
eye caught the bank, which was now receding rapidly past them; and when
he saw that they were really floating downwards again, without an
effort to stem the stream, he put away his bill, and sat himself down
deliberately in his place, astonishing the onlookers quite as much as
Philammon had done.

'Five minutes' good fighting, and no one killed! This is a shame!' quoth
another. 'Blood we must see, and it had better be yours, master monk,
than your betters','--and therewith he rushed on poor Philammon.

He spoke the heart of the crew; the sleeping wolf in them had
been awakened by the struggle, and blood they would have; and not
frantically, like Celts or Egyptians, but with the cool humorous cruelty
of the Teuton, they rose altogether, and turning Philammon over on his
back, deliberated by what death he should die.

Philammon quietly submitted--if submission have anything to do with that
state of mind in which sheer astonishment and novelty have broken up all
the custom of man's nature, till the strangest deeds and sufferings are
taken as matters of course. His sudden escape from the Laura, the new
world of thought and action into which he had been plunged, the new
companions with whom he had fallen in, had driven him utterly from his
moorings, and now anything and everything might happen to him. He who
had promised never to look upon woman found himself, by circumstances
over which he had no control, amid a boatful of the most objectionable
species of that most objectionable genus--and the utterly worst having
happened, everything else which happened must be better than the worst.
For the rest, he had gone forth to see the world--and this was one of
the ways of it. So he made up his mind to see it, and be filled with the
fruit of his own devices.

And he would have been certainly filled with the same in five minutes
more, in some shape too ugly to be mentioned: but, as even sinful women
have hearts in them, Pelagia shrieked out--

'Amalric! Amalric! do not let them! I cannot bear it!'

'The warriors are free men, my darling, and know what is proper. And
what can the life of such a brute be to you?'

Before he could stop her, Pelagia had sprung from her cushions, and
thrown herself into the midst of the laughing ring of wild beasts.

'Spare him! spare him for my sake!' shrieked she.

'Oh, my pretty lady! you mustn't interrupt warriors' sport!'

In an instant she had torn off her shawl, and thrown it over Philammon;
and as she stood, with all the outlines of her beautiful limbs revealed
through the thin robe of spangled gauze--

'Let the man who dares, touch him beneath that shawl!--though it be a
saffron one!'

The Goths drew back. For Pelagia herself they had as little respect as
the rest of the world had. But for a moment she was not the Messalina of
Alexandria, but a woman; and true to the old woman-worshipping instinct,
they looked one and all at her flashing eyes, full of noble pity and
indignation, as well as of mere woman's terror--and drew back, and
whispered together.

Whether the good spirit or the evil one would conquer, seemed for a
moment doubtful, when Pelagia felt a heavy hand on her shoulder, and
turning, saw Wulf the son of Ovida.

'Go back, pretty woman! Men, I claim the boy. Smid, give him to me. He
is your man. You could have killed him if you had chosen, and did not;
and no one else shall.'

'Give him us, Prince Wulf! We have not seen blood for many a day!'

'You might have seen rivers of it, if you had had the hearts to go
onward. The boy is mine, and a brave boy. He has upset a warrior fairly
this day, and spared him; and we will make a warrior of him in return.'

And he lifted up the prostrate monk.

'You are my man now. Do you like fighting?'

Philammon, not understanding the language in which he was addressed,
could only shake his head--though if he had known what its import was,
he could hardly in honesty have said, No.

'He shakes his head! He does not like it! He is craven! Let us have
him!'

'I had killed kings when you were shooting frogs,' cried Smid. 'Listen
to me, my sons! A coward grips sharply at first, and loosens his hand
after a while, because his blood is soon hot and soon cold. A brave
man's grip grows the firmer the longer he holds, because the spirit of
Odin comes upon him. I watched the boy's hands on my threat; and he will
make a man; and I will make him one. However, we may as well make him
useful at once; so give him an oar.'

'Well,' answered his new protector, 'he can as well row us as he rowed
by us; and if we are to go back to a cow's death and the pool of Hela,
the quicker we go the better.'

And as the men settled themselves again to their oars, one was put into
Philammon's hand, which he managed with such strength and skill that his
late tormentors, who, in spite of an occasional inclination to robbery
and murder, were thoroughly good-natured, honest fellows, clapped him
on the back, and praised him as heartily as they had just now heartily
intended to torture him to death, and then went forward, as many of them
as were not rowing, to examine the strange beast which they had just
slaughtered, pawing him over from tusks to tail, putting their heads
into his mouth, trying their knives on his hide, comparing him to all
beasts, like and unlike, which they had ever seen, and laughing and
shoving each other about with the fun and childish wonder of a party
of schoolboys; till Smid, who was the wit of the party, settled the
comparative anatomy of the subject for them--'Valhalla! I've found out
what he's most like!--One of those big blue plums, which gave us all the
stomach-ache when we were encamped in the orchards above Ravenna!'



CHAPTER IV: MIRIAM


One morning in the same week, Hypatia's favourite maid entered her
chamber with a somewhat terrified face.

'The old Jewess, madam--the hag who has been watching so often lately
under the wall opposite. She frightened us all out of our senses last
evening by peeping in. We all said she had the evil eye, if any one ever
had--'

'Well, what of her?'

'She is below, madam, and will speak with you. Not that I care for her;
I have my amulet on. I hope you have?'

'Silly girl! Those who have been initiated as I have in the mysteries
of the gods, can defy spirits and command them. Do you suppose that the
favourite of Pallas Athene will condescend to charms and magic? Send her
up.'

The girl retreated, with a look half of awe, half of doubt, at the lofty
pretensions of her mistress, and returned with old Miriam, keeping,
however, prudently behind her, in order to test as little as possible
the power of her own amulet by avoiding the basilisk eye which had
terrified her.

Miriam came in, and advancing to the proud beauty, who remained seated,
made an obeisance down to the very floor, without, however, taking her
eyes for an instant off Hypatia's face.

Her countenance was haggard and bony, with broad sharp-cut lips, stamped
with a strangely mingled expression of strength and sensuality. Put the
feature about her which instantly fixed Hypatia's attention, and from
which she could not in spite of herself withdraw it, was the dry,
glittering, coal-black eye which glared out from underneath the gray
fringe of her swarthy brows, between black locks covered with gold
coins. Hypatia could look at nothing but those eyes; and she reddened,
and grew all but unphilosophically angry, as she saw that the old woman
intended her to look at them, and feel the strange power which she
evidently wished them to exercise.

After a moment's silence, Miriam drew a letter from her bosom, and with
a second low obeisance presented it.

'From whom is this?'

'Perhaps the letter itself will tell the beautiful lady, the fortunate
lady, the discerning lady,' answered she, in a fawning, wheedling tone.
'How should a poor old Jewess know great folks' secrets?'

'Great folks?--'

Hypatia looked at the seal which fixed a silk cord round the letter. It
was Orestes'; and so was the handwriting.... Strange that he should have
chosen such a messenger! What message could it be which required such
secrecy?

She clapped her hands for the maid. 'Let this woman wait in the
ante-room.' Miriam glided out backwards, bowing as she went. As Hypatia
looked up over the letter to see whether she was alone, she caught
a last glance of that eye still fixed upon her, and an expression in
Miriam's face which made her, she knew not why, shudder and turn chill.

'Foolish that I am! What can that witch be to me? But now for the
letter.'

'To the most noble and most beautiful, the mistress of philosophy,
beloved of Athene, her pupil and slave sends greeting.'....

'My slave! and no name mentioned!'

'There are those who consider that the favourite hen of Honorius, which
bears the name of the Imperial City, would thrive better under a new
feeder; and the Count of Africa has been despatched by himself and by
the immortal gods to superintend for the present the poultry-yard of the
Caesars--at least during the absence of Adolf and Placidia. There are
those also who consider that in his absence the Numidian lion might be
prevailed on to become the yoke-fellow of the Egyptian crocodile; and
a farm which, ploughed by such a pair, should extend from the upper
cataract to the Pillars of Hercules, might have charms even for a
philosopher. But while the ploughman is without a nymph, Arcadia
is imperfect. What were Dionusos without his Ariadne, Ares without
Aphrodite, Zeus without Hera? Even Artemis has her Endymion; Athens
alone remains unwedded; but only because Hephaestus was too rough a
wooer. Such is not he who now offers to the representative of Athene the
opportunity of sharing that which may be with the help of her wisdom,
which without her is impossible. [Greek expression omitted] Shall Eros,
invincible for ages, be balked at last of the noblest game against which
he ever drew his bow?'....

If Hypatia's colour had faded a moment before under the withering glance
of the old Jewess, it rose again swiftly enough, as she read line after
line of this strange epistle; till at last, crushing it together in her
hand, she rose and hurried into the adjoining library, where Theon sat
over his books.

'Father, do you know anything of this? Look what Orestes has dared to
send me by the hands of some base Jewish witch!'--And she spread the
letter before him, and stood impatient, her whole figure dilated with
pride and anger, as the old man read it slowly and carefully, and then
looked up, apparently not ill pleased with the contents.

'What, father?' asked she, half reproachfully. 'Do not you, too, feel
the insult which has been put upon your daughter?'

'My dear child,' with a puzzled look, 'do you not see that he offers
you--'

'I know what he offers me, father. The Empire of Africa.... I am to
descend from the mountain heights of science, from the contemplation
of the unchangeable and ineffable glories, into the foul fields and
farmyards of earthly practical life, and become a drudge among political
chicanery, and the petty ambitions, and sins, and falsehoods of
the earthly herd.... And the price which he offers me--me, the
stainless--me, the virgin--me, the un-tamed,--is-his hand! Pallas
Athene! dost thou not blush with thy child?'

'But, my child--my child,--an empire--'

'Would the empire of the world restore my lost self-respect-my just
pride? Would it save my cheek from blushes every time I recollected that
I bore the hateful and degrading name of wife?--The property, the puppet
of a man--submitting to his pleasure--bearing his children--wearing
myself out with all the nauseous cares of wifehood--no longer able to
glory in myself, pure and self-sustained, but forced by day and night
to recollect that my very beauty is no longer the sacrament of Athene's
love for me, but the plaything of a man;--and such a man as that!
Luxurious, frivolous, heartless--courting my society, as he has done for
years, only to pick up and turn to his own base earthly uses the scraps
which fall from the festal table of the gods! I have encouraged him too
much--vain fool that I have been! No, I wrong myself! It was only--I
thought--I thought that by his being seen at our doors, the cause of
the immortal gods would gain honour and strength in the eyes of the
multitude.... I have tried to feed the altars of heaven with earthly
fuel.... And this is my just reward! I will write to him this
moment,--return by the fitting messenger which he has sent, insult for
insult!'

'In the name of Heaven, my daughter!--for your father's sake!--for my
sake! Hypatia!--my pride, my joy, my only hope!--have pity on my gray
hairs!'

And the poor old man flung himself at her feet, and clasped her knees
imploringly.

Tenderly she lifted him up, and wound her long arms round him, and laid
his head on her white shoulder, and her tears fell fast upon his gray
hair; but her lip was firm and determined.

'Think of my pride--my glory in your glory; think of me.... Not for
myself! You know I never cared for myself!' sobbed out the old man. 'But
to die seeing you empress!'

'Unless I died first in childbed, father, as many a woman dies who
is weak enough to become a slave, and submit to tortures only fit for
slaves.'

'But--but--said the old man, racking his bewildered brains for some
argument far enough removed from nature and common sense to have an
effect on the beautiful fanatic--'but the cause of the gods! What you
might do for it!.... Remember Julian!'

Hypatia's arms dropped suddenly. Yes; it was true! The thought flashed
across her mind with mingled delight and terror.... Visions of her
childhood rose swift and thick--temples--sacrifices--priesthoods--
colleges--museums! What might she not do? What might she not make
Africa? Give her ten years of power, and the hated name of Christian
might be forgotten, and Athene Polias, colossal in ivory and gold,
watching in calm triumph over the harbours of a heathen Alexandria....
But the price!

And she hid her face in her hands, and bursting into bitter tears,
walked slowly away into her own chamber, her whole body convulsed with
the internal struggle.

The old man looked after her, anxiously and perplexed, and then
followed, hesitating. She was sitting at the table, her face buried
in her hands. He did not dare to disturb her. In addition to all the
affection, the wisdom, the glorious beauty, on which his whole heart fed
day by day, he believed her to be the possessor of those supernatural
powers and favours to which she so boldly laid claim. And he stood
watching her in the doorway, praying in his heart to all gods and
demons, principalities and powers, from Athene down to his daughter's
guardian spirit, to move a determination which he was too weak to
gainsay, and yet too rational to approve.

At last the struggle was over, and she looked up, clear, calm, and
glorious again.

'It shall be. For the sake of the immortal gods--for the sake of art,
and science, and learning, and philosophy.... It shall be. If the gods
demand a victim, here am I. If a second time in the history of the ages
the Grecian fleet cannot sail forth, conquering and civilising, without
the sacrifice of a virgin, I give my throat to the knife. Father, call
me no more Hypatia: call me Iphigenia!'

'And me Agamemnon?' asked the old man, attempting a faint jest through
his tears of joy. 'I daresay you think me a very cruel father; but--'

'Spare me, father--I have spared you.'

And she began to write her answer.

'I have accepted his offer--conditionally, that is. And on whether he
have courage or not to fulfil that condition depends--Do not ask me what
it is. While Cyril is leader of the Christian mob, it may be safer for
you, my father, that you should be able to deny all knowledge of my
answer. Be content. I have said this--that if he will do as I would have
him do, I will do as you would have me do.'

'Have you not been too rash? Have you not demanded of him something
which, for the sake of public opinion, he dare not grant openly, and yet
which he may allow you to do for yourself when once--'

'I have. If I am to be a victim, the sacrificing priest shall at least
be a man, and not a coward and a time-server. If he believes this
Christian faith, let him defend it against me; for either it or I shall
perish. If he does not--as he does not--let him give up living in a lie,
and taking on his lips blasphemies against the immortals, from which his
heart and reason revolt!'

And she clapped her hands again for the maid-servant, gave her the
letter silently, shut the doors of her chamber, and tried to resume her
Commentary on Plotinus. Alas! what were all the wire-drawn dreams of
metaphysics to her in that real and human struggle of the heart? What
availed it to define the process by which individual souls emanated
from the universal one, while her own soul had, singly and on its own
responsibility, to decide so terrible an act of will? or to write fine
words with pen and ink about the immutability of the supreme Reason,
while her own reason was left there to struggle for its life amid a
roaring shoreless waste of doubts and darkness? Oh, how grand,
and clear, and logical it had all looked half an hour ago! And how
irrefragably she had been deducing from it all, syllogism after
syllogism, the non-existence of evil!--how it was but a lower form of
good, one of the countless products of the one great all-pervading mind
which could not err or change, only so strange and recondite in its form
as to excite antipathy in all minds but that of the philosopher, who
learnt to see the stem which connected the apparently bitter fruit
with the perfect root from whence it sprang. Could she see the stem
there?--the connection between the pure and supreme Reason, and the
hideous caresses of the debauched and cowardly Orestes? was not that
evil pure, unadulterate with any vein of good, past, present,
or future?...

True;--she might keep her spirit pure amid it all; she might sacrifice
the base body, and ennoble the soul by the self-sacrifice .... And yet,
would not that increase the horror, the agony, the evil of it-to her,
at least, most real evil, not to be explained away-and yet the gods
required it? Were they just, merciful in that? Was it like them, to
torture her, their last unshaken votary? Did they require it? Was it
not required of them by some higher power, of whom they were only the
emanations, the tools, the puppets?--and required of that higher power
by some still higher one--some nameless, absolute destiny of which
Orestes and she, and all heaven and earth, were but the victims, dragged
along in an inevitable vortex, helpless, hopeless, toward that for which
each was meant?--And she was meant for this! The thought was unbearable;
it turned her giddy. No! she would not! She would rebel! Like
Prometheus, she would dare destiny, and brave its worst! And she sprang
up to recall the letter.... Miriam was gone; and she threw herself on
the floor, and wept bitterly.

And her peace of mind would certainly not have been improved, could she
have seen old Miriam hurry home with her letter to a dingy house in the
Jews' quarter, where it was un-sealed, read, and sealed up again with
such marvellous skill, that no eye could have detected the change; and
finally, still less would she have been comforted could she have heard
the conversation which was going on in a summer-room of Orestes' palace,
between that illustrious statesman and Raphael Aben-Ezra, who were lying
on two divans opposite each other, whiling away, by a throw or two of
dice, the anxious moments which delayed her answer.

'Trays again! The devil is in you, Raphael!'

'I always thought he was,' answered Raphael, sweeping up the gold
pieces....

'When will that old witch be back?'

'When she has read through your letter and Hypatia's answer.'

'Read them?'

'Of course. You don't fancy she is going to be fool enough to carry a
message without knowing what it is? Don't be angry; she won't tell.
She would give one of those two grave-lights there, which she calls her
eyes, to see the thing prosper.'

'Why?'

'Your excellency will know when the letter comes. Here she is; I hear
steps in the cloister. Now, one bet before they enter. I give you two to
one she asks you to turn pagan.'

'What in? Negro-boys?'

'Anything you like.'

'Taken. Come in, slaves?'

And Hypocorisma entered, pouting.

'That Jewish fury is outside with a letter, and has the impudence to say
she won't let me bring it in!'

'Bring her in then. Quick!'

'I wonder what I am here for, if people have secrets that I am not to
know,' grumbled the spoilt youth.

'Do you want a blue ribbon round those white sides of yours, you
monkey?' answered Orestes. 'Because, if you do, the hippopotamus hide
hangs ready outside.'

'Let us make him kneel down here for a couple of hours, and use him as a
dice-board,' said Raphael, 'as you used to do to the girls in Armenia.'

'Ah, you recollect that?--and how the barbarian papas used to grumble,
till I had to crucify one or two, eh? That was something like life! I
love those out-of-the-way stations, where nobody asks questions: but
here one might as well live among the monks in Nitria. Here comes
Canidia! Ah, the answer? Hand it here, my queen of go-betweens!'

Orestes read it--and his countenance fell.

'I have won?'

'Out of the room, slaves! and no listening!'

'I have won then?'

Orestes tossed the letter across to him, and Raphael read--

'The immortal gods accept no divided worship; and he who would command
the counsels of their prophetess must remember that they will vouchsafe
to her no illumination till their lost honours be restored. If he who
aspires to be the lord of Africa dare trample on the hateful cross, and
restore the Caesareum to those for whose worship it was built--if he
dare proclaim aloud with his lips, and in his deeds, that contempt
for novel and barbarous superstitions, which his taste and reason have
already taught him, then he would prove himself one with whom it were a
glory to labour, to dare, to die in a great cause. But till then--'

And so the letter ended.

'What am I to do?'

'Take her at her word.'

'Good heavens! I shall be excommunicated! And--and--what is to become of
my soul?'

'What will become of it in any case, my most excellent lord?' answered
Raphael blandly.

'You mean--I know what you cursed Jews think will happen to every one
but yourselves. But what would the world say? I an apostate! And in the
face of Cyril and the populace! I daren't, I tell you!'

'No one asked your excellency to apostatise.'

'Why, what? What did you say just now?'

'I asked you to promise. It will not be the first time that promises
before marriage have not exactly coincided with performance afterwards.'

'I daren't--that is, I won't promise. I believe, now, this is some trap
of your Jewish intrigue, just to make me commit myself against those
Christians, whom you hate.'

'I assure you, I despise all mankind far too profoundly to hate them.
How disinterested my advice was when I proposed this match to you, you
never will know; indeed, it would be boastful in me to tell you. But
really you must make a little sacrifice to win this foolish girl. With
all the depth and daring of her intellect to help you, you might be a
match for Romans, Byzantines, and Goths at once. And as for beauty--why,
there is one dimple inside that wrist, just at the setting on of the
sweet little hand, worth all the other flesh and blood in Alexandria.'

'By Jove! you admire her so much, I suspect you must be in love with her
yourself. Why don't you marry her? I'll make you my prime minister,
and then we shall have the use of her wits without the trouble of her
fancies. By the twelve Gods! If you marry her and help me, I'll make you
what you like!'

Raphael rose and bowed to the earth.

'Your serene high-mightiness overwhelms me. But I assure you, that never
having as yet cared for any one's interest but my own, I could not be
expected, at my time of life, to devote myself to that of another, even
though it were to yours.'

'Candid!'

'Exactly so; and moreover, whosoever I may marry, will be practically,
as well as theoretically, my private and peculiar property.... You
comprehend.'

'Candid again.'

'Exactly so; and waiving the third argument, that she probably might not
choose to marry me, I beg to remark that it would not be proper to allow
the world to say, that I, the subject, had a wiser and fairer wife than
you, the ruler; especially a wife who bad already refused that ruler's
complimentary offer.'

'By Jove! and she has refused me in good earnest! I'll make her repent
it! I was a fool to ask her at all! What's the use of having guards, if
one can't compel what one wants? If fair means can't do it, foul shall!
I'll send for her this moment!'

'Most illustrious majesty--it will not succeed. You do not know that
woman's determination. Scourges and red-hot pincers will not shake her,
alive; and dead, she will be of no use whatsoever to you, while she will
be of great use to Cyril.'

'How?'

'He will be most happy to make the whole story a handle against you,
give out that she died a virgin-martyr, in defence of the most holy
catholic and apostolic faith, get miracles worked at her tomb, and pull
your palace about your ears on the strength thereof.'

'Cyril will hear of it anyhow: that's another dilemma into which you
have brought me, you intriguing rascal! Why, this girl will be boasting
all over Alexandria that I have offered her marriage, and that she has
done herself the honour to refuse me!'

'She will be much too wise to do anything of the kind; she has sense
enough to know that if she did so, you would inform a Christian populace
what conditions she offered you, and, with all her contempt for the
burden of the flesh, she has no mind to be lightened of that pretty load
by being torn in pieces by Christian monks; a very probable ending for
her in any case, as she herself, in her melancholy moods, confesses!'

'What will you have me do then?'

'Simply nothing. Let the prophetic spirit go out of her, as it will, in
a day or two, and then--I know nothing of human nature, if she does
not bate a little of her own price. Depend on it, for all her
ineffabilities, and impassibilities, and all the rest of the
seventh-heaven moonshine at which we play here in Alexandria, a throne
is far too pretty a bait for even Hypatia the pythoness to refuse.
Leave well alone is a good rule, but leave ill alone is a better. So
now another bet before we part, and this time three to one. Do nothing
either way, and she sends to you of her own accord before a month is
out. In Caucasian mules? Done? Be it so.'

'Well, you are the most charming counsellor for a poor perplexed devil
of a prefect! If I had but a private fortune like you, I could just take
the money, and let the work do itself.'

'Which is the true method of successful government. Your slave bids you
farewell. Do not forget our bet. You dine with me to-morrow?'

And Raphael bowed himself out.

As he left the prefect's door, he saw Miriam on the opposite side of the
street, evidently watching for him. As soon as she saw him, she held on
her own side, without appearing to notice him, till he turned a corner,
and then crossing, caught him eagerly by the arm.

'Does the fool dare!'

'Who dare what?'

'You know what I mean. Do you suppose old Miriam carries letters without
taking care to know what is inside them? Will he apostatise? Tell me. I
am secret as the grave!'

'The fool has found an old worm-eaten rag of conscience somewhere in the
corner of his heart, and dare not.'

'Curse the coward! And such a plot as I had laid! I would have swept
every Christian dog out of Africa within the year. What is the man
afraid of?'

'Hell-fire.'

'Why, he will go there in any case, the accursed Gentile!'

'So I hinted to him, as delicately as I could; but, like the rest of the
world, he had a sort of partiality for getting thither by his own road.'

'Coward! And whom shall I get now? Oh, if that Pelagia had as much
cunning in her whole body as Hypatia has in her little finger, I'd seat
her and her Goth upon the throne of the Caesars. But--'

'But she has five senses, and just enough wit to use them, eh?'

'Don't laugh at her for that, the darling! I do delight in her, after
all. It warms even my old blood to see how thoroughly she knows her
business, and how she enjoys it, like a true daughter of Eve.'

'She has been your most successful pupil, certainly, mother. You may
well be proud of her.'

The old hag chuckled to herself a while; and then suddenly turning to
Raphael--'See here! I have a present for you;' and she pulled out a
magnificent ring.

'Why, mother, you are always giving me presents. It was but a month ago
you sent me this poisoned dagger.'

'Why not, eh?--why not? Why should not Jew give to Jew? Take the old
woman's ring!'

'What a glorious opal!'

'Ah, that is an opal, indeed! And the unspeakable name upon it; just
like Solomon's own. Take it, I say! Whosoever wears that never need fear
fire, steel, poison, or woman's eye.'

'Your own included, eh?'

'Take it, I say!'and Miriam caught his hand, and forced the ring on his
finger. 'There! Now you're safe. And now call me mother again. I like
it. I don't know why, but I like it. And--Raphael Aben-Ezra--don't laugh
at me, and call me witch and hag, as you often do. I don't care about
it from any one else; I'm accustomed to it. But when you do it, I always
long to stab you. That's why I gave you the dagger. I used to wear it;
and I was afraid I might be tempted to use it some day, when the thought
came across me how handsome you'd look, and how quiet, when you were
dead, and your soul up there so happy in Abraham's bosom, watching all
the Gentiles frying and roasting for ever down below. Don't laugh at me,
I say; and don't thwart me! I may make you the emperor's prime minister
some day. I can if I choose.'

'Heaven forbid!' said Raphael, laughing.

'Don't laugh. I cast your nativity last night, and I know you have no
cause to laugh. A great danger hangs over you, and a deep temptation.
And if you weather this storm, you may be chamberlain, prime minister,
emperor, if you will. And you shall be--by the four archangels, you
shall!'

And the old woman vanished down a by-lane, leaving Raphael utterly
bewildered.

'Moses and the prophets! Does the old lady intend to marry me? What can
there be in this very lazy and selfish personage who bears my name, to
excite so romantic an affection? Well, Raphael Aben-Ezra, thou hast one
more friend in the world beside Bran the mastiff; and therefore one more
trouble--seeing that friends always expect a due return of affection
and good offices and what not. I wonder whether the old lady has been
getting into a scrape kidnapping, and wants my patronage to help her
out of it.... Three-quarters of a mile of roasting sun between me and
home!.... I must hire a gig, or a litter, or some-thing, off the next
stand .... with a driver who has been eating onions.... and of course
there is not a stand for the next half-mile. Oh, divine aether! as
Prometheus has it, and ye swift-winged breezes (I wish there were any
here), when will it all be over? Three-and-thirty years have I endured
already of this Babel of knaves and fools; and with this abominable good
health of mine, which won't even help me with gout or indigestion, I am
likely to have three-and-thirty years more of it....I know nothing, and
I care for nothing, and I expect nothing; and I actually can't take the
trouble to prick a hole in myself, and let the very small amount of
wits out, to see something really worth seeing, and try its strength at
something really worth doing--if, after all, the other side the grave
does not turn out to be just as stupid as this one.... When will it be
all over, and I in Abraham's bosom--or any one else's, provided it be
not a woman's?'



CHAPTER V: A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA


In the meanwhile, Philammon, with his hosts, the Goths, had been
slipping down the stream. Passing, one after another, world-old cities
now dwindled to decaying towns, and numberless canal-mouths, now fast
falling into ruin with the fields to which they ensured fertility,
under the pressure of Roman extortion and misrule, they had entered
one evening the mouth of the great canal of Alexandria, slid easily all
night across the star-bespangled shadows of Lake Mareotis, and found
themselves, when the next morning dawned, among the countless masts and
noisy quays of the greatest seaport in the world. The motley crowd of
foreigners, the hubbub of all dialects from the Crimea to Cadiz, the
vast piles of merchandise, and heaps of wheat, lying unsheltered in that
rainless air, the huge bulk of the corn-ships lading for Rome, whose
tall sides rose story over story, like floating palaces, above the
buildings of some inner dock--these sights, and a hundred more, made the
young monk think that the world did not look at first sight a thing to
be despised. In front of heaps of fruit, fresh from the market-boats,
black groups of glossy negro slaves were basking and laughing on the
quay, looking anxiously and coquettishly round in hopes of a purchaser;
they evidently did not think the change from desert toil to city
luxuries a change for the worse. Philammon turned away his eyes from
beholding vanity; but only to meet fresh vanity wheresoever they fell.
He felt crushed by the multitude of new objects, stunned by the din
around; and scarcely recollected himself enough to seize the first
opportunity of escaping from his dangerous companions.

'Holloa!' roared Smid the armourer, as he scrambled on to the steps of
the slip; 'you are not going to run away without bidding us good-bye?'

'Stop with me, boy!' said old Wulf. 'I saved you; and you are my man.'

Philammon turned and hesitated.

'I am a monk, and God's man.'

'You can be that anywhere. I will make you a warrior.'

'The weapons of my warfare are not of flesh and blood, but prayer and
fasting,' answered poor Philammon, who felt already that he should have
ten times more need of the said weapons in Alexandria than ever he had
had in the desert.... 'Let me go! I am not made for your life! I thank
you, bless you! I will pray for you, sir! but let me go!'

'Curse the craven hound!' roared half a dozen voices. 'Why did you not
let us have our will with him, Prince Wulf? You might have expected such
gratitude from a monk.'

'He owes me my share of the sport,' quoth Smid. 'And here it is!' And
a hatchet, thrown with practised aim, whistled right for Philammon's
head--he had just time to swerve, and the weapon struck and snapped
against the granite wall behind.

'Well saved!' said Wulf coolly, while the sailors and market-women above
yelled murder, and the custom-house officers, and other constables
and catchpolls of the harbour, rushed to the place--and retired again
quietly at the thunder of the Amal from the boat's stern--

'Never mind, my good follows! we're only Goths; and on a visit to the
prefect, too.'

'Only Goths, my donkey-riding friends!' echoed Smid, and at that ominous
name the whole posse comitatus tried to look unconcerned, and found
suddenly that their presence was absolutely required in an opposite
direction.

'Let him go,' said Wulf, as he stalked up the steps. 'Let the boy go.
I never set my heart on any man yet,' he growled to himself in an under
voice, 'but what he disappointed me--and I must not expect more from
this fellow. Come, men, ashore, and get drunk!'

Philammon, of course, now that he had leave to go, longed to stay--at
all events, he must go back and thank his hosts. He turned unwillingly
to do so, as hastily as he could, and found Pelagia and her gigantic
lover just entering a palanquin. With downcast eyes he approached the
beautiful basilisk, and stammered out some commonplace; and she, full of
smiles, turned to him at once.

'Tell us more about yourself before we part. You speak such beautiful
Greek--true Athenian. It is quite delightful to hear one's own accent
again. Were you ever at Athens?'

'When I was a child; I recollect--that is, I think--'

'What?' asked Pelagia eagerly.

'A great house in Athens--and a great battle there--and coming to Egypt
in a ship.'

'Heavens!' said Pelagia, and paused.... 'How strange! Girls, who said he
was like me?'

'I'm sure we meant no harm, if we did say it in a joke,' pouted one of
the attendants.

'Like me!--you must come and see us. I have something to say to you ....
You must!'

Philammon misinterpreted the intense interest of her tone, and if he did
not shrink back, gave some involuntary gesture of reluctance. Pelagia
laughed aloud.

'Don't be vain enough to suspect, foolish boy, but come! Do you think
that I have nothing to talk about but nonsense? Come and see me. It
may be better for you. I live in--' and she named a fashionable street,
which Philammon, though he inwardly vowed not to accept the invitation,
somehow could not help remembering.

'Do leave the wild man, and come,' growled the Amal from within the
palanquin. 'You are not going to turn nun, I hope?'

'Not while the first man I ever met in the world stays in it,' answered
Pelagia, as she skipped into the palanquin, taking care to show the most
lovely white heel and ankle, and, like the Parthian, send a random
arrow as she retreated. But the dart was lost on Philammon, who had been
already hustled away by the bevy of laughing attendants, amid baskets,
dressing-cases, and bird-cages, and was fain to make his escape into the
Babel round, and inquire his way to the patriarch's house.

'Patriarch's house?' answered the man whom he first addressed, a little
lean, swarthy fellow, with merry black eyes, who, with a basket of fruit
at his feet, was sunning himself on a baulk of timber, meditatively
chewing the papyrus-cane, and examining the strangers with a look of
absurd sagacity. 'I know it; without a doubt I know it; all Alexandria
has good reason to know it. Are you a monk?'

'Yes.'

'Then ask your way of the monks; you won't go far without finding one.'

'But I do not even know the right direction; what is your grudge against
monks, my good man?'

'Look here, my youth; you seem too ingenuous for a monk. Don't flatter
yourself that it will last. If you can wear the sheepskin, and haunt
the churches here for a month, without learning to lie, and slander, and
clap, and hoot, and perhaps play your part in a sedition--and--murder
satyric drama--why, you are a better man than I take you for. I, sir, am
a Greek and a philosopher; though the whirlpool of matter may have,
and indeed has, involved my ethereal spark in the body of a porter.
Therefore, youth,' continued the little man, starting up upon his baulk
like an excited monkey, and stretching out one oratorio paw, 'I bear a
treble hatred to the monkish tribe. First, as a man and a husband;....
for as for the smiles of beauty, or otherwise,--such as I have, I have;
and the monks, if they had their wicked will, would leave neither men
nor women in the world. Sir, they would exterminate the human race in a
single generation, by a voluntary suicide! Secondly, as a porter; for
if all men turned monks, nobody would be idle, and the profession of
portering would be annihilated. Thirdly, sir, as a philosopher; for as
the false coin is odious to the true, so is the irrational and animal
asceticism of the monk, to the logical and methodic self-restraint of
one who, like your humblest of philosophers, aspires to a life according
to the pure reason.'

'And pray,' asked Philammon, half laughing, 'who has been your tutor in
philosophy?'

'The fountain of classic wisdom, Hypatia herself. As the ancient
sage--the name is unimportant to a monk--pumped water nightly that he
might study by day, so I, the guardian of cloaks and parasols, at the
sacred doors of her lecture-room, imbibe celestial knowledge. From my
youth I felt in me a soul above the matter-entangled herd. She revealed
to me the glorious fact, that I am a spark of Divinity itself. A fallen
star, I am, sir!' continued he, pensively, stroking his lean stomach--'a
fallen star!--fallen, if the dignity of philosophy will allow of
the simile, among the hogs of the lower world--indeed, even into the
hog-bucket itself. Well, after all, I will show you the way to the
Archbishop's. There is a philosophic pleasure in opening one's treasures
to the modest young. Perhaps you will assist me by carrying this basket
of fruit?' And the little man jumped up, put his basket on Philammon's
head, and trotted off up a neighbouring street.

Philammon followed, half contemptuous, half wondering at what this
philosophy might be, which could feed the self-conceit of anything so
abject as his ragged little apish guide; but the novel roar and whirl of
the street, the perpetual stream of busy faces, the line of curricles,
palanquins, laden asses, camels, elephants, which met and passed him,
and squeezed him up steps and into doorways, as they threaded their
way through the great Moon-gate into the ample street beyond, drove
everything from his mind but wondering curiosity, and a vague, helpless
dread of that great living wilderness, more terrible than any dead
wilderness of sand which he had left behind. Already he longed for the
repose, the silence of the Laura--for faces which knew him and smiled
upon him; but it was too late to turn back ow. His guide held on for
more than a mile up the great main street, crossed in the centre of the
city, at right angles, by one equally magnificent, at each end of which,
miles away, appeared, dim and distant over the heads of the living
stream of passengers, the yellow sand-hills of the desert; while at the
end of the vista in front of them gleamed the blue harbour, through a
network of countless masts.

At last they reached the quay at the opposite end of the street; and
there burst on Philammon's astonished eyes a vast semicircle of blue
sea, ringed with palaces and towers....He stopped involuntarily; and
his little guide stopped also, and looked askance at the young monk, to
watch the effect which that grand panorama should produce on him.

'There!--Behold our works! Us Greeks!--us benighted heathens! Look at it
and feel yourself what you are, a very small, conceited, ignorant young
person, who fancies that your new religion gives you a right to despise
every one else. Did Christians make all this? Did Christians build that
Pharos there on the left horn--wonder of the world? Did Christians
raise that mile-long mole which runs towards the land, with its two
drawbridges, connecting the two ports? Did Christians build this
esplanade, or this gate of the Sun above our heads? Or that Caesareum
on our right here? Look at those obelisks before it!' And he pointed
upwards to those two world-famous ones, one of which still lies on its
ancient site, as Cleopatra's Needle. 'Look up! look up, I say, and feel
small--very small indeed! Did Christians raise them, or engrave them
from base to point with the wisdom of the ancients? Did Christians build
that Museum next to it, or design its statues and its frescoes--now,
alas! re-echoing no more to the hummings of the Attic bee? Did they pile
up out of the waves that palace beyond it, or that Exchange? or fill
that Temple of Neptune with breathing brass and blushing marble? Did
they build that Timonium on the point, where Antony, worsted at Actium,
forgot his shame in Cleopatra's arms? Did they quarry out that island of
Antirrhodus into a nest of docks, or cover those waters with the sails
of every nation under heaven? Speak! Thou son of bats and moles--thou
six feet of sand--thou mummy out of the cliff caverns! Can monks do
works like these?'

'Other men have laboured, and we have entered into their labours,'
answered Philammon, trying to seem as unconcerned as he could. He was,
indeed, too utterly astonished to be angry at anything. The overwhelming
vastness, multiplicity, and magnificence of the whole scene; the range
of buildings, such as mother earth never, perhaps, carried on her lap
before or since, the extraordinary variety of form-the pure Doric and
Ionic of the earlier Ptolemies, the barbaric and confused gorgeousness
of the later Roman, and here and there an imitation of the grand
elephantine style of old Egypt, its gaudy colours relieving, while they
deepened, the effect of its massive and simple outlines; the eternal
repose of that great belt of stone contrasting with the restless ripple
of the glittering harbour, and the busy sails which crowded out into
the sea beyond, like white doves taking their flight into boundless
space?--all dazzled, overpowered, saddened him.... This was the
world.... Was it not beautiful?.... Must not the men who made all this
have been--if not great.... yet.... he knew not what? Surely they had
great souls and noble thoughts in them! Surely there was something
godlike in being able to create such things! Not for themselves alone,
too; but for a nation--for generations yet unborn.... And there was the
sea.... and beyond it, nations of men innumerable .... His imagination
was dizzy with thinking of them. Were they all doomed--lost?.... Had God
no love for them?

At last, recovering himself, he recollected his errand, and again asked
his way to the archbishop's house.

'This way, O youthful nonentity!' answered the little man, leading the
way round the great front of the Caesareum, at the foot of the obelisks.

Philammon's eye fell on some new masonry in the pediment, ornamented
with Christian symbols.

'How? Is this a church?'

'It is the Caesareum. It has become temporarily a church. The immortal
gods have, for the time being, condescended to waive their rights; but
it is the Caesareum, nevertheless. This way; down this street to the
right. There,' said he, pointing to a doorway in the side of the Museum,
'is the last haunt of the Muses--the lecture-room of Hypatia, the school
of my unworthiness. And here,' stopping at the door of a splendid house
on the opposite side of the street, 'is the residence of that blest
favourite of Athene--Neith, as the barbarians of Egypt would denominate
the goddess--we men of Macedonia retain the time-honoured Grecian
nomenclature.... You may put down your basket.' And he knocked at
the door, and delivering the fruit to a black porter, made a polite
obeisance to Philammon, and seemed on the point of taking his departure.

'But where is the archbishop's house?'

'Close to the Serapeium. You cannot miss the place: four hundred columns
of marble, now ruined by Christian persecutors, stand on an eminence--'

'But how far off?'

'About three miles; near the gate of the Moon.'

'Why, was not that the gate by which we entered the city on the other
side?'

'Exactly so; you will know your way back, having already traversed it.'

Philammon checked a decidedly carnal inclination to seize the little
fellow by the throat, and knock his head against the wall, and contented
himself by saying--

'Then do you actually mean to say, you heathen villain, that you have
taken me six or seven miles out of my road?'

'Good words young man. If you do me harm, I call for help; we are close
to the Jews' quarter, and there are some thousands there who will swarm
out like wasps on the chance of beating a monk to death. Yet that which
I have done, I have done with a good purpose. First, politically, or
according to practical wisdom--in order that you, not I, might carry
the basket. Next, philosophically, or according to the intuitions of the
pure reason--in order that you might, by beholding the magnificence of
that great civilisation which your fellows wish to destroy, learn
that you are an ass, and a tortoise, and a nonentity, and so beholding
yourself to be nothing, may be moved to become something.'

And he moved off.

Philammon seized him by the collar of his ragged tunic, and held him in
a gripe from which the little man, though he twisted like an eel could
not escape.

'Peaceably, if you will; if not, by main force. You shall go back with
me, and show me every step of the way. It is a just penalty.'

'The philosopher conquers circumstances by submitting to them. I go
peaceably. Indeed, the base necessities of the hog-bucket side of
existence compel me of themselves back to the Moon-gate, for another
early fruit job.'

So they went back together.

Now why Philammon's thoughts should have been running on the next new
specimen of womankind to whom he had been introduced, though only in
name, let psychologists tell, but certainly, after he had walked some
half-mile in silence, he suddenly woke up, as out of many meditations,
and asked--

'But who is this Hypatia, of whom you talk so much?'

'Who is Hypatia, rustic? The queen of Alexandria! In wit, Athene; Hera
in majesty; in beauty, Aphrodite!'

'And who are they?' asked Philammon.

The porter stopped, surveyed him slowly from foot to head with an
expression of boundless pity and contempt, and was in the act of walking
off in the ecstasy of his disdain, when he was brought to suddenly by
Philammon's strong arm.

'Ah!--I recollect. There is a compact.... Who is Athene? The goddess,
giver of wisdom. Hera, spouse of Zeus, queen of the Celestials.
Aphrodite, mother of love.... You are not expected to understand.'

Philammon did understand, however, so much as this, that Hypatia was a
very unique and wonderful person in the mind of his little guide; and
therefore asked the only further question by which he could as yet test
any Alexandrian phenomenon--

'And is she a friend of the patriarch?'

The porter opened his eyes very wide, put his middle finger in a
careful and complicated fashion between his fore and third fingers, and
extending it playfully towards Philammon, performed therewith certain
mysterious signals, the effect whereof being totally lost on him, the
little man stopped, took another look at Philammon's stately figure, and
answered--

'Of the human race in general, my young friend. The philosopher must
rise above the individual, to the contemplation of the universal....
Aha!-Here is something worth seeing, and the gates are open.' And he
stopped at the portal of a vast building.

'Is this the patriarch's house?'

'The patriarch's tastes are more plebeian. He lives, they say, in two
dirty little rooms--knowing what is fit for him. The patriarch's house?
Its antipodes, my young friend--that is, if such beings have a cosmic
existence, on which point Hypatia has her doubts. This is the temple of
art and beauty; the Delphic tripod of poetic inspiration; the solace of
the earthworn drudge; in a word, the theatre; which your patriarch, if
he could, would convert to-morrow into a--but the philosopher must not
revile. Ah! I see the prefect's apparitors at the gate. He is making the
polity, as we call it here; the dispositions; settling, in short,
the bill of fare for the day, in compliance with the public palate. A
facetious pantomime dances here on this day every week--admired by
some, the Jews especially. To the more classic taste, many of his
movements--his recoil, especially--are wanting in the true antique
severity--might be called, perhaps, on the whole, indecent. Still the
weary pilgrim must be amused. Let us step in and hear.'

But before Philammon could refuse, an uproar arose within, a rush
outward of the mob, and inward of the prefect's apparitors.

'It is false!' shouted many voices. 'A Jewish calumny! The man is
innocent!'

'There is no more sedition in him than there is in me,' roared a fat
butcher, who looked as ready to fell a man as an ox. 'He was always the
first and the last to clap the holy patriarch at sermon.'

'Dear tender soul,' whimpered a woman; 'and I said to him only this
morning, why don't you flog my boys, Master Hierax? how can you expect
them to learn if they are not flogged? And he said, he never could abide
the sight of a rod, it made his back tingle so.'

'Which was plainly a prophecy!'

'And proves him innocent; for how could he prophesy if he was not one of
the holy ones?'

'Monks, to the rescue! Hierax, a Christian, is taken and tortured in the
theatre!' thundered a wild hermit, his beard and hair streaming about
his chest and shoulders.

'Nitria! Nitria! For God and the mother of God, monks of Nitria! Down
with the Jewish slanderers! Down with heathen tyrants!'--And the mob,
reinforced as if by magic by hundreds from without, swept down the huge
vaulted passage, carrying Philammon and the porter with them.

'My friends,' quoth the little man, trying to look philosophically calm,
though he was fairly off his legs, and hanging between heaven and earth
on the elbows of the bystanders, 'whence this tumult?'

'The Jews got up a cry that Hierax wanted to raise a riot. Curse them
and their sabbath, they are always rioting on Saturdays about this
dancer of theirs, instead of working like honest Christians!'

'And rioting on Sunday instead. Ahem! sectarian differences, which the
philosopher--

The rest of the sentence disappeared with the speaker, as a sudden
opening of the mob let him drop, and buried him under innumerable legs.

Philammon, furious at the notion of persecution, maddened by the cries
around him, found himself bursting fiercely through the crowd, till he
reached the front ranks, where tall gates of open ironwork barred all
farther progress, but left a full view of the tragedy which was enacting
within, where the poor innocent wretch, suspended from a gibbet, writhed
and shrieked at every stroke of the hide whips of his tormentors.

In vain Philammon and the monks around him knocked and beat at
the gates; they were only answered by laughter and taunts from the
apparitors within, curses on the turbulent mob of Alexandria, with its
patriarch, clergy, saints, and churches, and promises to each and all
outside, that their turn would come next; while the piteous screams grew
fainter and more faint, and at last, with a convulsive shudder, motion
and suffering ceased for ever in the poor mangled body.

'They have killed him! Martyred him! Back to the archbishop! To the
patriarch's house: he will avenge us!' And as the horrible news, and
the watchword which followed it, passed outwards through the crowd, they
wheeled round as one man, and poured through street after street towards
Cyril's house; while Philammon, beside himself with horror, rage, and
pity, hurried onward with them.

A tumultuous hour, or more, was passed in the street before he could
gain entrance; and then he was swept, along with the mob in which he had
been fast wedged, through a dark low passage, and landed breathless in
a quadrangle of mean and new buildings, overhung by the four hundred
stately columns of the ruined Serapeium. The grass was already
growing on the ruined capitals and architraves.... Little did even its
destroyers dream then, that the day would come when one only of that
four hundred would be left, as 'Pompey's Pillar,' to show what the men
of old could think and do.

Philammon at last escaped from the crowd, and putting the letter which
he had carried in his bosom into the hands of one of the priests who
was mixing with the mob, was beckoned by him into a corridor, and up a
flight of stairs, and into a large, low, mean room, and there, by virtue
of the world-wide freemasonry which Christianity had, for the first
time on earth, established, found himself in five minutes awaiting the
summons of the most powerful man south of the Mediterranean.

A curtain hung across the door of the inner chamber, through which
Philammon could hear plainly the steps of some one walking up and down
hurriedly and fiercely.

'They will drive me to it!' at last burst out a deep sonorous voice.
'They will drive me to it.... Their blood be on their own head! It
is not enough for them to blaspheme God and His church, to have the
monopoly of all the cheating, fortune-telling, usury, sorcery, and
coining of the city, but they must deliver my clergy into the hands of
the tyrant?'

'It was so even in the apostles' time,' suggested a softer but far more
unpleasant voice.

'Then it shall be so no longer! God has given me the power to stop
them; and God do so to me, and more also, if I do not use that power.
To-morrow I sweep out this Augean stable of villainy, and leave not a
Jew to blaspheme and cheat in Alexandria.'

'I am afraid such a judgment, however righteous, might offend his
excellency.'

'His excellency! His tyranny! Why does Orestes truckle to these
circumcised, but because they lend money to him and to his creatures? He
would keep up a den of fiends in Alexandria if they would do as much for
him! And then to play them off against me and mine, to bring religion
into contempt by setting the mob together by the ears, and to end with
outrages like this! Seditious! Have they not cause enough? The sooner
I remove one of their temptations the better: let the other tempter
beware, lest his judgment be at hand!'

'The prefect, your holiness?' asked the other voice slily.

'Who spoke of the prefect? Whosoever is a tyrant, and a murderer, and an
oppressor of the poor, and a favourer of the philosophy which despises
and enslaves the poor, should not he perish, though he be seven times a
prefect?'

At this juncture Philammon, thinking perhaps that he had already heard
too much, notified his presence by some slight noise, at which the
secretary, as he seemed to be, hastily lifted the curtain, and somewhat
sharply demanded his business. The names of Pambo and Arsenius, however,
seemed to pacify him at once; and the trembling youth was ushered into
the presence of him who in reality, though not in name, sat on the
throne of the Pharaohs.

Not, indeed, in their outward pomp; the furniture of the chamber was
but a grade above that of the artisan's; the dress of the great man was
coarse and simple; if personal vanity peeped out anywhere, it was in
the careful arrangement of the bushy beard, and of the few curling locks
which the tonsure had spared. But the height and majesty of his figure,
the stern and massive beauty of his features, the flashing eye, curling
lip, and projecting brow--all marked him as one born to command. As the
youth entered, Cyril stopped short in his walk, and looking him through
and through, with a glance which burnt upon his cheeks like fire, and
made him all but wish the kindly earth would open and hide him, took the
letters, read them, and then began--

'Philammon. A Greek. You are said to have learned to obey. If so you
have also learned to rule. Your father-abbot has transferred you to my
tutelage. You are now to obey me.'

'And I will.'

'Well said. Go to that window, then, and leap into the court.'

Philammon walked to it, and opened it. The pavement was fully twenty
feet below; but his business was to obey, and not take measurements.
There was a flower in the vase upon the sill. He quietly removed it,
and in an instant more would have leapt for life or death, when Cyril's
voice thundered 'Stop!'

'The lad will pass, my Peter. I shall not be afraid now for the secrets
which he may have overheard.'

Peter smiled assent, looking all the while as if he thought it a great
pity that the young man had not been allowed to put talebearing out of
his own power by breaking his neck.

'You wish to see the world. Perhaps you have seen something of it
to-day.'

'I saw the murder--'

'Then you saw what you came hither to see; what the world is, and what
justice and mercy it can deal out. You would not dislike to see God's
reprisals to man's tyranny?.... Or to be a fellow-worker with God
therein, if I judge rightly by your looks?'

'I would avenge that man.'

'Ah! my poor simple schoolmaster! And his fate is the portent of
portents to you now! Stay awhile, till you have gone with Ezekiel into
the inner chambers of the devil's temple, and you will see worse
things than these--women weeping for Thammuz; bemoaning the decay of an
idolatry which they themselves disbelieve--That, too, is on the list of
Hercules' labour, Peter mine.'

At this moment a deacon entered.... 'Your holiness, the rabbis of the
accursed nation are below, at your summons. We brought them in through
the back gate, for fear of--'

'Right, right. An accident to them might have ruined us. I shall not
forget you. Bring them up. Peter, take this youth, introduce him to the
parabolani.... Who will be the best man for him to work under?'

'The brother Theopompus is especially sober and gentle.'

Cyril shook his head laughingly.... 'Go into the next room, my son ....
No, Peter, put him under some fiery saint, some true Boanerges, who will
talk him down, and work him to death, and show him the best and worst
of everything. Cleitophon will be the man. Now then, let me see my
engagements; five minutes for these Jews--Orestes did not choose to
frighten them: let us see whether Cyril cannot; then an hour to look
over the hospital accounts; an hour for the schools; a half-hour for the
reserved cases of distress; and another half-hour for myself; and then
divine service. See that the boy is there. Do bring in every one in
their turn, Peter mine. So much time goes in hunting for this man and
that man.... and life is too short for all that. Where are these Jews?'
and Cyril plunged into the latter half of his day's work with that
untiring energy, self-sacrifice, and method, which commanded for him,
in spite of all suspicions of his violence, ambition, and intrigue,
the loving awe and implicit obedience of several hundred thousand human
beings.

So Philammon went out with the parabolani, a sort of organised guild
of district visitors.... And in their company he saw that afternoon
the dark side of that world, whereof the harbour-panorama had been the
bright one. In squalid misery, filth, profligacy, ignorance,
ferocity, discontent, neglected in body, house, and soul, by the civil
authorities, proving their existence only in aimless and sanguinary
riots, there they starved and rotted, heap on heap, the masses of the
old Greek population, close to the great food-exporting harbour of the
world. Among these, fiercely perhaps, and fanatically, but still among
them and for them, laboured those district visitors night and day. And
so Philammon toiled away with them, carrying food and clothing, helping
sick to the hospital, and dead to the burial; cleaning out the infected
houses--for the fever was all but perennial in those quarters--and
comforting the dying with the good news of forgiveness from above; till
the larger number had to return to evening service. He, however, was
kept by his superior, watching at a sick-bedside, and it was late at
night before he got home, and was reported to Peter the Reader as having
acquitted himself like 'a man of God,' as, indeed, without the least
thought of doing anything noble or self-sacrificing, he had truly done,
being a monk. And so he threw himself on a truckle-bed, in one of the
many cells which opened off a long corridor, and fell fast asleep in a
minute.

He was just weltering about in a dreary dream-jumble of Goths dancing
with district visitors, Pelagia as an angel, with peacock's wings;
Hypatia with horns and cloven feet, riding three hippopotami at
once round the theatre; Cyril standing at an open window, cursing
frightfully, and pelting him with flower-pots; and a similar self-sown
after-crop of his day's impressions; when he was awakened by the tramp
of hurried feet in the street outside, and shouts, which gradually, as
he became conscious, shaped themselves into cries of 'Alexander's Church
is on fire! Help, good Christians! Fire! Help!'

Whereat he sat up in his truckle-bed, tried to recollect where he was,
and having with some trouble succeeded, threw on his sheepskin, and
jumped up to ask the news from the deacons and monks who were hurrying
along the corridor outside.... 'Yes, Alexander's church was on fire;'
and down the stairs they poured, across the courtyard, and out into the
street, Peter's tall figure serving as a standard and a rallying point.

As they rushed out through the gateway, Philammon, dazzled by the sudden
transition from the darkness within to the blaze of moon and starlight
which flooded the street, and walls, and shining roofs, hung back a
moment. That hesitation probably saved his life; for in an instant he
saw a dark figure spring out of the shadow, a long knife flashed across
his eyes, and a priest next to him sank upon the pavement with a groan,
while the assassin dashed off down the street, hotly pursued by monks
and parabolani.

Philammon, who ran like a desert ostrich, had soon outstripped all but
Peter, when several more dark figures sprang out of doorways and corners
and joined, or seem to join, the pursuit. Suddenly, however, after
running a hundred yards, they drew up opposite the mouth of a side
street; the assassin stopped also. Peter, suspecting something wrong,
slackened his pace, and caught Philammon's arm.

'Do you see those fellows in the shadow?'

But, before Philammon could answer, some thirty or forty men, their
daggers gleaming in the moonlight, moved out into the middle of the
street, and received the fugitives into their ranks. What was the
meaning of it? Here was a pleasant taste of the ways of the most
Christian and civilised city of the Empire!

'Well,' thought Philammon, 'I have come out to see the world, and I
seem, at this rate, to be likely to see enough of it.'

Peter turned at once, and fled as quickly as he had pursued; while
Philammon, considering discretion the better part of valour, followed,
and they rejoined their party breathless.

'There is an armed mob at the end of the street.'

'Assassins!' 'Jews!' 'A conspiracy!' Up rose a Babel of doubtful voices.
The foe appeared in sight, advancing stealthily, and the whole party
took to flight, led once more by Peter, who seemed determined to make
free use, in behalf of his own safety, of the long legs which nature had
given him.

Philammon followed, sulkily and unwillingly, at a foot's pace; but he
had not gone a dozen yards when a pitiable voice at his feet called to
him--

'Help! mercy! Do not leave me here to be murdered! I am a Christian;
indeed I am a Christian!'

Philammon stooped, and lifted from the ground a comely negro-woman,
weeping, and shivering in a few tattered remnants of clothing.

'I ran out when they said the church was on fire,' sobbed the poor
creature, 'and the Jews beat and wounded me. They tore my shawl and
tunic off me before I could get away from them; and then our own people
ran over me and trod me down. And now my husband will beat me, if I ever
get home. Quick! up this side street, or we shall be murdered!'

The armed men, whosoever they were, were close on them. There was no
time to be lost; and Philammon, assuring her that he would not desert
her, hurried her up the side street which she pointed out. But the
pursuers had caught sight of them, and while the mass held on up the
main sight, three or four turned aside and gave chase. The poor negress
could only limp along, and Philammon, unarmed, looked back, and saw the
bright steel points gleaming in the moonlight, and made up his mind to
die as a monk should. Nevertheless, youth is hopeful. One chance for
life. He thrust the negress into a dark doorway, where her colour hid
her well enough, and had just time to ensconce himself behind a pillar,
when the foremost pursuer reached him. He held his breath in fearful
suspense. Should he be seen? He would not die without a struggle at
least. No! the fellow ran on, panting. But in a minute more, another
came up, saw him suddenly, and sprang aside startled. That start saved
Philammon. Quick as a cat, he leapt upon him, felled him to the earth
with a single blow, tore the dagger from his hand, and sprang to his
feet again just in time to strike his new weapon full into the third
pursuer's face. The man put his hand to his head, and recoiled against
a fellow-ruffian, who was close on his heels. Philammon, flushed with
victory, took advantage of the confusion, and before the worthy pair
could recover, dealt them half a dozen blows which, luckily for them,
came from an unpractised hand, or the young monk might have had more
than one life to answer for. As it was, they turned and limped off,
cursing in an unknown tongue; and Philammon found himself triumphant
and alone, with the trembling negress and the prostrate ruffian, who,
stunned by the blow and the fall, lay groaning on the pavement.

It was all over in a minute.... The negress was kneeling under the
gateway, pouring out her simple thanks to Heaven for this unexpected
deliverance; and Philammon was about to kneel too, when a thought struck
him; and coolly despoiling the Jew of his shawl and sash, he handed them
over to the poor negress, considering them fairly enough as his own by
right of conquest; but, lo and behold! as she was overwhelming him with
thanks, a fresh mob poured into the street from the upper end, and
were close on them before they were aware .... A flush of terror and
despair,.... and then a burst of joy, as, by mingled moonlight and
torchlight, Philammon descried priestly robes, and in the forefront of
the battle--there being no apparent danger--Peter the Reader, who
seemed to be anxious to prevent inquiry, by beginning to talk as fast as
possible.

'Ah, boy! Safe? The saints be praised! We gave you up for dead! Whom
have you here? A prisoner? And we have another. He ran right into our
arms up the street, and the Lord delivered him into our hand. He must
have passed you.'

'So he did,' said Philammon, dragging up his captive, 'and here is his
fellow-scoundrel.' Whereon the two worthies were speedily tied
together by the elbows; and the party marched on once more in search of
Alexander's church, and the supposed conflagration.

Philammon looked round for the negress, but she had vanished. He was far
too much ashamed of being known to have been alone with a woman to say
anything about her. Yet he longed to see her again; an interest--even
something like an affection--had already sprung up in his heart toward
the poor simple creature whom he had delivered from death. Instead of
thinking her ungrateful for not staying to tell what he had done
for her, he was thankful to her for having saved his blushes, by
disappearing so opportunely.... And he longed to tell her so--to know
if she was hurt--to--Oh, Philammon! only four days from the Laura, and
a whole regiment of women acquaintances already! True, Providence having
sent into the world about as many women as men, it maybe difficult to
keep out of their way altogether. Perhaps, too, Providence may have
intended them to be of some use to that other sex, with whom it has so
mixed them up. Don't argue, poor Philammon; Alexander's church is on
fire!-forward!

And so they hurried on, a confused mass of monks and populace, with
their hapless prisoners in the centre, who, hauled, cuffed, questioned,
and cursed by twenty self-elected inquisitors at once, thought fit,
either from Jewish obstinacy or sheer bewilderment, to give no account
whatsoever of themselves.

As they turned the corner of a street, the folding-doors of a large
gateway rolled open; a long line of glittering figures poured across the
road, dropped their spear-butts on the pavement with a single rattle,
and remained motionless. The front rank of the mob recoiled; and an
awe-struck whisper ran through them.... 'The Stationaries!'

'Who are they?' asked Philammon in a whisper.

'The soldiers--the Roman soldiers,' answered a whisperer to him.

Philammon, who was among the leaders, had recoiled too--he hardly knew
why--at that stern apparition. His next instinct was to press forward as
close as he dared.... And these were Roman soldiers!--the conquerors of
the world!--the men whose name had thrilled him from his childhood
with vague awe and admiration, dimly heard of up there in the lonely
Laura.... Roman soldiers! And here he was face to face with them at
last!

His curiosity received a sudden check, however, as he found his arm
seized by an officer, as he took him to be, from the gold ornaments on
his helmet and cuirass, who lifted his vine-stock threateningly over the
young monk's head, and demanded--

'What's all this about? Why are you not quietly in your beds, you
Alexandrian rascals?'

'Alexander's church is on fire,' answered Philammon, thinking the
shortest answer the wisest.

'So much the better.'

'And the Jews are murdering the Christians.'

'Fight it out, then. Turn in, men, it's only a riot.'

And the steel-clad apparition suddenly flashed round, and vanished,
trampling and jingling, into the dark jaws of the guardhouse-gate, while
the stream, its temporary barrier removed, rushed on wilder than ever.

Philammon hurried on too with them, not without a strange feeling of
disappointment. 'Only a riot!' Peter was chuckling to his brothers
over their cleverness in 'having kept the prisoners in the middle, and
stopped the rascals' mouths till they were past the guard-house.' 'A
fine thing to boast of,' thought Philammon, 'in the face of the men who
make and unmake kings and Caesars!' 'Only a riot!' He, and the corps of
district visitors--whom he fancied the most august body on earth--and
Alexander's church, Christians murdered by Jews, persecution of the
Catholic faith, and all the rest of it, was simply, then, not worth the
notice of those forty men, alone and secure in the sense of power and
discipline, among tens of thousands .... He hated them, those soldiers.
Was it because they were indifferent to the cause of which he was
inclined to think himself a not unimportant member, on the strength of
his late Samsonic defeat of Jewish persecutors? At least, he obeyed the
little porter's advice, and 'felt very small indeed.'

And he felt smaller still, being young and alive to ridicule, when,
at some sudden ebb or flow, wave or wavelet of the Babel sea, which
weltered up and down every street, a shrill female voice informed them
from an upper window, that Alexander's church was not on fire at all;
that she had gone to the top of the house, as they might have gone, if
they had not been fools, etc. etc.; and that it 'looked as safe and
as ugly as ever'; wherewith a brickbat or two having been sent up in
answer, she shut the blinds, leaving them to halt, inquire, discover
gradually and piecemeal, after the method of mobs, they had been
following the nature of mobs; that no one had seen the church on fire,
or seen any one else who had seen the same, or even seen any light in
the sky in any quarter, or knew who raised the cry; or--or--in short,
Alexander's church was two miles off; if it was on fire, it was either
burnt down or saved by this time; if not, the night-air was, to say
the least, chilly: and, whether it was or not, there were ambuscades
of Jews--Satan only knew how strong--in every street between them and
it.... Might it not be better to secure their two prisoners, and then
ask for further orders from the archbishop? Wherewith, after the manner
of mobs, they melted off the way they came, by twos and threes, till
those of a contrary opinion began to find themselves left alone, and
having a strong dislike to Jewish daggers, were fain to follow the
stream.

With a panic or two, a cry of 'The Jews are on us!' and a general rush
in every direction (in which one or two, seeking shelter from the
awful nothing in neighbouring houses, were handed over to the watch
as burglars, and sent to the quarries accordingly), they reached the
Serapeium, and there found, of course, a counter-mob collected to inform
them that they had been taken in--that Alexander's church had never
been on fire at all--that the Jews had murdered a thousand Christians
at least, though three dead bodies, including the poor priest who lay
in the house within, were all of the thousand who had yet been seen--and
that the whole Jews' quarter was marching upon them. At which news
it was considered advisable to retreat into the archbishop's house as
quickly as possible, barricade the doors, and prepare for a siege--a
work at which Philammon performed prodigies, tearing woodwork from the
rooms, and stones from the parapets, before it struck some of the
more sober-minded that it was as well to wait for some more decided
demonstration of attack, before incurring so heavy a carpenter's bill of
repairs.

At last the heavy tramp of footsteps was heard coming down the street,
and every window was crowded in an instant with eager heads; while Peter
rushed downstairs to heat the large coppers, having some experience in
the defensive virtues of boiling water. The bright moon glittered on a
long line of helmets and cuirasses. Thank Heaven! it was the soldiery.

'Are the Jews coming?' 'Is the city quiet?''Why did not you prevent
this villainy?' 'A thousand citizens murdered while you have been
snoring!'--and a volley of similar ejaculations, greeted the soldiers as
they passed, and were answered by a cool--'To your perches, and sleep,
you noisy chickens, or we'll set the coop on fire about your ears.'

A yell of defiance answered this polite speech, and the soldiery, who
knew perfectly well that the unarmed ecclesiastics within were not to be
trifled with, and had no ambition to die by coping-stones and hot water,
went quietly on their way.

All danger was now past; and the cackling rose jubilant, louder than
ever, and might have continued till daylight, had not a window in
the courtyard been suddenly thrown open, and the awful voice of Cyril
commanded silence.

'Every man sleep where he can. I shall want you at daybreak. The
superiors of the parabolani are to come up to me with the two prisoners,
and the men who took them.'

In a few minutes Philammon found himself, with some twenty others, in
the great man's presence: he was sitting at his desk, writing, quietly,
small notes on slips of paper.

'Here is the youth who helped me to pursue the murderer, and having
outrun me, was attacked by the prisoners,' said Peter. 'My hands are
clean from blood, I thank the Lord!'

'Three set on me with daggers,' said Philammon, apologetically, 'and I
was forced to take this one's dagger away, and beat off the two others
with it.'

Cyril smiled, and shook his head.

'Thou art a brave boy; but hast thou not read, "If a man smite thee on
one cheek, turn to him the other"?'

'I could not run away, as Master Peter and the rest did.'

'So you ran away, eh? my worthy friend?'

'Is it not written,' asked Peter, in his blandest tone, "If they
persecute you in one city, flee unto another"?'

Cyril smiled again. 'And why could not you run away, boy?'

Philammon blushed scarlet, but he dared not lie. 'There was a--a poor
black woman, wounded and trodden down, and I dare not leave her, for she
told me she was a Christian.'

'Right, my son, right. I shall remember this. What was her name?'

'I did not hear it.--Stay, I think she said Judith.'

'Ah! the wife of the porter who stands at the lecture-room door, which
God confound! A devout woman, full of good works, and sorely ill-treated
by her heathen husband. Peter, thou shalt go to her to-morrow with the
physician, and see if she is in need of anything. Boy, thou hast done
well. Cyril never forgets. Now bring up those Jews. Their Rabbis were
with me two hours ago promising peace: and this is the way they
have kept their promise. So be it. The wicked is snared in his own
wickedness.'

The Jews were brought in, but kept a stubborn silence.

'Your holiness perceives,' said some one, 'that they have each of them
rings of green palm-bark on their right hand.'

'A very dangerous sign! An evident conspiracy!' commented Peter.

'Ah! What does that mean, you rascals? Answer me, as you value your
lives.'

'You have no business with us: we are Jews, and none of your people,'
said one sulkily. 'None of my people? You have murdered my people! None
of my people? Every soul in Alexandria is mine, if the kingdom of God
means anything; and you shall find it out. I shall not argue with you,
my good friends, anymore than I did with your Rabbis. Take these fellows
away, Peter, and lock them up in the fuel-cellar, and see that they
are guarded. If any man lets them go, his life shall be for the life of
them.'

And the two worthies were led out.

'Now, my brothers, here are your orders. You will divide these notes
among yourselves, and distribute them to trusty and godly Catholics in
your districts. Wait one hour, till the city be quiet; and then start,
and raise the church. I must have thirty thousand men by sunrise.'

'What for, your holiness?' asked a dozen voices.

'Read your notes. Whosoever will fight to-morrow under the banner of the
Lord, shall have free plunder of the Jews' quarter, outrage and murder
only forbidden. As I have said it, God do so to me, and more also, if
there be a Jew left in Alexandria by to-morrow at noon. Go.'

And the staff of orderlies filed out, thanking Heaven that they had
a leader so prompt and valiant, and spent the next hour over the hall
fire, eating millet cakes, drinking bad beer, likening Cyril to Barak,
Gideon, Samson, Jephtha, Judas Maccabeus, and all the worthies of the
Old Testament, and then started on their pacific errand.

Philammon was about to follow them, when Cyril stopped him.

'Stay, my son; you are young and rash, and do not know the city. Lie
down here and sleep in the anteroom. Three hours hence the sun rises,
and we go forth against the enemies of the Lord.'

Philammon threw himself on the floor in a corner, and slumbered like a
child, till he was awakened in the gray dawn by one of the parabolani.

'Up, boy! and see what we can do. Cyril goes down greater than Barak the
son of Abinoam, not with ten, but with thirty thousand men at his feet!'

'Ay, my brothers!' said Cyril, as he passed proudly out in full
pontificals, with a gorgeous retinue of priests and deacons--'the
Catholic Church has her organisation, her unity, her common cause, her
watchwords, such as the tyrants of the earth, in their weakness and
their divisions, may envy and tremble at, but cannot imitate. Could
Orestes raise, in three hours, thirty thousand men, who would die for
him?'

'As we will for you!' shouted many voices.

'Say for the kingdom of God.' And he passed out.

And so ended Philammon's first day in Alexandria.



CHAPTER VI: THE NEW DIOGENES


About five o'clock the next morning, Raphael Aben-Ezra was lying in bed,
alternately yawning over a manuscript of Philo Judaeus, pulling the ears
of his huge British mastiff, watching the sparkle of the fountain in the
court outside, wondering when that lazy boy would come to tell him that
the bath was warmed, and meditating, half aloud....

'Alas! poor me! Here I am, back again--just at the point from which I
started!.... How am I to get free from that heathen Siren? Plagues on
her! I shall end by falling in love with her.... I don't know that I
have not got a barb of the blind boy in me already. I felt absurdly
glad the other day when that fool told me he dare not accept her modest
offer. Ha! ha! A delicious joke it would have been to have seen Orestes
bowing down to stocks and stones, and Hypatia installed in the ruins of
the Serapeium, as High Priestess of the Abomination of Desolation!. And
now.... Well I call all heaven and earth to witness, that I have fought
valiantly. I have faced naughty little Eros like a man, rod in hand.
What could a poor human being do more than try to marry her to some one
else, in hopes of sickening himself of the whole matter? Well, every
moth has its candle, and every man his destiny. But the daring of
the little fool! What huge imaginations she has! She might be another
Zenobia, now, with Orestes as Odenatus, and Raphael Aben-Ezra to play
the part of Longinus, and receive Longinus's salary of axe or poison.
She don't care for me; she would sacrifice me, or a thousand of me, the
cold-blooded fanatical archangel that she is, to water with our blood
the foundation of some new temple of cast rags and broken dolls.... Oh,
Raphael Aben-Ezra, what a fool you are!.... You know you are going off
as usual to her lecture, this very morning!'

At this crisis of his confessions the page entered, and announced, not
the bath, but Miriam.

The old woman, who, in virtue of her profession, had the private entry
of all fashionable chambers in Alexandria, came in hurriedly; and
instead of seating herself as usual, for a gossip, remained standing,
and motioned the boy out of the room.

'Well my sweet mother? Sit: Ah? I see! You rascal, you have brought in
no wine for the lady. Don't you know her little ways yet?'

'Eos has got it at the door, of course,' answered the boy, with a saucy
air of offended virtue.

'Out with you, imp of Satan!' cried Miriam. 'This is no time for
winebibbing. Raphael Aben-Ezra, why are you lying here? Did you not
receive a note last night?'

'A note? So I did, but I was too sleepy to read it. There it lies. Boy,
bring it here....What's this? A scrap out of Jeremiah? "Arise, and
flee for thy life, for evil is determined against the whole house
of Israel!"--Does this come from the chief rabbi; I always took the
venerable father for a sober man.... Eh, Miriam?'

'Fool! instead of laughing at the sacred words of the prophets, get up
and obey them. I sent you the note.'

'Why can't I obey them in bed? Here I am, reading hard at the Cabbala,
or Philo--who is stupider still--and what more would you have?'

The old woman, unable to restrain her impatience, literally ran at him,
gnashing her teeth, and, before he was aware, dragged him out of bed
upon the floor, where he stood meekly wondering what would come next.

'Many thanks, mother, for having saved me the one daily torture of
life--getting out of bed by one's own exertion.'

'Raphael Aben-Ezra! are you so besotted with your philosophy and your
heathenry, and your laziness, and your contempt for God and man, that
you will see your nation given up for a prey, and your wealth plundered
by heathen dogs? I tell you, Cyril has sworn that God shall do so to
him, and more also, if there be a Jew left in Alexandria by to-morrow
about this time.'

'So much the better for the Jews, then, if they are half as tired
of this noisy Pandemonium as I am. But how can I help it? Am I Queen
Esther, to go to Ahasuerus there in the prefect's palace, and get him to
hold out the golden sceptre to me?'

'Fool! if you had read that note last night, you might have gone and
saved us, and your name would have been handed down for ever from
generation to generation as a second Mordecai.'

'My dear mother, Ahasuerus would have been either fast asleep, or far
too drunk to listen to me. Why did you not go yourself?'

'Do you suppose that I would not have gone if I could? Do you fancy me
a sluggard like yourself? At the risk of my life I have got hither in
time, if there be time to save you.'

'Well: shall I dress? What can be done now?'

'Nothing! The streets are blockaded by Cyril's mob--There! do you hear
the shouts and screams? They are attacking the farther part of the
quarter already.'

'What! are they murdering them?' asked Raphael, throwing on his pelisse.
'Because, if it has really come to a practical joke of that kind, I
shall have the greatest pleasure in employing a counter-irritant. Here,
boy! My sword and dagger! Quick!'

'No, the hypocrites! No blood is to be shed, they say, if we make no
resistance, and let them pillage. Cyril and his monks are there, to
prevent outrage, and so forth.... The Angel of the Lord scatter them!'

The conversation was interrupted by the rushing in of the whole
household, in an agony of terror; and Raphael, at last thoroughly
roused, went to a window which looked into the street. The thoroughfare
was full of scolding women and screaming children; while men, old and
young, looked on at the plunder of their property with true Jewish
doggedness, too prudent to resist, but too manful to complain--while
furniture came flying out of every window, and from door after door
poured a stream of rascality, carrying off money, jewels, silks, and
all the treasures which Jewish usury had accumulated during many
a generation. But unmoved amid the roaring sea of plunderers and
plundered, stood, scattered up and down, Cyril's spiritual police,
enforcing, by a word, an obedience which the Roman soldiers could only
have compelled by hard blows of the spear-butt. There was to be no
outrage, and no outrage there was: and more than once some man in
priestly robes hurried through the crowd, leading by the hand, tenderly
enough, a lost child in search of its parents.

Raphael stood watching silently, while Miriam, who had followed him
upstairs, paced the room in an ecstasy of rage, calling vainly to him to
speak or act.

'Let me alone, mother,' he said, at last. 'It will be full ten minutes
more before they pay me a visit, and in the meantime what can one do
better than watch the progress of this, the little Exodus?'

'Not like that first one! Then we went forth with cymbals and songs to
the Red Sea triumph! Then we borrowed, every woman of her neighbour,
jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment.'

'And now we pay them back again;.. it is but fair, after all. We ought
to have listened to Jeremiah a thousand years ago, and never gone back
again, like fools, into a country to which we were so deeply in debt.'

'Accursed land!' cried Miriam. 'In an evil hour our forefathers
disobeyed the prophet; and now we reap the harvest of our sins!--Our
sons have forgotten the faith of their forefathers for the philosophy of
the Gentiles, and fill their chambers' (with a contemptuous look round)
'with heathen imagery; and our daughters are--Look there!'

As she spoke, a beautiful girl rushed shrieking out of an adjoining
house, followed by some half-drunk ruffian, who was clutching at the
gold chains and trinkets with which she was profusely bedecked, after
the fashion of Jewish women. The rascal had just seized with one hand
her streaming black tresses, and with the other a heavy collar of gold,
which was wound round her throat, when a priest, stepping up, laid a
quiet hand upon his shoulder. The fellow, too maddened to obey, turned,
and struck back the restraining arm...and in an instant was felled to
the earth by a young monk..

'Touchest thou the Lord's anointed, sacrilegious wretch?' cried the man
of the desert, as the fellow dropped on the pavement, with his booty in
his hand.

The monk tore the gold necklace from his grasp, looked at it for a
moment with childish wonder, as a savage might at some incomprehensible
product of civilised industry, and then, spitting on it in contempt,
dashed it on the ground, and trampled it into the mud.

'Follow the golden wedge of Achan, and the silver of Iscariot, thou root
of all evil!' And he rushed on, yelling, 'Down with the circumcision!
Down with the blasphemers!'--while the poor girl vanished among the
crowd.

Raphael watched him with a quaint thoughtful smile, while Miriam
shrieked aloud at the destruction of the precious trumpery.

'The monk is right, mother. If those Christians go on upon that method,
they must beat us. It has been our ruin from the first, our fancy for
loading ourselves with the thick clay.'

'What will you do?' cried Miriam, clutching him by the arm.

'What will you do?'

'I am safe. I have a boat waiting for me on the canal at the garden
gate, and in Alexandria I stay; no Christian hound shall make old Miriam
move afoot against her will. My jewels are all buried--my girls are
sold; save what you can, and come with me!'

'My sweet mother, why so peculiarly solicitous about my welfare, above
that of all the sons of Judah?'

'Because--because--No, I'll tell you that another time. But I loved your
mother, and she loved me. Come!'

Raphael relapsed into silence for a few minutes, and watched the tumult
below.

'How those Christian priests keep their men in order! There is no use
resisting destiny. They are the strong men of the time, after all,
and the little Exodus must needs have its course. Miriam, daughter of
Jonathan--'

'I am no man's daughter! I have neither father nor mother, husband
nor--Call me mother again!'

'Whatsoever I am to call you, there are jewels enough in that closet to
buy half Alexandria. Take them. I am going.'

'With me!'

'Out into the wide world, my dear lady. I am bored with riches. That
young savage of a monk understood them better than we Jews do. I shall
just make a virtue of necessity, and turn beggar.'

'Beggar?'

'Why not? Don't argue. These scoundrels will make me one, whether I like
or not; so forth I go. There will be few leavetakings. This brute of a
dog is the only friend I have on earth; and I love her, because she has
the true old, dogged, spiteful, cunning, obstinate Maccabee spirit in
her--of which if we had a spark left in us just now, there would be no
little Exodus; eh, Bran, my beauty?'

'You can escape with me to the prefect's, and save the mass of your
wealth.'

'Exactly what I don't want to do. I hate that prefect as I hate a dead
camel, or the vulture who eats him. And to tell the truth, I am growing
a great deal too fond of that heathen woman there--'

'What?' shrieked the old woman--'Hypatia?'

'If you choose. At all events, the easiest way to cut the knot is to
expatriate. I shall beg my passage on board the first ship to Cyrene,
and go and study life in Italy with Heraclian's expedition. Quick--take
the jewels, and breed fresh troubles for yourself with them. I am going.
My liberators are battering the outer door already.'

Miriam greedily tore out of the closet diamonds and pearls, rubies and
emeralds, and concealed them among her ample robes--'Go! go! Escape from
her! I will hide your jewels!'

'Ay, hide them, as mother earth does all things, in that all-embracing
bosom. You will have doubled them before we meet again, no doubt.
Farewell, mother!'

'But not for ever, Raphael! not for ever! Promise me, in the name of the
four archangels, that if you are in trouble or danger, you will write to
me, at the house of Eudaimon.'

'The little porter philosopher, who hangs about Hypatia's lecture-room?'

'The same, the same. He will give me your letter, and I swear to you,
I will cross the mountains of Kaf, to deliver you!--I will pay you all
back. By Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I swear! May my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth, if I do not account to you for the last penny!'

'Don't commit yourself to rash promises, my dear lady. If I am bored
with poverty, I can but borrow a few gold pieces of a rabbi, and turn
pedler. I really do not trust you to pay me back, so I shall not be
disappointed if you do not. Why should I?'

'Because--because--O God! No--never mind! You shall have all back.
Spirit of Elias! where is the black agate? Why is it not among
these?--The broken half of the black agate talisman!'

Raphael turned pale. 'How did you know that I have a black agate?'

'How did I? How did I not?' cried she, clutching him by the arm. 'Where
is it? All depends on that! Fool!' she went on, throwing him off from
her at arm's length, as a sudden suspicion stung her--'you have not
given it to the heathen woman?'

'By the soul of my fathers, then, you mysterious old witch, who seem to
know everything, that is exactly what I have done.'

Miriam clapped her hands together wildly. 'Lost! lost! lost! Not I will
have it, if I tear it out of her heart! I will be avenged of her--the
strange woman who flatters with her words, to whom the simple go in, and
know not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths
of hell! God do so to me, and more also, if she and her sorceries be on
earth a twelvemonth hence!'

'Silence, Jezebel! Heathen or none, she is as pure as the sunlight! I
only gave it her because she fancied the talisman upon it.'

'To enchant you with it, to your ruin!'

'Brute of a slave-dealer! you fancy every one as base as the poor
wretches whom you buy and sell to shame, that you may make them as much
the children of hell, if that be possible, as yourself!'

Miriam looked at him, her large black eyes widening and kindling. For an
instant she felt for her poniard--and then burst into an agony of tears,
hid her face in her withered hands, and rushed from the room, as a crash
and shout below announced the bursting of the door.

'There she goes with my jewels. And here come my guests, with the young
monk at their head.--One rising when the other sets. A worthy pair of
Dioscuri! Come, Bran!...Boys! Slaves! Where are you? Steal every one
what he can lay his hands on, and run for your lives through the back
gate.'

The slaves had obeyed him already. He walked smiling downstairs through
utter solitude, and in the front passage met face to face the mob of
monks, costermongers and dock-workers, fishwives and beggars, who were
thronging up the narrow entry, and bursting into the doors right and
left; and at their head, alas! the young monk who had just trampled the
necklace into the mud...no other, in fact, than Philammon.

'Welcome, my worthy guests! Enter, I beseech you, and fulfil, in your
own peculiar way, the precepts which bid you not be over anxious for the
good things of this life..For eating and drinking, my kitchen and cellar
are at your service. For clothing, if any illustrious personage will
do me the honour to change his holy rags with me, here are an Indian
shawl-pelisse and a pair of silk trousers at his service. Perhaps you
will accommodate me, my handsome young captain, choragus of this new
school of the prophets?'

Philammon, who was the person addressed, tried to push by him
contemptuously.

'Allow me, sir. I lead the way. This dagger is poisoned,-a scratch and
you are dead. This dog is of the true British breed; if she seizes you,
red-hot iron will not loose her, till she hears the bone crack. If any
one will change clothes with me, all I have is at your service. If not,
the first that stirs is a dead man.'

There was no mistaking the quiet, high-bred determination of the
speaker. Had he raged and blustered, Philammon could have met him on
his own ground: but there was an easy self-possessed disdain about him,
which utterly abashed the young monk, and abashed, too, the whole crowd
of rascals at his heels.

'I'll change clothes with you, you Jewish dog!' roared a dirty fellow
out of the mob.

'I am your eternal debtor. Let us step into this side room. Walk
upstairs, my friends. Take care there, sir!--That porcelain, whole, is
worth three thousand gold pieces: broken, it is not worth three pence.
I leave it to your good sense to treat it accordingly. Now then, my
friend!' And in the midst of the raging vortex of plunderers, who
were snatching up everything which they could carry away, and breaking
everything which they could not, lie quietly divested himself of his
finery, and put on the ragged cotton tunic, and battered straw hat,
which the fellow handed over to him.

Philammon, who had had from the first no mind to plunder, stood watching
Raphael with dumb wonder; and a shudder of regret, he knew not why,
passed through him, as he Saw the mob tearing down pictures, and dashing
statues to the ground. Heathen they were, doubtless; but still, the
Nymphs and Venuses looked too lovely to be so brutally destroyed...
There was something almost humanly pitiful in their poor broken arms and
legs, as they lay about upon the pavement.... He laughed at himself for
the notion; but he could not laugh it away.

Raphael seemed to think that he ought not to laugh it away; for he
pointed to the fragments, and with a quaint look at the young monk--

'Our nurses used to tell us, '"If you can't make it, You ought not to
break it."'

'I had no nurse,' said Philammon.

'Ah!--that accounts--for this and other things. Well,' he went on, with
the most provoking good-nature, 'you are in a fair road, my handsome
youth; I wish you joy of your fellow-workmen, and of your apprenticeship
in the noble art of monkery. Riot and pillage, shrieking women and
houseless children in your twentieth summer, are the sure path to a
Saint-ship, such as Paul of Tarsus, who, with all his eccentricities,
was a gentleman, certainly never contemplated. I have heard of Phoebus
Apollo under many disguises, but this is the first time I ever saw him
in the wolf's hide.'

'Or in the lion's,' said Philammon, trying in his shame to make a fine
speech.

'Like the Ass in the Fable. Farewell! Stand out of the way, friends!
'Ware teeth and poison!'

And he disappeared among the crowd, who made way respectfully enough for
his dagger and his brindled companion.



CHAPTER VII: THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME


Philammon's heart smote him all that day, whenever he thought of his
morning's work. Till then all Christians, monks above all, had been
infallible in his eyes: all Jews and heathens insane and accursed.
Moreover, meekness under insult, fortitude in calamity, the contempt of
worldly comfort, the worship of poverty as a noble estate, were virtues
which the Church Catholic boasted as her peculiar heritage: on which
side had the balance of those qualities inclined that morning? The
figure of Raphael, stalking out ragged and penniless into the wide
world, haunted him, with its quiet self-assured smile. And there haunted
him, too, another peculiarity in the man, which he had never before
remarked in any one but Arsenius--that ease and grace, that courtesy and
self-restraint, which made Raphael's rebukes rankle all the more keenly,
because he felt that the rebuker was in some mysterious way superior to
him, and saw through him, and could have won him Over, Or crushed him
in argument, or in intrigue--or in anything, perhaps, except mere brute
force. Strange--that Raphael, of all men, should in those few moments
have reminded him so much of Arsenius; and that the very same qualities
which gave a peculiar charm to the latter should give a peculiar
unloveliness to the former, and yet be, without a doubt, the same. What
was it? Was it rank which gave it Arsenius had been a great man, he
knew--the companion of kings. And Raphael seemed rich. He had heard
the mob crying out against the prefect for favouring him. Was it then
familiarity with the great ones of the world which produced this manner
and tone? It was a real strength, whether in Arsenius or in Raphael. He
felt humbled before it--envied it. If it made Arsenius a more complete
and more captivating person, why should it not do the same for him? Why
should not he, too, have his share of it?

Bringing with it such thoughts as these, the time ran on till noon, and
the mid-day meal, and the afternoon's work, to which Philammon looked
forward joyfully, as a refuge from his own thoughts.

He was sitting on his sheepskin upon a step, basking, like a true son
of the desert, in a blaze of fiery sunshine, which made the black
stone-work too hot to touch with the bare hand, watching the swallows,
as they threaded the columns of the Serapeium, and thinking how often he
had delighted in their air-dance, as they turned and hawked up and down
the dear old glen at Scetis. A crowd of citizens with causes,
appeals, and petitions, were passing in and out from the patriarch's
audience-room. Peter and the archdeacon were waiting in the shade close
by for the gathering of the parabolani, and talking over the morning's
work in an earnest whisper, in which the names of Hypatia and Orestes
were now and then audible.

An old priest came up, and bowing reverently enough to the archdeacon,
requested the help of one of the parabolani. He had a sailor's family,
all fever-stricken, who must be removed to the hospital at once.

The archdeacon looked at him, answered an off-hand 'Very well,' and went
on with his talk.

The priest, bowing lower than before, re-presented the immediate
necessity for help.

'It is very odd,' said Peter to the swallows in the Serapeium, 'that
some people cannot obtain influence enough in their own parishes to get
the simplest good works performed without tormenting his holiness the
patriarch.'

The old priest mumbled some sort of excuse, and the archdeacon, without
deigning a second look at him, said--'Find him a man, brother Peter.
Anybody will do. What is that boy--Philammon--doing there? Let him go
with Master Hieracas.'

Peter seemed not to receive the proposition favourably, and whispered
something to the archdeacon....

'No. I can spare none of the rest. Importunate persons must take their
chance of being well served. Come--here are our brethren; we will all go
together.'

'The farther together the better for the boy's sake,' grumbled Peter,
loud enough for Philammon--perhaps for the old priest--to overhear him.

So Philammon went out with them, and as he went questioned his
companions meekly enough as to who Raphael was.

'A friend of Hypatia!'--that name, too, haunted him; and he began, as
stealthily and indirectly as he could, to obtain information about her.
There was no need for his caution; for the very mention of her name
roused the whole party into a fury of execration.

'May God confound her, siren, enchantress, dealer in spells and
sorceress! She is the strange woman of whom Solomon prophesied.'

'It is my opinion,' said another, 'that she is the forerunner of
Antichrist.'

'Perhaps the virgin of whom it is prophesied that he will be born,'
suggested another.

'Not that, I'll warrant her,' said Peter, with a savage sneer.

'And is Raphael Aben-Ezra her pupil in philosophy?' asked Philammon.

'Her pupil in whatsoever she can find where-with to delude men's souls,'
said the old priest.

'The reality of philosophy has died long ago, but the great ones find it
still worth their while to worship its shadow.'

'Some of them worship more than a shadow, when they haunt her house,'
said Peter. 'Do you think Orestes goes thither only for philosophy?'

'We must not judge harsh judgments,' said the old priest; 'Synesius of
Cyrene is a holy man, and yet he loves Hypatia well.'

'He a holy man?--and keeps a wife! One who had the insolence to tell the
blessed Theophilus himself that he would not be made bishop unless he
were allowed to remain with her; and despised the gift of the Holy Ghost
in comparison of the carnal joys of wedlock, not knowing the Scriptures,
which saith that those who are in the flesh cannot please God! Well said
Siricius of Rome of such men--"Can the Holy Spirit of God dwell in other
than holy bodies?" No wonder that such a one as Synesius grovels at the
feet of Orestes' mistress!'

'Then she is profligate?' asked Philammon.

'She must be. Has a heathen faith and grace? And without faith and
grace, are not all our righteousnesses as filthy rags? What says St.
Paul?--That God has given them over to a reprobate mind, full of all
injustice, uncleanness, covetousness, maliciousness, you know the
catalogue--why do you ask me?'

'Alas! and is she this?'

'Alas! And why alas? How would the Gospel be glorified if heathens were
holier than Christians? It ought to be so, therefore it is so. If she
seems to have virtues, they, being done without the grace of Christ, are
only bedizened vices, cunning shams, the devil transformed into an
angel of light. And as for chastity, the flower and crown of all
virtues--whosoever says that she, being yet a heathen, has that,
blasphemes the Holy Spirit, whose peculiar and highest gift it is, and
is anathema maranatha for ever! Amen!' And Peter, devoutly crossing
himself, turned angrily and contemptuously away from his young
companion.

Philammon was quite shrewd enough to see that assertion was not
identical with proof. But Peter's argument of 'it ought to be, therefore
it is,' is one which saves a great deal of trouble...and no doubt he had
very good sources of information. So Philammon walked on, sad, he knew
not why, at the new notion which he had formed of Hypatia, as a sort
of awful sorceress--Messalina, whose den was foul with magic rites and
ruined souls of men. And yet if that was all she had to teach, whence
had her pupil Raphael learned that fortitude of his? If philosophy had,
as they said, utterly died out, then what was Raphael?

Just then, Peter and the rest turned up a side street, and Philammon and
Hieracas were left to go on their joint errand together. They paced on
for some way in silence, up one street and down another, till Philammon,
for want of anything better to say, asked where they were going.

'Where I choose, at all events. No, young man! If I, a priest, am to be
insulted by archdeacons and readers, I won't be insulted by you.'

'I assure you I meant no harm.'

'Of course not; you all learn the same trick, and the young ones catch
it of the old ones fast enough. Words smoother than butter, yet very
swords.'

'You do not mean to complain of the archdeacon and his companions?' said
Philammon, who of course was boiling over with pugnacious respect for
the body to which he belonged.

No answer.

'Why, sir, are they not among the most holy and devoted of men?'

'Ah--yes,' said his companion, in a tone which sounded very like
'Ah--no.'

'You do not think so?' asked Philammon bluntly.

'You are young, you are young. Wait a while till you have seen as much
as I have. A degenerate age this, my son; not like the good old times,
when men dare suffer and die for the faith. We are too prosperous
nowadays; and fine ladies walk about with Magdalens embroidered on their
silks, and gospels hanging round their necks. When I was young they died
for that with which they now bedizen themselves.'

'But I was speaking of the parabolani.'

'Ah, there are a great many among them who have not much business where
they are. Don't say I said so. But many a rich man puts his name on the
list of the guild just to get his exemption from taxes, and leaves the
work to poor men like you. Rotten, rotten! my son, and you will find
it out. The preachers, now--people used to say--I know Abbot Isidore
did--that I had as good a gift for expounding as any man in Pelusium;
but since I came here, eleven years since, if you will believe it, I
have never been asked to preach in my own parish church.'

'You surely jest!'

'True, as I am a christened man. I know why--I know why: they are afraid
of Isidore's men here.... Perhaps they may have caught the holy man's
trick of plain speaking--and ears are dainty in Alexandria. And there
are some in these parts, too, that have never forgiven him the part he
took about those three villains, Marc, Zosimus, and Martinian, and a
certain letter that came of it; or another letter either, which we
know of, about taking alms for the church from the gains of robbers and
usurers. "Cyril never forgets." So he says to every one who does him a
good turn.... And so he does to every one who he fancies has done him
a bad one. So here am I slaving away, a subordinate priest, while such
fellows as Peter the Reader look down on me as their slave. But
it's always so. There never was a bishop yet, except the blessed
Augustine--would to Heaven I had taken my abbot's advice, and gone to
him at Hippo!--who had not his flatterers and his tale-bearers, and
generally the archdeacon at the head of them, ready to step into the
bishop's place when he dies, over the heads of hard-working parish
priests. But that is the way of the world. The sleekest and the oiliest,
and the noisiest; the man who can bring in most money to the charities,
never mind whence or how; the man who will take most of the bishop's
work off his hands, and agree with him in everything he wants, and save
him, by spying and eavesdropping, the trouble of using his own eyes;
that is the man to succeed in Alexandria, or Constantinople, or Rome
itself. Look now; there are but seven deacons to this great city, and
all its priests; and they and the archdeacon are the masters of it and
us. They and that Peter manage Cyril's work for him, and when Cyril
makes the archdeacon a bishop, he will make Peter archdeacon....They
have their reward, they have their reward; and so has Cyril, for that
matter.'

'How?'

'Why, don't say I said it. But what do I care? I have nothing to lose,
I'm sure. But they do say that there are two ways of promotion in
Alexandria: one by deserving it, the other by paying for it. That's
all.'

'Impossible!'

'Oh, of course, quite impossible. But all I know is just this, that when
that fellow Martinian got back again into Pelusium, after being turned
out by the late bishop for a rogue and hypocrite as he was, and got the
ear of this present bishop, and was appointed his steward, and ordained
priest--I'd as soon have ordained that street-dog--and plundered him and
brought him to disgrace--for I don't believe this bishop is a bad man,
but those who use rogues must expect to be called rogues--and ground the
poor to the earth, and tyrannised over the whole city so that no man's
property, or reputation, scarcely their lives, were safe; and after all,
had the impudence, when he was called on for his accounts, to bring the
church in as owing him money; I just know this, that he added to all his
other shamelessness this, that he offered the patriarch a large sum of
money to buy a bishopric of him.... And what do you think the patriarch
answered?'

'Excommunicated the sacrilegious wretch, of course!'

'Sent him a letter to say that if he dared to do such a thing again he
should really be forced to expose him! So the fellow, taking courage,
brought his money himself the next time; and all the world says that
Cyril would have made him a bishop after all, if Abbot Isidore had not
written to remonstrate.'

'He could not have known the man's character,' said poor Philammon,
hunting for an excuse.

'The whole Delta was ringing with it. Isidore had written to him again
and again.'

'Surely then his wish was to prevent scandal, and preserve the unity of
the church in the eyes of the heathen.'

The old man laughed bitterly.

'Ah, the old story--of preventing scandals by retaining them, and
fancying that sin is a less evil than a little noise; as if the worst of
all scandals was not the being discovered in hushing up a scandal. And
as for unity, if you want that, you must go back to the good old times
of Dioclesian and Decius.'

'The persecutors?'

'Ay, boy--to the times of persecution, when Christians died like
brothers, because they lived like brothers. You will see very little of
that now, except in some little remote county bishopric, which no one
ever hears of from year's end to year's end. But in the cities it is
all one great fight for place and power. Every one is jealous of his
neighbour. The priests are jealous of the deacons, and good cause they
have. The county bishops are jealous of the metropolitan, and he is
jealous of the North African bishops, and quite right he is. What
business have they to set up for themselves, as if they were infallible?
It's a schism, I say--a complete schism. They are just as bad as their
own Donatists. Did not the Council of Nice settle that the Metropolitan
of Alexandria should have authority over Libya and Pentapolis, according
to the ancient custom?'

'Of course he ought,' said Philammon, jealous for the honour of his own
patriarchate.

'And the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople are jealous of our
patriarch.'

'Of Cyril?'

'Of course, because he won't be at their beck and nod, and let them be
lords and masters of Africa.'

'But surely these things can be settled by councils?'

'Councils? Wait till you have been at one. The blessed Abbot Isidore
used to say, that if he ever was a bishop--which he never will be--he
is far too honest for that--he would never go near one of them; for he
never had seen one which did not call out every evil passion in men's
hearts, and leave the question more confounded with words than they
found it, even if the whole matter was not settled beforehand by some
chamberlain, or eunuch, or cook sent from court, as if he were an
anointed vessel of the Spirit, to settle the dogmas of the Holy Catholic
Church.'

'Cook?'

'Why, Valens sent his chief cook to stop Basil of Caesarea from opposing
the Court doctrine.... I tell you, the great battle in these cases is
to get votes from courts, or to get to court yourself. When I was young,
the Council of Antioch had to make a law to keep bishops from running
off to Constantinople to intrigue, under pretence of pleading the cause
of the orphan and widow. But what's the use of that, when every noisy
and ambitious man shifts and shifts, from one see to another, till he
settles himself close to Rome or Byzantium, and gets the emperor's ear,
and plays into the hands of his courtiers?'

'Is it not written, "Speak not evil of dignities"? 'said Philammon, in
his most sanctimonious tone.

'Well, what of that? I don't speak evil of dignities, when I complain of
the men who fill them badly, do I?'

'I never heard that interpretation of the text before.'

'Very likely not. That's no reason why it should not be true and
orthodox. You will soon hear a good many more things, which are true
enough--though whether they are orthodox or not, the court cooks must
settle. Of course, I am a disappointed, irreverent old grumbler.
Of course, and of course, too, young men must needs buy their own
experience, instead of taking old folks' at a gift. There--use your own
eyes, and judge for yourself. There you may see what sort of saints are
bred by this plan of managing the Catholic Church. There comes one of
them. Now! I say no more!'

As he spoke, two tall negroes came up to them, and set down before
the steps of a large church which they were passing an object new to
Philammon--a sedan-chair, the poles of which were inlaid with ivory and
silver, and the upper part enclosed in rose-coloured silk curtains.

'What is inside that cage?' asked he of the old priest, as the negroes
stood wiping the perspiration from their foreheads, and a smart
slave-girl stepped forward, with a parasol and slippers in her hand, and
reverently lifted the lower edge of the curtain.

'A saint, I tell you!'

An embroidered shoe, with a large gold cross on the instep, was put
forth delicately from beneath the curtain, and the kneeling maid put on
the slipper over it.

'There!'whispered the old grumbler. 'Not enough, you see, to use
Christian men as beasts of burden--Abbot Isidore used to say--ay, and
told Iron, the pleader, to his face, that he could not conceive how a
man who loved Christ, and knew the grace which has made all men free,
could keep a slave.'

'Nor can I,' said Philammon.

'But we think otherwise, you see, in Alexandria here. We can't even walk
up the steps of God's temple without an additional protection to our
delicate feet.'

'I had thought it was written, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for
the place where thou standest is holy ground."'

'Ah! there are a good many more things written which we do not find
it convenient to recollect.--Look! There is one of the pillars of the
church-the richest and most pious lady in Alexandria.'

And forth stepped a figure, at which Philammon's eyes opened wider than
they had done even at the sight of Pelagia. Whatever thoughts the rich
and careless grace of her attire might have raised in his mind, it had
certainly not given his innate Greek good taste the inclination to
laugh and weep at once, which he felt at this specimen of the tasteless
fashion of an artificial and decaying civilisation. Her gown was stuffed
out behind in a fashion which provoked from the dirty boys who lay about
the steps, gambling for pistachios on their fingers, the same comments
with which St. Clement had upbraided from the pulpit the Alexandrian
ladies of his day. The said gown of white silk was bedizened, from waist
to ankle, with certain mysterious red and green figures at least a foot
long, which Philammon gradually discovered to be a representation, in
the very lowest and ugliest style of fallen art, of Dives and Lazarus;
while down her back hung, upon a bright blue shawl, edged with
embroidered crosses, Job sitting, potsherd in hand, surrounded by his
three friends--a memorial, the old priest whispered, of a pilgrimage
which she had taken a year or two before, to Arabia, to see and kiss the
identical dunghill on which the patriarch had sat.

Round her neck hung, by one of half a dozen necklaces, a manuscript of
the Gospels, gilt-edged and clasped with jewels; the lofty diadem of
pearls on the head carried in front a large gold cross; while above and
around it her hair, stiffened with pomatum, was frizzled out half a foot
from a wilderness of plaits and curls, which must have cost some hapless
slave-girl an hour's work, and perhaps more than one scolding, that very
morning.

Meekly, with simpering face and downcast eyes, and now and then a
penitent sigh and shake of the head and pressure of her hand on her
jewelled bosom, the fair penitent was proceeding up the steps, when she
caught sight of the priest and the monk, and turning to them with an
obeisance of the deepest humility, entreated to be allowed to kiss the
hem of their garments.

'You had far better, madam,' said Philammon, bluntly enough, 'kiss the
hem of your own. You carry two lessons there which you do not seem to
have learnt yet.'

In an instant her face flashed up into pride and fury. 'I asked for your
blessing, and not for a sermon. I can have that when I like.'

'And such as you like,' grumbled the old priest, as she swept up the
steps, tossing some small coin to the ragged boys, and murmuring to
herself, loud enough for Philammon's hearing, that she should certainly
inform the confessor, and that she would not be insulted in the streets
by savage monks.

'Now she will confess her sins inside--all but those which she has been
showing off to us here outside, and beat her breast, and weep like a
very Magdalen; and then the worthy man will comfort her with--"What a
beautiful chain! And what a shawl--allow me to touch it! How soft and
delicate this Indian wool! Ah! if you knew the debts which I have been
compelled to incur in the service of the sanctuary!--" And then of
course the answer will be, as, indeed, he expects it should, that if it
can be of the least use in the service of the Temple, she, of course,
will think it only too great an honour.... And he will keep the chain,
and perhaps the shawl too. And she will go home, believing that she
has fulfilled to the very letter the command to break off her sins by
almsgiving, and only sorry that the good priest happened to hit on that
particular gewgaw!'

'What,' asked Philammon; 'dare she actually not refuse such
importunity?'

'From a poor priest like me, stoutly enough; but from a popular
ecclesiastic like him.... As Jerome says, in a letter of his I once saw,
ladies think twice in such cases before they offend the city newsmonger.
Have you anything more to say?'

Philammon had nothing to say; and wisely held his peace, while the old
grumbler ran on--

'Ah, boy, you have yet to learn city fashions! When you are a little
older, instead of speaking unpleasant truths to a fine lady with a cross
on her forehead, you will be ready to run to the Pillars of Hercules
at her beck and nod, for the sake of her disinterested help towards a
fashionable pulpit, or perhaps a bishopric. The ladies settle that for
us here.'

'The women?'

'The women, lad. Do you suppose that they heap priests and churches
with wealth for nothing? They have their reward. Do you suppose that
a preacher gets into the pulpit of that church there, without looking
anxiously, at the end of each peculiarly flowery sentence, to see
whether her saintship there is clapping or not? She, who has such a
delicate sense for orthodoxy, that she can scent out Novatianism or
Origenism where no other mortal nose would suspect it. She who meets at
her own house weekly all the richest and most pious women of the city,
to settle our discipline for us' as the court cooks do our doctrine. She
who has even, it is whispered, the ear of the Augusta Pulcheria herself,
and sends monthly letters to her at Constantinople, and might give the
patriarch himself some trouble' if he crossed her holy will!'

'What! will Cyril truckle to such creatures?'

'Cyril is a wise man in his generation--too wise, some say, for a child
of the light. But at least, he knows there is no use fighting with those
whom you cannot conquer; and while he can get money out of these great
ladies for his almshouses, and orphan-houses, and lodging-houses, and
hospitals, and workshops, and all the rest of it--and in that, I will
say for him, there is no man on earth equal to him, but Ambrose of Milan
and Basil of Caesarea--why, I don't quarrel with him for making the best
of a bad matter; and a very bad matter it is, boy, and has been ever
since emperors and courtiers have given up burning and crucifying us,
and taken to patronising and bribing us instead.'

Philammon walked on in silence by the old priest's side, stunned and
sickened.... 'And this is what I have come out to see--reeds shaken in
the wind, and men clothed in soft raiment, fit only for kings' palaces!'
For this he had left the dear old Laura, and the simple joys and
friendships of childhood, and cast himself into a roaring whirlpool of
labour and temptation! This was the harmonious strength and unity of
that Church Catholic, in which, as he had been taught from boyhood,
there was but one Lord, one Faith, one Spirit. This was the indivisible
body, 'without spot or wrinkle, which fitly joined together and
compacted by that which every member supplied, according to the
effectual and proportionate working of every part, increased the
body, and enabled it to build itself up in Love!' He shuddered as the
well-known words passed through his memory, and seemed to mock the
base and chaotic reality around him. He felt angry with the old man for
having broken his dream; he longed to believe that his complaints were
only exaggerations of cynic peevishness, of selfish disappointment; and
yet, had not Arsenius warned him? Had he not foretold, word for word,
what the youth would find-what he had found? Then was Saint Paul's great
idea an empty and an impossible dream? No! God's word could not fail;
the Church could not err. The fault could not be in her, but in her
enemies; not, as the old man said, in her too great prosperity, but in
her slavery. And then the words which he had heard from Cyril at their
first interview rose before him as the true explanation. How could the
Church work freely and healthily while she was crushed and fettered by
the rulers of this world? And how could they be anything but the tyrants
and antichrists they were, while they were menaced and deluded by
heathen philosophy, and vain systems of human wisdom? If Orestes was the
curse of the Alexandrian Church, then Hypatia was the curse of Orestes.
On her head the true blame lay. She was the root of the evil. Who would
extirpate it?....

Why should not he? It might be dangerous; yet, successful or
unsuccessful, it must be glorious. The course of Christianity wanted
great examples. Might he not-and his young heart beat high at the
thought--might he not, by some great act of daring, self-sacrifice,
divine madness of faith, like David's of old, when he went out against
the giant--awaken selfish and luxurious souls to a noble emulation, and
recall to their minds, perhaps to their lives, the patterns of those
martyrs who were the pride, the glory, the heirloom of Egypt? And as
figure after figure rose before his imagination, of simple men and weak
women who had conquered temptation and shame, torture and death, to live
for ever on the lips of men, and take their seats among the patricians
of the heavenly court, with brows glittering through all eternities with
the martyr's crown, his heart beat thick and fast, and he longed only
for an opportunity to dare and die.

And the longing begot the opportunity. For he had hardly rejoined his
brother visitors when the absorbing thought took word again, and he
began questioning them eagerly for more information about Hypatia.

On that point, indeed, he obtained nothing but fresh invective; but when
his companions, after talking of the triumph which the true faith had
gained that morning, went on to speak of the great overthrow of Paganism
twenty years before, under the patriarch Theophilus; of Olympiodorus and
his mob, who held the Serapeium for many days by force of arms against
the Christians, making sallies into the city, and torturing and
murdering the prisoners whom they took; of the martyrs who, among those
very pillars which overhung their heads, had died in torments rather
than sacrifice to Serapis; and of the final victory, and the soldier
who, in presence of the trembling mob, clove the great jaw of the
colossal idol, and snapped for ever the spell of heathenism, Philammon's
heart burned to distinguish himself like that soldier, and to wipe out
his qualms of conscience by some more unquestionable deed of Christian
prowess. There were no idols now to break but there was philosophy--'Why
not carry war into the heart of the enemy's camp, and beard Satan in his
very den? Why does not some man of God go boldly into the lecture-room
of the sorceress, and testify against her to her face?'

'Do it yourself, if you dare,' said Peter. 'We have no wish to get our
brains knocked out by all the profligate young gentlemen in the city.'

'I will do it,' said Philammon.

'That is, if his holiness allows you to make such a fool of yourself.'

'Take care, sir, of your words. You revile the blessed martyrs, from St.
Stephen to St. Telemachus, when you call such a deed foolishness.'

'I shall most certainly inform his holiness of your insolence.'

'Do so,' said Philammon, who, possessed with a new idea, wished for
nothing more. And there the matter dropped for the time. ...............

'The presumption of the young in this generation is growing
insufferable,' said Peter to his master that evening.

'So much the better. They put their elders on their mettle in the race
of good works. But who has been presuming to-day?'

'That mad boy whom Pambo sent up from the deserts dared to offer himself
as champion of the faith against Hypatia. He actually proposed to go
into her lecture-room and argue with her to her face. What think you of
that for a specimen of youthful modesty and self-distrust?'

Cyril was silent a while.

'What answer am I to have the honour of taking back? A month's
relegation to Nitria on bread and water? You, I am sure, will not allow
such things to go unpunished; indeed, if they do, there is an end to all
authority and discipline.'

Cyril was still silent; whilst Peter's brow clouded fast. At last he
answered--

'The cause wants martyrs. Send the boy to me.'

Peter went down with a shrug, and an expression of face which looked but
too like envy, and ushered up the trembling youth, who dropped on his
knees as soon as he entered.

'So you wish to go into the heathen woman's lecture-room, and defy her?
Have you courage for it?'

'God will give it me.'

'You will be murdered by her pupils.'

'I can defend myself,' said Philammon, with a pardonable glance
downward at his sinewy limbs. 'And if not: what death more glorious than
martyrdom?'

Cyril smiled genially enough. 'Promise me two things.'

'Two thousand, if you will.'

'Two are quite difficult enough to keep. Youth is rash in promises, and
rasher in forgetting them. Promise me that, whatever happens, you will
not strike the first blow.'

'I do.'

'Promise me again, that you will not argue with her.'

'What then?'

'Contradict, denounce, defy. But give no reasons. If you do, you are
lost. She is subtler than the serpent, skilled in all the tricks of
logic, and you will become a laughing-stock, and run away in shame.
Promise me.'

'I do.'

'Then go.'

'When?'

'The sooner the better. At what hour does the accursed woman lecture
to-morrow, Peter?'

'We saw her going to the Museum at nine this morning.'

'Then go at nine to-morrow. There is money for you.'

'What is this for?' asked Philammon, fingering curiously the first coins
which he ever had handled in his life.

'To pay for your entrance. To the philosopher none enters without money.
Not so to the Church of God, open all day long to the beggar and the
slave. If you convert her, well. And if not'.... And he added to himself
between his teeth, 'And if not, well also--perhaps better.'

'Ay!' said Peter bitterly, as he ushered Philammon out. 'Go up to Ramoth
Gilead, and prosper, young fool! What evil spirit sent you here to feed
the noble patriarch's only weakness?'

'What do you mean?' asked Philammon, as fiercely as he dare.

'The fancy that preachings, and protestations, and martyrdoms can drive
out the Canaanites, who can only be got rid of with the sword of the
Lord and of Gideon. His uncle Theophilus knew that well enough. If he
had not, Olympiodorus might have been master of Alexandria, and incense
burning before Serapis to this day. Ay, go, and let her convert you!
Touch the accursed thing, like Achan, and see if you do not end by
having it in your tent. Keep company with the daughters of Midian, and
see if you do not join yourself to Baal poor, and eat the offerings of
the dead!'

And with this encouraging sentence, the two parted for the night.



CHAPTER VIII: THE EAST WIND


As Hypatia went forth the next morning, in all her glory, with a crowd
of philosophers and philosophasters, students, and fine gentlemen,
following her in reverend admiration across the street to her
lecture-room, a ragged beggar-man, accompanied by a huge and
villainous-looking dog, planted himself right before her, and extending
a dirty hand, whined for an alms.

Hypatia, whose refined taste could never endure the sight, much less the
contact, of anything squalid and degraded, recoiled a little, and bade
the attendant slave get rid of the man with a coin. Several of the
younger gentlemen, however, considered themselves adepts in that noble
art of 'upsetting' then in vogue in the African universities, to which
we all have reason enough to be thankful, seeing that it drove Saint
Augustine from Carthage to Rome; and they, in compliance with the usual
fashion of tormenting any simple creature who came in their way by
mystification and insult, commenced a series of personal witticisms,
which the beggar bore stoically enough. The coin was offered him, but
he blandly put aside the hand of the giver, and keeping his place on the
pavement, seemed inclined to dispute Hypatia's farther passage.

'What do you want? Send the wretch and his frightful dog away,
gentlemen!' said the poor philosopher in some trepidation.

'I know that dog,' said one of them; 'it is Aben-Ezra's. Where did you
find it before it was lost, you rascal.'

'Where your mother found you when she palmed you off upon her goodman,
my child--in the slave-market. Fair Sybil, have you already forgotten
your humblest pupil, as these young dogs have, who are already trying to
upset their master and instructor in the angelic science of bullying?'

And the beggar, lifting his broad straw hat, disclosed the features of
Raphael Aben-Ezra. Hypatia recoiled with a shriek of surprise.

'Ah! you are astonished. At what, I pray?'

'To see you, sir, thus!'

'Why, then? You have been preaching to us all a long time the glory of
abstraction from the allurements of sense. It augurs ill, surely, for
your estimate either of your pupils or of your own eloquence, if you are
so struck with consternation because one of them has actually at last
obeyed you.'

'What is the meaning of this masquerade, most excellent sir?' asked
Hypatia and a dozen voices beside.

'Ask Cyril. I am on my way to Italy, in the character of the New
Diogenes, to look, like him, for a man. When I have found one, I shall
feel great pleasure in returning to acquaint you with the amazing news.
Farewell! I wished to look once more at a certain countenance, though
I have turned, as you see, Cynic; and intend henceforth to attend no
teacher but my dog, who will luckily charge no fees for instruction; if
she did, I must go untaught, for my ancestral wealth made itself wings
yesterday morning. You are aware, doubtless, of the Plebiscitum against
the Jews, which was carried into effect under the auspices of a certain
holy tribune of the people?'

'Infamous!'

'And dangerous, my dear lady. Success is inspiriting.... and Theon's
house is quite as easily sacked, as the Jews' quarter.... Beware.'

'Come, come, Aben-Ezra,' cried the young men; 'you are far too good
company for us to lose you for that rascally patriarch's fancy. We will
make a subscription for you, eh? And you shall live with each of us,
month and month about. We shall quite lose the trick of joking without
you.'

'Thank you, gentlemen. But really you have been my butts far too long
for me to think of becoming yours. Madam, one word in private before I
go.'

Hypatia leant forward, and speaking in Syriac, whispered hurriedly--

'Oh, stay, sir, I beseech you: You are the wisest of my pupils--perhaps
my only true pupil.... My father will find some concealment for you from
these wretches; and if you need money, remember, he is your debtor. We
have never repaid you the gold which--'

'Fairest Muse, that was but my entrance-fee to Parnassus. It is I who
am in your debt; and I have brought my arrears, in the form of this
opal ring. As for shelter near you,' he went on, lowering his voice, and
speaking like her, in Syriac--'Hypatia the Gentile is far too lovely
for the peace of mind of Raphael the Jew.' And he drew from his finger
Miriam's ring and offered it.

'Impossible!'said Hypatia, blushing scarlet: 'I cannot accept it.'

'I beseech you. It is the last earthly burden I have, except this
snail's prison of flesh and blood. My dagger will open a crack through
that when it becomes intolerable. But as I do not intend to leave my
shell, if I can help it, except just when and how I choose, and as, if
I take this ring with me, some of Heraclian's Circumcellions will
assuredly knock my brains out for the sake of it-I must entreat.'

'Never! Can you not sell the ring, and escape to Synesius? He will give
you shelter.'

'The hospitable hurricane! Shelter, yes; but rest, none. As soon pitch
my tent in the crater of Aetna. Why, he will be trying day and night to
convert me to that eclectic farrago of his, which he calls philosophic
Christianity. Well, if you will not have the ring, it is soon disposed
of. We Easterns know how to be magnificent, and vanish as the lords of
the world ought.'

And he turned to the philosophic crowd.

'Here, gentlemen of Alexandria! Does any gay youth wish to pay his
debts once and for all?--Behold the Rainbow of Solomon, an opal such
as Alexandria never saw before, which would buy any one of you, and his
Macedonian papa, and his Macedonian mamma, and his Macedonian sisters,
and horses, and parrots, and peacocks, twice over, in any slave-market
in the world. Any gentleman who wishes to possess a jewel worth ten
thousand gold pieces, will only need to pick it out of the gutter into
which I throw it. Scramble for it, you young Phaedrias and Pamphili!
There are Laides and Thaides enough about, who will help you to spend
it.'

And raising the jewel on high, he was in the act of tossing it into the
street, when his arm was seized from behind, and the ring snatched
from his hand. He turned, fiercely enough, and saw behind him, her eyes
flashing fury and contempt, old Miriam.

Bran sprang at the old woman's throat in an instant; but recoiled again
before the glare of her eye. Raphael called the dog off, and turning
quietly to the disappointed spectators--

'It is all right, my luckless friends. You must raise money for
yourselves, after all; which, since the departure of my nation, will be
a somewhat more difficult matter than ever. The over-ruling destinies,
whom, as you all know so well when you are getting tipsy, not even
philosophers can resist, have restored the Rainbow of Solomon to its
original possessor. Farewell, Queen of Philosophy! When I find the man,
you shall hear of it. Mother, I am coming with you for a friendly word
before we part, though' he went on, laughing, as the two walked away
together, 'it was a scurvy trick of you to balk one of The Nation of the
exquisite pleasure of seeing those heathen dogs scrambling in the gutter
for his bounty.'

Hypatia went on to the Museum, utterly bewildered by this strange
meeting, and its still stranger end. She took care, nevertheless, to
betray no sign of her deep interest till she found herself alone in
her little waiting-room adjoining the lecture-hall; and there, throwing
herself into a chair, she sat and thought, till she found, to her
surprise and anger, the tears trickling down her cheeks. Not that her
bosom held one spark of affection for Raphael. If there had ever been
any danger of that the wily Jew had himself taken care to ward it off,
by the sneering and frivolous tone with which he quashed every approach
to deep feeling, either in himself or in others. As for his compliments
to her beauty, she was far too much accustomed to such, to be either
pleased or displeased by them. But she felt, as she said, that she
had lost perhaps her only true pupil; and more--perhaps her only true
master. For she saw clearly enough, that under that Silenus' mask was
hidden a nature capable of--perhaps more than she dare think of. She had
always felt him her superior in practical cunning; and that morning had
proved to her what she had long suspected, that he was possibly also her
superior in that moral earnestness and strength of will for which she
looked in vain among the enervated Greeks who surrounded her. And even
in those matters in which he professed himself her pupil, she had long
been alternately delighted by finding that he alone, of all her school,
seemed thoroughly and instinctively to comprehend her every word, and
chilled by the disagreeable suspicion that he was only playing with her,
and her mathematics and geometry, and meta-physic and dialectic, like
a fencer practising with foils, while he reserved his real strength for
some object more worthy of him. More than once some paradox or question
of his had shaken her neatest systems into a thousand cracks, and
opened up ugly depths of doubt, even on the most seemingly-palpable
certainties; or some half-jesting allusion to those Hebrew Scriptures,
the quantity and quality of his faith in which he would never confess,
made her indignant at the notion that he considered himself in
possession of a reserved ground of knowledge, deeper and surer than her
own, in which he did not deign to allow her to share.

And yet she was irresistibly attracted to him. That deliberate and
consistent luxury of his, from which she shrank, he had always boasted
that he was able to put on and take off at will like a garment: and now
he seemed to have proved his words; to be a worthy rival of the great
Stoics of old time. Could Zeno himself have asked more from frail
humanity? Moreover, Raphael had been of infinite practical use to
her. He worked out, unasked, her mathematical problems; he looked out
authorities, kept her pupils in order by his bitter tongue, and drew
fresh students to her lectures by the attractions of his wit, his
arguments, and last, but not least, his unrivalled cook and cellar.
Above all he acted the part of a fierce and valiant watch-dog on her
behalf, against the knots of clownish and often brutal sophists, the
wrecks of the old Cynic, Stoic, and Academic schools, who, with venom
increasing, after the wont of parties, with their decrepitude, assailed
the beautifully bespangled card-castle of Neo-Platonism, as an empty
medley of all Greek philosophies with all Eastern superstitions. All
such Philistines had as yet dreaded the pen and tongue of Raphael, even
more than those of the chivalrous Bishop of Cyrene, though he certainly,
to judge from certain of his letters, hated them as much as he could
hate any human being; which was after all not very bitterly.

But the visits of Synesius were few and far between; the distance
between Carthage and Alexandria, and the labour of his diocese, and,
worse than all, the growing difference in purpose between him and
his beautiful teacher, made his protection all but valueless. And now
Aben-Ezra was gone too, and with him were gone a thousand plans and
hopes. To have converted him at last to a philosophic faith in the old
gods! To have made him her instrument for turning back the stream of
human error I... How often had that dream crossed her! And now, who
would take his place? Athanasius? Synesius in his good-nature might
dignify him with the name of brother, but to her he was a powerless
pedant, destined to die without having wrought any deliverance on
the earth, as indeed the event proved. Plutarch of Athens? He was
superannuated. Syrianus? A mere logician, twisting Aristotle to mean
what she knew, and he ought to have known, Aristotle never meant. Her
father? A man of triangles and conic sections. How paltry they all
looked by the side of the unfathomable Jew!--Spinners of charming
cobwebs..... But would the flies condescend to be caught in them?
Builders of pretty houses..... If people would but enter and live in
them! Preachers of superfine morality.... which their admiring pupils
never dreamt of practising. Without her, she well knew, philosophy must
die in Alexandria. And was it her wisdom--or other and more earthly
charms of hers--which enabled her to keep it alive? Sickening thought!
Oh, that she were ugly, only to test the power of her doctrines!

Ho! The odds were fearful enough already; she would be glad of any help,
however earthly and carnal. But was not the work hopeless? What she
wanted was men who could act while she thought. And those were just the
men whom she would find nowhere but--she knew it too well--in the hated
Christian priesthood. And then that fearful Iphigenia sacrifice loomed
in the distance as inevitable. The only hope of philosophy was in her
despair! ...............

She dashed away the tears, and proudly entered the lecture-hall, and
ascended the tribune like a goddess, amid the shouts of her audience....
What did she care for them? Would they do what she told them? She was
half through her lecture before she could recollect herself, and banish
from her mind the thought of Raphael. And at that point we will take the
lecture up. ...............

'Truth? Where is truth but in the soul itself? Facts, objects, are but
phantoms matter-woven--ghosts of this earthly night, at which the soul,
sleeping here in the mire and clay of matter, shudders and names its own
vague tremors sense and perception. Yet, even as our nightly dreams stir
in us the suspicion of mysterious and immaterial presences, unfettered
by the bonds of time and space, so do these waking dreams which we call
sight and sound. They are divine messengers, whom Zeus, pitying
his children, even when he pent them in this prison-house of flesh,
appointed to arouse in them dim recollections of that real world of
souls whence they came. Awakened once to them; seeing, through the
veil of sense and fact, the spiritual truth of which they are but the
accidental garment, concealing the very thing which they make palpable,
the philosopher may neglect the fact for the doctrine, the shell for
the kernel, the body for the soul, of which it is but the symbol and the
vehicle. What matter, then, to the philosopher whether these names of
men, Hector or Priam, Helen or Achilles, were ever visible as phantoms
of flesh and blood before the eyes of men? What matter whether they
spoke or thought as he of Scios says they did? What matter, even,
whether he himself ever had earthly life? The book is here--the word
which men call his. Let the thoughts thereof have been at first whose
they may, now they are mine. I have taken them to myself, and thought
them to myself, and made them parts of my own soul. Nay, they were and
ever will be parts of me; for they, even as the poet was, even as I am,
are but a part of the universal soul. What matter, then, what myths
grew up around those mighty thoughts of ancient seers? Let others try
to reconcile the Cyclic fragments, or vindicate the Catalogue of ships.
What has the philosopher lost, though the former were proved to be
contradictory, and the latter interpolated? The thoughts are there, and
ours, Let us open our hearts lovingly to receive them, from whencesoever
they may have come. As in men, so in books, the soul is all with which
our souls must deal; and the soul of the book is whatsoever beautiful,
and true, and noble we can find in it. It matters not to us whether the
poet was altogether conscious of the meanings which we can find in him.
Consciously or unconsciously to him, the meanings must be there; for
were they not there to be seen, how could we see them? There are
those among the uninitiate vulgar--and those, too, who carry under
the philosophic cloak hearts still uninitiate--who revile such
interpretations as merely the sophistic and arbitrary sports of fancy.
It lies with them to show what Homer meant, if our spiritual meanings be
absurd; to tell the world why Homer is admirable, if that for which we
hold him up to admiration does not exist in him. Will they say that the
honour which he has enjoyed for ages was inspired by that which seems to
be his first and literal meaning? And more, will they venture to impute
that literal meaning to him? can they suppose that the divine soul of
Homer could degrade itself to write of actual and physical feastings,
and nuptials, and dances, actual nightly thefts of horses, actual
fidelity of dogs and swineherds, actual intermarriages between deities
and men, or that it is this seeming vulgarity which has won for him from
the wisest of every age the title of the father of poetry? Degrading
thought! fit only for the coarse and sense-bound tribe who can
appreciate nothing but what is palpable to sense and sight! As soon
believe the Christian scriptures, when they tell us of a deity who has
hands and feet, eyes and ears, who condescends to command the patterns
of furniture and culinary utensils, and is made perfect by being
born--disgusting thought!--as the son of a village maiden, and defiling
himself with the wants and sorrows of the lowest slaves!'

'It is false! blasphemous! The Scriptures cannot lie!' cried a voice
from the farther end of the room.

It was Philammon's. He had been listening to the whole lecture; and yet
not so much listening as watching, in bewilderment, the beauty of the
speaker, the grace of her action, the melody of her voice, and last, but
not least, the maze of her rhetoric, as it glittered before his
mind's eye like a cobweb diamonded with dew. A sea of new thoughts and
questions, if not of doubts, came rushing in at every sentence on his
acute Greek intellect, all the more plentifully and irresistibly
because his speculative faculty was as yet altogether waste and empty,
undefended by any scientific culture from the inrushing flood. For
the first time in his life he found himself face to face with the
root-questions of all thought--'What am I, and where?' 'What can I
know?' And in the half-terrified struggle with them, he had all but
forgotten the purpose for which he entered the lecture-hall. He
felt that he must break the spell. Was she not a heathen and a
false prophetess? Here was something tangible to attack; and half
in indignation at the blasphemy, half in order to force himself into
action, he had sprung up and spoken.

A yell arose. 'Turn the monk out!''Throw the rustic through the window!'
cried a dozen young gentlemen. Several of the most valiant began to
scramble over the benches up to him; and Philammon was congratulating
himself on the near approach of a glorious martyrdom, when Hypatia's
voice, calm and silvery, stifled the tumult in a moment.

'Let the youth listen, gentlemen. He is but a monk and a plebeian, and
knows no better; he has been taught thus. Let him sit here quietly, and
perhaps we may be able to teach him otherwise.'

And without interrupting, even by a change of tone, the thread of her
discourse, she continued--

'Listen, then, to a passage from the sixth book of the _Iliad_, in which
last night I seemed to see glimpses of some mighty mystery. You know it
well: yet I will read it to you; the very sound and pomp of that great
verse may tune our souls to a fit key for the reception of lofty wisdom.
For well said Abamnon the Teacher, that "the soul consisted first of
harmony and rhythm, and ere it gave itself to the body, had listened to
the divine harmony. Therefore it is that when, after having come into
a body, it hears such melodies as most preserve the divine footstep of
harmony, it embraces such, and recollects from them that divine harmony,
and is impelled to it, and finds its home in it, and shares of it as
much as it can share."'

And therewith fell on Philammon's ear, for the first time, the mighty
thunder-roll of Homer's verse--

So spoke the stewardess: but Hector rushed From the house, the same way
back, down stately streets, Through the broad city, to the Scaian gates,
Whereby he must go forth toward the plain, There running toward him
came Andromache, His ample-dowered wife, Eetion's child-- Eetion the
great-hearted, he who dwelt In Thebe under Placos, and the woods Of
Placos, ruling over Kilic men. His daughter wedded Hector brazen-helmed,
And met him then; and with her came a maid, Who bore in arms a
playful-hearted babe An infant still, akin to some fair star, Only and
well-loved child of Hector's house, Whom he had named Scamandrios, but
the rest Astyanax, because his sire alone Upheld the weal of Ilion the
holy. He smiled in silence, looking on his child But she stood close to
him, with many tears; And hung upon his hand, and spoke, and called him.
'My hero, thy great heart will wear thee out; Thou pitiest not thine
infant child, nor me The hapless, soon to be thy widow; The Greeks will
slay thee, falling one and all Upon thee: but to me were sweeter far,
Having lost thee, to die; no cheer to me Will come thenceforth, if thou
shouldst meet thy fate; Woes only: mother have I none, nor sire. For
that my sire divine Achilles slew, And wasted utterly the pleasant homes
Of Kilic folk in Thebe lofty-walled, And slew Eetion with the sword!
yet spared To strip the dead: awe kept his soul from that. Therefore he
burnt him in his graven arms, And heaped a mound above him; and around
The damsels of the Aegis-holding Zeus, The nymphs who haunt the upland,
planted elms. And seven brothers bred with me in the halls, All in one
day went down to Hades there; For all of them swift-foot Achilles slew
Beside the lazy kine and snow-white sheep. And her, my mother, who of
late was queen Beneath the woods of Places, he brought here Among his
other spoils; yet set her free Again, receiving ransom rich and great.
But Artemis, whose bow is all her joy, Smote her to death within her
father's halls. Hector! so thou art father to me now, Mother, and
brother, and husband fair and strong! Oh, come now, pity me, and stay
thou here Upon the tower, nor make thy child an orphan And me thy wife
a widow; range the men Here by the fig-tree, where the city lies Lowest,
and where the wall can well be scaled; For here three times the best
have tried the assault Round either Ajax, and Idomeneus, And round the
Atridai both, and Tydeus' son, Whether some cunning seer taught them
craft, Or their own spirit stirred and drove them on.' Then spake tall
Hector, with the glancing helm All this I too have watched, my wife; yet
much I hold in dread the scorn of Trojan men And Trojan women with their
trailing shawls, If, like a coward, I should skulk from war. Beside, I
have no lust to stay; I have learnt Aye to be bold, and lead the van of
fight, To win my father, and myself, a name. For well I know, at heart
and in my thought, The day will come when Ilios the holy Shall lie in
heaps, and Priam, and the folk Of ashen-speared Priam, perish all. But
yet no woe to come to Trojan men, Nor even to Hecabe, nor Priam king,
Nor to my brothers, who shall roll in dust, Many and fair, beneath the
strokes of foes, So moves me, as doth thine, when thou shalt go Weeping,
led off by some brass-harnessed Greek, Robbed of the daylight of thy
liberty, To weave in Argos at another's loom, Or bear the water of
Messeis home, Or Hypereia, with unseemly toils, While heavy doom
constrains thee, and perchance The folk may say, who see thy tears
run down, "This was the wife of Hector, best in fight At Ilium, of
horse-taming Trojan men." So will they say perchance; while unto thee
Now grief will come, for such a husband's loss, Who might have warded
off the day of thrall. But may the soil be heaped above my corpse Before
I hear thy shriek and see thy shame!' He spoke, and stretched his arms
to take the child, But back the child upon his nurse's breast Shrank
crying, frightened at his father's looks. Fearing the brass and crest of
horse's hair Which waved above the helmet terribly. Then out that father
dear and mother laughed, And glorious Hector took the helmet off, And
laid it gleaming on the ground, and kissed His darling child, and danced
him in his arm; And spoke in prayer to Zeus, and all the gods 'Zeu,
and ye other gods, oh grant that this My child, like me, may grow the
champion here As good in strength, and rule with might in Troy That men
may say, "The boy is better far Than was his sire," when he returns
from war, Bearing a gory harness, having slain A foeman, and his mothers
heart rejoice. Thus saying, on the hands of his dear wife He laid the
child; and she received him back In fragrant bosom, smiling through her
tears.

[Footnote: The above lines are not meant as a 'translation,' but as an
humble attempt to give the literal sense in some sort of metre. It would
be an act of arrogance even to aim at success where Pope and Chapman
failed. It is simply, I believe, impossible to render Homer into English
verse; because, for one reason among many, it is impossible to preserve
the pomp of sound, which invests with grandeur his most common words.
How can any skill represent the rhythm of Homeric Greek in a language
which--to take the first verse which comes to hand--transforms 'boos
megaloio boeien,' into 'great ox's hide'?]

'Such is the myth. Do you fancy that in it Homer meant to hand down to
the admiration of ages such earthly commonplaces as a mother's brute
affection, and the terrors of an infant? Surely the deeper insight of
the philosopher may be allowed without the reproach of fancifulness, to
see in it the adumbration of some deeper mystery!

'The elect soul, for instance--is not its name Astyanax, king of the
city; by the fact of its ethereal parentage, the leader and lord of
all around it, though it knows it not? A child as yet, it lies upon
the fragrant bosom of its mother Nature, the nurse and yet the enemy
of man--Andromache, as the poet well names her, because she fights with
that being, when grown to man's estate, whom as a child she nourished.
Fair is she, yet unwise; pampering us, after the fashion of mothers,
with weak indulgences; fearing to send us forth into the great realities
of speculation, there to forget her in the pursuit of glory, she would
have us while away our prime within the harem, and play for ever round
her knees. And has not the elect soul a father, too, whom it knows not?
Hector, he who is without--unconfined, unconditioned by Nature, yet its
husband?--the all-pervading, plastic Soul, informing, organising, whom
men call Zeus the lawgiver, Aether the fire, Osiris the lifegiver; whom
here the poet has set forth as the defender of the mystic city, the
defender of harmony, and order, and beauty throughout the universe?
Apart sits his great father--Priam, the first of existences, father
of many sons, the Absolute Reason; unseen, tremendous, immovable, in
distant glory; yet himself amenable to that abysmal unity which Homer
calls Fate, the source of all which is, yet in Itself Nothing, without
predicate, unnameable.

'From It and for It the universal Soul thrills through the whole
Creation, doing the behests of that Reason from which it overflowed,
unwillingly, into the storm and crowd of material appearances; warring
with the brute forces of gross matter, crushing all which is foul and
dissonant to itself, and clasping to its bosom the beautiful, and all
wherein it discovers its own reflex; impressing on it its signature,
reproducing from it its own likeness, whether star, or daemon, or soul
of the elect:--and yet, as the poet hints in anthropomorphic language,
haunted all the while by a sadness--weighed down amid all its labours by
the sense of a fate--by the thought of that First One from whom the Soul
is originally descended; from whom it, and its Father the Reason before
it, parted themselves when they dared to think and act, and assert their
own free will.

'And in the meanwhile, alas! Hector, the father, fights around, while
his children sleep and feed; and he is away in the wars, and they know
him not-know not that they the individuals are but parts of him the
universal. And yet at moments--oh! thrice blessed they whose celestial
parentage has made such moments part of their appointed destiny--at
moments flashes on the human child the intuition of the unutterable
secret. In the spangled glory of the summer night--in the roar of the
Nile-flood, sweeping down fertility in every wave--in the awful depths
of the temple-shrine--in the wild melodies of old Orphic singers, or
before the images of those gods of whose perfect beauty the divine
theosophists of Greece caught a fleeting shadow, and with the sudden
might of artistic ecstasy smote it, as by an enchanter's wand, into an
eternal sleep of snowy stone--in these there flashes on the inner eye a
vision beautiful and terrible, of a force, an energy, a soul, an idea,
one and yet million-fold, rushing through all created things, like the
wind across a lyre, thrilling the strings into celestial harmony--one
life-blood through the million veins of the universe, from one great
unseen heart, whose thunderous pulses the mind hears far away, beating
for ever in the abysmal solitude, beyond the heavens and the galaxies,
beyond the spaces and the times, themselves but veins and runnels from
its all-teeming sea.


'Happy, thrice happy! they who once have dared, even though breathless,
blinded with tears of awful joy, struck down upon their knees in utter
helplessness, as they feel themselves but dead leaves in the wind which
sweeps the universe--happy they who have dared to gaze, if but for an
instant, on the terror of that glorious pageant; who have not, like the
young Astyanax, clung shrieking to the breast of mother Nature, scared
by the heaven-wide flash of Hector's arms, and the glitter of his
rainbow crest! Happy, thrice happy,! even though their eyeballs, blasted
by excess of light, wither to ashes in their sockets!--Were it not a
noble end to have seen Zeus, and die like Semele, burnt up by his
glory? Happy, thrice happy! though their mind reel from the divine
intoxication, and the hogs of Circe call them henceforth madmen and
enthusiasts. Enthusiasts they are; for Deity is in them, and they in
It. For the time, this burden of individuality vanishes, and recognising
themselves as portions of the universal Soul, they rise upward, through
and beyond that Reason from whence the soul proceeds, to the fount of
all--the ineffable and Supreme One--and seeing It, become by that act
portions of Its essence. They speak no more, but It speaks in them, and
their whole being, transmuted by that glorious sunlight into whose rays
they have dared, like the eagle, to gaze without shrinking, becomes an
harmonious vehicle for the words of Deity, and passive itself, utters
the secrets of the immortal gods! What wonder if to the brute mass they
seem as dreamers? Be it so.... Smile if you will. But ask me not to
teach you things unspeakable, above all sciences, which the word-battle
of dialectic, the discursive struggles of reason, can never reach, but
which must be seen only, and when seen confessed to be unspeakable.
Hence, thou disputer of the Academy!--hence, thou sneering
Cynic!--hence, thou sense-worshipping Stoic, who fanciest that the soul
is to derive her knowledge from those material appearances which she
herself creates!.... hence--; and yet no: stay and sneer if you will.
It is but a little time--a few days longer in this prison-house of
our degradation, and each thing shall return to its own fountain; the
blood-drop to the abysmal heart, and the water to the river, and the
river to the shining sea; and the dew-drop which fell from heaven shall
rise to heaven again, shaking off the dust-grains which weighed it down,
thawed from the earth-frost which chained it here to herb and sward,
upward and upward ever through stars and suns, through gods, and through
the parents of the gods, purer and purer through successive lives,
till it enters The Nothing, which is The All, and finds its home at
last.'....

And the speaker stopped suddenly, her eyes glistening with tears, her
whole figure trembling and dilating with rapture. She remained for a
moment motionless, gazing earnestly at her audience, as if in hopes of
exciting in them some kindred glow; and then recovering herself, added
in a more tender tone, not quite unmixed with sadness--

'Go now, my pupils. Hypatia has no more for you to-day. Go now, and
spare her at least--woman as she is after all--the shame of finding
that she has given you too much, and lifted the veil of Isis before
eyes which are not enough purified to behold the glory of the
goddess.--Farewell!'

She ended: and Philammon, the moment that the spell of her voice was
taken off him, sprang up, and hurried out through the corridor into the
street....

So beautiful! So calm and merciful to him So enthusiastic towards all
which was noble! Had not she too spoken of the unseen world, of the hope
of immortality, of the conquest of the spirit over the flesh, just as a
Christian might have done? Was the gulf between them so infinite? If so,
why had her aspirations awakened echoes in his own heart--echoes too,
just such as the prayers and lessons of the Laura used to awaken? If the
fruit was so like, must not the root be like also?.... Could that be a
counterfeit? That a minister of Satan in the robes of an angel of
light? Light, at least, it was purity, simplicity, courage, earnestness,
tenderness, flashed out from eye, lip, gesture.... A heathen, who
disbelieved? .... What was the meaning of it all?

But the finishing stroke yet remained which was to complete the utter
confusion of his mind. For before he had gone fifty yards up the street,
his little friend of the fruit-basket, whom he had not seen since
he vanished under the feet of the mob in the gateway of the theatre,
clutched him by the arm, and burst forth, breathless with running--

'The--gods--heap their favours--on those who--who least deserve them!
Rash and insolent rustic! And this is the reward of thy madness!'

'Off with you!' said Philammon, who had no mind at the moment to renew
his acquaintance with the little porter. But the guardian of parasols
kept a firm hold on his sheepskin.

'Fool! Hypatia herself commands! Yes, you will see her, have speech with
her! while I--I the illuminated--I the appreciating--I the obedient--I
the adoring--who for these three years past have grovelled in the
kennel, that the hem of her garment might touch the tip of my little
finger--I--I--I--'

'What do you want, madman?'

'She calls for thee, insensate wretch! Theon sent me--breathless at once
with running and with envy--Go! favourite of the unjust gods!'

'Who is Theon?'

'Her father, ignorant! He commands thee to be at her
house--here-opposite--to-morrow at the third hour. Hear and obey! There
they are coming out of the Museum, and all the parasols will get wrong!
Oh, miserable me!' And the poor little fellow rushed back again, while
Philammon, at his wits' end between dread and longing, started off,
and ran the whole way home to the Serapeium, regardless of carriages,
elephants, and foot-passengers; and having been knocked down by a
surly porter, and left a piece of his sheepskin between the teeth of a
spiteful camel-neither of which insults he had time to resent-arrived at
the archbishop's house, found Peter the Reader, and tremblingly begged
an audience from Cyril.



CHAPTER IX: THE SNAPPING OF THE BOW


Cyril heard Philammon's story and Hypatia's message with a quiet smile,
and then dismissed the youth to an afternoon of labour in the city,
commanding him to mention no word of what had happened, and to come to
him that evening and receive his order when he should have had time
to think over the matter. So forth Philammon went with his companions,
through lanes and alleys hideous with filth and poverty, compulsory
idleness and native sin. Fearfully real and practical it all was; but he
saw it all dimly as in a dream. Before his eyes one face was shining; in
his ears one silvery voice was ringing.... 'He is a monk, and knows no
better.'.... True! And how should he know better? How could he tell
how much more there was to know, in that great new universe, in such
a cranny whereof his life had till now been past? He had heard but one
side already. What if there were two sides? Had he not a right-that is,
was it not proper, fair, prudent, that he should hear both, and then
judge?

Cyril had hardly, perhaps, done wisely for the youth in sending him out
about the practical drudgery of benevolence, before deciding for him
what was his duty with regard to Hypatia's invitation. He had not
calculated on the new thoughts which were tormenting the young monk;
perhaps they would have been unintelligible to him bad he known of them.
Cyril had been bred up under the most stern dogmatic training, in those
vast monastic establishments, which had arisen amid the neighbouring
saltpetre quarries of Nitria, where thousands toiled in voluntary
poverty and starvation at vast bakeries, dyeries, brick-fields, tailors'
shops, carpenters' yards, and expended the profits of their labour, not
on themselves, for they had need of nothing, but on churches, hospitals,
and alms. Educated in that world of practical industrial production as
well as of religious exercise, which by its proximity to the great
city accustomed monks to that world which they despised; entangled from
boyhood in the intrigues of his fierce and ambitious uncle Theophilus,
Cyril had succeeded him in the patriarchate of Alexandria without
having felt a doubt, and stood free to throw his fiery energy and clear
practical intellect into the cause of the Church without scruple, even,
where necessary, without pity. How could such a man sympathise with the
poor boy of twenty, suddenly dragged forth from the quiet cavern-shadow
of the Laura into the full blaze and roar of the world's noonday? He,
too, was cloister-bred. But the busy and fanatic atmosphere of Nitria,
where every nerve of soul and body was kept on a life-long artificial
strain, without rest, without simplicity, without human affection, was
utterly antipodal to the government of the remote and needy, though
no less industrious commonwealths of Coenobites, who dotted the lonely
mountain-glens, far up into the heart of the Nubian desert. In such a
one Philammon had received, from a venerable man, a mother's sympathy as
well as a father's care; and now he yearned for the encouragement of a
gentle voice, for the greeting of a kindly eye, and was lonely and sick
at heart.... And still Hypatia's voice haunted his ears, like a strain
of music, and would not die away. That lofty enthusiasm, so sweet and
modest in its grandeur--that tone of pity--in one so lovely it could
not be called contempt--for the many; that delicious phantom of being an
elect spirit, unlike the crowd.... 'And am I altogether like the crowd?'
said Philammon to himself, as he staggered along under the weight of a
groaning fever-patient. 'Can there be found no fitter work for me than
this, which any porter from the quay might do as well? Am I not somewhat
wasted on such toil as this? Have I not an intellect, a taste, a reason?
I could appreciate what she said.--Why should not my faculties be
educated? Why am I only to be shut out from knowledge? There is a
Christian Gnosis as well as a heathen one. What was permissible to
Clement'--he had nearly said to Origen, but checked himself on the
edge of heresy--'is surely lawful for me! Is not my very craving for
knowledge a sign that I am capable of it? Surely my sphere is the study
rather than the street!'

And then his fellow-labourers--he could not deny it to himself--began to
grow less venerable in his eyes. Let him try as he might to forget the
old priest's grumblings and detractions, the fact was before him. The
men were coarse, fierce, noisy.... so different from her! Their talk
seemed mere gossip--scandalous too, and hard-judging, most of it; about
that man's private ambition, and that woman's proud looks; and who had
stayed for the Eucharist the Sun-day before, and who had gone out after
the sermon; and how the majority who did not stay could possibly dare to
go, and how the minority who did not go could possibly dare to stay....
Endless suspicions, sneers, complaints.... what did they care for the
eternal glories and the beatific vision? Their one test for all men and
things, from the patriarch to the prefect, seemed to be--did he or it
advance the cause of the Church?--which Philammon soon discovered to
mean their own cause, their influence, their self-glorification. And the
poor boy, as his faculty for fault-finding quickened under the influence
of theirs, seemed to see under the humble stock-phrases in which they
talked of their labours of love, and the future reward of their present
humiliations, a deep and hardly-bidden pride, a faith in their
own infallibility, a contemptuous impatience of every man, however
venerable, who differed from their party on any, the slightest, matter.
They spoke with sneers of Augustine's Latinising tendencies, and with
open execrations of Chrysostom, as the vilest and most impious of
schismatics; and, for aught Philammon knew, they were right enough. But
when they talked of wars and desolation past and impending, without a
word of pity for the slain and ruined, as a just judgment of Heaven
upon heretics and heathens; when they argued over the awful struggle
for power which, as he gathered from their words, was even then pending
between the Emperor and the Count of Africa, as if it contained but one
question of interest to them--would Cyril, and they as his bodyguard,
gain or lose power in Alexandria? and lastly, when at some mention of
Orestes, and of Hypatia as his counsellor, they broke out into open
imprecations of God's curse, and comforted themselves with the prospect
of everlasting torment for both; he shuddered and asked himself
involuntarily--were these the ministers of a Gospel?--were these the
fruits of Christ's Spirit?.... And a whisper thrilled through the inmost
depth of his soul--'Is there a Gospel? Is there a Spirit of Christ?
Would not their fruits be different from these?'

Faint, and low, and distant, was that whisper, like the mutter of an
earthquake miles below the soil. And yet, like the earthquake-roll, it
had in that one moment jarred every belief, and hope, and memory of his
being each a hair's-breadth from its place.... Only one hair's-breadth.
But that was enough; his whole inward and outward world changed shape,
and cracked at every joint. What if it were to fall in pieces? His brain
reeled with the thought. He doubted his own identity. The very light of
heaven had altered its hue. Was the firm ground on which he stood after
all no solid reality, but a fragile shell which covered--what?

The nightmare vanished, and he breathed once more. What a strange dream!
The sun and the exertion must have made him giddy. He would forget all
about it.

Weary with labour, and still wearier with thought, he returned that
evening, longing and yet dreading to be permitted to speak with Hypatia.
He half hoped at moments that Cyril might think him too weak for it;
and the next, all his pride and daring, not to say his faith and hope,
spurred him on. Might he but face the terrible enchantress, and rebuke
her to her face! And yet so lovely, so noble as she looked! Could
he speak to her, except in tones of gentle warning, pity, counsel,
entreaty? Might he not convert her--save her? Glorious thought! to win
such a soul to the true cause! To be able to show, as the firstfruits of
his mission, the very champion of heathendom! It was worth while to have
lived only to do that; and having done it, to die.

The archbishop's lodgings, when he entered them, were in a state of
ferment even greater than usual. Groups of monks, priests, parabolani,
and citizens rich and poor, were banging about the courtyard, talking
earnestly and angrily. A large party of monks fresh from Nitria, with
ragged hair and beards, and the peculiar expression of countenance which
fanatics of all creeds acquire, fierce and yet abject, self-conscious
and yet ungoverned, silly and yet sly, with features coarsened and
degraded by continual fasting and self-torture, prudishly shrouded from
head to heel in their long ragged gowns, were gesticulating wildly and
loudly, and calling on their more peaceable companions, in no measured
terms, to revenge some insult offered to the Church.

'What is the matter?' asked Philammon of a quiet portly citizen, who
stood looking up, with a most perplexed visage, at the windows of the
patriarch's apartments.

'Don't ask me; I have nothing to do with it. Why does not his holiness
come out and speak to them? Blessed virgin, mother of God! that we were
well through it all!--'

'Coward!' bawled a monk in his ear. 'These shopkeepers care for nothing
but seeing their stalls safe. Rather than lose a day's custom, they
would give the very churches to be plundered by the heathen!'

'We do not want them!' cried another. 'We managed Dioscuros and his
brother, and we can manage Orestes. What matter what answer he sends?
The devil shall have his own!'

'They ought to have been back two hours ago: they are murdered by this
time.'

'He would not dare to touch the archdeacon!'

'He will dare anything. Cyril should never have sent them forth as lambs
among wolves. What necessity was there for letting the prefect know that
the Jews were gone? He would have found it out for himself fast enough,
the next time he wanted to borrow money.'

'What is all this about, reverend sir?' asked Philammon of Peter the
Reader, who made his appearance at that moment in the quadrangle,
walking with great strides, like the soul of Agamemnon across the meads
of Asphodel, and apparently beside himself with rage.

'Ah! you here? You may go to-morrow, young fool! The patriarch can't
talk to you. Why should he? Some people have a great deal too much
notice taken of them, in my opinion. Yes; you may go. If your head is
not turned already, you may go and get it turned to-morrow. We shall see
whether he who exalts himself is not abased, before all is over!' And he
was striding away, when Philammon, at the risk of an explosion, stopped
him.

'His holiness commanded me to see him, sir, before--'

Peter turned on him in a fury. 'Fool! will you dare to intrude your
fantastical dreams on him at such a moment as this?'

'He commanded me to see him,' said Philammon, with the true soldierlike
discipline of a monk; 'and see him I will in spite of any man. I believe
in my heart you wish to keep me from his counsels and his blessing.'

Peter looked at him for a moment with a right wicked expression, and
then, to the youth's astonishment, struck him full in the face, and
yelled for help.

If the blow had been given by Pambo in the Laura a week before,
Philammon would have borne it. But from that man, and coming
unexpectedly as the finishing stroke to all his disappointment and
disgust, it was intolerable; and in an instant Peter's long legs were
sprawling on the pavement, while he bellowed like a bull for all the
monks in Nitria.

A dozen lean brown hands were at Philammon's throat as Peter rose.
'Seize him! hold him!' half blubbered he. 'The traitor! the heretic! He
holds communion with heathens!'

'Down with him!' 'Cast him out! Carry him to the archbishop!' while
Philammon shook himself free, and Peter returned to the charge.

'I call all good Catholics to witness! He has beaten an ecclesiastic in
the courts of the Lord's house, even in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem!
And he was in Hypatia's lecture-room this morning!'

A groan of pious horror rose. Philammon set his back against the wall.

'His holiness the patriarch sent me.'

'He confesses, he confesses! He deluded the piety of the patriarch into
letting him go, under colour of converting her; and even now he wants
to intrude on the sacred presence of Cyril, burning only with the carnal
desire that he may meet the sorceress in her house to-morrow!'

'Scandal!' 'Abomination in the holy place!' and a rush at the poor youth
took place.

His blood was thoroughly up. The respectable part of the crowd, as usual
in such cases, prudently retreated, and left him to the mercy of the
monks, with an eye to their own reputation for orthodoxy, not to mention
their personal safety; and he had to help himself as he could. He looked
round for a weapon. There was none. The ring of monks were baying at him
like hounds round a bear: and though he might have been a match for any
one of them singly, yet their sinewy limbs and determined faces warned
him that against such odds the struggle would be desperate.

'Let me leave this court in safety! God knows whether I am a heretic;
and to Him I commit my cause! The holy patriarch shall know of your
iniquity. I will not trouble you; I give you leave to call me heretic,
or heathen, if you will, if I cross this threshold till Cyril himself
sends for me back to shame you.'

And he turned, and forced his way to the gate, amid a yell of derision
which brought every drop of, blood in his body into his cheeks. Twice,
as he went down the vaulted passage, a rush was made on him from behind,
but the soberer of his persecutors checked it. Yet he could not leave
them, young and hot-headed as he was, without one last word, and on the
threshold he turned.

'You! who call yourselves the disciples of the Lord, and are more like
the demoniacs who abode day and night in the tombs, crying and cutting
themselves with stones--'

In an instant they rushed upon him; and, luckily for him, rushed also
into the arms of a party of ecclesiastics, who were hurrying inwards
from the street, with faces of blank terror.

'He has refused!' shouted the foremost. He declares war against the
Church of God!'

'Oh, my friends,' panted the archdeacon, 'we are escaped like the bird
out of the snare of the fowler. The tyrant kept us waiting two hours at
his palace-gates, and then sent lictors out upon us, with rods and axes,
telling us that they were the only message which he had for robbers and
rioters.'

'Back to the patriarch!' and the whole mob streamed in again, leaving
Philammon alone in the street--and in the world.

Whither now?

He strode on in his wrath some hundred yards or more before he asked
himself that question. And when he asked it, he found himself in no
humour to answer it. He was adrift, and blown out of harbour upon a
shoreless sea, in utter darkness; all heaven and earth were nothing to
him. He was alone in the blindness of anger.

Gradually one fixed idea, as a light-tower, began to glimmer through the
storm.... To see Hypatia, and convert her. He had the patriarch's leave
for that. That must be right. That would justify him--bring him back,
perhaps, in a triumph more glorious than any Caesar's, leading captive,
in the fetters of the Gospel, the Queen of Heathendom. Yes, there was
that left, for which to live.

His passion cooled down gradually as he wandered on in the fading
evening light, up one street and down another, till he had utterly lost
his way. What matter? He should find that lecture-room to-morrow at
least. At last he found himself in a broad avenue, which he seemed to
know. Was that the Sun-gate in the distance? He sauntered carelessly
down it, and found himself at last on the great Esplanade, whither the
little porter had taken him three days before. He was close then to the
Museum, and to her house. Destiny had led him, unconsciously, towards
the scene of his enterprise. It was a good omen; he would go thither
at once. He might sleep upon her doorstep as well as upon any other.
Perhaps he might catch a glimpse of her going out or coming in, even
at that late hour. It might be well to accustom himself to the sight
of her. There would be the less chance of his being abashed to-morrow
before those sorceress eyes. And moreover, to tell the truth, his
self-dependence, and his self-will too, crushed, or rather laid to
sleep, by the discipline of the Laura, had started into wild life, and
gave him a mysterious pleasure, which he had not felt since he was a
disobedient little boy, of doing what he chose, right or wrong, simply
because he chose it. Such moments come to every free-willed creature.
Happy are those who have not, like poor Philammon, been kept by a hotbed
cultivation from knowing how to face them? But he had yet to learn,
or rather his tutors had to learn, that the sure path toward willing
obedience and manful self-restraint, lies not through slavery, but
through liberty.

He was not certain which was Hypatia's house; but the door of the Museum
he could not forget. So there he sat himself down under the garden wall,
soothed by the cool night, and the holy silence, and the rich perfume of
the thousand foreign flowers which filled the air with enervating balm.
There he sat and watched, and watched, and watched in vain for some
glimpse of his one object. Which of the houses was hers? Which was the
window of her chamber! Did it look into the street? What business had
his fancy with woman's chambers?.... But that one open window, with the
lamp burning bright inside--he could not help looking up to it--he could
not help fancying--hoping. He even moved a few yards to see better the
bright interior of the room. High up as it was, he could still discern
shelves of books--pictures on the walls. Was that a voice? Yes! a
woman's voice--reading aloud in metre--was plainly distinguishable in
the dead stillness of the night, which did not even awaken a whisper in
the trees above his head. He stood, spellbound by curiosity.

Suddenly the voice ceased, and a woman's figure came forward to the
window, and stood motionless, gazing upward at the spangled star-world
overhead, and seeming to drink in the glory, and the silence, and the
rich perfume.... Could it be she? Every pulse in his body throbbed
madly.... Could it be? What was she doing? He could not distinguish the
features; but the full blaze of the eastern moon showed him an upturned
brow, between a golden stream of glittering tresses which hid her
whole figure, except the white hands clasped upon her bosom.... Was she
praying? were these her midnight sorceries?....

And still his heart throbbed and throbbed, till he almost fancied she
must hear its noisy beat--and still she stood motionless, gazing upon
the sky, like some exquisite chryselephantine statue, all ivory and
gold. And behind her, round the bright room within, painting, books, a
whole world of unknown science and beauty.... and she the priestess of
it all....inviting him to learn of her and be wise! It was a temptation!
He would flee from it!--Fool that he was!--and it might not be she after
all!

He made some sudden movement. She looked down, saw him, and shutting
the blind, vanished for the night. In vain, now that the temptation had
departed, he sat and waited for its reappearance, half cursing himself
for having broken the spell. But the chamber was dark and silent
henceforth; and Philammon, wearied out, found himself soon wandering
back to the Laura in quiet dreams, beneath the balmy, semi-tropic night.



CHAPTER X: THE INTERVIEW


Philammon was aroused from his slumbers at sunrise the next morning by
the attendants who came in to sweep out the lecture-rooms, and wandered,
disconsolately enough, up and down the street; longing for, and yet
dreading, the three weary hours to be over which must pass before he
would be admitted to Hypatia. But he had tasted no food since noon the
day before: he had but three hours' sleep the previous night, and
had been working, running, and fighting for two whole days without a
moment's peace of body or mind. Sick with hunger and fatigue, and aching
from head to foot with his hard night's rest on the granite-flags, he
felt as unable as man could well do to collect his thoughts or brace his
nerves for the coming interview. How to get food he could not guess; but
having two hands, he might at least earn a coin by carrying a load; so
he went down to the Esplanade in search of work. Of that, alas! there
was none. So he sat down upon the parapet of the quay, and watched the
shoals of sardines which played in and out over the marble steps below,
and wondered at the strange crabs and sea-locusts which crawled up and
down the face of the masonry, a few feet below the surface, scrambling
for bits of offal, and making occasional fruitless dashes at the nimble
little silver arrows which played round them. And at last his whole
soul, too tired to think of anything else, became absorbed in a mighty
struggle between two great crabs, who held on stoutly, each by a claw,
to his respective bunch of seaweed, while with the others they tugged,
one at the head and the other at the tail of a dead fish. Which would
conquer?.... Ay, which? And for five minutes Philammon was alone in the
world with the two struggling heroes.... Might not they be emblematic?
Might not the upper one typify Cyril?--the lower one Hypatia?--and the
dead fish between, himself?.... But at last the deadlock was suddenly
ended--the fish parted in the middle; and the typical Hypatia and Cyril,
losing hold of their respective seaweeds by the jerk, tumbled down, each
with its half-fish, and vanished head over heels into the blue depths in
so undignified a manner, that Philammon burst into a shout of laughter.

'What's the joke?' asked a well-known voice behind him; and a hand
patted him familiarly on the back. He looked round, and saw the little
porter, his head crowned with a full basket of figs, grapes, and
water-melons, on which the poor youth cast a longing eye. 'Well, my
young friend, and why are you not at church? Look at all the saints
pouring into the Caesareum there, behind you.'

Philammon answered sulkily enough something inarticulate.

'Ho, ho! Quarrelled with the successor of the Apostles already? Has my
prophecy come true, and the strong meat of pious riot and plunder proved
too highly spiced for your young palate? Eh?'

Poor Philammon! Angry with himself for feeling that the porter was
right; shrinking from the notion of exposing the failings of his
fellow-Christians; shrinking still more from making such a jackanapes
his confidant: and yet yearning in his loneliness to open his heart to
some one, he dropped out, hint by hint, word by word, the events of the
past evening, and finished by a request to be put in the way of earning
his breakfast.

'Earning your breakfast! Shall the favourite of the gods--shall the
guest of Hypatia--earn his breakfast, while I have an obol to share
with him? Base thought! Youth! I have wronged you. Unphilosophically I
allowed, yesterday morning, envy to ruffle the ocean of my intellect. We
are now friends and brothers, in hatred to the monastic tribe.'

'I do not hate them, I tell you,' said Philammon. 'But these Nitrian
savages--'

'Are the perfect examples of monkery, and you hate them; and therefore,
all greaters containing the less, you hate all less monastic monks--I
have not heard logic lectures in vain. Now, up! The sea woos our dusty
limbs: Nereids and Tritons, charging no cruel coin, call us to Nature's
baths. At home a mighty sheat-fish smokes upon the festive board; beer
crowns the horn, and onions deck the dish; come then, my guest and
brother!'

Philammon swallowed certain scruples about becoming the guest of a
heathen, seeing that otherwise there seemed no chance of having anything
else to swallow; and after a refreshing plunge in the sea, followed the
hospitable little fellow to Hypatia's door, where he dropped his daily
load of fruit, and then into a narrow by-street, to the ground-floor
of a huge block of lodgings with a common staircase, swarming with
children, cats, and chickens; and was ushered by his host into a little
room, where the savoury smell of broiling fish revived Philammon's
heart.

'Judith! Judith! where lingerest thou? Marble of Pentelicus! foam-flake
of the wine dark main! lily of the Mareotic lake! You accursed black
Andromeda, if you don't bring the breakfast this moment, I'll cut you in
two!'

The inner door opened, and in bustled, trembling, her hands full of
dishes, a tall lithe negress, dressed in true negro fashion, in a
snow-white cotton shift, a scarlet cotton petticoat, and a bright yellow
turban of the same, making a light in that dark place which would have
served as a landmark a mile off. She put the dishes down, and the porter
majestically waved Philammon to a stool; while she retreated, and stood
humbly waiting on her lord and master, who did not deign to introduce
to his guest the black beauty which composed his whole seraglio.... But,
indeed, such an act of courtesy would have been needless; for the first
morsel of fish was hardly safe in poor Philammon's mouth, when the
regress rushed upon him, caught him by the head, and covered him with
rapturous kisses.

Up jumped the little man with a yell, brandishing a knife in one hand
and a leek in the other; while Philammon, scarcely less scandalised,
jumped up too, and shook himself free of the lady, who, finding it
impossible to vent her feelings further on his head, instantly changed
her tactics, and, wallowing on the floor, began frantically kissing his
feet.

'What is this? before my face! Up, shameless baggage, or thou diest the
death!' and the porter pulled her up upon her knees.

'It is the monk! the young man I told you of, who saved me from the Jews
the other night! What good angel sent him here that I might thank him?'
cried the poor creature, while the tears ran down her black shining
face.

'I am that good angel,' said the porter, with a look of intense
self-satisfaction. 'Rise, daughter of Erebus; thou art pardoned, being
but a female. What says the poet?--

'"Woman is passion's slave, while rightful lord O'er her and passion,
rules the nobler male."

Youth! to my arms! Truly say the philosophers, that the universe is
magical in itself, and by mysterious sympathies links like to like. The
prophetic instinct of thy future benefits towards me drew me to thee as
by an invisible warp, hawser, or chain-cable, from the moment I beheld
thee. Thou went a kindred spirit, my brother, though thou knewest it
not. Therefore I do not praise thee--no, nor thank thee in the least,
though thou hast preserved for me the one palm which shadows my weary
steps--the single lotus-flower (in this case black, not white) which
blooms for me above the mud-stained ocean wastes of the Hylic Borboros.
That which thou hast done, thou hast done by instinct--by divine
compulsion--thou couldst no more help it than thou canst help eating
that fish, and art no more to be praised for it.'

'Thank you,' said Philammon.

'Comprehend me. Our theory in the schools for such cases is this--has
been so at least for the last six months; similar particles, from one
original source, exist in you and me. Similar causes produce similar
effects; our attractions, antipathies, impulses, are therefore, in
similar circumstances, absolutely the same; and therefore you did the
other night exactly what I should have done in your case.'

Philammon thought the latter part of the theory open to question, but he
had by no means stopped eating when he rose, and his mouth was much too
full of fish to argue.

'And therefore,' continued the little man,'we are to consider ourselves
henceforth as one soul in two bodies. You may have the best of the
corporeal part of the division.... yet it is the soul which makes the
person. You may trust me, I shall not disdain my brotherhood. If any
one insults you henceforth, you have but to call me; and if I be within
hearing, why, by this right arm---'

And he attempted a pat on Philammon's head, which, as there was a head
and shoulder's difference between them, might on the whole have been
considered, from a theatric point of view, as a failure. Whereon the
little man seized the calabash of beer, and filling therewith a cow's
horn, his thumb on the small end, raised it high in the air.

'To the Tenth Muse, and to your interview with her!'

And removing his thumb, he sent a steady jet into his open mouth, and
having drained the horn without drawing breath, licked his lips, handed
it to Philammon, and flew ravenously upon the fish and onions.

Philammon, to whom the whole was supremely absurd, had no invocation to
make, but one which he felt too sacred for his present temper of mind:
so he attempted to imitate the little man's feat, and, of course, poured
the beer into his eyes, and up his nose, and in his bosom, and finally
choked himself black in the face, while his host observed smilingly--

'Aha, rustic! unacquainted with the ancient and classical customs
preserved in this centre of civilisation by the descendants of
Alexander's heroes? Judith! clear the table. Now to the sanctuary of the
Muses!'

Philammon rose, and finished his meal by a monkish grace. A gentle and
reverent 'Amen' rose from the other end of the room. It was the negress.
She saw him look up at her, dropped her eyes modestly, and bustled away
with the remnants, while Philammon and his host started for Hypatia's
lecture-room.

'Your wife is a Christian?' asked he when they were outside the door.

'Ahem--! The barbaric mind is prone to superstition. Yet she is, being
but a woman and a negress, a good soul, and thrifty, though requiring,
like all lower animals, occasional chastisement. I married her on
philosophic grounds. A wife was necessary to me for several reasons: but
mindful that the philosopher should subjugate the material appetite,
and rise above the swinish desires of the flesh, even when his nature
requires him to satisfy them, I purposed to make pleasure as unpleasant
as possible. I had the choice of several cripples--their parents, of
ancient Macedonian family like myself, were by no means adverse; but I
required a housekeeper, with whose duties the want of an arm or a leg
might have interfered.'

'Why did you not marry a scold?' asked Philammon.

'Pertinently observed: and indeed the example of Socrates rose luminous
more than once before my imagination. But philosophic calm, my dear
youth, and the peaceful contemplation of the ineffable? I could not
relinquish those luxuries. So having, by the bounty of Hypatia and her
pupils, saved a small suns, I went out bought me a negress, and hired
six rooms in the block we have just left, where I let lodgings to young
students of the Divine Philosophy.'

'Have you any lodgers now?'

'Ahem! Certain rooms are occupied by a lady of rank. The philosopher
will, above all things, abstain from babbling. To bridle the tongue,
is to--But there is a closet at your service; and for the hall of
reception, which you have just left--are you not a kindred and fraternal
spark? We can combine our meals, as our souls are already united.'

Philammon thanked him heartily for the offer, though he shrank from
accepting it; and in ten minutes more found himself at the door of the
very house which he had been watching the night before. It was she,
then, whom he had seen!.... He was handed over by a black porter to a
smart slave-girl, who guided him up, through cloisters and corridors,
to the large library, where five or six young men were sitting, busily
engaged, under Theon's superintendence, in copying manuscripts and
drawing geometric diagrams.

Philammon gazed curiously at these symbols of a science unknown to
him, and wondered whether the day would ever come when he too would
understand their mysteries; but his eyes fell again as he saw the
youths staring at his ragged sheepskin and matted locks with undisguised
contempt. He could hardly collect himself enough to obey the summons of
the venerable old man, as he beckoned him silently out of the room, and
led him, with the titters of the young students ringing in his ears,
through the door by which he had entered, and along a gallery, till he
stopped and knocked humbly at a door.... She must be within! knocked
together under him. His heart sank and sank into abysses! Poor
wretch!.... He was half minded once to escape and dash into the
street.... but was it not his one hope, his one object?.... But why did
not that old man speak? If he would have but said something!.... If
he would only have looked cross, contemptuous!.... But with the same
impressive gravity, as of a man upon a business in which he had no
voice, and wished it to be understood that lie had none, the old man
silently opened the door, and Philammon followed.... There she was!
looking more glorious than ever; more than when glowing with the
enthusiasm of her own eloquence; more than when transfigured last night
in golden tresses and glittering moonbeams. There she sat, without
moving a finger, as the two entered. She greeted her father with a
smile, which made up for all her seeming want of courtesy to him, and
then fixed her large gray eyes full on Philammon.

'Here is the youth, my daughter. It was your wish, you know; and I
always believe that you know best--'

Another smile put an end to this speech, and the old man retreated
humbly toward another door, with a somewhat anxious visage, and then
lingering and looking back, his hand upon the latch--

'If you require any one, you know, you have only to call--we shall be
all in the library.'

Another smile; and the old man disappeared, leaving the two alone.

Philammon stood trembling, choking, his eyes fixed on the floor. Where
were all the fine things he had conned over for the occasion? He dared
not look up at that face, lest it should drive them out of his head. And
yet the more lie kept his eyes turned from the face, the more lie was
conscious of it, conscious that it was watching him; and the more all
the fine words were, by that very knowledge, driven out of his head....
When would she speak? Perhaps she wished him to speak first. It was her
duty to begin, for she had sent for him.... But still she kept silence,
and sat scanning him intently from head to foot, herself as motionless
as a statue; her hands folded together before her, over the manuscript
which lay upon her knee. If there was a blush on her cheek at her own
daring, his eyes swam too much to notice it.

When would the intolerable suspense end? She was, perhaps, as unwilling
to speak as he. But some one must strike the first blow: and, as often
happens, the weaker party, impelled by sheer fear, struck it, and broke
the silence in a tone half indignant, half apologetic--

'You sent for me hither!'

'I did. It seemed to me, as I watched you during my lecture, both before
and after you were rude enough to interrupt me, that your offence was
one of mere youthful ignorance. It seemed to me that your countenance
bespoke a nobler nature than that which the gods are usually pleased to
bestow upon monks. That I may now ascertain whether or not my surmises
were correct, I ask you for what purpose are you come hither?'

Philammon hailed the question as a godsend.--Now for his message! And
yet he faltered as he answered, with a desperate effort,--'To rebuke you
for your sins.'

'My sins! What sins?' she asked, as she looked up with a stately, slow
surprise in those large gray eyes, before which his own glance sank
abashed, he knew not why. What sins?--He knew not. Did she look like
a Messalina? But was she not a heathen and a sorceress?--And yet he
blushed, and stammered, and hung down his head, as, shrinking at the
sound of his own words, he replied--


'The foul sorceries--and profligacy worse than sorceries, in which, they
say--' He could get no farther: for he looked up again and saw an awful
quiet smile upon that face. His words had raised no blush upon the
marble cheek.

'They say! The bigots and slanderers; wild beasts of the desert, and
fanatic intriguers, who, in the words of Him they call their master,
compass heaven and earth to make one proselyte, and when they have found
him, make him two-fold more the child of hell than themselves. Go--I
forgive you: you are young, and know not yet the mystery of the world.
Science will teach you some day that the outward frame is the sacrament
of the soul's inward beauty. Such a soul I had fancied your face
expressed; but I was mistaken. Foul hearts alone harbour such foul
suspicions, and fancy others to be what they know they might become
themselves. Go! Do I look like--? The very tapering of these fingers, if
you could read their symbolism, would give your dream the lie.' And she
flashed full on him, like sun-rays from a mirror, the full radiance of
her glorious countenance.

Alas, poor Philammon! where were thy eloquent arguments, thy orthodox
theories then? Proudly he struggled with his own man's heart of flesh,
and tried to turn his eyes away; the magnet might as well struggle to
escape from the spell of the north. In a moment, he knew not how, utter
shame, remorse, longing for forgiveness, swept over him, and crushed him
down; and he found himself on his knees before her, in abject and broken
syllables entreating pardon.

'Go--I forgive you. But know before you go, that the celestial milk
which fell from Here's bosom, bleaching the plant which it touched to
everlasting whiteness, was not more taintless than the soul of Theon's
daughter.'

He looked up in her face as he knelt before her. Unerring instinct
told him that her words were true. He was a monk, accustomed to believe
animal sin to be the deadliest and worst of all sins--indeed, 'the great
offence' itself, beside which all others were comparatively venial:
where there was physical purity, must not all other virtues follow in
its wake? All other failings were invisible under the dazzling veil of
that great loveliness; and in his self-abasement he went on--

'Oh, do not spurn me!--do not drive me away! I have neither friend,
home, nor teacher. I fled last night from the men of my own faith,
maddened by bitter insult and injustice--disappointed and disgusted with
their ferocity, narrowness, ignorance. I dare not, I cannot, I will not
return to the obscurity and the dulness of a Thebaid Laura. I have a
thousand doubts to solve, a thousand questions to ask, about that great
ancient world of which I know nothing--of whose mysteries, they say, you
alone possess the key! I am a Christian; but I thirst for knowledge....
I do not promise to believe you-I do not promise to obey you; but let me
hear! Teach me what you know, that I may compare it with what I
know.... If indeed' (and he shuddered as he spoke the words) 'I do know
anything!'

'Have you forgotten the epithets which you used to me just now?'

'No, no! But do you forget them; they were put into my mouth. I--I did
not believe them when I said them. It was agony to me; but I did it, as
I thought, for your sake--to save you. Oh, say that I may come and hear
you again! Only from a distance--in the very farthest corner of your
lecture-room. I will be silent; you shall never see me. But your words
yesterday awoke in me--no, not doubts; but still I must, I must hear
more, or be as miserable and homeless inwardly as I am in my outward
circumstances!' And he looked up imploringly for consent.

'Rise. This passion and that attitude are fitting neither for you nor
me.'

And as Philammon rose, she rose also, went into the library to her
father, and in a few minutes returned with him.

'Come with me, young man,' said he, laying his hand kindly enough on
Philammon's shoulder.... 'The rest of this matter you and I can settle;'
and Philammon followed him, not daring to look back at Hypatia, while
the whole room swam before his eyes.

'So, so I hear you have been saying rude things to my daughter. Well,
she has forgiven you--'

'Has she?' asked the young monk, with an eager start.

'Ah! you may well look astonished. But I forgive you too. It is lucky
for you, however, that I did not hear you, or else, old man as I am, I
can't say what I might not have done. Ah! you little know, you little
know what she is.--and the old pedant's eyes kindled with loving pride.
'May the gods give you some day such a daughter!--that is, if you learn
to deserve it--as virtuous as she is wise, as wise as she is beautiful.
Truly they have repaid me for my labours in their service. Look, young
man! little as you merit it, here is a pledge of your forgiveness, such
as the richest and noblest in Alexandria are glad to purchase with
many an ounce of gold--a ticket of free admission to all her lectures
henceforth! Now go; you have been favoured beyond your deserts, and
should learn that the philosopher can practise what the Christian only
preaches, and return good for evil.' And he put into Philammon's hand
a slip of paper, and bid one of the secretaries show him to the outer
door.

The youths looked up at him from their writing as he passed, with faces
of surprise and awe, and evidently thinking no more about the absurdity
of his sheepskin and his tanned complexion; and he went out with a
stunned, confused feeling, as of one who, by a desperate leap, has
plunged into a new world. He tried to feel content; but he dare not. All
before him was anxiety, uncertainty. He had cut himself adrift; he was
on the great stream. Whither would it lead him? Well--was it not the
great stream? Had not all mankind, for all the ages, been floating on
it? Or was it but a desert-river, dwindling away beneath the fiery
sun, destined to lose itself a few miles on, among the arid sands? Were
Arsenius and the faith of his childhood right? And was the Old World
coming speedily to its death-throe, and the Kingdom of God at hand?
Or was Cyril right, and the Church Catholic appointed to spread, and
conquer, and destroy, and rebuild, till the kingdoms of this world had
become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ! If so, what use in this
old knowledge which he craved? And yet, if the day of the destruction of
all things were at hand, and the times destined to become worse and not
better, till the end-how could that be?....

'What news?' asked the little porter, who had been waiting for him at
the door all the while. 'What news, O favourite of the gods!'

'I will lodge with you, and labour with you. Ask me no more at present.
I am--I am--

'Those who descended into the Cave of Trophonius, and beheld the
unspeakable, remained astonished for three days, my young friend--and so
will you!' And they went forth together to earn their bread.

But what is Hypatia doing all this while, upon that cloudy Olympus,
where she sits enshrined far above the noise and struggle of man and his
work-day world?

She is sitting again, with her manuscripts open before her; but she is
thinking of the young monk, not of them.

'Beautiful as Antinous!.... Rather as the young Phoebus himself, fresh
glowing from the slaughter of the Python. Why should not he, too, become
a slayer of Pythons, and loathsome monsters, bred from the mud of sense
and matter? So bold and earnest! I can forgive him those words for the
very fact of his having dared, here in my fathers house, to say them to
me.... And yet so tender, so open to repentance and noble shame!--That
is no plebeian by birth; patrician blood surely flows in those veins;
it shows out in every attitude, every tone, every motion of the hand
and lip. He cannot be one of the herd. Who ever knew one of them crave
after knowledge for its own sake?.... And I have longed so for one
real pupil! I have longed so to find one such man, among the effeminate
selfish triflers who pretend to listen to me. I thought I had found
one--and the moment that I had lost him, behold, I find another; and
that a fresher, purer, simpler nature than ever Raphael's was at its
best. By all the laws of physiognomy--by all the symbolism of gesture
and voice and complexion--by the instinct of my own heart, that young
monk might be the instrument, the ready, valiant, obedient instrument,
for carrying out all my dreams. If I could but train him into a
Longinus, I could dare to play the part of a Zenobia, with him as
counseller.... And for my Odenatus--Orestes? Horrible!'

She covered her face with her hand a minute. 'No!' she said, dashing
away the tears--'That--and anything--and everything for the cause of
Philosophy and the gods!'



CHAPTER XI: THE LAURA AGAIN


Not a sound, not a moving object, broke the utter stillness of the glen
of Scetis. The shadows of the crags, though paling every moment before
the spreading dawn, still shrouded all the gorge in gloom. A winding
line of haze slept above the course of the rivulet. The plumes of the
palm-trees hung motionless, as if awaiting in resignation the breathless
blaze of the approaching day. At length, among the green ridges of the
monastery garden, two gray figures rose from their knees, and began,
with slow and feeble strokes, to break the silence by the clatter of
their hoes among the pebbles.

'These beans grow wonderfully, brother Aufugus. We shall be able to
sow our second crop, by God's blessing, a week earlier than we did last
year.'

The person addressed returned no answer; and his companion, after
watching him for some time in silence, recommenced--

'What is it, my brother? I have remarked lately a melancholy about you,
which is hardly fitting for a man of God.'

A deep sigh was the only answer. The speaker laid down his hoe, and
placing his hand affectionately on the shoulder of Aufugus, asked
again--

'What is it, my friend? I will not claim with you my abbot's right to
know the secrets of your heart: but surely that breast hides nothing
which is unworthy to be spoken to me, however unworthy I may be to hear
it!'

'Why should I not be sad, Pambo, my friend? Does not Solomon say that
there is a time for mourning?'

'True: but a time for mirth also.'

'None to the penitent, burdened with the guilt of many sins.'

'Recollect what the blessed Anthony used to say--"Trust not in thine own
righteousness, and regret not that which is past."'

'I do neither, Pambo.'

'Do not be too sure of that. Is it not because thou art still trusting
in thyself, that thou dost regret the past, which shows thee that thou
art not that which thou wouldst gladly pride thyself on being?'

'Pambo, my friend,' said Arsenius solemnly, 'I will tell thee all. My
sins are not yet past; for Honorius, my pupil, still lives, and in him
lives the weakness and the misery of Rome. My sins past? If they are,
why do I see rising before me, night after night, that train of accusing
spectres, ghosts of men slain in battle, widows and orphans, virgins of
the Lord shrieking in the grasp of barbarians, who stand by my bedside
and cry, "Hadst thou done thy duty, we had not been thus! Where is that
imperial charge which God committed to thee?"'.... And the old man hid
his face in his hands and wept bitterly.

Pambo laid his hand again tenderly on the weeper's shoulder.

'Is there no pride here, my brother? Who art thou, to change the fate of
nations and the hearts of emperors, which are in the hand of the King of
kings? If thou wert weak, and imperfect in thy work--for unfaithful, I
will warrant thee, thou wert never--He put thee there, because thou wert
imperfect, that so that which has come to pass might come to pass; and
thou bearest thine own burden only-and yet not thou, but He who bore it
for thee.'

'Why then am I tormented by these nightly visions?'

'Fear them not, friend. They are spirits of evil, and therefore lying
spirits. Were they good spirits they would speak to thee only in pity,
forgiveness, encouragement. But be they ghosts or demons, they must be
evil, because they are accusers, like the Evil One himself, the accuser
of the saints. He is the father of lies, and his children will be like
himself. What said the blessed Anthony? That a monk should not busy his
brain with painting spectres, or give himself up for lost; but rather be
cheerful, as one who knows that he is redeemed, and in the hands of the
Lord, where the Evil One has no power to hurt him. "For," he used to
say, "the demons behave to us even as they find us. If they see us east
down and faithless, they terrify us still more, that they may plunge us
in despair. But if they see us full of faith, and joyful in the Lord,
with our souls filled with the glory which shall be, then they shrink
abashed, and flee away in confusion." Cheer up, friend! such thoughts
are of the night, the hour of Satan and of the powers of darkness; and
with the dawn they flee away.'

'And yet things are revealed to men upon their beds, in visions of the
night.'

'Be it so. Nothing, at all events, has been revealed to thee upon thy
bed, except that which thou knowest already far better than Satan does,
namely, that thou art a sinner. But for me, my friend, though I doubt
not that such things are, it is the day, and not the night, which brings
revelations.'

'How, then?'

'Because by day I can see to read that book which is written, like the
Law given on Sinai, upon tables of stone, by the finger of God Himself.'

Arsenius looked up at him inquiringly. Pambo smiled.

'Thou knowest that, like many holy men of old, I am no scholar, and knew
not even the Greek tongue, till thou, out of thy brotherly kindness,
taughtest it to me. But hast thou never heard what Anthony said to a
certain Pagan who reproached him with his ignorance of books? "Which is
first," he asked, "spirit, or letter?--Spirit, sayest thou? Then know,
the healthy spirit needs no letters. My book is the whole creation,
lying open before me, wherein I can read, whensoever I please, the word
of God."'

'Dost thou not undervalue learning, my friend?'

'I am old among monks, and have seen much of their ways; and among them
my simplicity seems to have seen this--many a man wearing himself with
study, and tormenting his soul as to whether he believed rightly this
doctrine and that, while he knew not with Solomon that in much learning
is much sorrow, and that while he was puzzling at the letter of God's
message, the spirit of it was going fast and faster out of him.'

'And how didst thou know that of such a man?'

'By seeing him become a more and more learned theologian, and more and
more zealous for the letter of orthodoxy; and yet less and less loving
and merciful--less and less full of trust in God, and of hopeful
thoughts for himself and for his brethren, till he seemed to have
darkened his whole soul with disputations, which breed only strife,
and to have forgotten utterly the message which is written in that book
wherewith the blessed Anthony was content' 'Of what message dost thou
speak?'

'Look,' said the old abbot, stretching his hand toward the Eastern
desert, 'and judge, like a wise man, for thyself!'

As he spoke, a long arrow of level light flashed down the gorge from
crag to crag, awakening every crack and slab to vividness and life. The
great crimson sun rose swiftly through the dim night-mist of the desert,
and as he poured his glory down the glen, the haze rose in threads and
plumes, and vanished, leaving the stream to sparkle round the rocks,
like the living, twinkling eye of the whole scene. Swallows flashed by
hundreds out of the cliffs, and began their air-dance for the day; the
jerboa hopped stealthily homeward on his stilts from his stolen meal
in the monastery garden; the brown sand-lizards underneath the stones
opened one eyelid each, and having satisfied themselves that it was
day, dragged their bloated bodies and whip-like tails out into the most
burning patch of gravel which they could find, and nestling together as
a further protection against cold, fell fast asleep again; the buzzard,
who considered himself lord of the valley, awoke with a long querulous
bark, and rising aloft in two or three vast rings, to stretch himself
after his night's sleep, bung motionless, watching every lark which
chirruped on the cliffs; while from the far-off Nile below, the
awakening croak of pelicans, the clang of geese, the whistle of the
godwit and curlew, came ringing up the windings of the glen; and last
of all the voices of the monks rose chanting a morning hymn to some wild
Eastern air; and a new day had begun in Seetis, like those which went
before, and those which were to follow after, week after week, year
after year, of toil and prayer as quiet as its sleep.

'What does that teach thee, Aufugus, my friend?'

Arsenius was silent.

'To me it teaches this: that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at
all. That in His presence is life, and fulness of joy for evermore. That
He is the giver, who delights in His own bounty; the lover, whose mercy
is over all His works--and why not over thee, too, O thou of little
faith? Look at those thousand birds--and without our Father not one of
them shall fall to the ground: and art thou not of more value than many
sparrows, thou for whom God sent His Son to die?.... Ah, my friend, we
must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we
persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own
imperfections, that we learn to make a God after our own image, and
fancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of
His light and love.'

'Thou speakest rather as a philosopher than as a penitent Catholic.
For me, I feel that I want to look more, and not less, inward. Deeper
self-examination, completer abstraction, than I can attain even here,
are what I crave for. I long--forgive me, my friend--but I long more and
more, daily, for the solitary life. This earth is accursed by man's sin:
the less we see of it, it seems to me, the better.'

'I may speak as a philosopher, or as a heathen, for aught I know: yet it
seems to me that, as they say, the half loaf is better than none; that
the wise man will make the best of what he has, and throw away no lesson
because the book is somewhat torn and soiled. The earth teaches me thus
far already. Shall I shut my eyes to those invisible things of God which
are clearly manifested by the things which are made, because some
day they will be more clearly manifested than now? But as for more
abstraction, are we so worldly here in Scetis?'

'Nay, my friend, each man has surely his vocation, and for each some
peculiar method of life is more edifying than another. In my case, the
habits of mind which I acquired in the world will cling to me in spite
of myself even here. I cannot help watching the doings of others,
studying their characters, planning and plotting for them, trying to
prognosticate their future fate. Not a word, not a gesture of this our
little family, but turns away my mind from the one thing needful.'

'And do you fancy that the anchorite in his cell has fewer
distractions?'

'What can he have but the supply of the mere necessary wants of life?
and them, even, he may abridge to the gathering of a few roots and
herbs. Men have lived like the beasts already, that they might at the
same time live like the angels--and why should not I also?'

'And thou art the wise man of the world--the student of the hearts
of others--the anatomiser of thine own? Hast thou not found out that,
besides a craving stomach, man carries with him a corrupt heart? Many
a man I have seen who, in his haste to fly from the fiends without him,
has forgotten to close the door of his heart against worse fiends who
were ready to harbour within him. Many a monk, friend, changes his
place, but not the anguish of his soul. I have known those who, driven
to feed on their own thoughts in solitude, have desperately cast
themselves from cliffs or ripped up their own bodies, in the longing to
escape from thoughts, from which one companion, one kindly voice, might
have delivered them. I have known those, too, who have been so puffed up
by those very penances which were meant to humble them, that they have
despised all means of grace, as though they were already perfect, and
refusing even the Holy Eucharist, have lived in self-glorying dreams
and visions suggested by the evil spirits. One such I knew, who, in
the madness? of his pride, refused to be counselled by any mortal
man--saying that he would call no man master: and what befell him? He
who used to pride himself on wandering a day's journey into the desert
without food or drink, who boasted that he could sustain life for three
months at a time only on wild herbs and the Blessed Bread, seized with
an inward fire, fled from his cell back to the theatres, the circus, and
the taverns, and ended his miserable days in desperate gluttony, holding
all things to be but phantasms, denying his own existence, and that of
God Himself.'

Arsenius shook his head.

'Be it so. But my case is different. I have yet more to confess, my
friend. Day by day I am more and more haunted by the remembrance of
that world from which I fled. I know that if I returned I should feel
no pleasure in those pomps, which, even while I battened on them, I
despised. Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing
women; or discern any longer what I eat or what I drink? And yet--the
palaces of those seven hills, their statesmen and their generals, their
intrigues, their falls, and their triumphs--for they might rise and
conquer yet!--for no moment are they out of my imagination,-no moment in
which they are not tempting me back to them, like a moth to the candle
which has already scorched him, with a dreadful spell, which I must at
last obey, wretch that I am, against my own will, or break by fleeing
into some outer desert, from whence return will be impossible!'

Pambo smiled.

'Again, I say, this is the worldly-wise man, the searcher of hearts! And
he would fain flee from the little Laura, which does turn his thoughts
at times from such vain dreams, to a solitude where he will be utterly
unable to escape those dreams. Well, friend!--and what if thou art
troubled at times by anxieties and schemes for this brother and for
that? Better to be anxious for others than only for thyself. Better to
have something to love--even something to weep over--than to become in
some lonely cavern thine own world,--perhaps, as more than one whom I
have known, thine own God.'

'Do you know what you are saying?' asked Arsenius in a startled tone.

'I say, that by fleeing into solitude a man cuts himself off from
all which makes a Christian man; from law, obedience, fellow-help,
self-sacrifice--from the communion of saints itself.'

'How then?'

'How canst thou hold communion with those toward whom thou canst show no
love? And how canst thou show thy love but by works of love?'

'I can, at least, pray day and night for all mankind. Has that no
place--or rather, has it not the mightiest place--in the communion of
saints!

'He who cannot pray for his brothers whom he does see, and whose sins
and temptations he knows, will pray but dully, my friend Aufugus, for
his brothers whom he does not see, or for anything else. And he who will
not labour for his brothers, the same will soon cease to pray for them,
or love them either. And then, what is written? "If a man love not his
brother whom he hath seen, how will he love God whom he hath not seen?"'

'Again, I say, do you know whither your argument leads?'

'I am a plain man, and know nothing about arguments. If a thing be true,
let it lead where it will, for it leads where God wills.'

'But at this rate, it were better for a man to take a wife, and have
children, and mix himself up in all the turmoil of carnal affections, in
order to have as many as possible to love, and fear for, and work for.'

Pambo was silent for a while.

'I am a monk and no logician. But this I say, that thou leavest not the
Laura for the desert with my good will. I would rather, had I my wish,
see thy wisdom installed somewhere nearer the metropolis--at Troe or
Canopus, for example--where thou mightest be at hand to fight the Lord's
battles. Why wert thou taught worldly wisdom, but to use it for the good
of the Church? It is enough. Let us go.'

And the two old men walked homeward across the valley, little guessing
the practical answer which was ready for their argument in Abbot Pambo's
cell, in the shape of a tall and grim ecclesiastic, who was busily
satisfying his hunger with dates and millet, and by no means refusing
the palm-wine, the sole delicacy of the monastery, which had been
brought forth only in honour of a guest.

The stately and courtly hospitality of Eastern manners, as well as the
self-restraining kindliness of monastic Christianity, forbade the abbot
to interrupt the stranger; and it was not till he had finished a hearty
meal that Pambo asked his name and errand.

'My unworthiness is called Peter the Reader. I come from Cyril, with
letters and messages to the brother Aufugus.'

Pambo rose, and bowed reverentially.

'We have heard your good report, sir, as of one zealously affected in
the cause of the Church Catholic. Will it please you to follow us to the
cell of Aufugus?'

Peter stalked after them with a sufficiently important air to the little
hut, and there taking from his bosom Cyril's epistle, handed it to
Arsenius, who sat long, reading and re-reading with a clouded brow,
while Pambo watched him with simple awe, not daring to interrupt by a
question lucubrations which he considered of unfathomable depth.

'These are indeed the last days,' said Arsenius at length, 'spoken of by
the prophet, when many shall run to and fro. So Heraclian has actually
sailed for Italy?'

'His armament was met on the high seas by Alexandrian merchantmen, three
weeks ago.'

'And Orestes hardens his heart more and more?'

'Ay, Pharaoh that he is; or rather, the heathen woman hardens it for
him.'

'I always feared that woman above all the schools of the heathen,' said
Arsenius. 'But the Count Heraclian, whom I always held for the wisest
as well as the most righteous of men! Alas!--alas! what virtue will
withstand, when ambition enters the heart!'

'Fearful, truly,' said Peter, 'is that same lust of power: but for
him, I have never trusted him since he began to be indulgent to those
Donatists.'

'Too true. So does one sin beget another.'

'And I consider that indulgence to sinners is the worst of all sins
whatsoever.'

'Not of all, surely, reverend sir?' said Pambo humbly. But Peter, taking
no notice of the interruption, went on to Arsenius--

'And now, what answer am I to bear back from your wisdom to his
holiness?'

'Let me see--let me see. He might--it needs consideration--I ought to
know more of the state of parties. He has, of course, communicated with
the African bishops, and tried to unite them with him?'

'Two months ago. But the stiff-necked schismatics are still jealous of
him, and hold aloof.'

'Schismatics is too harsh a term, my friend. But has he sent to
Constantinople?'

'He needs a messenger accustomed to courts. It was possible, he thought,
that your experience might undertake the mission.'

'Me? Who am I? Alas! alas! fresh temptations daily! Let him send by
the hand of whom he will.... And yet--were I--at least in Alexandria--I
might advise from day to day.... I should certainly see my way
clearer.... And unforeseen chances might arise, too .... Pambo,
my friend, thinkest thou that it would be sinful to obey the Holy
Patriarch?'

'Aha!' said Pambo, laughing, 'and thou art he who was for fleeing into
the desert an hour agone! And now, when once thou smellest the battle
afar off, thou art pawing in the valley, like the old war-horse. Go, and
God be with thee! Thou wilt be none the worse for it. Thou art too old
to fall in love, too poor to buy a bishopric, and too righteous to have
one given thee.'

'Art thou in earnest?'

'What did I say to thee in the garden? Go, and see our son, and send me
news of him.'

'Ah! shame on my worldly-mindedness! I had forgotten all this time to
inquire for him. How is the youth, reverend sir?'

'Whom do you mean?'

'Philammon, our spiritual son, whom we sent down to you three months
ago,' said Pambo. 'Risen to honour he is, by this time, I doubt not?'

'He? He is gone!'

'Gone?'

'Ay, the wretch, with the curse of Judas on him. He had not been with us
three days before he beat me openly in the patriarch's court, cast off
the Christian faith, and fled away to the heathen woman, Hypatia, of
whom he is enamoured.'

The two old men looked at each other with blank and horror-stricken
faces.

'Enamoured of Hypatia?' said Arsenius at last.

'It is impossible!' sobbed Pambo. 'The boy must have been treated
harshly, unjustly? Some one has wronged him, and he was accustomed
only to kindness, and could not bear it. Cruel men that you are, and
unfaithful stewards. The Lord will require the child's blood at your
hands!'

'Ay,' said Peter, rising fiercely, that is the world's justice! Blame
me, blame the patriarch, blame any and every one but the sinner. As if
a hot head and a hotter heart were not enough to explain it all! As if a
young fool had never before been bewitched by a fair face!'

'Oh, my friends, my friends,' cried Arsenius, 'why revile each other
without cause? I, I only am to blame. I advised you, Pambo!--I sent
him--I ought to have known--what was I doing, old worldling that I am,
to thrust the poor innocent forth into the temptations of Babylon? This
comes of all my schemings and my plottings! And now his blood will be on
my head-as if I bad not sins enough to bear already, I must go and add
this over and above all, to sell my own Joseph, the son of my old age,
to the Midianites! Here, I will go with you--now--at once--I will not
rest till I find hint, clasp his knees till he pities my gray hairs! Let
Heraclian and Orestes go their way for aught I care--I will find him,
I say. O Absalom, my son! would to God I had died for thee, my son! my
son!'



CHAPTER XII: THE BOWER OF ACRASIA


The house which Pelagia and the Amal had hired after their return to
Alexandria, was one of the most splendid in the city. They had been now
living there three months or more, and in that time Pelagia's taste had
supplied the little which it needed to convert it into a paradise
of lazy luxury. She herself was wealthy; and her Gothic guests,
overburdened with Roman spoils, the very use of which they could not
understand, freely allowed her and her nymphs to throw away for them the
treasures which they had won in many a fearful fight. What matter? If
they had enough to eat, and more than enough to drink, how could the
useless surplus of their riches be better spent than in keeping their
ladies in good humour?.... And when it was all gone....they would go
somewhere or other--who cared whither?--and win more. The whole world
was before them waiting to be plundered, and they would fulfil their
mission, whensoever it suited them. In the meantime they were in no
hurry. Egypt furnished in profusion every sort of food which could
gratify palates far more nice than theirs. And as for wine--few of them
went to bed sober from one week's end to another. Could the souls of
warriors have more, even in the halls of Valhalla?

So thought the party who occupied the inner court of the house, one
blazing afternoon in the same week in which Cyril's messenger had so
rudely broken in on the repose of the Scetis. Their repose, at least,
was still untouched. The great city roared without; Orestes plotted,
and Cyril counterplotted, and the fate of a continent hung--or seemed to
hang--trembling in the balance; but the turmoil of it no more
troubled those lazy Titans within, than did the roll and rattle of the
carriage-wheels disturb the parakeets and sunbirds which peopled, under
an awning of gilded wire, the inner court of Pelagia's house. Why should
they fret themselves with it all? What was every fresh riot, execution,
conspiracy, bankruptcy, but a sign--that the fruit was growing ripe
for the plucking? Even Heraclian's rebellion, and Orestes' suspected
conspiracy, were to the younger and coarser Goths a sort of child's
play, at which they could look on and laugh, and bet, from morning till
night; while to the more cunning heads, such as Wulf and Smid, they were
but signs of the general rottenness--new cracks in those great walls
over which they intended, with a simple and boyish consciousness of
power, to mount to victory when they chose.

And in the meantime, till the right opening offered, what was there
better than to eat, drink, and sleep? And certainly they had chosen
a charming retreat in which to fulfil that lofty mission. Columns
of purple and green porphyry, among which gleamed the white limbs of
delicate statues, surrounded a basin of water, fed by a perpetual jet,
which sprinkled with cool spray the leaves of the oranges and mimosas,
mingling its murmurs with the warblings of the tropic birds which
nestled among the branches.

On one side of the fountain, under the shade of a broad-leaved palmetto,
lay the Amal's mighty limbs, stretched out on cushions, his yellow hair
crowned with vine-leaves, his hand grasping a golden cup, which had
been won from Indian Rajahs by Parthian Chosroos, from Chosroos by Roman
generals, from Roman generals by the heroes of sheepskin and horsehide;
while Pelagia, by the side of the sleepy Hercules-Dionysos, lay leaning
over the brink of the fountain, lazily dipping her fingers into the
water, and basking, like the gnats which hovered over its surface, in
the mere pleasure of existence.

On the opposite brink of the basin, tended each by a dark-eyed Hebe,
who filled the wine-cups, and helped now and then to empty them, lay the
especial friends and companions in arms of the Amal, Goderic the son
of Ermenric, and Agilmund the son of Cniva, who both, like the Amal,
boasted a descent from gods; and last, but not least, that most
important and all but sacred personage, Smid the son of Troll,
reverenced for cunning beyond the sons of men; for not only could he
make and mend all matters, from a pontoon bridge to a gold bracelet,
shoe horses and doctor them, charm all diseases out of man and beast,
carve runes, interpret war-omens, foretell weather, raise the winds, and
finally, conquer in the battle of mead-horns all except Wulf the son of
Ovida; but he had actually, during a sojourn among the half-civilised
Maesogoths, picked up a fair share of Latin and Greek, and a rough
knowledge of reading and writing.

A few yards off lay old Wulf upon his back, his knees in the air,
his hands crossed behind his head, keeping up, even in his sleep,
a half-conscious comment of growls on the following intellectual
conversation:--

'Noble wine this, is it not?'

'Perfect. Who bought it for us?'

'Old Miriam bought it, at some great tax-farmer's sale. The fellow was
bankrupt, and Miriam said she got it for the half what it was worth.'

'Serve the penny-turning rascal right. The old vixen-fox took care, I'll
warrant her, to get her profit out of the bargain.'

'Never mind if she did. We can afford to pay like men, if we earn like
men.'

'We shan't afford it long, at this rate,' growled Wulf.

'Then we'll go and earn more. I am tired of doing nothing.'

'People need not do nothing, unless they choose,' said Goderic. 'Wulf
and I had coursing fit for a king, the other morning on the sand-hills.
I had had no appetite for a week before, and I have been as sharp-set as
a Danube pike ever since.'

'Coursing? What, with those long-legged brush-tailed brutes, like a fox
upon stilts, which the prefect cozened you into buying.'

'All I can say is, that we put up a herd of those--what do you call them
here--deer with goats' horns?'

'Antelopes?'

'That's it--and the curs ran into them as a falcon does into a skein of
ducks. Wulf and I galloped and galloped over those accursed sand-heaps
till the horses stuck fast; and when they got their wind again, we found
each pair of dogs with a deer down between them--and what can man want
more, if he cannot get fighting? You eat them, so you need not sneer.'

'Well, dogs are the only things worth having, then, that this Alexandria
does produce.'

'Except fair ladies!' put in one of the girls.

'Of course. I'll except the women. But the men-'

'The what? I have not seen a man since I came here, except a dock-worker
or two--priests and fine gentlemen they are all--and you don't call them
men, surely?'

'What on earth do they do, beside riding donkeys?'

'Philosophise, they say.'

'What's that?'

'I'm sure I don't know; some sort of slave's quill-driving, I suppose.'

'Pelagia! do you know what philosophising is?'

'No--and I don't care.'

'I do,' quoth Agilmund, with a look of superior wisdom; 'I saw a
philosopher the other day.'

'And what sort of a thing was it?'

'I'll tell you. I was walking down the great street there, going to the
harbour; and I saw a crowd of boys--men they call them here--going into
a large doorway. So I asked one of them what was doing, and the fellow,
instead of answering me, pointed at my legs, and set all the other
monkeys laughing. So I boxed his ears, and he tumbled down.'

'They all do so here, if you box their ears,' said the Amal
meditatively, as if he had bit upon a great inductive law.

'Ah,' said Pelagia, looking up with her most winning smile, 'they are
not such giants as you, who make a poor little woman feel like a gazelle
in a lion's paw!'

'Well--it struck me that, as I spoke in Gothic, the boy might not
have understood me, being a Greek. So I walked in at the door, to save
questions, and see for myself. And there a fellow held out his hand--I
suppose for money, So I gave him two or three gold pieces, and a box
on the ear, at which he tumbled down, of course, but seemed very well
satisfied. So I walked in.'

'And what did you see?'

'A great hall, large enough for a thousand heroes, full of these
Egyptian rascals scribbling with pencils on tablets. And at the farther
end of it the most beautiful woman I ever saw--with right fair hair
and blue eyes, talking, talking--I could not understand it; but the
donkey-riders seemed to think it very fine; for they went on looking
first at her, and then at their tablets, gaping like frogs in drought.
And, certainly, she looked as fair as the sun, and talked like an
Alruna-wife. Not that I knew what it was about, but one can see somehow,
you know.--So I fell asleep; and when I woke, and came out, I met some
one who understood me, and he told me that it was the famous maiden, the
great philosopher. And that's what I know about philosophy.'

'She was very much wasted then, on such soft-handed starvelings. Why
don't she marry some hero?'

'Because there are none here to marry,' said Pelagia; 'except some who
are fast netted, I fancy, already.'

'But what do they talk about, and tell people to do, these philosophers,
Pelagia?'

'Oh, they don't tell any one to do anything--at least, if they do,
nobody ever does it, as far as I can see; but they talk about suns and
stars, and right and wrong, and ghosts and spirits, and that sort of
thing; and about not enjoying oneself too much. Not that I ever saw that
they were any happier than any one else.'

'She must have been an Alruna-maiden,' said Wulf, half to himself.

'She is a very conceited creature, and I hate her,' said Pelagia.

'I believe you,' said Wulf.

'What is an Alruna-maiden?' asked one of the girls.

'Something as like you as a salmon is like a horse-leech. Heroes, will
you hear a saga?'

'If it is a cool one,' said Agilmund; 'about ice, and pine-trees, and
snowstorms, I shall be roasted brown in three days more.'

'Oh,' said the Amal, 'that we were on the Alps again for only two hours,
sliding down those snow-slopes on our shields, with the sleet whistling
about our ears! That was sport!'

'To those who could keep their seat,' said Goderic. 'Who went head over
heels into a glacier-crack, and was dug out of fifty feet of snow, and
had to be put inside a fresh-killed horse before he could be brought to
life?'

'Not you, surely,' said Pelagia. 'Oh, you wonderful creature! what
things you have done and suffered!'

'Well,' said the Amal, with a look of stolid self-satisfaction, 'I
suppose I have seen a good deal in my time, eh?'

'Yes, my Hercules, you have gone through your twelve labours, and saved
your poor little Hesione after them all, when she was chained to the
rock, for the ugly sea-monsters to eat; and she will cherish you, and
keep you out of scrapes now, for her own sake;' and Pelagia threw her
arms round the great bull-neck, and drew it down to her.

'Will you hear my saga?' said Wulf impatiently.

'Of course we will,' said the Amal; 'anything to pass the time.'

'But let it be about snow,' said Agilmund.

'Not about Alruna-wives?'

'About them, too,' said Goderic; 'my mother was one, so I must needs
stand up for them.'

'She was, boy. Do you be her son. Now hear, Wolves of the Goths!'

And the old man took up his little lute, or as he would probably have
called it, 'fidel,' and began chanting to his own accompaniment.

Over the camp fires Drank I with heroes, Under the Donau bank Warm in
the snow-trench, Sagamen heard I there, Men of the Longbeards, Cunning
and ancient, Honey-sweet-voiced. Scaring the wolf-cub, Scaring the
horn-owl out, Shaking the snow-wreaths Down from the pine-boughs, Up
to the star-roof Rang out their song. Singing how Winil men Over the
icefloes Sledging from Scanland on Came unto Scoring; Singing of Gambara
Freya's beloved. Mother of Ayo Mother of Ibor. Singing of Wendel men,
Ambri and Assi; How to the Winilfolk Went they with war-words-- 'Few are
ye, strangers, And many are we; Pay us now toll and fee, Clothyarn, and
rings, and beeves; Else at the raven's meal Bide the sharp bill's doom.'

Clutching the dwarfs' work then, Clutching the bullock's shell, Girding
gray iron on, Forth fared the Winils all, Fared the Alruna's sons, Ayo
and Ibor. Mad of heart stalked they Loud wept the women all, Loud the
Alruna-wife; Sore was their need.

Out of the morning land, Over the snowdrifts, Beautiful Freya came,
Tripping to Scoring. White were the moorlands, And frozen before her;
But green were the moorlands, And blooming behind her, Out of her golden
locks Shaking the spring flowers, Out of her garments Shaking the south
wind, Around in the birches Awaking the throstles, And making chaste
housewives all Long for their heroes home, Loving and love-giving, Came
she to Scoring. Came unto Gambara, Wisest of Valas-- 'Vala, why weepest
thou Far in the wide-blue, High up in the Elfin-home, Heard I thy
weeping.'

'Stop not thy weeping, Till one can fight seven, Sons have I, heroes
tall, First in the sword-play; This day at the Wendels' hands Eagles
must tear them; While their mothers, thrall-weary, Must grind for the
Wendels'

Wept the Alruna-wife; Kissed her fair Freya-- 'Far off in the morning
land High in Valhalla, A window stands open, Its sill is the snow-peaks,
Its posts are the water-spouts Storm rack its lintel, Gold cloud-flakes
above it Are piled for the roofing. Far up to the Elfin-home, High in
the wide-blue. Smiles out each morning thence Odin Allfather; From
under the cloud-eaves, Smiles out on the heroes, Smiles out on chaste
housewives all, Smiles on the brood-mares, Smiles on the smith's work:
And theirs is the sword-luck, With them is the glory-- So Odin hath
sworn it--


     Who first in the morning
     Shall meet him and greet him.'


Still the Alruna wept-- 'Who then shall greet him? Women alone are here:
Far on the moorlands Behind the war-lindens, In vain for the bill's doom
Watch Winil heroes all, One against seven.'

Sweetly the Queen laughed-- 'Hear thou my counsel now; Take to thee
cunning, Beloved of Freya. Take thou thy women-folk, Maidens and wives:
Over your ankles Lace on the white war-hose; Over your bosoms Link up
the hard mailnets; Over your lips Plait long tresses with cunning;--
So war-beasts full bearded King Odin shall deem you, When off the gray
sea-beach At sunrise ye greet him.'

Night's son was driving His golden-haired horses up. Over the Eastern
firths High flashed their manes. Smiled from the cloud-eaves out
Allfather Odin, Waiting the battle-sport: Freya stood by him. 'Who are
these heroes tall-- Lusty-limbed Longbeards? Over the swans' bath
Why cry they to me? Bones should be crashing fast, Wolves should be
full-fed, Where'er such, mad-hearted, Swing hands in the sword-play.'

Sweetly laughed Freya-- 'A name thou hast given them-- Shames neither
thee nor them, Well can they wear it. Give them the victory, First have
they greeted thee; Give them the victory, Yokefellow mine! Maidens and
wives are these-- Wives of the Winils; Few are their heroes And far on
the war-road, So over the swans' bath They cry unto thee.'

Royally laughed he then; Dear was that craft to him, Odin Allfather,
Shaking the clouds. 'Cunning are women all, Bold and importunate!
Longbeards their name shall be, Ravens shall thank them: Where the women
are heroes, What must the men be like? Theirs is the victory; No need of
me!'

[Footnote: This punning legend may be seen in Paul Warnefrid's _Gesta
Langobardorum_. The metre and language are intended as imitations of
those of the earlier Eddaic poems.]

'There!' said Wulf, when the song was ended; 'is that cool enough for
you?'

'Rather too cool; eh, Pelagia?' said the Amal, laughing.

'Ay,' went on the old man, bitterly enough, 'such were your mothers; and
such were your sisters; and such your wives must be, if you intend to
last much longer on the face of the earth--women who care for something
better than good eating, strong drinking, and soft lying.'

'All very true, Prince Wulf,' said Agilmund, 'but I don't like the saga
after all. It was a great deal too like what Pelagia here says those
philosophers talk about--right and wrong, and that sort of thing.'

'I don't doubt it.'

'Now I like a really good saga, about gods and giants, and the fire
kingdoms and the snow kingdoms, and the Aesir making men and women out
of two sticks, and all that.'

'Ay,' said the Amal, 'something like nothing one ever saw in one's
life, all stark mad and topsy-turvy, like one's dreams when one has been
drunk; something grand which you cannot understand, but which sets you
thinking over it all the morning after.'

'Well,' said Goderic, 'my mother was an Alruna-woman, so I will not be
the bird to foul its own nest. But I like to hear about wild beasts and
ghosts, ogres, and fire-drakes, and nicors--something that one could
kill if one had a chance, as one's fathers had.'

'Your fathers would never have killed nicors,' said Wulf, 'if they had
been--'

'Like us--I know,' said the Amal. 'Now tell me, prince, you are old
enough to be our father; and did you ever see a nicor?'

'My brother saw one, in the Northern sea, three fathoms long, with the
body of a bison-bull, and the head of a cat, and the beard of a man, and
tusks an ell long, lying down on its breast, watching for the fishermen;
and he struck it with an arrow, so that it fled to the bottom of the
sea, and never came up again.'

'What is a nicor, Agilmund?' asked one of the girls.

'A sea-devil who eats sailors. There used to be plenty of them where our
fathers came from, and ogres too, who came out of the fens into the
hall at night, when the warriors were sleeping, to suck their blood, and
steal along, and steal along, and jump upon you--so!'

Pelagia, during the saga, had remained looking into the fountain, and
playing with the water-drops, in assumed indifference. Perhaps it was to
hide burning blushes, and something very like two hot tears, which fell
unobserved into the ripple. Now she looked up suddenly--

'And of course you have killed some of these dreadful creatures,
Amalric?'

'I never had such good luck, darling. Our forefathers were in such a
hurry with them, that by the time we were born, there was hardly one
left.'

'Ay, they were men,' growled Wulf.

'As for me,' went on the Amal, 'the biggest thing I ever killed was a
snake in the Donau fens. How long was he, prince? You had time to see,
for you sat eating your dinner and looking on, while he was trying to
crack my bones.'

'Four fathom,' answered Wulf.

'With a wild bull lying by him, which he had just killed. I spoilt his
dinner, eh, Wulf?'

'Yes,' said the old grumbler, mollified, 'that was a right good fight.'

'Why don't you make a saga about it, then, instead of about right and
wrong, and such things?'

'Because I am turned philosopher. I shall go and hear that Alruna-maiden
this afternoon.'

'Well said. Let us go too, young men: it will pass the time, at all
events.'

'Oh, no! no! no! do not! you shall not!' almost shrieked Pelagia.

'Why not, then, pretty one?'

'She is a witch--she--I will never love you again if you dare to go.
Your only reason is that Agilmund's report of her beauty.'

'So? You are afraid of my liking her golden locks better than your black
ones?'

'I? Afraid?' And she leapt up, panting with pretty rage. 'Come, we will
go too--at once--and brave this nun, who fancies herself too wise to
speak to a woman, and too pure to love a man! Lookout my jewels! Saddle
my white mule! We will go royally. We will not be ashamed of Cupid's
livery, my girls--saffron shawl and all! Come, and let us see whether
saucy Aphrodite is not a match after all for Pallas Athene and her owl!'

And she darted out of the cloister.

The three younger men burst into a roar of laughter, while Wulf looked
with grim approval.

'So you want to go and hear the philosopher, prince?' said Smid.

'Wheresoever a holy and a wise woman speaks, a warrior need not be
ashamed of listening. Did not Alaric bid us spare the nuns in Rome,
comrade? And though I am no Christian as he was, I thought it no shame
for Odin's man to take their blessing; nor will I to take this one's,
Smid, son of Troll.'



CHAPTER XIII: THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS


'Here am I, at last!' said Raphael Aben-Ezra to himself. 'Fairly and
safely landed at the very bottom of the bottomless; disporting myself on
the firm floor of the primeval nothing, and finding my new element, like
boys when they begin to swim, not so impracticable after all. No man,
angel, or demon, can this day cast it in my teeth that I am weak enough
to believe or disbelieve any phenomenon or theory in or concerning
heaven or earth; or even that any such heaven, earth, phenomena,
or theories exist--or otherwise.... I trust that is a sufficiently
exhaustive statement of my opinions? .... I am certainly not dogmatic
enough to deny--or to assert either--that there are sensations.... far
too numerous for comfort .... but as for proceeding any further, by
induction, deduction, analysis, or synthesis, I utterly decline
the office of Arachne, and will spin no more cobwebs out of my
own inside--if I have any. Sensations? What are they, but parts of
oneself--if one has a self! What put this child's fancy into one's head,
that there is anything outside of one which produces them? You have
exactly similar feelings in your dreams, and you know that there is no
reality corresponding to them--No, you don't! How dare you be dogmatic
enough to affirm that? Why should not your dreams be as real as your
waking thoughts? Why should not your dreams be the reality, and your
waking thoughts the dream? What matter which?

'What matter indeed? Here have I been staring for years--unless that,
too, is a dream, which it very probably is--at every mountebank "ism"
which ever tumbled and capered on the philosophic tight-rope; and they
are every one of them dead dolls, wooden, worked with wires, which are
_petitiones principii_.... Each philosopher begs the question in hand,
and then marches forward, as brave as a triumph, and prides himself--on
proving it all afterwards. No wonder that his theory fits the universe,
when he has first clipped the universe to fit his theory. Have I not
tried my hand at many a one--starting, too, no one can deny, with the
very minimum of clipping,.... for I suppose one cannot begin lower than
at simple "I am I".... unless--which is equally demonstrable--at "I am
not I." I recollect--or dream--that I offered that sweet dream, Hypatia,
to deduce all things in heaven and earth, from the Astronomics of
Hipparchus to the number of plumes in an archangel's wing, from that one
simple proposition, if she would but write me out a demonstration of it
first, as some sort of [Greek expression] for the apex of my inverted
pyramid. But she disdained.... People are apt to disdain what they know
they cannot do.... "It was an axiom," it was, "like one and one making
two.".... How cross the sweet dream was, at my telling her that I did
not consider that any axiom either, and that one thing and one thing
seeming to us to be two things, was no more proof that they really were
two, and not three hundred and sixty-five, than a man seeming to be
an honest man, proved him not to be a rogue; and at my asking her,
moreover, when she appealed to universal experience, how she proved that
the combined folly of all fools resulted in wisdom!

'"I am I" an axiom, indeed! What right have I to say that I am not any
one else? How do I know it? How do I know that there is any one else
for me not to be? I, or rather something, feel a number of sensations,
longings, thoughts, fancies--the great devil take them all--fresh ones
every moment, and each at war tooth and nail with all the rest; and
then on the strength of this infinite multiplicity and contradiction,
of which alone I am aware, I am to be illogical enough to stand up, and
say, "I by myself I," and swear stoutly that I am one thing, when all I
am conscious of is the devil only knows how many things. Of all quaint
deductions from experience, that is the quaintest! Would it not be more
philosophical to conclude that I, who never saw or felt or heard this
which I call myself, am what I have seen, heard, and felt--and no more
and no less--that sensation which I call that horse, that dead man,
that jackass, those forty thousand two-legged jackasses who appear to be
running for their lives below there, having got hold of this same notion
of their being one thing each--as I choose to fancy in my foolish
habit of imputing to them the same disease of thought which I find in
myself--crucify the word!--The folly of my ancestors--if I ever had
any--prevents my having any better expression.... Why should I not be
all I feel--that sky, those clouds--the whole universe? Hercules! what
a creative genius my sensorium must be!--I'll take to writing' poetry--a
mock-epic, in seventy-two books, entitled "The Universe: or, Raphael
Aben-Ezra," and take Homer's Margites for my model. Homer's? Mine! Why
must not the Margites, like everything else, have been a sensation of my
own? Hypatia used to say Homer's poetry was a part of her.... only she
could not prove it.... but I have proved that the Margites is a part of
me.... not that I believe my own proof--scepticism forbid! Oh, would to
heaven that the said whole disagreeable universe were annihilated, if
it were only just to settle by fair experiment whether any of master "I"
remained when they were gone! Buzzard and dogmatist! And how do you know
that that would settle it? And if it did--why need it be settled?....

'I daresay there is an answer pat for all this. I could write a pretty
one myself in half an hour. But then I should not believe it .... nor
the rejoinder to that.... nor the demurrer to that again .... So.... I
am both sleepy and hungry.... or rather, sleepiness and hunger are me.
Which is it! Heigh-ho....' and Raphael finished his meditation by a
mighty yawn.

This hopeful oration was delivered in a fitting lecture-room. Between
the bare walls of a doleful fire-scarred tower in the Campagna of Rome,
standing upon a knoll of dry brown grass, ringed with a few grim pines,
blasted and black with smoke; there sat Raphael Aben-Ezra, working out
the last formula of the great world problem--'Given Self; to find God.'
Through the doorless stone archway he could see a long vista of the
plain below, covered with broken trees, trampled crops, smoking villas,
and all the ugly scars of recent war, far onward to the quiet purple
mountains and the silver sea, towards which struggled, far in the
distance, long dark lines of moving specks, flowing together, breaking
up, stopping short, recoiling back to surge forward by some fresh
channel, while now and then a glitter of keen white sparks ran through
the dense black masses.... The Count of Africa had thrown for the empire
of the world--and lost.

'Brave old Sun!' said Raphael, 'how merrily he flashes off the
sword-blades yonder, and never cares that every tiny spark brings
a death-shriek after it! Why should he? It is no concern of his.
Astrologers are fools. His business is to shine; and on the whole, he
is one of my few satisfactory sensations. How now? This is questionably
pleasant!'

As he spoke, a column of troops came marching across the field, straight
towards his retreat.

'If these new sensations of mine find me here, they will infallibly
produce in me a new sensation, which will render all further ones
impossible.... Well? What kinder thing could they do for me?.... Ay--but
how do I know that they would do it? What possible proof is there that
if a two-legged phantasm pokes a hard iron-gray phantasm in among my
sensations, those sensations will be my last? Is the fact of my turning
pale, and lying still, and being in a day or two converted into crows'
flesh, any reason why I should not feel? And how do I know that would
happen? It seems to happen to certain sensations of my eyeball--or
something else--who cares? which I call soldiers; but what possible
analogy can there be between what seems to happen to those single
sensations called soldiers, and what may or may not really happen to all
my sensations put together, which I call me? Should I bear apples if a
phantasm seemed to come and plant me? Then why should I die if another
phantasm seemed to come and poke me in the ribs?

'Still I don't intend to deny it.... I am no dogmatist. Positively the
phantasms are marching straight for my tower! Well, it may be safer
to run away, on the chance. But as for losing feeling,' continued he,
rising and cramming a few mouldy crusts into his wallet, 'that, like
everything else, is past proof. Why--if now, when I have some sort of
excuse for fancying myself one thing in one place, I am driven mad with
the number of my sensations, what will it be when I am eaten, and turned
to dust, and undeniably many things in many places.... Will not the
sensations be multiplied by--unbearable! I would swear at the thought,
if I had anything to swear by! To be transmuted into the sensoria of
forty different nasty carrion crows, besides two or three foxes, and a
large black beetle! I'll run away, just like anybody else.... if anybody
existed. Come, Bran! ...............

'Bran! where are you; unlucky inseparable sensation of mine? Picking up
a dinner already off these dead soldiers? Well, the pity is that this
foolish contradictory taste of mine, while it makes me hungry,
forbids me to follow your example. Why am I to take lessons from my
soldier-phantasms, and not from my canine one? Illogical! Bran! Bran!'
and he went out and whistled in vain for the dog.

'Bran! unhappy phantom, who will not vanish by night or day, lying on
my chest even in dreams; and who would not even let me vanish, and solve
the problem--though I don't believe there is any--why did you drag me
out of the sea there at Ostia? Why did you not let me become a whole
shoal of crabs? How did you know, or I either, that they may not be
very jolly fellows, and not in the least troubled with philosophic
doubts?.... But perhaps there were no crabs, but only phantasms of
crabs.... And, on the other hand, if the crab-phantasms give jolly
sensations, why should not the crow-phantasms? So whichever way it turns
out, no matter; and I may as well wait here, and seem to become crows,
as I certainly shall do.--Bran!.... Why should I wait for her? What
pleasure can it be to me to have the feeling of a four-legged, brindled,
lop-eared, toad-mouthed thing always between what seem to be my legs?
There she is! Where have you been, madam? Don't you see I am in marching
order, with staff and wallet ready shouldered? Come!'

But the dog, looking up in his face as only dogs can look, ran toward
the back of the ruin, and up to him again, and back again, until he
followed her.

'What's this? Here is a new sensation with a vengeance! O storm and
cloud of material appearances, were there not enough of you already,
that you must add to your number these also? Bran! Bran! Could you find
no other day in the year but this, whereon to present my ears with the
squeals of--one--two--three--nine blind puppies?'

Bran answered by rushing into the hole where her new family lay tumbling
and squalling, bringing out one in her mouth, and laying it at his feet.

'Needless, I assure you. I am perfectly aware of the state of the case
already. What! another? Silly old thing!--do you fancy, as the fine
ladies do, that burdening the world with noisy likenesses of your
precious self, is a thing of which to be proud? Why, she's bringing out
the whole litter!.... What was I thinking of last? Ah--the argument was
self-contradictory, was it, because I could not argue without using
the very terms which I repudiated. Well.... And--why should it not be
contradictory; Why not? One must face that too, after all. Why should
not a thing be true and false also? What harm in a thing's being false?
What necessity for it to be true? True? What is truth? Why should a
thing be the worse for being illogical? Why should there be any logic at
all? Did I ever see a little beast flying about with "Logic" labelled on
its back? What do I know of it, but as a sensation of my own mind--if I
have any? What proof is that that I am to obey it, and not it me? If a
flea bites me I get rid of that sensation; and if logic bothers me, I'll
get rid of that too. Phantasms must be taught to vanish courteously.
One's only hope of comfort lies in kicking feebly against the tyranny
of one's own boring notions and sensations--every philosopher
confesses that--and what god is logic, pray, that it is to be the sole
exception?.... What, old lady? I give you fair warning, you must choose
this day, like any nun, between the ties of family and those of duty.'

Bran seized him by the skirt, and pulled him down towards the puppies;
took up one of the puppies and lifted it towards him; and then repeated
the action with another.

'You unconscionable old brute! You don't actually dare to expect the to
carry your puppies for you?' and he turned to go.

Bran sat down on her tail and began howling.

'Farewell, old dog! you have been a pleasant dream after all.... But if
you will go the way of all phantasms.'.... And he walked away.

Bran ran with him, leaping and barking; then recollected her family and
ran back; tried to bring them, one by one, in her mouth, and then to
bring them all at once; and failing sat down and howled.

'Come, Bran! Come, old girl!'

She raced halfway up to him; then halfway back again to the puppies;
then towards him again: and then suddenly gave it up, and dropping
her tail, walked slowly back to the blind suppliants, with a deep
reproachful growl.

'* * *!' said Raphael with a mighty oath; 'you are right after all! Here
are nine things come into the world, phantasms or not, there it is; I
can't deny it. They are something, and you are something, old dog; or at
least like enough to something to do instead of it; and you are not I,
and as good as I, and they too, for aught I know, and have as good a
right to live as I; and by the seven planets and all the rest of it,
I'll carry them!'

And he went back, tied up the puppies in his blanket, and set forth,
Bran barking, squeaking, wagging, leaping, running between his legs and
upsetting him, in her agonies of joy.

'Forward! Whither you will, old lady! The world is wide. You shall be
my guide, tutor, queen of philosophy, for the sake of this mere common
sense of yours. Forward, you new Hypatia! I promise you I will attend no
lectures but yours this day!'

He toiled on, every now and then stepping across a dead body, or
clambering a wall out of the road, to avoid some plunging, shrieking
horse, or obscene knot of prowling camp followers, who were already
stripping and plundering the slain.... At last, in front of a large
villa, now a black and smoking skeleton, he leaped a wall, and found
himself landed on a heap of corpses.... They were piled up against the
garden fence for many yards. The struggle had been fierce there some
three hours before.

'Put me out of my misery! In mercy kill me!' moaned a voice beneath his
feet.

Raphael looked down; the poor wretch was slashed and mutilated beyond
all hope.

'Certainly, friend, if you wish it,' and he drew his dagger. The poor
fellow stretched out his throat, and awaited the stroke with a ghastly
smile. Raphael caught his eye; his heart failed him, and he rose.

'What do you advise, Bran?' But the dog was far ahead, leaping and
barking impatiently.

'I obey,' said Raphael; and he followed her, while the wounded man
called piteously and upbraidingly after him.

'He will not have long to wait. Those plunderers will not be as
squeamish as I.... Strange, now! From Armenian reminiscences I should
have fancied myself as free from such tender weakness as any of
my Canaanite-slaying ancestors.... And yet by some mere spirit of
contradiction, I couldn't kill that fellow, exactly because he asked me
to do it.... There is more in that than will fit into the great inverted
pyramid of "I am I.". Never mind, let me get the dog's lessons by heart
first. What next, Bran? Ah! Could one believe the transformation? Why,
this is the very trim villa which I passed yesterday morning, with the
garden-chairs standing among the flower-beds, just as the young ladies
had left them, and the peacocks and silver pheasants running about,
wondering why their pretty mistresses did not come to feed them. And
here is a trampled mass of wreck and corruption for the girls to find,
when they venture back from Rome, and complain how horrible war is for
breaking down all their shrubs, and how cruel soldiers must be to kill
and cook all their poor dear tame turtle-doves! Why not? Why should they
lament over other things--which they can just as little mend--and which
perhaps need no more mending? Ah! there lies a gallant fellow underneath
that fruit-tree!'

Raphael walked up to a ring of dead, in the midst of which lay,
half-sitting against the trunk of the tree, a tall and noble officer
in the first bloom of manhood. His casque and armour, gorgeously inlaid
with gold, were hewn and battered by a hundred blows; his shield was
cloven through and through; his sword broken in the stiffened hand which
grasped it still. Cut off from his troop, he had made his last stand
beneath the tree, knee-deep in the gay summer flowers, and there he lay,
bestrewn, as if by some mockery--or pity--of mother nature, with faded
roses, and golden fruit, shaken from off the boughs in that last deadly
struggle. Raphael stood and watched him with a sad sneer.

'Well!--you have sold your fancied personality dear! How many dead
men?.... Nine.... Eleven! Conceited fellow! Who told you that your one
life was worth the eleven which you have taken?'

Bran went up to the corpse--perhaps from its sitting posture fancying it
still living--smelt the cold cheek, and recoiled with a mournful whine.

'Eh? That is the right way to look at the phenomena, is it? Well, after
all, I am sorry for you.... almost like you.... All your wounds in
front, as a man's should be. Poor fop! Lais and Thais will never curl
those dainty ringlets for you again! What is that bas-relief upon your
shield? Venus receiving Psyche into the abode of the gods!.... Ah! you
have found out all about Psyche's wings by this time.... How do I
know that? And yet, why am I, in spite of my common sense--if I have
any--talking to you as you, and liking you, and pitying you, if you are
nothing now, and probably never were anything? Bran! What right had you
to pity him without giving your reasons in due form, as Hypatia would
have done? Forgive me, sir, however--whether you exist or not, I cannot
leave that collar round your neck for these camp-wolves to convert into
strong liquor.'

And as he spoke, he bent down, and detached, gently enough, a
magnificent necklace.

'Not for myself, I assure you. Like Ate's golden apple, it shall go to
the fairest. Here, Bran!' And he wreathed the jewels round the neck
of the mastiff, who, evidently exalted in her own eyes by the burden,
leaped and barked forward again, taking, apparently as a matter of
course, the road back towards Ostia, by which they had come thither
from the sea. And as he followed, careless where he went, he continued
talking to himself aloud after the manner of restless self-discontented
men.

....'And then man talks big about his dignity and his intellect, and
his heavenly parentage, and his aspirations after the unseen, and the
beautiful, and the infinite--and everything else unlike himself. How
can he prove it? Why, these poor blackguards lying about are very fair
specimens of humanity.--And how much have they been bothered since they
were born with aspirations after anything infinite, except infinite sour
wine? To eat, to drink; to destroy a certain number of their species; to
reproduce a certain number of the same, two-thirds of whom will die in
infancy, a dead waste of pain to their mothers and of expense to their
putative sires.... and then--what says Solomon? What befalls them
befalls beasts. As one dies, so dies the other; so that they have all
one breath, and a man has no pre-eminence over a beast; for all is
vanity. All go to one place; all are of the dust, and turn to dust
again. Who knows that the breath of man goes upward, and that the breath
of the beast goes downward to the earth? Who, indeed, my most wise
ancestor? Not I, certainly. Raphael Aben-Ezra, how art thou better than
a beast? W hat pre-eminence hast thou, not merely over this dog, But
over the fleas whom thou so wantonly cursest? Man must painfully win
house, clothes, fire.... A pretty proof of his wisdom, when every flea
has the wit to make my blanket, without any labour of his own, lodge him
a great deal better than it lodges me! Man makes clothes, and the fleas
live in them.... Which is the wiser of the two?....

'Ah, but--man is fallen.... Well--and the flea is not. So much better he
than the man; for he is what he was intended to be, and so fulfils the
very definition of virtue, which no one can say of us of the red-ochre
vein. And even if the old myth be true, and the man only fell, because
he was set to do higher work than the flea, what does that prove--but
that he could not do it?

'But his arts and his sciences?.... Apage! The very sound of those
grown-children's rattles turns me sick.... One conceited ass in a
generation increasing labour and sorrow, and dying after all even as
the fool dies, and ten million brutes and slaves, just where their
fore-fathers were, and where their children will be after them, to the
end of the farce.... The thing that has been, it is that which shall be;
and there is no new thing under the sun....

'And as for your palaces, and cities, and temples.... look at this
Campagna, and judge. Flea-bites go down after a while--and so do they.
What are they but the bumps which we human fleas make in the old earth's
skin?. Make them? We only cause them, as fleas cause flea-bites....
What are all the works of man, but a sort of cutaneous disorder in this
unhealthy earth-hide, and we a race of larger fleas, running about among
its fur, which we call trees? Why should not the earth be an animal? How
do I know it is not? Because it is too big? Bah! What is big, and
what is little? Because it has not the shape of one?.... Look into
a fisherman's net, and see what forms are there! Because it does not
speak?.... Perhaps it has nothing to say, being too busy. Perhaps it
can talk no more sense than we.... In both cases it shows its wisdom by
holding its tongue. Because it moves in one necessary direction? ....
How do I know that it does? How can I tell that it is not flirting with
all the seven spheres at once, at this moment? But if it does--so much
the wiser of it, if that be the best direction for it. Oh, what a base
satire on ourselves and our notions of the fair and fitting, to say that
a thing cannot be alive and rational, just because it goes steadily on
upon its own road, instead of skipping and scrambling fantastically up
and down without method or order, like us and the fleas, from the cradle
to the grave! Besides, if you grant, with the rest of the world, that
fleas are less noble than we, because they are our parasites, then you
are bound to grant that we are less noble than the earth, because we are
its parasites. .... Positively, it looks more probable than anything
I have seen for many a day.... And, by the bye, why should not
earthquakes, and floods, and pestilences, be only just so many ways
which the cunning old brute earth has of scratching herself when the
human fleas and their palace and city bites get too troublesome?'

At a turn of the road he was aroused from this profitable meditation
by a shriek, the shrillness of which told him that it was a woman's.
He looked up, and saw close to him, among the smouldering ruins of a
farmhouse, two ruffians driving before them a young girl, with her hands
tied behind her, while the poor creature was looking back piteously
after something among the ruins, and struggling in vain, bound as she
was, to escape from her captors and return.

'Conduct unjustifiable in any fleas,--eh, Bran? How do I know that,
though? Why should it not be a piece of excellent fortune for her, if
she had but the equanimity to see it? Why--what will happen to her?
She will betaken to Rome, and sold as a slave.... And in spite of a few
discomforts in the transfer, and the prejudice which some persons have
against standing an hour on the catasta to be handled from head to foot
in the minimum of clothing, she will most probably end in being far
better housed, fed, bedizened, and pampered to her heart's desire, than
ninety-nine out of a hundred of her sister fleas.... till she begins
to grow old.... which she must do in any case....And if she have not
contrived to wheedle her master out of her liberty, and to make tip a
pretty little purse of savings, by that time--why, it is her own fault.
Eh, Bran?'

But Bran by no means agreed with his view of the case; for after
watching the two ruffians, with her head stuck on one side, for a minute
or two, she suddenly and silently, after the manner of mastiffs, sprang
upon them, and dragged one to the ground.

'Oh! that is the "fit and beautiful," in this case, as they say in
Alexandria, is it? Well--I obey. You are at least a more practical
teacher than ever Hypatia was. Heaven grant that there may be no more of
them in the ruins!'

And rushing on the second plunderer, he laid him dead with a blow of his
dagger, and then turned to the first, whom Bran was holding down by the
throat.

'Mercy, mercy!' shrieked the wretch. 'Life! only life!'

'There was a fellow half a mile back begging me to kill him: with which
of you two am I to agree?--for you can't both be right.'

'Life! Only life!'

'A carnal appetite, which man must learn to conquer,' said Raphael,
as he raised the poniard..... In a moment it was over, and Bran and
he rose--Where was the girl? She had rushed back to the ruins, whither
Raphael followed her; while Bran ran to the puppies, which he had laid
upon a stone, and commenced her maternal cares.

'What do you want, my poor girl?' asked he in Latin. 'I will not hurt
you.'

'My father! My father!'

He untied her bruised and swollen wrists; and without stopping to thank
him, she ran to a heap of fallen stones and beams, and began digging
wildly with all her little strength, breathlessly calling 'Father!'

'Such is the gratitude of flea to flea! What is there, now, in the mere
fact of being accustomed to call another person father, and not
master, or slave, which should produce such passion as that?.... Brute
habit!.... What services can the said man render, or have rendered,
which make him worth--Here is Bran!.... What do you think of that, my
female philosopher?'

Bran sat down and watched too. The poor girl's tender hands were
bleeding from the stones, while her golden tresses rolled down over
her eyes, and entangled in her impatient fingers; but still she worked
frantically. Bran seemed suddenly to comprehend the case, rushed to the
rescue, and began digging too, with all her might.

Raphael rose with a shrug, and joined in the work. ...............

'Hang these brute instincts! They make one very hot. What was that?'

A feeble moan rose from under the stones. A human limb was uncovered.
The girl threw herself on the place, shrieking her father's name.
Raphael put her gently back and exerting his whole strength, drew out
of the ruins a stalwart elderly man, in the dress of an officer of high
rank.

He still breathed. The girl lifted up his head and covered him with
wild kisses. Raphael looked round for water; found a spring and a broken
sherd, and bathed the wounded man's temples till he opened his eyes and
showed signs of returning life.

The girl still sat by him, fondling her recovered treasure, and bathing
the grizzled face in holy tears.

'It is no business of mine,' said Raphael. 'Come, Bran!'

The girl sprang up, threw herself at his feet, kissed his hands, called
him her saviour, her deliverer, sent by God.

'Not in the least, my child. You must thank my teacher the dog, not me.'

And she took him at his word, and threw her soft arms round Bran's Deck;
and Bran understood it, and wagged her tail, and licked the gentle face
lovingly.

'Intolerably absurd, all this!' said Raphael. 'I must be going, Bran.'

'You will not leave us? You surely will not leave an old man to die
here?'

'Why not? What better thing could happen to him?'

'Nothing,' murmured the officer, who had not spoken before.

'Ah, God! he is my father!'

'Well?'

'He is my father!'

'Well?'

'You must save him! You shall, I say!' And she seized Raphael's arm in
the imperiousness of her passion.

He shrugged his shoulders: but felt, he knew not why, marvellously
inclined to obey her.

'I may as well do this as anything else, having nothing else to do.
Whither now, sir?'

'Whither you will. Our troops are disgraced, our eagles taken. We are
your prisoners by right of war. We follow you.'

'Oh, my fortune! A new responsibility! Why cannot I stir, without live
animals, from fleas upward, attaching themselves to me? Is it not
enough to have nine blind puppies at my back, and an old brute at my
heels, who will persist in saving my life, that I must be burdened over
and above with a respectable elderly rebel and his daughter? Why am I
not allowed by fate to care for nobody but myself? Sir, I give you
both your freedom. The world is wide enough for us all. I really ask no
ransom.'

'You seem philosophically disposed, my friend.'

'I? Heaven forbid! I have gone right through that slough, and come out
sheer on the other side. For sweeping the last lingering taint of it out
of me, I have to thank, not sulphur and exorcisms, but your soldiers and
their morning's work. Philosophy is superfluous in a world where all are
fools.'

'Do you include yourself under that title?'

'Most certainly, my best sir. Don't fancy that I make any exceptions. If
I can in any way prove my folly to you, I will do it.'

'Then help me and my daughter to Ostia.'

'A very fair instance. Well--my dog happens to be going that way; and
after all, you seem to have a sufficient share of human imbecility to
be a very fit companion for me. I hope, though, you do not set up for a
wise man!'

'God knows--no! Am I not of Heraclian's army?'

'True; and the young lady here made herself so great a fool about you,
that she actually infected the very dog.'

'So we three fools will forth together.'

'And the greatest one, as usual, must help the rest. But I have nine
puppies in my family already. How am I to carry you and them?'

'I will take them,' said the girl; and Bran, after looking on at the
transfer with a somewhat dubious face, seemed to satisfy herself that
all was right, and put her head contentedly under the girl's hand.

'Eh? You trust her, Bran?' said Raphael, in an undertone. 'I must
really emancipate myself from your instructions if you require a similar
simplicity in me. Stay! there wanders a mule without a rider; we may as
well press into the service.'

He caught the mule, lifted the wounded man into the saddle, and the
cavalcade set forth, turning out of the highroad into a by-lane, which
the officer, who seemed to know the country thoroughly, assured would
lead them to Ostia by an unfrequented route.

'If we arrive there before sundown, we are saved,' said he.

'And in the meantime,' answered Raphael, 'between the dog and this
dagger, which, as I take care to inform all comers, is delicately
poisoned, we may keep ourselves clear of marauders. And yet, what a
meddling fool I am!' he went on to himself. 'What possible interest can
I have in this uncircumcised rebel! The least evil is, that if we are
taken, which we most probably shall be, I shall be crucified for helping
to escape. But even if we get safe off--here is a fresh tie between me
and those very brother fleas, to be rid of whom I have chosen beggary
and starvation. Who knows where it may end? Pooh! The man is like other
men. He is certain, before the day is over, to prove ungrateful, or
attempt the mountebank-heroic, or give me some other excuse for bidding
good-evening. And in the meantime there is something quaint in the fact
of finding so sober a respectability, with a young daughter too, abroad
on this fool's errand, which really makes me curious to discover with
what variety of flea I am to class him.'

But while Aben-Ezra was talking to himself about the father, he could
not help, somehow, thinking about the daughter. Again and again he
found himself looking at her. She was, undeniably, most beautiful. Her
features were not as regularly perfect as Hypatia's, nor her stature so
commanding; but her face shone with a clear and joyful determination,
and with a tender and modest thoughtfulness, such as he had never beheld
before united in one countenance; and as she stepped along, firmly and
lightly, by her father's side, looping up her scattered tresses as she
went, laughing at the struggles of her noisy burden, and looking up with
rapture at her father's gradually brightening face, Raphael could
not help stealing glance after glance, and was surprised to find them
returned with a bright, honest, smiling gratitude, which met full-eyed,
as free from prudery as it was from coquetry.... 'A lady she is,' said
he to himself; 'but evidently no city one. There is nature--or something
else, there, pure and unadulterated, without any of man's additions or
beautifications.' And as he looked, he began to feel it a pleasure
such as his weary heart had not known for many a year, simply to watch
her....

'Positively there is a foolish enjoyment after all in making other fleas
smile.... Ass that I am! As if I had not drunk all that ditch-water cup
to the dregs years ago!'

They went on for some time in silence, till the officer, turning to
him--

'And may I ask you, my quaint preserver, whom I would have thanked
before but for this foolish faintness, which is now going off, what and
who you are?'

'A flea, sir--a flea--nothing more.'

'But a patrician flea, surely, to judge by your language and manners?'

'Not that exactly. True, I have been rich, as the saying is; I may be
rich again, they tell me, when I am fool enough to choose.'

'Oh if we were but rich!' sighed the girl.

'You would be very unhappy, my dear young lady. Believe a flea who has
tried the experiment thoroughly.'

'Ah! but we could ransom my brother! and now we can find no money till
we get back to Africa.'

'And none then,' said the officer, in a low voice. 'You forget, my poor
child, that I mortgaged the whole estate to raise my legion. We must not
shrink from looking at things as they are.'

'Ah! and he is prisoner! he will be sold for a slave--perhaps--ah!
perhaps crucified, for he is not a Roman! Oh, he will be crucified!' and
she burst into an agony of weeping....Suddenly she dashed away her tears
and looked up clear and bright once more.

'No! forgive me, father! God will protect His own!'

'My dear young lady,' said Raphael, 'if you really dislike such
a prospect for your brother, and are in want of a few dirty coins
wherewith to prevent it, perhaps I may be able to find you them in
Ostia.'

She looked at incredulously, as her eye glanced over his rags, and then,
blushing, begged his pardon for her unspoken thoughts.

'Well, as you choose to suppose. But my dog has been so civil to you
already, that perhaps she may have no objection to make you a present
of that necklace of hers. I will go to the Rabbis, and we will make all
right; so don't cry. I hate crying; and the puppies are quite chorus
enough for the present tragedy.'

'The Rabbis? Are you a Jew?' asked the officer.

'Yes, sir, a Jew. And you, I presume, a Christian: perhaps you may
have scruples about receiving--your sect has generally none about
taking--from one of our stubborn and unbelieving race. Don't be
frightened, though, for your conscience; I assure you I am no more a Jew
at heart than I am a Christian.'

'God help you then!'

'Some one, or something, has helped me a great deal too much, for
three-and-thirty years of pampering. But, pardon me, that was a strange
speech for a Christian.'

'You must be a good Jew, sir, before you can be a good Christian.'

'Possibly. I intend to be neither--nor a good Pagan either. My dear sir,
let us drop the subject. It is beyond me. If I can be as good a brute
animal as my dog there--it being first demonstrated that it is good to
be good--I shall be very well content.'

The officer looked down on with a stately, loving sorrow. Raphael caught
his eye, and felt that he was in the presence of no common man.

'I must take care what I say here, I suspect, or I shall be entangled
shortly in a regular Socratic dialogue.... And now, sir, may I return
your question, and ask who and what are you? I really have no intention
of giving you up to any Caesar, Antiochus, Tiglath-Pileser, or other
flea-devouring flea.... They will fatten well enough without your blood.
So I only ask as a student of the great nothing-in-general, which men
call the universe.'

'I was prefect of a legion this morning. What I am now, you know as well
as I.'

'Just what I do not. I am in deep wonder at seeing your hilarity, when,
by all flea-analogies, you ought to be either be howling your fate like
Achilles on the shores of Styx, or pretending to grin and bear it, as
I was taught to do when I played at Stoicism. You are not of that sect
certainly, for you confessed yourself a fool just now.'

'And it would be long, would it not, before you made one of them do as
much? Well, be it so. A fool I am; yet, if God helps us as far as Ostia,
why should I not be cheerful?'

'Why should you?'

'What better thing can happen to a fool, than that God should teach that
he is one, when he fancied himself the wisest of the wise? Listen to
me, sir. Four mouths ago I was blessed with health, honour, lands,
friends--all for which the heart of man could wish. And if, for an
insane ambition, I have chosen to risk all those, against the solemn
warnings of the truest friend, and the wisest saint who treads this
earth of God's--should I not rejoice to have it proved to me, even by
such a lesson as this, that the friend who never deceived me before was
right in this case too; and that the God who has checked and turned me
for forty years of wild toil and warfare, whenever I dared to do what
was right in the sight of my own eyes, has not forgotten me yet, or
given up the thankless task of my education?'

'And who, pray, is this peerless friend?'

'Augustine of Hippo.'

'Humph! It had been better for the world in general, if the great
dialectician had exerted his powers of persuasion on Heraclian himself.'

'He did so, but in vain.'

'I don't doubt it. I know the sleek Count well enough to judge what
effect a sermon would have upon that smooth vulpine determination of
his.... "An instrument in the hands of God, my dear brother.... We
must obey His call, even to the death," etc. etc.' And Raphael laughed
bitterly.

'You know the Count?'

'As well, sir, as I care to know any man.'

'I am sorry for your eyesight, then, sir,' said the Prefect severely,
'if it has been able to discern no more than that in so august a
character.'

'My dear sir, I do not doubt his excellence--nay, his inspiration. How
well he divined the perfectly fit moment for stabbing his old comrade
Stilicho! But really, as two men of the world, we must be aware by this
time that every man has his price.'....

'Oh, hush! hush!' whispered the girl. 'You cannot guess how you pain
him. He worships the Count. It was not ambition, as he pretends, but
merely loyalty to him, which brought here against his will.'

'My dear madam, forgive me. For your sake I am silent.'....

'For her sake! A pretty speech for me! What next?' said he to himself.
'Ah, Bran, Bran, this is all your fault!'

'For my sake! Oh, why not for your own sake? How sad to hear one--one
like you, only sneering and speaking evil!'

'Why then? If fools are fools, and one can safely call them so, why not
do it?'

'Ah,--if God was merciful enough to send down His own Son to die for
them, should we not be merciful enough not to judge their failings
harshly!'

'My dear young lady, spare a worn-out philosopher any new anthropologic
theories. We really must push on a little faster, if we intend to reach
Ostia to-night.'

But, for some reason or other, Raphael sneered no more for a full
half-hour.

Long, however, ere they reached Ostia, the night had fallen; and their
situation began to be more than questionably safe. Now and then a wolf,
slinking across the road towards his ghastly feast, glided like a lank
ghost out of the darkness, and into it again, answering Bran's growl by
a gleam of his white teeth. Then the voices of some marauding party rang
coarse and loud through the still night, and made them hesitate and stop
a while. And at last, worst of all, the measured tramp of an imperial
column began to roll like distant thunder along the plain below. They
were advancing upon Ostia! What if they arrived there before the routed
army could rally, and defend themselves long enough to re-embark!....
What if--a thousand ugly possibilities began to crowd up.

'Suppose we found the gates of Ostia shut, and the Imperialists
bivouacked outside?' said Raphael half to himself.

'God would protect His own,' answered the girl; and Raphael had no heart
to rob her of her hope, though he looked upon their chances of escape as
growing smaller and smaller every moment. The poor girl was weary; the
mule weary also; and as they crawled along, at a pace which made it
certain that the fast passing column would be at Ostia an hour before
them, to join the vanguard of the pursuers, and aid them in investing
the town, she had to lean again and again on Raphael's arm. Her shoes,
unfitted for so rough a journey, bad been long since torn off, and her
tender feet were marking every step with blood. Raphael knew it by her
faltering gait; and remarked, too, that neither sigh nor murmur passed
her lips. But as for helping her, he could not; and began to curse
the fancy which had led to eschew even sandals as unworthy the
self-dependence of a Cynic.

And so they crawled along, while Raphael and the Prefect, each guessing
the terrible thoughts of the other, were thankful for the darkness which
hid their despairing countenances from the young girl; she, on the other
hand, chatting cheerfully, almost laughingly, to her silent father.

At last the poor girl stepped on some stone more sharp than usual--and,
with a sudden writhe and shriek, sank to the ground. Raphael lifted her
up, and she tried to proceed, but sank down again.... What was to be
done?

'I expected this,' said the Prefect, in a slow stately voice. 'Hear me,
sir! Jew, Christian, or philosopher, God seems to have bestowed on you a
heart which I can trust. To your care I commit this girl--your property,
like me, by right of war. Mount her upon this mule. Hasten with
her--where you will--for God will be there also. And may He so deal with
you as you deal with her henceforth. An old and disgraced soldier can do
no more than die.'

And he made an effort to dismount; but fainting from his wounds, sank
upon the neck of the mule. Raphael and his daughter caught in their
arms.

'Father! Father! Impossible! Cruel! Oh--do you think that I would have
followed you hither from Africa, against your own entreaties, to desert
you now?'

'My daughter, I command!'

The girl remained firm and sound.

'How long have you learned to disobey me? Lift the old disgraced man
down, sir, and leave to die in the right place--on the battlefield where
his general sent him.'

The girl sank down on the road in an agony of weeping. 'I must help
myself, I see,' said her father, dropping to the ground. 'Authority
vanishes before old age and humiliation. Victoria! has your father no
sins to answer for already, that you will send before his God with your
blood too upon his head?'

Still the girl sat weeping on the ground; while Raphael, utterly at his
wits end, tried hard to persuade himself that it was no concern of his.

'I am at the service of either or of both, for life or death; only be so
good as to settle it quickly.... Hell! here it is settled for us, with a
vengeance!'

And as he spoke, the tramp and jingle of horsemen rang along the lane,
approaching rapidly.

In an instant Victoria had sprung to her feet--weakness and pain had
vanished.

'There is one chance--one chance for him! Lift over the bank, sir! Lift
over, while I run forward and meet them. My death will delay them long
enough for you to save him!'

'Death?' cried Raphael, seizing her by the arm. 'If that were all--'

'God will protect His own,' answered she calmly, laying her finger
on her lips; and then breaking from his grasp in the strength of her
heroism, vanished into the night.

Her father tried to follow her, but fell on his face, groaning. Raphael
lifted him, strove to drag up the steep bank: but his knees knocked
together; a faint sweat seemed to melt every limb.... There was a pause,
which secured ages long.... Nearer and nearer came the trampling.... A
sudden gleam of the moon revealed Victoria standing with outspread arms,
right before the horses' heads. A heavenly glory seemed to bathe her
from head to foot.... or was it tears sparkling in his own eyes?....
Then the grate and jar of the horse-hoofs on the road, as they pulled up
suddenly.... He turned his face away and shut his eyes....

'What are you?' thundered a voice.

'Victoria, the daughter of Majoricus the Prefect.'

The voice was low, but yet so clear and calm, that every syllable rang
through Aben-Ezra's tingling ears....

A shout--a shriek--the confused murmur of many voices.... He looked up,
in spite of himself-a horseman had sprung to the ground, and clasped
Victoria in his arms. The human heart of flesh, asleep for many a year,
leaped into mad life within his breast, and drawing his dagger, he
rushed into the throng--

'Villains! Hellhounds! I will balk you! She shall die first!'

And the bright blade gleamed over Victoria's head.... He was struck
down--blinded--half-stunned--but rose again with the energy of
madness.... What was this? Soft arms around him.... Victoria's!

'Save him! spare him! He saved us! Sir! It is my brother! We are safe!
Oh, spare the dog! It saved my father!'

'We have mistaken each other, indeed, sir!' said a gay young Tribune, in
a voice trembling with joy. 'Where is my father?'

'Fifty yards behind. Down, Bran! Quiet! O Solomon, mine ancestor, why
did you not prevent me making such an egregious fool of myself? Why, I
shall be forced, in self-justification, to carry through the farce!'

There is no use telling what followed during the next five minutes,
at the end of which time Raphael found himself astride of a goodly
war-horse, by the side of the young Tribune, who carried Victoria before
him. Two soldiers in the meantime were supporting the Prefect on his
mule, and convincing that stubborn bearer of burdens that it was not
quite so unable to trot as it had fancied, by the combined arguments of
a drench of wine and two sword-points, while they heaped their general
with blessings, and kissed his hands and feet.

'Your father's soldiers seem to consider themselves in debt to him: not,
surely, for taking them where they could best run away?'

'Ah, poor fellows!' said the Tribune; 'we have had as real a panic among
us as I ever read of in Arrian or Polybius. But he has been a father
rather than a general to them. It is not often that, out of a routed
army, twenty gallant men will volunteer to ride back into the enemy's
ranks, on the chance of an old man's breathing still.'

'Then you knew where to find us?' said Victoria.

'Some of them knew. And he himself showed us this very by-road
yesterday, when we took up our ground, and told us it might be of
service on occasion--and so it has been.'

'But they told me that you were taken prisoner. Oh, the torture I have
suffered for you!'

'Silly child! Did you fancy my father's son would be taken alive? I and
the first troop got away over the garden walls, and cut our way out into
the plain, three hours ago.'

'Did I not tell you,' said Victoria, leaning toward Raphael, 'that God
would protect His own?'

'You did,' answered he; and fell into a long and silent meditation.



CHAPTER XIV: THE ROCKS OF THE SIRENS


THESE four months had been busy and eventful enough to Hypatia and
to Philammon; yet the events and the business were of so gradual and
uniform a tenor, that it is as well to pass quickly over them, and show
what had happened principally by its effects.

The robust and fiery desert-lad was now metamorphosed into the pale and
thoughtful student, oppressed with the weight of careful thought and
weary memory. But those remembrances were all recent ones. With his
entrance into Hypatia's lecture-room, and into the fairy realms of Greek
thought, a new life had begun for him; and the Laura, and Pambo, and
Arsenius, seemed dim phantoms from some antenatal existence, which faded
day by day before the inrush of new and startling knowledge.

But though the friends and scenes of his childhood had fallen back
so swiftly into the far horizon, he was not lonely. His heart found a
lovelier, if not a healthier home, than it had ever known before. For
during those four peaceful and busy months of study there had sprung
up between Hypatia and the beautiful boy one of those pure and yet
passionate friendships--call them rather, with St. Augustine, by the
sacred name of love--which, fair and holy as they are when they link
youth to youth, or girl to girl, reach their full perfection only
between man and woman. The unselfish adoration with which a maiden
may bow down before some strong and holy priest, or with which an
enthusiastic boy may cling to the wise and tender matron, who, amid
the turmoil of the world, and the pride of beauty, and the cares of
wifehood, bends down to with counsel and encouragement--earth knows
no fairer bonds than these, save wedded love itself. And that second
relation, motherly rather than sisterly, had bound Philammon with a
golden chain to the wondrous maid of Alexandria.

From the commencement of his attendance in her lecture-room she had
suited her discourses to what she fancied were his especial spiritual
needs; and many a glance of the eye towards him, on any peculiarly
important sentence, set the poor boy's heart beating at that sign that
the words were meant for him. But before a month was past, won by the
intense attention with which he watched for every utterance of hers, she
had persuaded her father to give a place in the library as one of his
pupils, among the youths who were employed there daily in transcribing,
as well as in studying, the authors then in fashion.

She saw him at first but seldom--more seldom than she would have wished;
but she dreaded the tongue of scandal, heathen as well as Christian,
and contented herself with inquiring daily from her father about the
progress of the boy. And when at times she entered for a moment the
library, where he sat writing, or passed him on her way to the Museum, a
look was interchanged, on her part of most gracious approval, and on his
of adoring gratitude, which was enough for both. Her spell was working
surely; and she was too confident in her own cause and her own powers to
wish to hurry that transformation for which she so fondly hoped.

'He must begin at the beginning,' thought she to herself. 'Mathematics
and the Parmenides are enough for him as yet. Without a training in the
liberal sciences be cannot gain a faith worthy of those gods to whom
some day I shall present him; and I should find his Christian ignorance
and fanaticism transferred, whole and rude, to the service of those gods
whose shrine is unapproachable save to the spiritual man, who has passed
through the successive vestibules of science and philosophy.'

But soon, attracted herself, as much as wishing to attract him, she
employed him in copying manuscripts for her own use. She sent back his
themes and declamations, corrected with her own hand; and Philammon laid
them by in his little garret at Eudaimon's house as precious badges of
honour, after exhibiting them to the reverential and envious gaze of the
little porter. So he toiled on, early and late, counting himself
well paid for a week's intense exertion by a single smile or word of
approbation, and went home to pour out his soul to his host on the
one inexhaustible theme which they had in common--Hypatia and her
perfections. He would have raved often enough on the same subject to
his fellow-pupils, but he shrank not only from their artificial city
manners, but also from their morality, for suspecting which he saw but
too good cause. He longed to go out into the streets, to proclaim to the
whole world the treasure which he had found, and call on all to come and
share it with him. For there was no jealousy in that pure love of his.
Could he have seen her lavishing on thousands far greater favours than
she had conferred on him, he would have rejoiced in the thought that
there were so many more blest beings upon earth, and have loved them
all and every one as brothers, for having deserved her notice. Her
very beauty, when his first flush of wonder was past, he ceased to
mention--ceased even to think of it. Of course she must be beautiful. It
was her right; the natural complement of her other graces but it was to
him only what the mother's smile is to the infant, the sunlight to the
skylark, the mountain-breeze to the hunter--an inspiring element, on
which he fed unconsciously. Only when he doubted for a moment some
especially startling or fanciful assertion, did he become really aware
of the great loveliness of her who made it; and then his heart silenced
his judgment with the thought--Could any but true words come out of
those perfect lips?--any but royal thoughts take shape within that
queenly head?.... Poor fool! Yet was it not natural enough?

Then, gradually, as she passed the boy, poring over his book, in some
alcove of the Museum Gardens, she would invite him by a glance to join
the knot of loungers and questioners who dangled about her and her
father, and fancied themselves to be reproducing the days of the
Athenian sages amid the groves of another Academus. Sometimes, even, she
had beckoned him to her side as she sat in some retired arbour, attended
only by her father; and there some passing observation, earnest and
personal, however lofty and measured, made him aware, as it was intended
to do, that she had a deeper interest in him, a livelier sympathy for
him, than for the many; that he was in her eyes not merely a pupil to be
instructed, but a soul whom she desired to educate. And those delicious
gleams of sunlight grew more frequent and more protracted; for by each
she satisfied herself more and more that she had not mistaken either
his powers or his susceptibilities: and in each, whether in public or
private, Philammon seemed to bear himself more worthily. For over and
above the natural ease and dignity which accompanies physical beauty,
and the modesty, self-restraint, and deep earnestness which he had
acquired under the discipline of the Laura, his Greek character was
developing itself in all its quickness, subtlety, and versatility, until
he seemed to Hypatia some young Titan, by the side of the flippant,
hasty, and insincere talkers who made up her chosen circle.

But man can no more live upon Platonic love than on the more prolific
species of that common ailment; and for the first month Philammon would
have gone hungry to his couch full many a night, to lie awake from baser
causes than philosophic meditation, had it not been for his magnanimous
host, who never lost heart for a moment, either about himself, or any
other human being. As for Philammon's going out with him to earn his
bread, he would not hear of it. Did he suppose that he could meet any
of those monkish rascals in the street, without being knocked down and
carried off by main force? And besides there was a sort of impiety in
allowing so hopeful a student to neglect the 'Divine Ineffable' in order
to supply the base necessities of the teeth. So he should pay no rent
for his lodgings--positively none; and as for eatables--why, he must
himself work a little harder in order to cater for both. Had not all his
neighbours their litters of children to provide for, while he, thanks
to the immortals, had been far too wise to burden the earth with animals
who would add to the ugliness of their father the Tartarean hue of their
mother? And after all, Philammon could pay him back when he became a
great sophist, and made money, as of course he would some day or other;
and in the meantime, something might turn up--things were always
turning up for those whom the gods favoured; and besides, he had fully
ascertained that on the day on which he first met Philammon, the planets
were favourable, the Mercury being in something or other, he forgot
what, with Helios, which portended for Philammon, in his opinion, a
similar career with that of the glorious and devout Emperor Julian.

Philammon winced somewhat at the hint; which seemed to have an ugly
verisimilitude in it: but still, philosophy he must learn, and bread he
must eat; so he submitted.

But one evening, a few days after he had been admitted as Theon's pupil,
he found, much to his astonishment, lying on the table in his garret, an
undeniable glittering gold piece. He took it down to the porter the
next morning, and begged him to discover the owner of the lost coin,
and return it duly. But what was his surprise, when the little man, amid
endless capers and gesticulations, informed him with an air of mystery,
that it was anything but lost; that his arrears of rent had been paid
for him; and that by the bounty of the upper powers, a fresh piece of
coin would be forthcoming every month! In vain Philammon demanded to
know who was his benefactor. Eudaimon resolutely kept the secret and
imprecated a whole Tartarus of unnecessary curses on his wife if she
allowed her female garrulity--though the poor creature seemed never to
open her lips from morning till night--to betray so great a mystery.

Who was the unknown friend? There was but one person who could have done
it.... And yet he dared not--the thought was too delightful--think it
was she. It must have been her father. The old man had asked him more
than once about the state of his purse. True, he had always returned
evasive answers; but the kind old man must have divined the truth. Ought
he not--must he not--go and thank him? No; perhaps it was more courteous
to say nothing. If he--she--for of course she had permitted, perhaps
advised, the gift--had intended him to thank them, would they have so
carefully concealed their own generosity?.... Be it so, then. But how
would he not repay them for it! How delightful to be in her debt for
anything--for everything! Would that he could have the enjoyment of
owing her existence itself!

So he took the coin, bought unto himself a cloak of the most philosophic
fashion, and went his way, such as it was, rejoicing.

But his faith in Christianity? What had become of that?

What usually happens in such cases. It was not dead; but nevertheless it
had fallen fast asleep for the time being. He did not disbelieve it;
he would have been shocked to hear such a thing asserted of him: but he
happened to be busy believing something else--geometry, conic sections,
cosmogonies, psychologies, and what not. And so it befell that he had
not just then time to believe in Christianity. He recollected at times
its existence; but even then he neither affirmed nor denied it. When
he had solved the great questions--those which Hypatia set forth as the
roots of all knowledge--how the world was made, and what was the
origin of evil, and what his own personality was, and--that being
settled--whether he had one, with a few other preliminary matters, then
it would be time to return, with his enlarged light, to the study of
Christianity; and if, of course, Christianity should be found to be at
variance with that enlarged light, as Hypatia seemed to think ....
Why, then--What then?.... He would not think about such disagreeable
possibilities. Sufficient for the day was the evil thereof.

Possibilities? It was impossible.... Philosophy could not mislead. Had
not Hypatia defined it, as man's search after the unseen? And if he
found the unseen by it, did it not come to just the same thing as if the
unseen had revealed itself to him? And he must find it--for logic and
mathematics could not err. If every step was correct, the conclusion
must be correct also; so he must end, after all, in the right path--that
is, of course, supposing Christianity to be the right path--and return
to fight the Church's battles, with the sword which he had wrested from
Goliath the Philistine....But he had not won the sword yet.; and in the
meanwhile, learning was weary work; and sufficient for the day was the
good, as well as the evil, thereof.

So, enabled by his gold coin each month to devote himself entirely
to study, he became very much what Peter would have coarsely termed a
heathen. At first, indeed, he slipped into the Christian churches,
from a habit of conscience. But habits soon grow sleepy; the fear of
discovery and recapture made his attendance more and more of a labour.
And keeping himself apart as much as possible from the congregation, as
a lonely and secret worshipper, he soon found himself as separate from
them in heart as in daily life. He felt that they, and even more than
they, those flowery and bombastic pulpit rhetoricians, who were paid for
their sermons by the clapping and cheering of the congregation, were
not thinking of, longing after, the same things as himself. Besides, he
never spoke to a Christian; for the negress at his lodgings seemed to
avoid him--whether from modesty or terror, he could not tell; and cut
off thus from the outward 'communion of saints,' he found himself fast
parting away from the inward one. So he went no more to church, and
looked the other way, he hardly knew why, whenever he passed the
Caesareum; and Cyril, and all his mighty organisation, became to him
another world, with which he had even less to do than with those
planets over his head, whose mysterious movements, and symbolisms, and
influences Hypatia's lectures on astronomy were just opening before his
bewildered imagination.

Hypatia watched all this with growing self-satisfaction, and fed herself
with the dream that through Philammon she might see her wildest hopes
realised. After the manner of women, she crowned him, in her own
imagination, with all powers and excellences which she would have wished
him to possess, as well as with those which he actually manifested, till
Philammon would have been as much astonished as self-glorified could he
have seen the idealised caricature of himself which the sweet enthusiast
had painted for her private enjoyment. They were blissful months those
to poor Hypatia. Orestes, for some reason or other, had neglected to
urge his suit, and the Iphigenia-sacrifice had retired mercifully into
the background. Perhaps she should be able now to accomplish all without
it. And yet--it was so long to wait! Years might pass before Philammon's
education was matured, and with them golden opportunities which might
never recur again.

'Ah!' she sighed at times, 'that Julian had lived a generation later!
That I could have brought all my hard-earned treasures to the feet of
the Poet of the Sun, and cried, "Take me!--Hero, warrior, statesman,
sage, priest of the God of Light! Take thy slave! Command her--send
her--to martyrdom, if thou wilt!" A pretty price would that have been
wherewith to buy the honour of being the meanest of thy apostles, the
fellow-labourer of Iamblichus, Maximus, Libanius, and the choir of sages
who upheld the throne of the last true Caesar!'



CHAPTER XV: NEPHELOCOCCUGIA


Hypatia had always avoided carefully discussing with Philammon any
of those points on which she differed from his former faith. She was
content to let the divine light of philosophy penetrate by its own
power, and educe its own conclusions. But one day, at the very time at
which this history reopens, she was tempted to speak more openly to her
pupil than she yet had done. Her father had introduced him, a few days
before, to a new work of hers on Mathematics; and the delighted and
adoring look with which the boy welcomed her, as he met her in the
Museum Gardens, pardonably tempted her curiosity to inquire what
miracles her own wisdom might have already worked. She stopped in her
walk, and motioned her father to begin a conversation with Philammon.

'Well!' asked the old man, with an encouraging smile, 'and how does our
pupil like his new--'

'You mean my conic sections, father? It is hardly fair to expect an
unbiased answer in my presence.'

'Why so?' said Philammon. 'Why should I not tell you, as well as all the
world, the fresh and wonderful field of thought which they have opened
to me in a few short hours?'

'What then?' asked Hypatia, smiling, as if she knew what the answer
would be. 'In what does my commentary differ from the original text of
Apollonius, on which I have so faithfully based it?'

'Oh, as much as a living body differs from a dead one. Instead of mere
dry disquisitions on the properties of lines and curves, I found a
mine of poetry and theology. Every dull mathematical formula seemed
transfigured, as if by a miracle, into the symbol of some deep and noble
principle of the unseen world.'

'And do you think that he of Perga did not see as much? or that we can
pretend to surpass, in depth of insight, the sages of the elder world?
Be sure that they, like the poets, meant only spiritual things, even
when they seem to talk only of physical ones, and concealed heaven under
an earthly garb, only to hide it from the eyes of the profane; while we,
in these degenerate days, must interpret and display each detail to the
dull ears of men.'

'Do you think, my young friend,' asked Theon, 'that mathematics can
be valuable to the philosopher otherwise than as vehicles of spiritual
truth? Are we to study numbers merely that we may be able to keep
accounts; or as Pythagoras did, in order to deduce from their laws the
ideas by which the universe, man, Divinity itself, consists?'

'That seems to me certainly to be the nobler purpose.'

'Or conic sections, that we may know better how to construct machinery;
or rather to devise from them symbols of the relations of Deity to its
various emanations?'

'You use your dialectic like Socrates himself, my father,' said Hypatia.

'If I do, it is only for a temporary purpose. I should be sorry to
accustom Philammon to suppose that the essence of philosophy was to be
found in those minute investigations of words and analyses of notions,
which seem to constitute Plato's chief power in the eyes of those who,
like the Christian sophist Augustine, worship his letter while they
neglect his spirit; not seeing that those dialogues, which they fancy
the shrine itself, are but vestibules--'

'Say rather, veils, father.'

'Veils, indeed, which were intended to baffle the rude gaze of the
carnal-minded; but still vestibules, through which the enlightened soul
might be led up to the inner sanctuary, to the Hesperid gardens and
golden fruit of the Timaeus and the oracles.... And for myself, were
but those two books left, I care not whether every other writing in the
world perished to-morrow.'[Footnote: This astounding speech is usually
attributed to Proclus, Hypatia's 'great' successor.]

'You must except Homer, father.'

'Yes, for the herd.... But of what use would he be to them without some
spiritual commentary?'

'He would tell them as little, perhaps, as the circle tells to the
carpenter who draws one with his compasses.'

'And what is the meaning of the circle?' asked Philammon.

'It may have infinite meanings, like every other natural phenomenon;
and deeper meanings in proportion to the exaltation of the soul which
beholds it. But, consider, is it not, as the one perfect figure, the
very symbol of the totality of the spiritual world; which, like it, is
invisible, except at its circumference, where it is limited by the dead
gross phenomena of sensuous matter! and even as the circle takes its
origin from one centre, itself unseen,--a point, as Euclid defines it,
whereof neither parts nor magnitude can be predicated,--does not
the world of spirits revolve round one abysmal being, unseen and
undefinable--in itself, as I have so often preached, nothing, for it
is conceivable only by the negation of all properties, even of those of
reason, virtue, force; and yet, like the centre of the circle, the cause
of all other existences?'

'I see,' said Philammon; for the moment, certainly, the said abysmal
Deity struck him as a somewhat chill and barren notion.... but that
might be caused only by the dulness of his own spiritual perceptions. At
all events, if it was a logical conclusion, it must be right.

'Let that be enough for the present. Hereafter you may be--I fancy that
I know you well enough to prophesy that you will be--able to recognise
in the equilateral triangle inscribed within the circle, and touching it
only with its angles, the three supra-sensual principles of existence,
which are contained in Deity as it manifests itself in the physical
universe, coinciding with its utmost limits, and yet, like it, dependent
on that unseen central One which none dare name.'

'Ah!' said poor Philammon, blushing scarlet at the sense of his own
dulness, 'I am, indeed, not worthy to have such wisdom wasted upon
my imperfect apprehension.... But, if I may dare to ask.... does not
Apollonius regard the circle, like all other curves, as not depending
primarily on its own centre for its existence, but as generated by the
section of any cone by a plane at right angles to its axis?'

'But must we not draw, or at least conceive a circle, in order to
produce that cone? And is not the axis of that cone determined by the
centre of that circle?'

Philammon stood rebuked.

'Do not be ashamed; you have only, unwittingly, laid open another, and
perhaps, as deep a symbol. Can you guess what it is?'

Philammon puzzled in vain.

'Does it not show you this? That, as every conceivable right section of
the cone discloses the circle, so in all which is fair and symmetric
you will discover Deity, if you but analyse it in a right and symmetric
direction?'

'Beautiful!' said Philammon, while the old man added--

'And does it not show us, too, how the one perfect and original
philosophy may be discovered in all great writers, if we have but that
scientific knowledge which will enable us to extract it?'

'True, my father: but just now, I wish Philammon, by such thoughts as I
have suggested, to rise to that higher and more spiritual insight into
nature, which reveals her to us as instinct throughout--all fair and
noble forms of her at least--with Deity itself; to make him feel that it
is not enough to say, with the Christians, that God has made the world,
if we make that very assertion an excuse for believing that His presence
has been ever since withdrawn from it.'

'Christians, I think, would hardly say that,' said Philammon.

'Not in words. But, in fact, they regard Deity as the maker of a
dead machine, which, once made, will move of itself thenceforth, and
repudiate as heretics every philosophic thinker, whether Gnostic
or Platonist, who, unsatisfied with so dead, barren, and sordid
a conception of the glorious all, wishes to honour the Deity by
acknowledging His universal presence, and to believe, honestly, the
assertion of their own Scriptures, that He lives and moves, and has His
being in the universe.'

Philammon gently suggested that the passage in question was worded
somewhat differently in the Scripture.

'True. But if the one be true, its converse will be true also. If
the universe lives and moves, and has its being in Him, must He not
necessarily pervade all things?'

'Why?--Forgive my dulness, and explain.'

'Because, if He did not pervade all things, those things which He did
not pervade would be as it were interstices in His being, and in so far,
without Him.'

'True, but still they would be within His circumference.'

'Well argued. But yet they would not live in Him, but in themselves.
To live in Him they must be pervaded by His life. Do you think it
possible--do you think it even reverent to affirm that there can be
anything within the infinite glory of Deity which has the power of
excluding from the space which it occupies that very being from which it
draws its worth, and which must have originally pervaded that thing,
in order to bestow on it its organisation and its life? Does He retire
after creating, from the spaces which He occupied during creation,
reduced to the base necessity of making room for His own universe, and
endure the suffering--for the analogy of all material nature tells us
that it is suffering--of a foreign body, like a thorn within the flesh,
subsisting within His own substance? Rather believe that His wisdom and
splendour, like a subtle and piercing fire, insinuates itself eternally
with resistless force through every organised atom, and that were it
withdrawn but for an instant from the petal of the meanest flower, gross
matter, and the dead chaos from which it was formed, would be all which
would remain of its loveliness....

'Yes'--she went on, after the method of her school, who preferred,
like most decaying ones, harangues to dialectic, and synthesis to
induction.... 'Look at yon lotus-flower, rising like Aphrodite from
the wave in which it has slept throughout the night, and saluting, with
bending swan-neck, that sun which it will follow lovingly around the
sky. Is there no more there than brute matter, pipes and fibres, colour
and shape, and the meaningless life-in-death which men call vegetation?
Those old Egyptian priests knew better, who could see in the number and
the form of those ivory petals and golden stamina, in that mysterious
daily birth out of the wave, in that nightly baptism, from which it
rises each morning re-born to a new life, the signs of some divine idea,
some mysterious law, common to the flower itself, to the white-robed
priestess who held it in the temple rites, and to the goddess to whom
they both were consecrated.... The flower of Isis!.... Ah!--well. Nature
has her sad symbols, as well as her fair ones. And in proportion as
a misguided nation has forgotten the worship of her to whom they owed
their greatness, for novel and barbaric superstitions, so has her sacred
flower grown rarer and more rare, till now--fit emblem of the worship
over which it used to shed its perfume--it is only to be found in
gardens such as these--a curiosity to the vulgar, and, to such as me, a
lingering monument of wisdom and of glory past away.'

Philammon, it may be seen, was far advanced by this time; for he bore
the allusions to Isis without the slightest shudder. Nay--he dared even
to offer consolation to the beautiful mourner.

'The philosopher,' he said, 'will hardly lament the loss of a mere
outward idolatry. For if, as you seem to think, there were a root of
spiritual truth in the symbolism of nature, that cannot die. And thus
the lotus-flower must still retain its meaning, as long as its species
exists on earth.'

'Idolatry!' answered she, with a smile. 'My pupil must not repeat to me
that worn-out Christian calumny. Into whatsoever low superstitions the
pious vulgar may have fallen, it is the Christians now, and not the
heathens, who are idolaters. They who ascribe miraculous power to dead
men's bones, who make temples of charnel-houses, and bow before the
images of the meanest of mankind, have surely no right to accuse of
idolatry the Greek or the Egyptian, who embodies in a form of symbolic
beauty ideas beyond the reach of words!

'Idolatry? Do I worship the Pharos when I gaze at it, as I do for hours,
with loving awe, as the token to me of the all-conquering might of
Hellas? Do I worship the roll on which Homer's words are written, when
I welcome with delight the celestial truths which it unfolds to me, and
even prize and love the material book for the sake of the message
which it brings? Do you fancy that any but the vulgar worship the image
itself, or dream that it can help or hear them? Does the lover mistake
his mistress's picture for the living, speaking reality? We worship the
idea of which the image is a symbol. Will you blame us because we use
that symbol to represent the idea to our own affections and emotions
instead of leaving it a barren notion, a vague imagination of our own
intellect?'

'Then,' asked Philammon, with a faltering voice, yet unable to restrain
his curiosity, 'then you do reverence the heathen gods?'

Why Hypatia should have felt this question a sore one, puzzled
Philammon; but she evidently did feel it as such, for she answered
haughtily enough--

'If Cyril had asked me that question, I should have disdained to answer.
To you I will tell, that before I can answer your question you must
learn what those whom you call heathen gods are. The vulgar, or rather
those who find it their interest to calumniate the vulgar for the sake
of confounding philosophers with them, may fancy them mere human beings,
subject like man to the sufferings of pain and love, to the limitations
of personality. We, on the other hand, have been taught by the primeval
philosophers of Greece, by the priests of ancient Egypt, and the sages
of Babylon, to recognise in them the universal powers of nature, those
children of the all-quickening spirit, which are but various emanations
of the one primeval unity--say rather, various phases of that unity, as
it has been variously conceived, according to the differences of climate
and race, by the wise of different nations. And thus, in our eyes, he
who reverences the many, worships by that very act, with the highest
and fullest adoration, the one of whose perfection they are the partial
antitypes; perfect each in themselves, but each the image of only one of
its perfections.'

'Why, then,' said Philammon, much relieved by this explanation, 'do you
so dislike Christianity? may it not be one of the many methods--'

'Because,' she answered, interrupting him impatiently, 'because it
denies itself to be one of those many methods, and stakes its existence
on the denial; because it arrogates to itself the exclusive revelation
of the Divine, and cannot see, in its self-conceit, that its own
doctrines disprove that assumption by their similarity to those of all
creeds. There is not a dogma of the Galileans which may not be found,
under some form or other, in some of those very religions from which it
pretends to disdain borrowing.'

'Except,' said Theon, 'its exaltation of all which is human and
low-born, illiterate, and levelling.'

'Except that--. But look! here comes some one whom I cannot--do not
choose to meet. Turn this way--quick!'

And Hypatia, turning pale as death, drew her father with unphilosophic
haste down a side-walk.

'Yes,' she went on to herself, as soon as she had recovered her
equanimity. 'Were this Galilean superstition content to take its place
humbly among the other "religiones licitas" of the empire, one might
tolerate it well enough, as an anthropomorphic adumbration of divine
things fitted for the base and toiling herd; perhaps peculiarly fitted,
because peculiarly flattering to them. But now--'

'There is Miriam again,' said Philammon, 'right before us!'

'Miriam?' asked Hypatia severely. 'You know her then? How is that?'

'She lodges at Eudaimon's house, as I do,' answered Philammon frankly.
'Not that I ever interchanged, or wish to interchange, a word with so
base a creature.'

'Do not! I charge you!' said Hypatia, almost imploringly. But there was
now no way of avoiding her, and perforce Hypatia and her tormentress met
face to face.

'One word! one moment, beautiful lady,' began the old woman, with a
slavish obeisance. 'Nay, do not push by so cruelly. I have--see what I
have for you!' and she held out with a mysterious air, 'The Rainbow of
Solomon.'

'Ah! I knew you would stop a moment--not for the ring's sake, of course,
nor even for the sake of one who once offered it to you.--Ah! and where
is he now? Dead of love, perhaps! at least, here is his last token to
the fairest one, the cruel one.... Well, perhaps she is right.... To be
an empress--an empress!.... Far finer than anything the poor Jew could
have offered.... But still.... An empress need not be above hearing her
subject's petition....'

All this was uttered rapidly, and in a wheedling undertone, with a
continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which
seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all
her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious hold,
there was no escaping.

'What do you mean? What have I to do with this ring?' asked Hypatia,
half frightened.

'He who owned it once, offers it to you now. You recollect a little
black agate--a paltry thing..... If you have not thrown it away, as you
most likely have, he wishes to redeem it with this opal.... a gem surely
more fit for such a hand as that.'

'He gave me the agate, and I shall keep it.'

'But this opal--worth, oh, worth ten thousand gold pieces--in exchange
for that paltry broken thing not worth one?'

'I am not a dealer, like you, and have not yet learnt to value things
by their money price. It that agate had been worth money, I would never
have accepted it.'

'Take the ring, take it, my darling,' whispered Theon impatiently; 'it
will pay all our debts.'

'Ah, that it will--pay them all,' answered the old woman, who seemed to
have mysteriously overheard him.

'What!--my father! Would you, too, counsel me to be so mercenary? My
good woman,' she went on, turning to Miriam, 'I cannot expect you to
understand the reason of my refusal. You and I have a different standard
of worth. But for the sake of the talisman engraven on that agate, if
for no other reason, I cannot give it up.'

'Ah! for the sake of the talisman! That is wise, now! That is noble!
Like a philosopher! Oh, I will not say a word more. Let the beautiful
prophetess keep the agate, and take the opal too; for see, there is a
charm on it also! The name by which Solomon compelled the demons to do
his bidding. Look! What might you not do now, if you knew how to use
that! To have great glorious angels, with six wings each, bowing at your
feet whensoever you called them, and saying, "Here am I, mistress; send
me." Only look at it!'

Hypatia took the tempting bait, and examined it with more curiosity than
she would have wished to confess; while the old woman went on--

'But the wise lady knows how to use the black agate, of course?
Aben-Ezra told her that, did he not?'

Hypatia blushed somewhat; she was ashamed to confess that Aben-Ezra had
not revealed the secret to her, probably not believing that there was
any, and that the talisman had been to her only a curious plaything,
of which she liked to believe one day that it might possibly have
some occult virtue, and the next day to laugh at the notion as
unphilosophical and barbaric; so she answered, rather severely, that her
secrets were her own property.

'Ah, then! she knows it all--the fortunate lady! And the talisman
has told her whether Heraclian has lost or won Rome by this time, and
whether she is to be the mother of a new dynasty of Ptolemies, or to die
a virgin, which the Four Angels avert! And surely she has had the great
demon come to her already, when she rubbed the flat side, has she not?'

'Go, foolish woman! I am not like you, the dupe of childish
superstitions.'

'Childish superstitions! Ha! ha! ha!'said the old woman, as she turned
to go, with obeisances more lowly than ever. 'And she has not seen the
Angels yet!.... Ah well! perhaps some day, when she wants to know how to
use the talisman, the beautiful lady will condescend to let the poor old
Jewess show her the way.'

And Miriam disappeared down an alley, and plunged into the thickest
shrubberies, while the three dreamers went on their way.

Little thought Hypatia that the moment the old woman had found herself
alone, she had dashed herself down on the turf, rolling and biting at
the leaves like an infuriated wild beast..... 'I will have it yet! I
will have it, if I tear out her heart with it!'



CHAPTER XVI: VENUS AND PALLAS


As Hypatia was passing across to her lecture-room that afternoon, she
was stopped midway by a procession of some twenty Goths and damsels,
headed by Pelagia herself, in all her glory of jewels, shawls, and
snow-white mule; while by her side rode the Amal, his long legs, like
those of Gang-Rolf the Norseman, all but touching the ground, as he
crushed down with his weight a delicate little barb, the best substitute
to be found in Alexandria for the huge black chargers of his native
land.

On they came, followed by a wondering and admiring mob, straight to the
door of the Museum, and stopping began to dismount, while their slaves
took charge of the mules and horses.

There was no escape for Hypatia; pride forbade her to follow her own
maidenly instinct, and to recoil among the crowd behind her; and in
another moment the Amal had lifted Pelagia from her mule, and the rival
beauties of Alexandria stood, for the first time in their lives, face to
face.

'May Athene befriend you this day, Hypatia!' said Pelagia with her
sweetest smile. 'I have brought my guards to hear somewhat of your
wisdom this afternoon. I am anxious to know whether you can teach Ahem
anything more worth listening to than the foolish little songs which
Aphrodite taught me, when she raised me from the sea-foam, as she rose
herself, and named me Pelagia.'

Hypatia drew herself up to her stateliest height, and returned no
answer.

'I think my bodyguard will well hear comparison with yours. At least
they are the princes and descendants of deities. So it is but fitting
that they should enter before your provincials. Will you show them the
way?'

No answer.

'Then I must do it myself. Come, Amal!' and she swept up the steps,
followed by the Goths, who put the Alexandrians aside right and left, as
if they had been children.

'Ah! treacherous wanton that you are!' cried a young man's voice out
of the murmuring crowd. 'After having plundered us of every coin out
of which you could dupe us, here you are squandering our patrimonies on
barbarians!'

'Give us back our presents, Pelagia,' cried another, 'and you are
welcome to your herd of wild bulls!'

'And I will!' cried she, stopping suddenly; and clutching at her chains
and bracelets, she was on the point of dashing them among the astonished
crowd--

'There! take your gifts! Pelagia and her girls scorn to be debtors to
boys, while they are worshipped by men like these!'

But the Amal, who, luckily for the students, had not understood a word
of this conversation, seized her arm, asking if she were mad.

'No, no!' panted she, inarticulate with passion. 'Give me gold--every
coin you have. These wretches are twitting me with what they gave me
before--before--oh Amal, you understand me?' And she clung imploringly
to his arm.

'Oh! Heroes! each of you throw his purse among these fellows! they say
that we and our ladies are living on their spoils!' And he tossed his
purse among the crowd.

In an instant every Goth had followed his example: more than one
following it up by dashing a bracelet or necklace into the face of some
hapless philosophaster.

'I have no lady, my young friends,' said old Wulf, in good enough Greek,
'and owe you nothing: so I shall keep my money, as you might have kept
yours; and as you might, too, old Smid, if you had been as wise as I.'

'Don't be stingy, prince, for the honour of the Goths,' said Smid,
laughing.

'If I take in gold I pay in iron,' answered Wulf, drawing half out of
its sheath the huge broad blade, at the ominous brown stains of which
the studentry recoiled; and the whole party swept into the empty
lecture-room, and seated themselves at their ease in the front ranks.

Poor Hypatia! At first she determined not to lecture--then to send for
Orestes--then to call on her students to defend the sanctity of the
Museum; but pride, as well as prudence, advised her better; to retreat
would be to confess herself conquered--to disgrace philosophy--to lose
her hold on the minds of all waverers. No! she would go on and brave
everything, insults, even violence; and with trembling limbs and a pale
cheek, she mounted the tribune and began.

To her surprise and delight, however, her barbarian auditors were
perfectly well behaved. Pelagia, in childish good-humour at her triumph,
and perhaps, too, determined to show her contempt for her adversary by
giving her every chance, enforced silence and attention, and checked
the tittering of the girls, for a full half-hour. But at the end of
that time the heavy breathing of the slumbering Amal, who had been twice
awoke by her, resounded unchecked through the lecture-room, and deepened
into a snore; for Pelagia herself was as fast asleep as he. But now
another censor took upon himself the office of keeping order. Old Wulf,
from the moment Hypatia had begun, had never taken his eyes off her
face; and again and again the maiden's weak heart had been cheered, as
she saw the smile of sturdy intelligence and honest satisfaction which
twinkled over that scarred and bristly visage; while every now and then
the graybeard wagged approval, until she found herself, long before the
end of the oration, addressing herself straight to her new admirer.

At last it was over, and the students behind, who had sat meekly through
it all, without the slightest wish to 'upset' the intruders, who had so
thoroughly upset them, rose hurriedly, glad enough to get safe out of so
dangerous a neighbourhood. But to their astonishment, as well as to that
of Hypatia, old Wulf rose also, and stumbling along to the foot of the
tribune, pulled out his purse, and laid it at Hypatia's feet.

'What is this?' asked she, half terrified at the approach of a figure
more rugged and barbaric than she had ever beheld before.

'My fee for what I have heard to-day. You are a right noble maiden, and
may Freya send you a husband worthy of you, and make you the mother of
kings!'

And Wulf retired with his party.

Open homage to her rival, before her very face! Pelagia felt quite
inclined to hate old Wulf.

But at least he was the only traitor. The rest of the Goths agreed
unanimously that Hypatia was a very foolish person, who was wasting her
youth and beauty in talking to donkey-riders; and Pelagia remounted her
mule, and the Goths their horses, for a triumphal procession homeward.

And yet her heart was sad, even in her triumph. Right and wrong were
ideas as unknown to her as they were to hundreds of thousands in her
day. As far as her own consciousness was concerned, she was as destitute
of a soul as the mule on which she rode. Gifted by nature with boundless
frolic and good-humour, wit and cunning, her Greek taste for the
physically beautiful and graceful developed by long training, until she
had become, without a rival, the most perfect pantomime, dancer,
and musician who catered for the luxurious tastes of the Alexandrian
theatres, she had lived since her childhood only for enjoyment and
vanity, and wished for nothing more. But her new affection, or rather
worship, for the huge manhood of her Gothic lover had awoke in her a new
object--to keep him--to live for him--to follow him to the ends of the
earth, even if he tired of her, ill-used her, despised her. And slowly,
day by day, Wulf's sneers bad awakened in her a dread that perhaps the
Amal might despise her.... Why, she could not guess: but what sort of
women were those Alrunas of whom Wulf sang, of whom even the Amal and
his men spoke with reverence, as something nobler, not only than her,
but even than themselves? And what was it which Wulf had recognised in
Hypatia which had bowed the stern and coarse old warrior before her in
that public homage?.... it was not difficult to say what.... But why
should that make Hypatia or any one else attractive? And the poor
little child of nature gazed in deep bewilderment at a crowd of new
questions, as a butterfly might at the pages of the book on which it has
settled, and was sad and discontented--not with herself, for was she
not Pelagia the perfect?--but with these strange fancies which came
into other people's heads.--Why should not every one be as happy as they
could? And who knew better than she how to be happy, and to make others
happy?....

'Look at that old monk standing on the pavement, Amalric! Why does he
stare so at me? Tell him to go away.'

The person at whom she pointed, a delicate-featured old man, with a
venerable white beard, seemed to hear her; for he turned with a sudden
start, and then, to Pelagia's astonishment, put his hands before his
face, and burst convulsively into tears.

'What does he mean by behaving in that way? Bring him here to me this
moment! I will know!' cried she, petulantly catching at the new object,
in order to escape from her own thoughts.

In a moment a Goth had led up the weeper, who came without demur to the
side of Pelagia's mule.

'Why were you so rude as to burst out crying in my face?' asked she
petulantly.

The old man looked up sadly and tenderly, and answered in a low voice,
meant only for her ear--

'And how can I help weeping, when I see anything as beautiful as you are
destined to the flames of hell for ever?'

'The flames of hell?' said Pelagia, with a shudder. 'What for?'

'Do you not know?' asked the old man, with a look of sad surprise. 'Have
you forgotten what you are?'

'I? I never hurt a fly!'

'Why do you look so terrified, my darling? What have you been saying to
her, you old villain?' and the Amal raised his whip.

'Oh! do not strike him. Come, come to-morrow, and tell me what you
mean.'

'No, we will have no monks within our doors, frightening silly women.
Off, sirrah! and thank the lady that you have escaped with a whole
skin.' And the Amal caught the bridle of Pelagia's mule, and pushed
forward, leaving the old man gazing sadly after them.

But the beautiful sinner was evidently not the object which had brought
the old monk of the desert into a neighbourhood so strange and ungenial
to his habits; for, recovering himself in a few moments, he hurried on
to the door of the Museum, and there planted himself, scanning earnestly
the faces of the passers-out, and meeting, of course, with his due share
of student ribaldry.

'Well, old cat, and what mouse are you on the watch for, at the hole's
mouth here?'

'Just come inside, and see whether the mice will not singe your whiskers
for you....'

'Here is my mouse, gentlemen,' answered the old monk, with a bow and
a smile, as he laid his hand on Philammon's arm, and presented to his
astonished eyes the delicate features and high retreating forehead of
Arsenius.

'My father,' cried the boy, in the first impulse of affectionate
recognition; and then--he had expected some such meeting all along, but
now that it was come at last, he turned pale as death. The students saw
his emotion.

'Hands off, old Heautontimoroumenos! He belongs to our guild now! Monks
have no more business with sons than with wives. Shall we hustle him for
you, Philammon?'

'Take care how you show off, gentlemen: the Goths are not yet out of
hearing!' answered Philammon, who was learning fast how to give a smart
answer; and then, fearing the temper of the young dandies, and shrinking
from the notion of any insult to one so reverend and so beloved as
Arsenius, he drew the old man gently away, and walked up the street with
him in silence, dreading what was coming.

'And are these your friends?'

'Heaven forbid! I have nothing in common with such animals but flesh and
blood, and a seat in the lecture-room!'

'Of the heathen woman?'

Philammon, after the fashion of young men in fear, rushed desperately
into the subject himself, just because he dreaded Arsenius's entering on
it quietly.

'Yes, of the heathen woman. Of course you have seen Cyril before you
came hither?'

'I have, and--'

'And,' went on Philammon, interrupting him, 'you have been told every
lie which prurience, stupidity, and revenge can invent. That I have
trampled on the cross--sacrificed to all the deities in the pantheon-and
probably'--(and he blushed scarlet)--'that that purest and holiest of
beings--who, if she were not what people call a pagan, would be, and
deserves to be, worshipped as the queen of saints--that she--and I--'
and he stopped.

'Have I said that I believed what I may have heard?'

'No--and therefore, as they are all simple and sheer falsehoods, there
is no more to be said on the subject. Not that I shall not be delighted
to answer any questions of yours, my dearest father--'

'Have I asked any, my child?'

'No. So we may as well change the subject for the present,'--and he
began overwhelming the old man with inquiries about himself, Pambo, and
each and all of the inhabitants of the Laura to which Arsenius, to
the boy's infinite relief, answered cordially and minutely, and even
vouchsafed a smile at some jest of Philammon's on the contrast between
the monks of Nitria and those of Scetis.

Arsenius was too wise not to see well enough what all this flippancy
meant; and too wise, also, not to know that Philammon's version was
probably quite as near the truth as Peter's and Cyril's; but for reasons
of his own, merely replied by an affectionate look, and a compliment to
Philammon's growth.

And yet you seem thin and pale, my boy.'

'Study,' said Philammon, 'study. One cannot burn the midnight oil
without paying some penalty for it.... However, I am richly repaid
already; I shall be more so hereafter.'

'Let us hope so. But who are those Goths whom I passed in the streets
just now?'

'Ah! my father,' said Philammon, glad in his heart of any excuse to
turn the conversation, and yet half uneasy and suspicious at Arsenius's
evident determination to avoid the very object of his visit. 'It must
have been you, then, whom I saw stop and speak to Pelagia at the farther
end of the street. What words could you possibly have had wherewith to
honour such a creature?'

'God knows. Some secret sympathy touched my heart.... Alas! poor child!
But how came you to know her?'

'All Alexandria knows the shameless abomination,' interrupted a voice
at their elbow--none other than that of the little porter, who had
been dodging and watching the pair the whole way, and could no longer
restrain his longing to meddle. 'And well it had been for many a rich
young man had odd Miriam never brought her over, in an evil day, from
Athens hither.'

'Miriam?'

'Yes, monk; a name not unknown, I am told, in palaces as well as in
slave-markets.'

'An evil-eyed old Jewess?'

'A Jewess she is, as her name might have informed you; and as for her
eyes, I consider them, or used to do so, of course--for her injured
nation have been long expelled from Alexandria by your fanatic tribe--as
altogether divine and demoniac, let the base imagination of monks call
them what it likes.'

'But how did you know this Pelagia, my son? She is no fit company for
such as you.'

Philammon told, honestly enough, the story of his Nile journey, and
Pelagia's invitation to him.

'You did not surely accept it?'

'Heaven forbid that Hypatia's scholar should so degrade himself!'

Arsenius shook his head sadly.

'You would not have had me go?'

'No, boy. But how long hast thou learned to call thyself Hypatia's
scholar, or to call it a degradation to visit the most sinful, if
thou mightest thereby bring back a lost lamb to the Good Shepherd?
Nevertheless, thou art too young for such employment--and she meant to
tempt thee doubtless.'

'I do not think it. She seemed struck by my talking Athenian Greek, and
having come from Athens.'

'And how long since she came from Athens?' said Arsenius, after a pause.
'Who knows?'

'Just after it was sacked by the barbarians,' said the little porter,
who, beginning to suspect a mystery, was peaking and peering like
an excited parrot. 'The old dame brought her hither among a cargo of
captive boys and girls.'

'The time agrees.... Can this Miriam be found?'

'A sapient and courteous question for a monk to ask! Do you not know
that Cyril has expelled all Jews four months ago?'

'True, true.... Alas!' said the old man to himself, 'how little
the rulers of this world guess their own power! They move a finger
carelessly, and forget that that finger may crush to death hundreds
whose names they never heard--and every soul of them as precious in
God's sight as Cyril's own.'

'What is the matter, my father?' asked Philammon. 'You seem deeply moved
about this woman....'

'And she is Miriam's slave?'

'Her freedwoman this four years past,' said the porter. 'The good
lady--for reasons doubtless excellent in themselves, though not
altogether patent to the philosophic mind--thought good to turn her
loose on the Alexandrian republic, to seek what she might devour.'

'God help her! And you are certain that Miriam is not in Alexandria?'

The little porter turned very red, and Philammon did so likewise; but he
remembered his promise, and kept it.

'You both know something of her, I can see. You cannot deceive an
old statesman, sir!'--turning to the little porter with a look of
authority--'poor monk though he be now. If you think fitting to tell me
what you know, I promise you that neither she nor you shall be losers by
your confidence in me. If not, I shall find means to discover.'

Both stood silent.

'Philammon, my son! and art thou too in league against--no, not against
me; against thyself, poor misguided boy?'

'Against myself?'

'Yes--I have said it. But unless you will trust me, I cannot trust you.'

'I have promised.'

'And I, sir statesman, or monk, or both, or neither, have sworn by the
immortal gods!' said the porter, looking very big.

Arsenius paused.

'There are those who hold that an oath by an idol, being nothing, is of
itself void. I do not agree with them. If thou thinkest it sin to break
thine oath, to thee it is sin. And for thee, my poor child, thy promise
is sacred, were it made to Iscariot himself. But hear me. Can either of
you, by asking this woman, be so far absolved as to give me speech of
her? Tell her--that is, if she be in Alexandria, which God grant--all
that has passed between us here, and tell her, on the solemn oath of a
Christian, that Arsenius, whose name she knows well, will neither injure
nor betray her. Will you do this?'

'Arsenius?' said the little porter, with a look of mingled awe and pity.

The old man smiled. 'Arsenius, who was once called the Father of the
Emperors. Even she will trust that name.'

'I will go this moment' sir; I will fly!' and off rushed the little
porter.

'The little fellow forgets,' said Arsenius, with a smile, 'to how much
he has confessed already, and how easy it were now to trace him to the
old hag's lair.... Philammon, my son.... I have many tears to weep over
thee--but they must wait a while, I have thee safe now,' and the old man
clutched his arm. 'Thou wilt not leave thy poor old father? Thou wilt
not desert me for the heathen woman?'

'I will stay with you, I promise you, indeed! if--if you will not say
unjust things of her.'

'I will speak evil of no one, accuse no one, but myself. I will not say
one harsh word to thee, my poor boy. But listen now! Thou knowest that
thou camest from Athens. Knowest thou that it was I who brought thee
hither?'

'You?'

'I, my son: but when I brought thee to the Laura, it seemed right that
thou, as the son of a noble gentleman, shouldest hear nothing of it.
But tell me: dost thou recollect father or mother, brother or sister; or
anything of thy home in Athens?'

'No.'

'Thanks be to God. But, Philammon, if thou hadst had a sister-hush! And
if--I only say if--,

'A sister!' interrupted Philammon. 'Pelagia?'

'God forbid, my son! But a sister thou hadst once--some three years
older than thee she seemed.'

'What! did you know her?'

'I saw her but once--on one sad day.--Poor children both! I will not
sadden you by telling you where and how.'

'And why did you not bring her hither with me? You surely had not the
heart to part us?'

'Ah, my son, what right had an old monk with a fair young girl? And,
indeed, even had I had the courage, it would have been impossible. There
were others, richer than I, to whose covetousness her youth and beauty
seemed a precious prize. When I saw her last, she was in company with an
ancient Jewess. Heaven grant that this Miriam may prove to be the one!'

'And I have a sister!' gasped Philammon, his eyes bursting with tears.
'We must find her! You will help me?--Now--this moment! There is nothing
else to be thought of, spoken of, done, henceforth, till she is found!'

'Ah, my son, my son! Better, better, perhaps, to leave her in the hands
of God! What if she were dead? To discover that, would be to discover
needless sorrow. And what if--God grant that it be not so! she had only
a name to live, and were dead, worse than dead, in sinful pleasure--'

'We would save her, or die trying to save her! Is it not enough for
me that she is my sister?' Arsenius shook his head. He little knew the
strange new light and warmth which his words had poured in upon the
young heart beside him. 'A sister!' What mysterious virtue was there in
that simple word, which made Philammon's brain reel and his heart throb
madly? A sister! not merely a friend, an equal, a help-mate, given
by God Himself, for loving whom none, not even a monk, could blame
him.--Not merely something delicate, weak, beautiful--for of course she
must be beautiful-whom he might cherish, guide, support, deliver, die
for, and find death delicious. Yes--all that, and more than that, lay
in the sacred word. For those divided and partial notions had flitted
across his mind too rapidly to stir such passion as moved him now; even
the hint of her sin and danger had been heard heedlessly, if heard at
all. It was the word itself which bore its own message, its own spell
to the heart of the fatherless and motherless foundling, as he faced for
the first time the deep, everlasting, divine reality of kindred.... A
sister! of his own flesh and blood--born of the same father, the
same mother--his, his, for ever! How hollow and fleeting seemed all
'spiritual sonships,' 'spiritual daughterhoods,' inventions of the
changing fancy, the wayward will of man! Arsenius--Pambo--ay, Hypatia
herself--what were they to him now? Here was a real relationship .... A
sister! What else was worth caring for upon earth?

'And she was at Athens when Pelagia was'--he cried at last--'perhaps
knew her--let us go to Pelagia herself!'

'Heaven forbid!' said Arsenius. 'We must wait at least till Miriam's
answer comes.'

'I can show you her house at least in the meanwhile; and you can go in
yourself when you will. I do not ask to enter. Come! I feel certain that
my finding her is in some way bound up with Pelagia. Had I not met her
on the Nile, had you not met her in the street, I might never have heard
that I had a sister. And if she went with Miriam, Pelagia must know
her--she may be in that very house at this moment!'

Arsenius had his reasons for suspecting that Philammon was but too
right. But he contented himself with yielding to the boy's excitement,
and set off with him in the direction of the dancer's house.

They were within a few yards of the gate, when hurried footsteps behind
them, and voices calling them by name, made them turn; and behold,
evidently to the disgust of Arsenius as much as Philammon himself, Peter
the Reader and a large party of monks!

Philammon's first impulse was to escape; Arsenius himself caught him by
the arm, and seemed inclined to hurry on.

'No!' thought the youth, 'am I not a free man, and a philosopher?' and
facing round, he awaited the enemy.

'Ah, young apostate! So you have found him, reverend and ill-used sir.
Praised be Heaven for this rapid success!'

'My good friend,' asked Arsenius, in a trembling voice, 'what brings you
here?'

'Heaven forbid that I should have allowed your sanctity and age to
go forth without some guard against the insults and violence of this
wretched youth and his profligate companions. We have been following you
afar off all the morning, with hearts full of filial solicitude.'

'Many thanks; but indeed your kindness has been superfluous. My son
here, from whom I have met with nothing but affection, and whom, indeed,
I believe far more innocent than report declared him, is about to return
peaceably with me. Are you not, Philammon?'

'Alas! my father'' said Philammon, with an effort, 'how can I find
courage to say it'?--but I cannot return with you.'

'Cannot return?'

'I vowed that I would never again cross that threshold till--'

'And Cyril does. He bade me, indeed he bade me, assure you that he would
receive you back as a son, and forgive and forget all the past.'

'Forgive and forget? That is my part--not his. Will he right me against
that tyrant and his crew? Will he proclaim me openly to be an innocent
and persecuted man, unjustly beaten and driven forth for obeying his own
commands? Till he does that, I shall not forget that I am a free man.'

'A free man!' said Peter, with an unpleasant smile; 'that remains to
be proved, my gay youth; and will need more evidence than that smart
philosophic cloak and those well-curled locks which you have adopted
since I saw you last.'

'Remains to be proved?'

Arsenius made an imploring gesture to Peter to be silent.

'Nay, sir. As I foretold to you, this one way alone remains; the
blame of it, if there be blame, must rest on the unhappy youth whose
perversity renders it necessary.'

'For God's sake, spare me!' cried the old man, dragging Peter aside,
while Philammon stood astonished, divided between indignation and vague
dread.

'Did I not tell you again and again that I never could bring myself to
call a Christian man my slave? And him, above all, my spiritual son?'

'And, most reverend sir, whose zeal is only surpassed by your tenderness
and mercy, did not the holy patriarch assure you that your scruples were
groundless? Do you think that either he or I can have less horror than
you have of slavery in itself? Heaven forbid! But when an immortal soul
is at stake--when a lost lamb is to be brought back to the fold--surely
you may employ the authority which the law gives you for the salvation
of that precious charge committed to you? What could be more conclusive
than his Holiness's argument this morning? "Christians are bound to
obey the laws of this world for conscience' sake, even though, in the
abstract, they may disapprove of them, and deny their authority. Then,
by parity of reasoning, it must be lawful for them to take the advantage
which those same laws offer them, when by so doing the glory of God may
be advanced."'

Arsenius still hung back, with eyes brimming with tears; but Philammon
himself put an end to the parley.

'What is the meaning of all this? Are you, too, in a conspiracy against
me? Speak, Arsenius!'

'This is the meaning of it, blinded sinner!' cried Peter. 'That you are
by law the slave of Arsenius, lawfully bought with his money in the city
of Ravenna; and that he has the power, and, as I trust, for the sake of
your salvation, the will also, to compel you to accompany him.'

Philammon recoiled across the pavement, with eyes flashing defiance. A
slave! The light of heaven grew black to him.... Oh, that Hypatia might
never know his shame! Yet it was impossible. Too dreadful to be true....

'You lie!' almost shrieked he. 'I am the son of a noble citizen of
Athens. Arsenius told me so, but this moment, with his own lips!'

'Ah, but he bought you--bought you in the public market; and he can
prove it!'

'Hear me--hear me, my son!' cried the old man, springing toward him.
Philammon, in his fury, mistook the gesture and thrust him fiercely
back.

'Your son!--your slave! Do not insult the name of son by applying it to
me. Yes, sir; your slave in body, but not in soul! Ay, seize me--drag
home the fugitive--scourge him--brand him--chain him in the mill, if you
can; but even for that the free heart has a remedy. If you will not let
me live as a philosopher, you shall see me die like one!'

'Seize the fellow, my brethren!' cried Peter, while Arsenius, utterly
unable to restrain either party, hid his face and wept.

'Wretches!' cried the boy; 'you shall never take me alive, while I have
teeth or nails left. Treat me as a brute beast, and I will defend myself
as such!'

'Out of the way there, rascals! Place for the Prefect! What are you
squabbling about here, you unmannerly monks?' shouted peremptory voices
from behind. The crowd parted, and disclosed the apparitors of Orestes,
who followed in his robes of office.

A sudden hope flashed before Philammon, and in an instant he had burst
through the mob, and was clinging to the Prefect's chariot.

'I am a free-born Athenian, whom these monks wish to kidnap back into
slavery! I claim your protection!'

'And you shall have it, right or wrong, my handsome fellow. By Heaven,
you are much too good-looking to be made a monk of! What do you mean,
you villains, by attempting to kidnap free men? Is it not enough for you
to lock up every mad girl whom you can dupe, but you must--'

'His master is here present, your Excellency, who will swear to the
purchase.'

'Or to anything else for the glory of God. Out of the way! And take
care, you tall scoundrel, that I do not get a handle against you. You
have been one of my marked men for many a month. Off!'

'His master demands the rights of the law as a Roman citizen,' said
Peter, pushing forward Arsenius.

'If he be a Roman citizen, let him come and make his claim at the
tribune to-morrow, in legal form. But I would have you remember, ancient
sir, that I shall require you to prove your citizenship before we
proceed to the question of purchase.'

'The law does not demand that,' quoth Peter.

'Knock that fellow down, apparitor!' Whereat Peter vanished, and an
ominous growl rose from the mob of monks.

'What am I to do, most noble sir?' said Philammon.

'Whatever you like, till the third hour to-morrow--if you are fool
enough to appear at the tribune. If you will take my advice' you will
knock down these fellows right and left, and run for your life.' And
Orestes drove on.

Philammon saw that it was his only chance, and did so; and in another
minute he found himself rushing headlong into the archway of Pelagia's
house, with a dozen monks at his heels. As luck would have it, the outer
gates, at which the Goths had just entered, were still open; but the
inner ones which led into the court beyond were fast. He tried them,
but in vain. There was an open door in the wall on his right: he rushed
through it, into a long range of stables, and into the arms of Wulf and
Smid, who were unsaddling and feeding, like true warriors, their own
horses.

'Souls of my fathers!' shouted Smid, 'here's our young monk come back!
What brings you here head over heels in this way, young curly-pate?'

'Save me from those wretches!' pointing to the monks, who were peeping
into the doorway.

Wulf seemed to understand it all in a moment; for, snatching up a heavy
whip, he rushed at the foe, and with a few tremendous strokes cleared
the doorway, and shut-to the door.

Philammon was going to explain and thank, but Smid stopped his mouth.

'Never mind, young one, you are our guest now. Come in, and you shall be
as welcome as ever. See what comes of running away from us at first.'

'You do not seem to have benefited much by leaving me for the monks,'
said old Wulf. 'Come in by the inner door. Smid! go and turn those monks
out of the gateway.'

But the mob, after battering the door for a few minutes, had yielded
to the agonised entreaties of Peter, who assured them that if those
incarnate fiends once broke out upon them, they would not leave a
Christian alive in Alexandria. So it was agreed to leave a few to watch
for Philammon's coming out; and the rest, balked of their prey, turned
the tide of their wrath against the Prefect, and rejoined the mass
of their party, who were still hanging round his chariot, ready for
mischief.

In vain the hapless shepherd of the people attempted to drive on. The
apparitors were frightened and hung back; and without their help it
was impossible to force the horses through the mass of tossing arms and
beards in front. The matter was evidently growing serious.

'The bitterest ruffians in all Nitria, your Excellency,' whispered one
of the guards, with a pale face; 'and two hundred of them at the least.
The very same set, I will be sworn, who nearly murdered Dioscuros.'

'If you will not allow me to proceed, my holy brethren,' said Orestes,
trying to look collected, 'perhaps it will not be contrary to the canons
of the Church if I turn back. Leave the horses' heads alone. Why, in
God's name, what do you want?'

'Do you fancy we have forgotten Hieracas?' cried a voice from the rear;
and at that name, yell upon yell arose, till the mob, gaining courage
from its own noise, burst out into open threats. 'Revenge for the
blessed martyr Hieracas!' 'Revenge for the wrongs of the Church!' 'Down
with the friend of Heathens, Jews, and Barbarians!' 'Down with the
favourite of Hypatia!' 'Tyrant!' 'Butcher!' And the last epithet so
smote the delicate fancy of the crowd, that a general cry arose of
'Kill the butcher!' and one furious monk attempted to clamber into the
chariot. An apparitor tore him down, and was dragged to the ground in
his turn. The monks closed in. The guards, finding the enemy number ten
to their one, threw down their weapons in a panic, and vanished; and in
another minute the hopes of Hypatia and the gods would have been lost
for ever, and Alexandria robbed of the blessing of being ruled by the
most finished gentleman south of the Mediterranean, had it not been for
unexpected succour; of which it will be time enough, considering who and
what is in danger, to speak in a future chapter.



CHAPTER XVII: A STRAY GLEAM


THE last blue headland of Sardinia was fading fast on the north-west
horizon, and a steady breeze bore before it innumerable ships, the
wrecks of Heraclian's armament, plunging and tossing impatiently in
their desperate homeward race toward the coast of Africa. Far and
wide, under a sky of cloudless blue, the white sails glittered on
the glittering sea, as gaily now, above their loads of shame and
disappointment terror and pain, as when, but one short month before,
they bore with them only wild hopes and gallant daring. Who can
calculate the sum of misery in that hapless flight?.... And yet it
was but one, and that one of the least known and most trivial, of the
tragedies of that age of woe; one petty death-spasm among the unnumbered
throes which were shaking to dissolution the Babylon of the West. Her
time had come. Even as Saint John beheld her in his vision, by agony
after agony, she was rotting to her well-earned doom. Tyrannising
it luxuriously over all nations, she had sat upon the mystic
beast--building her power on the brute animal appetites of her dupes and
slaves: but she had duped herself even more than them. She was finding
out by bitter lessons that it was 'to the beast', and not to her, that
her vassal kings of the earth had been giving their power and strength;
and the ferocity and lust which she had pampered so cunningly in them,
had become her curse and her destruction.... Drunk with the blood of the
saints; blinded by her own conceit and jealousy to the fact that she had
been crushing and extirpating out of her empire for centuries past all
which was noble, purifying, regenerative, divine, she sat impotent
and doting, the prey of every fresh adventurer, the slave of her own
slaves.... 'And the kings of the earth, who had sinned with her, hated
the harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and devoured her flesh, and
burned her with fire. For God had put into their hearts to fulfil His
will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the
words of God should be fulfilled.'.... Everywhere sensuality, division,
hatred, treachery, cruelty, uncertainty, terror; the vials of God's
wrath poured out. Where was to be the end of it all? asked every man
of his neighbour, generation after generation; and received for answer
only, 'It is better to die than to live.'

And yet in one ship out of that sad fleet, there was peace; peace amid
shame and terror; amid the groans of the wounded, and the sighs of
the starving; amid all but blank despair. The great triremes and
quinqueremes rushed onward past the lagging transports, careless, in the
mad race for safety, that they were leaving the greater number of their
comrades defenceless in the rear of the flight; but from one little
fishing-craft alone no base entreaties, no bitter execrations greeted
the passing flash and roll of their mighty oars. One after another, day
by day, they came rushing up out of the northern offing, each like a
huge hundred-footed dragon, panting and quivering, as if with terror, at
every loud pulse of its oars, hurling the wild water right and left
with the mighty share of its beak, while from the bows some gorgon or
chimaera, elephant or boar, stared out with brazen eyes toward the coast
of Africa, as if it, too, like the human beings which it carried, was
dead to every care but that of dastard flight. Past they rushed, one
after another; and off the poop some shouting voice chilled all hearts
for a moment, with the fearful news that the Emperor's Neapolitan fleet
was in full chase.... And the soldiers on board that little vessel
looked silently and steadfastly into the silent steadfast face of the
old Prefect, and Victoria saw him shudder, and turn his eyes away--and
stood up among the rough fighting men, like a goddess, and cried aloud
that 'the Lord would protect His own'; and they believed her, and
were still; till many days and many ships were passed, and the little
fishing-craft, outstripped even by the transports and merchantmen, as it
strained and crawled along before its single square-sail, was left alone
upon the sea.

And where was Raphael Aben-Ezra?

He was sitting, with Bran's head between his knees, at the door of a
temporary awning in the vessel's stern, which shielded the wounded men
from sun and spray; and as he sat he could hear from within the tent the
gentle voices of Victoria and her brother, as they tended the sick like
ministering angels, or read to them words of divine hope and comfort-in
which his homeless heart felt that he had no share....

'As I live, I would change places now with any one of those poor mangled
ruffians to have that voice speaking such words to me....and to believe
them.'.... And he went on perusing the manuscript which he held in his
hand. ...............

'Well!' he sighed to himself after a while 'at least it is the most
complimentary, not to say hopeful, view of our destinies with which I
have met since I threw away my curse's belief that the seed of David was
fated to conquer the whole earth, and set up a second Roman Empire
at Jerusalem, only worse than the present one, in that the devils of
superstition and bigotry would be added to those of tyranny and rapine.'

A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice asked' 'And what may this
so hopeful view be?'

'Ah! my dear General!' said Raphael, looking up. 'I have a poor bill
of fare whereon to exercise my culinary powers this morning. Had it not
been for that shark who was so luckily deluded last night, I should have
been reduced to the necessity of stewing my friend the fat decurion's
big boots.'

'They would have been savoury enough, I will warrant, after they had
passed under your magical hand.'

'It is a comfort, certainly, to find that after all one did learn
something useful in Alexandria! So I will even go forward at once, and
employ my artistic skill.'

'Tell me first what it was about which I heard you just now
soliloquising, as so hopeful a view of some matter or other?'

'Honestly--if you will neither betray me to your son and daughter,
nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself--it was Paul of
Tarsus's notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation.
See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!' And he held up a
manuscript of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

'It is execrable Greek. But it is sound philosophy, I cannot deny. He
knows Plato better than all the ladies and gentlemen in Alexandria put
together, if my opinion on the point be worth having.'

'I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that point, sir. He may or may
not know Plato; but I am right sure that he knows God.'

'Not too fast,' said Raphael with a smile. 'You do not know, perhaps,
that I have spent the last ten years of my life among men who professed
the same knowledge?'

'Augustine, too, spent the best ten years of his life among such; and
yet he is now combating the very errors which he once taught.'

'Having found, he fancies, something better!'

'Having found it, most truly. But you must talk to him yourself, and
argue the matter over, with one who can argue. To me such questions are
an unknown land.'

'Well.... Perhaps I may be tempted to do even that. At least a
thoroughly converted philosopher--for poor dear Synesius is half heathen
still, I often fancy, and hankers after the wisdom of the Egyptian--will
be a curious sight; and to talk with so famous and so learned a man
would always be a pleasure; but to argue with him, or any other human
being, none whatsoever.'

'Why, then?'

'My dear sir, I am sick of syllogisms, and probabilities, and pros and
contras. What do I care if, on weighing both sides, the nineteen pounds
weight of questionable arguments against, are overbalanced by the twenty
pounds weight of equally questionable arguments for? Do you not see that
my belief of the victorious proposition will be proportioned to the one
over-balancing pound only, while the whole other nineteen will go for
nothing?'

'I really do not.'

'Happy are you, then. I do, from many a sad experience. No, my worthy
sir. I want a faith past arguments; one which, whether I can prove it
or not to the satisfaction of the lawyers, I believe to my own
satisfaction, and act on it as undoubtingly and unreasoningly as I
do upon my own newly-rediscovered personal identity. I don't want to
possess a faith. I want a faith which will possess me. And if I ever
arrived at such a one, believe me, it would be by some such practical
demonstration as this very tent has given me.'

'This tent?'

'Yes, sir, this tent; within which I have seen you and your children
lead a life of deeds as new to me the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia
the Gentile. I have watched you for many a day, and not in vain. When I
saw you, an experienced officer, encumber your flight with wounded men,
I was only surprised. But since I have seen you and your daughter,
and, strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades of a son, starving
yourselves to feed those poor ruffians--performing for them, day and
night, the offices of menial slaves--comforting them, as no man ever
comforted me--blaming no one but yourselves, caring for every one but
yourselves, sacrificing nothing but yourselves; and all this without
hope of fame or reward, or dream of appeasing the wrath of any god or
goddess, but simply because you thought it right.... When I saw that,
sir, and more which I have seen; and when, reading in this book here,
I found most unexpectedly those very grand moral rules which you were
practising, seeming to spring unconsciously, as natural results, from
the great thoughts, true or false, which had preceded them; then, sir, I
began to suspect that the creed which could produce such deeds as I have
watched within the last few days, might have on its side not merely a
slight preponderance of probabilities, but what the Jews used once to
call, when we believed in it--or in anything--the mighty power of God.'

And as he spoke, he looked into the Prefect's face with the look of a
man wrestling in some deadly struggle; so intense and terrible was the
earnestness of his eye, that even the old soldier shrank before it.

'And therefore,' he went on, 'therefore, sir, beware of your own
actions, and of your children's. If, by any folly or baseness, such as I
have seen in every human being whom I ever met as yet upon this accursed
stage of fools, you shall crush my new-budding hope that there is
something somewhere which will make me what I know that I ought to be,
and can be--If you shall crush that, I say, by any misdoing of yours,
you had better have been the murderer of my firstborn; with such a
hate--a hate which Jews alone can feel--will I hate you and yours.'

'God help us and strengthen us!'said the old warrior in a tone of noble
humility.

'And now,' said Raphael, glad to change the subject, after this unwonted
outburst, 'we must once more seriously consider whether it is wise to
hold on our present course. If you return to Carthage, or to Hippo--'

'I shall be beheaded.'

'Most assuredly. And how much soever you may consider such an event a
gain to yourself, yet for the sake of your son and your daughter--'

'My dear sir,' interrupted the Prefect, 'you mean kindly. But do not, do
not tempt me. By the Count's side I have fought for thirty years, and by
his side I will die, as I deserve.'

'Victorius! Victoria!' cried Raphael; 'help me! Your father,' he went
on, as they came out from the tent, 'is still decided on losing his own
head, and throwing away ours, by going to Carthage.'

'For my sake--for our sakes--father!' cried Victoria, clinging to him.

'And for my sake, also, most excellent sir,' said Raphael, smiling
quietly. 'I have no wish to be so uncourteous as to urge any help which
I may have seemed to afford you. But I hope that you will recollect that
I have a life to lose, and that it is hardly fair of you to imperil it
as you intend to do. If you could help or save Heraclian, I should be
dumb at once. But now, for a mere point of honour to destroy fifty good
soldiers, who know not their right hands from their left--Shall I ask
their opinion?'

'Will you raise a mutiny against me, sir?' asked the old man sternly.

'Why not mutiny against Philip drunk, in behalf of Philip sober? But
really, I will obey you.... only you must obey us.... What is Hesiod's
definition of the man who will neither counsel himself nor be counselled
by his friends?.... Have you no trusty acquaintances in Cyrenaica, for
instance?'

The Prefect was silent.

'Oh, hear us, my father! Why not go to Euodius? He is your old
comrade--a well-wisher, too, to this.... this expedition.... And
recollect, Augustine must be there now. He was about to sail for
Berenice, in order to consult Synesius and the Pentapolitan bishops,
when we left Carthage.'

And at the name of Augustine the old man paused.

'Augustine will be there; true. And this our friend must meet him.
And thus at least I should have his advice. If he thinks it my duty to
return to Carthage, I can but do so, after all. But the soldiers!'

'Excellent sir,' said Raphael, 'Synesius and the Pentapolitan
landlords--who can hardly call their lives their own, thanks to the
Moors--will be glad enough to feed and pay them, or any other brave
fellows with arms in their hands, at this moment. And my friend
Victorius, here, will enjoy, I do not doubt, a little wild campaigning
against marauding blackamoors.'

The old man bowed silently. The battle was won.

The young tribune, who had been watching his father's face with the most
intense anxiety caught at the gesture, and hurrying forward, announced
the change of plan to the soldiery. It was greeted with a shout of joy,
and in another five minutes the sails were about, the rudder shifted,
and the ship on her way towards the western point of Sicily, before a
steady north-west breeze.

'Ah!' cried Victoria, delighted. 'And now you will see Augustine! You
must promise me to talk to him!'

'This, at least, I will promise, that whatsoever the great sophist shall
be pleased to say, shall meet with a patient hearing from a brother
sophist. Do not be angry at the term. Recollect that I am somewhat
tired, like my ancestor Solomon, of wisdom and wise men, having found
it only too like madness and folly. And you cannot surely expect me to
believe in man, while I do not yet believe in God?'

Victoria sighed. 'I will not believe you. Why always pretend to be worse
than you are?'

'That kind souls like you may be spared the pain of finding me worse
than I seem.... There, let us say no more; except that I heartily wish
that you would hate me!'

'Shall I try?'

'That must be my work, I fear, not yours. However, I shall give you good
cause enough before long' doubt it not.'

Victoria sighed again, and retired into the tent to nurse the sick.

'And now, sir,' said the Prefect, turning to Raphael and his son; 'do
not mistake me. I may have been weak, as worn-out and hopeless men are
wont to be; but do not think of me as one who has yielded to adversity
in fear for his own safety. As God hears me, I desire nothing better
than to die; and I only turn out of my course on the understanding that
if Augustine so advise, my children hold me free to return to Carthage
and meet my fate. All I pray for is, that my life may be spared until I
can place my dear child in the safe shelter of a nunnery.'

'A nunnery?'

'Yes, indeed; I have intended ever since her birth to dedicate her to
the service of God. And in such times as these, what better lot for a
defenceless girl?'

'Pardon me!' said Raphael; 'but I am too dull to comprehend what
benefit or pleasure your Deity will derive from the celibacy of your
daughter.... Except, indeed, on one supposition, which, as I have some
faint remnants of reverence and decency reawakening in me just now, I
must leave to be uttered only by the pure lips of sexless priests.'

'You forget, sir, that you are speaking to a Christian.'

'I assure you, no! I had certainly been forgetting it till the last two
minutes, in your very pleasant and rational society. There is no danger
henceforth of my making so silly a mistake.'

'Sir!' said the Prefect, reddening at the undisguised contempt of
Raphael's manner...., 'When you know a little more of St. Paul's
Epistles, you will cease to insult the opinions and feelings of those
who obey them, by sacrificing their most precious treasures to God.'

'Oh, it is Paul of Tarsus, then, who gives you the advice! I thank you
for informing me of the fact; for it will save me the trouble of any
future study of his works. Allow me, therefore, to return by your hands
this manuscript of his with many thanks from me to that daughter of
yours, by whose perpetual imprisonment you intend to give pleasure to
your Deity. Henceforth the less communication which passes between me
and any member of your family, the better.' And he turned away.

'But, my dear sir!' said the honest soldier, really chagrined, 'you must
not!--we owe you too much, and love you too well, to part thus for the
caprice of a moment. If any word of mine has offended you--forget it,
and forgive me, I beseech you!' and he caught both Raphael's hands in
his own.

'My very dear sir,' answered the Jew quietly; 'let me ask the same
forgiveness of you; and believe me, for the sake of past pleasant
passages, I shall not forget my promise about the mortgage.... But-here
we must part. To tell you the truth, I half an hour ago was fearfully
near becoming neither more nor less than a Christian. I had actually
deluded myself into the fancy that the Deity of the Galileans might be,
after all, the God of our old Hebrew forefathers--of Adam and Eve, of
Abraham and David, and of the rest who believed that children and
the fruit of the womb were an heritage and gift which cometh of the
Lord--and that Paul was right--actually right--in his theory that the
church was the development and fulfilment of our old national polity....
I must thank you for opening my eyes to a mistake which, had I not been
besotted for the moment, every monk and nun would have contradicted by
the mere fact of their existence, and reserve my nascent faith for some
Deity who takes no delight in seeing his creature: stultify the primary
laws of their being. Farewell!'

And while the Prefect stood petrified with astonishment, he retired to
the further extremity of the deck, muttering to himself--

'Did I not know all along that this gleam was too sudden and too bright
to last? Did I not know that he, too, would prove himself like all the
rest--an ass?.... Fool! to have looked for common sense on such an earth
as this!.... Back to chaos again, Raphael Aben-Ezra, and spin ropes of
sand to the end of the farce!'

And mixing with the soldiers, he exchanged no word with the Prefect and
his children, till they reached the port of Berenice; and then putting
the necklace into Victoria's hands, vanished among the crowds upon the
quay, no one knew whither.



CHAPTER XVIII: THE PREFECT TESTED


WHEN we lost sight of Philammon, his destiny had hurled him once more
among his old friends the Goths, in search of two important elements of
human comfort, freedom and a sister. The former be found at once, in a
large hall where sundry Goths were lounging and toping, into the nearest
corner of which he shrank, and stood, his late terror and rage forgotten
altogether in the one new and absorbing thought--His sister might be in
that house!.... and yielding to so sweet a dream, he began fancying to
himself which of all those gay maidens she might be who had become in
one moment more dear, more great to him, than all things else in heaven
or earth. That fair-haired, rounded Italian? That fierce, luscious,
aquiline-faced Jewess? That delicate, swart, sidelong-eyed Copt? No.
She was Athenian, like himself. That tall, lazy Greek girl, then, from
beneath whose sleepy lids flashed, once an hour, sudden lightnings,
revealing depths of thought and feeling uncultivated, perhaps even
unsuspected, by their possessor. Her? Or that, her seeming sister? Or
the next?.... Or--Was it Pelagia herself, most beautiful and most
sinful of them all? Fearful thought! He blushed scarlet at the bare
imagination: yet why, in his secret heart, was that the most pleasant
hypothesis of them all? And suddenly flashed across him that observation
of one of the girls on board the boat, on his likeness to Pelagia.
Strange, that he had never recollected it before! It must be so! and
yet on what a slender thread, woven of scattered hints and surmises,
did that 'must' depend! He would be sane! he would wait; he would
have patience. Patience, with a sister yet unfound, perhaps perishing?
Impossible!

Suddenly the train of his thoughts was changed perforce:--

'Come! come and see! There's a fight in the streets,' called one of the
damsels down the stairs, at the highest pitch of her voice.

'I shan't go,' yawned a huge fellow, who was lying on his back on a
sofa.

'Oh come up, my hero,' said one of the girls. 'Such a charming riot, and
the Prefect himself in the middle of it! We have not had such a one in
the street this month.'

'The princes won't let me knock any of these donkey-riders on the
head, and seeing other people do it only makes me envious. Give me the
wine-jug--curse the girl! she has run upstairs!'

The shouting and trampling came nearer; and in another minute Wulf came
rapidly downstairs, through the hall into the harem-court, and into the
presence of the Amal.

'Prince--here is a chance for us. These rascally Greeks are murdering
their Prefect under our very windows.'

'The lying cur! Serve him right for cheating us. He has plenty of
guards. Why can't the fool take care of himself?'

'They have all run away, and I saw some of them hiding among the mob. As
I live, the man will be killed in five minutes more.'

'Why not?'

'Why should he, when we can save him and win his favour for ever? The
men's fingers are itching far a fight; it's a bad plan not to give
hounds blood now and then, or they lose the knack of hunting.'

'Well, it wouldn't take five minutes.'

'And heroes should show that they can forgive when an enemy is in
distress.'

'Very true! Like an Amal too!' And the Amal sprang up and shouted to his
men to follow him.

'Good-bye, my pretty one. Why, Wulf,' cried he, as he burst out into the
court, 'here's our monk again! By Odin, you're welcome, my handsome boy!
come along and fight too, young fellow; what were those arms given you
for?'

'He is my man,' said Wulf, laying his hand on Philammon's shoulder,
'and blood he shall taste.' And out the three hurried, Philammon, in his
present reckless mood, ready for anything.

'Bring your whips. Never mind swords. Those rascals are not worth it,'
shouted the Amal, as he hurried down the passage brandishing his heavy
thong, some ten feet in length, threw the gate open, and the next moment
recoiled from a dense crush of people who surged in--and surged out
again as rapidly as the Goth, with the combined force of his weight
and arm, hewed his way straight through them, felling a wretch at every
blow, and followed up by his terrible companions.

They were but just in time. The four white blood-horses were plunging
and rolling over each other, and Orestes reeling in his chariot, with
a stream of blood running down his face, and the hands of twenty wild
monks clutching at him. 'Monks again!' thought Philammon and as he saw
among them more than one hateful face, which he recollected in Cyril's
courtyard on that fatal night, a flush of fierce revenge ran through
him.

'Mercy!' shrieked the miserable Prefect--'I am a Christian! I swear that
I am a Christian! the Bishop Atticus baptized me at Constantinople!'

'Down with the butcher! down with the heathen tyrant, who refuses the
adjuration on the Gospels rather than be reconciled to the patriarch!
Tear him out of the chariot!' yelled the monks.

The craven hound!' said the Amal, stopping short, 'I won't help him!'
But in an instant Wulf rushed forward, and struck right and left; the
monks recoiled, and Philammon, burning to prevent so shameful a scandal
to the faith to which he still clung convulsively, sprang into the
chariot and caught Orestes in his arms.

'You are safe, my lord; don't struggle,' whispered he, while the monks
flew on him. A stone or two struck him, but they only quickened his
determination, and in another moment the whistling of the whips round
his head, and the yell and backward rush of the monks, told him that he
was safe. He carried his burden safely within the doorway of Pelagia's
house, into the crowd of peeping and shrieking damsels, where twenty
pairs of the prettiest hands in Alexandria seized on Orestes, and drew
him into the court.

'Like a second Hylas, carried off by the nymphs!' simpered he, as he
vanished into the harem, to reappear in five minutes, his head bound rip
with silk handkerchiefs, and with as much of his usual impudence as he
could muster.

'Your Excellency--heroes all--I am your devoted slave. I owe you life
itself; and more, the valour of your succour is only surpassed by the
deliciousness of your cure. I would gladly undergo a second wound to
enjoy a second time the services of such hands, and to see such feet
busying themselves on my behalf.'

'You wouldn't have said that five minutes ago, quoth the Amal, looking
at him very much as a bear might at a monkey.

'Never mind the hands and feet, old fellow, they are none of yours!'
bluntly observed a voice from behind' probably Smid's, and a laugh
ensued.

'My saviours, my brothers!' said Orestes, politely ignoring the
laughter. 'How can I repay you? Is there anything in which my office
here enables me--I will not say to reward, for that would be a term
beneath your dignity as free barbarians--but to gratify you?'

'Give us three days' pillage of the quarter!' shouted some one.

'Ah, true valour is apt to underrate obstacles; you forget your small
numbers.'

'I say,' quoth the Amal--'I say, take care, Prefect.--If you mean to
tell me that we forty couldn't cut all the throats in Alexandria in
three days, and yours into the bargain, and keep your soldiers at bay
all the time--'

'Half of them would join us!' cried some one. 'They are half our own
flesh and blood after all!'

'Pardon me, my friends, I do not doubt it a moment. I know enough of the
world never to have found a sheep-dog yet who would not, on occasion,
help to make away with a little of the mutton which he guarded. Eh, my
venerable sir?' turning to Wulf with a knowing bow.

Wulf chuckled grimly, and said something to the Amal in German about
being civil to guests.

'You will pardon me, my heroic friends,' said Orestes, 'but, with your
kind permission, I will observe that I am somewhat faint and disturbed
by late occurrences. To trespass on your hospitality further would be
an impertinence. If, therefore, I might send a slave to find some of my
apparitors-'

'No, by all the gods!' roared the Amal, 'you're my guest now--my lady's
at least. And no one ever went out of my house sober yet if I could help
it. Set the cooks to work, my men! The Prefect shall feast with us like
an emperor, and we'll send him home to-night as drunk as he can wish.
Come along, your Excellency; we're rough fellows, we Goths; but by the
Valkyrs, no one can say that we neglect our guests!'

'It is a sweet compulsion,' said Orestes, as he went in.

'Stop, by the bye! Didn't one of you men catch a monk.?'

'Here he is, prince, with his elbows safe behind him.' And a tall,
haggard, half-naked monk was dragged forward.

'Capital! bring him in. His Excellency shall judge him while dinner's
cooking' and Smid shall have the hanging of him. He hurt nobody in the
scuffle; he was thinking of his dinner.'

'Some rascal bit a piece out of my leg, and I tumbled down,' grumbled
Smid.

'Well, pay out this fellow for it, then. Bring a chair, slaves! Here,
your Highness, sit there and judge.'

'Two chairs!' said some one; 'the Amal shan't stand before the emperor
himself.'

'By all means, my dear friends. The Amal and I will act as the two
Caesars, with divided empire. I presume we shall have little difference
of opinion as to the hanging of this worthy.'

'Hanging's too quick for him.'

'Just what I was about to remark--there are certain judicial
formalities, considered generally to be conducive to the stability, if
not necessary to the existence, of the Roman empire--'

'I say, don't talk so much,' shouted a Goth, 'If you want to have the
hanging of him yourself, do. We thought we would save you trouble.'

'Ah, my excellent friend, would you rob me of the delicate pleasure of
revenge? I intend to spend at least four hours to-morrow in killing this
pious martyr. He will have a good time to think, between the beginning
and the end of the rack.'

'Do you hear that, master monk?' said Smid, chucking him under the
chin, while the rest of the party seemed to think the whole business
an excellent joke, and divided their ridicule openly enough between the
Prefect and his victim.

'The man of blood has said it. I am a martyr,' answered the monk in a
dogged voice.

'You will take a good deal of time in becoming one.'

'Death may be long, but glory is everlasting.'

'True. I forgot that, and will save you the said glory, if I can help
it, for a year or two. Who was it struck me with the stone?'

No answer.

'Tell me, and the moment he is in my lictors' hands I pardon you
freely.'

The monk laughed. 'Pardon? Pardon me eternal bliss, and the things
unspeakable, which God has prepared for those who love Him? Tyrant and
butcher! I struck thee, thou second Dioclesian--I hurled the stone--I,
Ammonius. Would to heaven that it had smitten thee through, thou Sisera,
like the nail of Jael the Kenite!'

'Thanks, my friend. Heroes, you have a cellar for monks as well as for
wine? I will trouble you with this hero's psalm-singing tonight, and
send my apparitors for him in the morning.'

'If he begins howling when we are in bed, your men won't find much of
him left in the morning,' said the Amal. 'But here come the slaves,
announcing dinner.'

'Stay,' said Orestes; 'there is one more with whom I have an account to
settle--that young philosopher there.'

'Oh, he is coming in, too. He never was drunk in his life, I'll warrant,
poor fellow, and it's high time for him to begin.' And the Amal laid
a good-natured bear's paw on Philammon's shoulder, who hung back in
perplexity, and cast a piteous look towards Wulf.

Wulf answered it by a shake of the head which gave Philammon courage
to stammer out a courteous refusal. The Amal swore an oath at him which
made the cloister ring again, and with a quiet shove of his heavy hand,
sent him staggering half across the court: but Wulf interposed.

'The boy is mine, prince. He is no drunkard, and I will not let him
become one. Would to heaven,' added he, under his breath, 'that I could
say the same to some others. Send us out our supper here, when you are
done. Half a sheep or so will do between us, and enough of the strongest
to wash it down with. Smid knows my quantity.'

'Why in heaven's name are you not coming in?'

'That mob will be trying to burst the gates again before two hours are
out; and as some one must stand sentry, it may as well be a man who will
not have his ears stopped up by wine and women's kisses. The boy will
stay with me.'

So the party went in, leaving Wulf and Philammon alone in the outer
hall.

There the two sat for some half hour, casting stealthy glances at each
other, and wondering perhaps, each of them vainly enough, what was going
on in the opposite brain. Philammon, though his heart was full of his
sister, could not help noticing the air of deep sadness which hung about
the scarred and weather-beaten features of the old warrior. The grimness
which he had remarked on their first meeting seemed to be now changed
into a settled melancholy. The furrows round his mouth and eyes had
become deeper and sharper. Some perpetual indignation seemed smouldering
in the knitted brow and protruding upper lip. He sat there silent and
motionless for some half hour, his chin resting on his hands, and
they again upon the butt of his axe, apparently in deep thought, and
listening with a silent sneer to the clinking of glasses and dishes
within.

Philammon felt too much respect, both for his age and his stately
sadness, to break the silence. At last some louder burst of merriment
than usual aroused him.

'What do you call that?' said he, speaking in Greek.

'Folly and vanity.'

'And what does she there--the Alruna--the prophet-woman, call it?'

'Whom do you mean?'

'Why, the Greek woman whom we went to hear talk this morning.'

'Folly and vanity.'

'Why can't she cure that Roman hairdresser there of it, then?'

Philammon was silent--'Why not, indeed!'

'Do you think she could cure any one of it?'

'Of what?'

'Of getting drunk, and wasting their strength and their fame, and their
hard-won treasures upon eating and drinking, and fine clothes, and bad
women.'

'She is most pure herself, and she preaches purity to all who hear her.'

'Curse preaching. I have preached for these four months.'

'Perhaps she may have some more winning arguments--perhaps--'

'I know. Such a beautiful bit of flesh and blood as she is might get a
hearing, when a grizzled old head-splitter like me was called a dotard.
Eh? Well. It's natural.'

A long silence.

'She is a grand woman. I never saw such a one, and I have seen many.
There was a prophetess once, lived in an island in the Weser-stream--and
when a man saw her, even before she spoke a word, one longed to crawl
to her feet on all fours, and say, "There, tread on me; I am not fit for
you to wipe your feet upon." And many a warrior did it.... Perhaps I may
have done it myself, before now .... And this one is strangely like her.
She would make a prince's wife, now.'

Philammon started. What new feeling was it, which made him indignant at
the notion?

'Beauty? What's body without soul? What's beauty without wisdom? What's
beauty without chastity? Best! fool! wallowing in the mire which every
hog has fouled!'

'Like a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman who is
without discretion.'

'Who said that?'

'Solomon, the king of Israel.'

'I never heard of him. But he was a right Sagaman, whoeve