THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 PAUL TURNER, U.S.M.C.R. 
 
 KILLED IN ACTION, SAIPAN 
 
 JUNE, 1944
 
 HYPATIA 
 
 OR 
 
 NEW FOES WITH AN OLD FACE
 
 H Y P A T I A 
 
 OR 
 
 NEW FOES WITH AN OLD FACE 
 
 Pontoon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1888 
 
 The right of translation and reproduction is reserved
 
 First Edition, 2 vols., Post 8vo (Parker), 1853. 
 New Edition, 1 vol., 1856. 
 
 Nev EdUion(l vol., Crown 8vo, Macmillan and Co.), 1863 ; Reprinted, 1869, 
 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1887. 
 
 New Edition, Crown Bvo, 1888. 
 Eversley Edition, 2 vols., Globe 8vo, 1881. 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.
 
 College 
 Jjibrary 
 
 H * 
 
 /efr 
 
 2Detication 
 
 TO MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER 
 
 MY DEAR PARENTS, 
 
 WHEN you shall have read this book, and 
 considered the view of human relationships which is 
 set forth in it, you will be at no loss to discover why 
 I have dedicated it to you, as one paltry witness of an 
 union and of a debt which, though they may seem to 
 have begun with birth, and to have grown with your 
 most loving education, yet cannot die with death : but 
 are spiritual, indefeasible, eternal in the heavens with 
 that God from whom every fatherhood in heaven and 
 earth is named. 
 
 C. K. 
 
 I
 
 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 furnish- 
 ing that which would satisfy it ; and was teaching mankind, by 
 a long and painful education, to distinguish the truth from its
 
 via PREFACE 
 
 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 mankina 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 organisa- 
 tion, 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 atmo- 
 sphere 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 or having to endure 
 within herself continual outbursts of the evil passions in which 
 her members had once indulged without check ; 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
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 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 j 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 para- 
 mount, 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
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 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 
 ubbles, 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 revolu- 
 tion. 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 heir-loom for nations yet unborn ; and laid in 
 foreign lands, by unconscious agents, the foundations of all 
 European thought and Ethics. 
 
 But the health of s, 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 indi- 
 vidual 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
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 onward, wave over wave, in a steady south-western current, 
 across the whole Roman territory, and only stopping and recoil- 
 ing 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 
 blest 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, con- 
 fined 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 tramp- 
 ling upon each other on the frontiers of the Empire. The Huns, 
 singly their inferiors, pressed them from behind with the irre- 
 sistible weight of numbers ; Italy, with her rich cities and fer- 
 tile 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 horsehide ; 
 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
 
 Xll PREFACE 
 
 Alps, to give their name for ever to the plains of Lombardy. 
 A tew more tumultuous years, and the Franks would find them- 
 selves lords of the Lower Rhineland ; and before the hairs of 
 Hypatia's scholars had grown gray, the mythic Hengst 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 Var- 
 angens 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 Salyian and his contemporaries, the Vandal con- 
 querors 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 slaveholders, doomed to utter extermina- 
 tion 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 which had 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
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 relationships and duties and therein, to the God who had ap- 
 pointed 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 villanies of the Byzantine court ; the ever-downward career 
 of Eastern Christianity went on unchecked for two more miser- 
 able 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 in- 
 vaders, strong by living trust in that living God, whom the 
 Christians, while they hated and persecuted each other for argu- 
 ments about Him, were denying and blaspheming in every 
 action of their lives. 
 
 But at the period whereof this story treats, the Grseco- 
 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 lifeblpod 
 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, Brah- 
 minic 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
 
 xiv PREFACE 
 
 authentic history, especially Socrates's account of the closing 
 scene, as given in Book vii. 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 haying 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 ex- 
 posing my mistakes, shall teach me and the public somewhat 
 more about the last struggle between the Young Church and the 
 Old World.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE LAUEA 1 
 
 II. THE DYING WORLD 10 
 
 III. THE GOTHS 24 
 
 IV. MIRIAM 34 
 
 V. A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 44 
 
 VI. THE NEW DIOGENES 63 
 
 VII. THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME 70 
 
 VIII. THE EAST WIND . . 82 
 
 IX. THE SNAPPING OF THE Bow 95 
 
 X. THE INTERVIEW 103 
 
 XI. THE LAURA AGAIN 112 
 
 XII. THE BOWER OF ACRASIA 120 
 
 XIII. THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 130 
 
 XIV. THE ROCKS OF THE SIRENS ... . 148 
 XV. NEPHELOCOCCUGIA 153 
 
 XVI. VENUS AND PALLAS 161 
 
 XVII. A STRAY GLEAM 174 
 
 XVIII. THE PREFECT TESTED 181 
 
 XIX. JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS 192 
 
 XX. SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER . 202 
 
 XXI. THE SQUIRE-BISHOP . . . .222
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 - P o?? 
 
 XXII. PANDEMONIUM 244 
 
 XXIII. NEMESIS .... 
 
 XXIV. LOST LAMBS .260 
 
 XXV. SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 275 
 
 XXVI. MIRIAM'S PLOT 
 
 XXVII. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 
 
 XXVIII. WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 XXIX. NEMESIS 
 XXX. EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 330
 
 HYPATIA 
 
 OK 
 
 NEW FOES WITH AN OLD FACE 
 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 eves 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 ? 
 
 dS B H
 
 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 clifls, 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 1 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 engraven, 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
 
 I THE LAURA 3 
 
 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 sneer- 
 ing 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 1 . . . 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 hut 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 !
 
 IIYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Was the thought bearable ! was it possible ! Millions upon 
 millions burning for ever for Adam's fall. . . . Could God be 
 just in that? . . . 
 
 It was the temptation of a fiend ! He had entered the un- 
 hallowed 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 store- 
 house, 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 there- 
 fore 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-furni- 
 ture 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
 
 i THE LAUKA 5 
 
 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 con- 
 tinual 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 first fruits 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 ;
 
 G HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 and on the bank, . . . not very near, . . . there were two 
 creatures . . . with lone 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 recol- 
 lected 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 con- 
 fession 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.
 
 i THE LAUKA 7 
 
 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 re- 
 spected 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 deli- 
 cate 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, 
 ana 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
 
 8 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 '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 wa.stcd his substance with riotous living. 
 Thou shalt go, my son. But first come after me, and speak 
 with Aufugus.' 
 
 Philammon, like every one 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 ques- 
 tions 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 1 1 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 hand, 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 pray- 
 ing, 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 
 tight. 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
 
 i THE LAURA 9 
 
 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 worse than 
 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 dis- 
 tress 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 sen- 
 tence 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 had 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
 
 10 HYPATIA (HAP. 
 
 face of man ; but look not on the face of woman. In .-in evil 
 hour came they into the world, the mothers of ;ill 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, Philam- 
 mon 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 others 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 Alex- 
 andria, 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, and trumpeting from the Menagerie, a 
 short way off, on the opposite side of the street. The attraction
 
 it THE DYING WORLD 11 
 
 of the situation lay, perhaps, in the view which it commanded 
 over the wall of the Museum gardens, of flower-beds, shrub- 
 beries, 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 chest- 
 nuts, figs and palm-trees. The place seemea 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 
 held 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 with- 
 out 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 mos- 
 quito nets of the courtyard windows, was one of exquisite cool- 
 ness, 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 a 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 out- 
 line 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 Koman citizen, the gold embroidered
 
 12 HYl'ATIA (HAP. 
 
 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 have envied 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 her- 
 self. 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 disap- 
 pointments. ... 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
 
 ii THE DYING WORLD 13 
 
 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 1 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 Pytha- 
 goras, 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 ex- 
 pressed, 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
 
 14 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 worship every word of mine as an oracle, lounging in the after- 
 noon round Pelagia's litter ; and then at night for I know that 
 thev do it the dice, and the wine, and worse. That Pallas her- 
 self 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 up- 
 stairs.' 
 
 ' 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 offer- 
 ing 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 rascal- 
 dom 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
 
 ii THE DYING WORLD 15 
 
 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 body-guards 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 unphilo- 
 sophically 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 per- 
 plexed 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. 
 till, 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 1 ' 
 
 'Cyril?' 
 
 'Cyril.' 
 
 ' Justice.' 
 
 ' Ah, Fairest Wisdom, don't mention that horrid woi'd 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 sand-hills outside. 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 Constanti- 
 nople riots re-enacted here ? I really cannot face it ; I have not 
 nerve for it ; perhaps I am too lazy. Be it so.'
 
 16 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Hypatia sighed. ' Ah, that your excellency but saw the groat 
 duel which depends on you alone ! Dp not fancy that the battle \ 
 is merely between Paganism and Christianity 
 
 ' Why, if it were, you know, I, as a Christian, under a Chris- ' 
 tian 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 barbarianism. The struggle is simply one be-/ 
 tween the aristocracy and the mob, between wealth, refine- 
 ment, 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 protept 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 ! ' l 
 
 '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- 
 
 1 These are the arguments and the language which were commonly em- 
 ployed by Porphyry, Julian, and the other opponents of Christianity.
 
 n THE DYING WORLD 17 
 
 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 be just 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 almshouses 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 excel- 
 lency, or this proud bishop, govern Alexandria ? ' 
 
 ' Keally, 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 know- 
 ledge, 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 
 
 C ii
 
 18 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 pro- 
 pitious 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 osten- 
 tatiously low salutation, which could not hide, and indeed was 
 not intended to hide, the contemptuous and lazy expression of 
 liis 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 or white Nisseans, is not this ? And only 
 one grey foot among all the four.'
 
 ii THE DYING WORLD 19 
 
 '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 Gyrene, 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 disgust- 
 ingly 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 horse- 
 back 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,
 
 20 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 and will send for the old Erictho this very afternoon. Now 
 listen a moment to base, earthly, and political business. Cyril 
 lias 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 inten- 
 tion. 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 or 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 Csesareum. A very handsome fellow, after all, though he 
 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 
 lias ! ' 
 
 '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.'
 
 ii THE DYING WORLD 21 
 
 ' 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 Sera- 
 peium 1 ' 
 
 1 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 
 ot 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, Kaphael 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.'
 
 22 IIYPATIA OKAP. 
 
 '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 
 liimself 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 especi- 
 ally, 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 beat 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
 
 THE DYING WORLD 23 
 
 to write to you to stop yours, and to starve out the 
 ternal 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 Kabbis 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 ; and applied to me. I 
 never lend money it is unphilpsophical : 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 vin- 
 tage, my Ilaphael. 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. J^ow, 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.'
 
 24 HYPATIA C-HAP. 
 
 ' My good friend, my debts are far too numerous for me to 
 think of paying any or them. But what wages does he want?' 
 
 ' The purple.' 
 
 Orestes started, and then fell into thought. Eaphael 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 bad dish 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 Alex-
 
 in THE GOTHS 25 
 
 andria 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 mysteri- 
 ously 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 1 He 
 wished to see the world . . . that might be carnal. True j 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 shrunk 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, on board of which armed men, in uncoutli 
 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 con- 
 tinually 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 pair 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
 
 26 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 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 paralys- 
 ing terror in it, even then, when life seemed just about to open 
 on him anew. But the monk was a man, ana 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 hip- 
 popotamus 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 
 he 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 him- 
 self 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
 
 in THE GOTHS 27 
 
 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 unor- 
 namented the costume of his race, the white linen leggings, 
 strapped with thongs of deerskin, the quilted leather cuirass, 
 the bear's-f ur 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 mat- 
 tress, 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
 
 28 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 deep- 
 ened 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 inter- 
 preter, 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 fljing, as by row- 
 ing 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 ^Ethiopia in ^Ethiopian 
 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 Thpr'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-
 
 in THE GOTHS . 29 
 
 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 them- 
 selves, 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 Tasked 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.' 
 
 4 Don't look so cross at me, Prince Wulf : I'm sure it's not my 
 fault j I could only say what the monk tola me,' whispered poor 
 Pelagia. 
 
 ' Who looks cross at you, my queen 1 ' 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
 
 30 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 wo 
 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 those donkey- 
 riders in two days, and hang up that lying prefect who sent us 
 here on 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 Constanti- 
 nople. 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 ! 
 Wnen my fathers swore to be Odin's men, and gave up the 
 kingdom to the holy Amals, the sons of the Msir, 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 vEsir ? ' 
 
 ' 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 :
 
 in THE GOTHS 31 
 
 ' 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 can'st, 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 Mes- 
 sina 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 soiig ! ' 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 drank blood enough to satisfy Odin ten times 
 over ? If he wants us, let 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 
 over 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 
 uplifted 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 verv 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
 
 32 HYPATIA (MAP. 
 
 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 
 Ids 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 deliber- 
 ately 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 turn- 
 ing 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 objection-
 
 in THE GOTHS 33 
 
 able 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. Aad 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 ! '
 
 34 HYPATIA (ii M-. 
 
 C 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 gripe grows the firmer 
 the longer he holds, because the spirit of Odin comes upon him. 
 I watched the boy's hands on my throat ; 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, ' lie can as well row us as 
 be 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 01 Pallas Athene will condescend 
 to charms and magic ? Send her up.' 
 
 The girl retreated, with a look half of awe, half of doubt at
 
 iv MIRIAM 35 
 
 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. But 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 grey 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 1 ' 
 
 'Perhaps the letter itself will tell the beautiful lady, the 
 fortunate lady, the discerning lady,' answered she, in a fawn- 
 ing, 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
 
 36 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 Here ? Even Artemis has her Endymion ; Athene 
 alone remains unwedded ; but only because Hephaestus was too 
 rough a wooer. Such is not he who now offers to the repre- 
 sentative of Athene the opportunity of sharing that which may 
 be with the help of her wisdom, which without her is impossible. 
 Qwnavra ffwtroiffiv. 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 untamed, 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 !
 
 iv MIRIAM 37 
 
 Luxurious, frivolous, heartless courting my society, as he has 
 clone 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 grey 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 grey 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 carea 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 ! ... Re- 
 member Julian ! ' 
 
 Hypatia's arms dropped suddenly. Yes j 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
 
 38 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 doorway, praying in his heart to all gods and demons, prin- 
 cipalities and! powers, from Athene down to his daughter's 
 guardian spirit, to move a determination which lie 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. It 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 Hying 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,
 
 iv MIRIAM 39 
 
 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 sprung. Could she see the stem 
 there ? the connection between the pure and supreme Reason, 
 and the hideous caresses of the debauched and cowardly Orestes 1 
 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 1 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 im- 
 proved, 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 con- 
 versation 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 l>e fool enough to 
 carry a message without knowing what it is ? Don't be angry ;
 
 40 HYPATIA rim'. 
 
 she won't tell. She would give one of those two grave-lights 
 there, which she calls her eyes, to see the thing prosper.' 
 
 ' 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 1 Negro-boys ? ' 
 
 ' Anything you like.' 
 
 ' Taken. Come in, slaves ? ' 
 
 And Hypocorisma entered, pouting. 
 
 ' That Jewish fury is outside with a letter, and has the im- 
 pudence 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 hip- 
 popotamus 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 1 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 Csesareum 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 bar- 
 barous 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.
 
 iv MIRIAM 41 
 
 '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 per- 
 formance 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 my- 
 self 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 Alex- 
 andria.' 
 
 ' 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 prob- 
 ably 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 had 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 1 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
 
 42 HYPATIA DIM-. 
 
 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 aid 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 to 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 Cau- 
 casian mules ? Done 1 Be it so.' 
 
 ' Well, you are the most charming counsellor for a poor per- 
 plexed 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 1 ' 
 
 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 ! '
 
 iv MIRIAM 43 
 
 '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 1 ' 
 
 '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 
 Csesars. 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 MI 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.'
 
 44 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' 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 tour 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 
 something, 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 some- 
 thing 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 number- 
 less canal-mouths, now fast falling into ruin with the fields to 
 which they ensured fertility, under the pressure of Roman ex- 
 tortion 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 them- 
 selves, when the next morning dawned, among the countless
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 45 
 
 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 com- 
 panions. 
 
 ' 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 fellows ! 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
 
 46 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 unconcerned, and found suddenly that their presence was abso- 
 lutely 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 dp 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 ad- 
 dressed, a little lean, swarthy fellow, with merry black eyes, 
 who, with a basket of fruit at his feet, was sunning himself on
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 47 
 
 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 T 
 
 '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 natter 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. Per- 
 haps you will assist me by carrying this basket of fruit ?' And 
 the little man jumped up, put his Dasket on Philammon 's head, 
 and trotted off up a neighbouring street.
 
 48 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Philammon followed, half contemptuous, half wondering at 
 what this philosophy might be, which could feed the self-conceit 
 of anything so abject as his 1'agged 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 thi'ough 
 the great Moon-gate into the ample street beyond, drove every- 
 thing 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 now. 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 Csesareum 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
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 49 
 
 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, top 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 gor- 
 geousness 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 genera- 
 tions 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 Csesareum, 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 Csesareum. It has become temporarily a church. 
 The immortal gods have, for the time being, condescended to 
 waive their rights ; but it is the Csesareum, 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 un- 
 worthiness. . . . 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 deliver- 
 ing the fruit to a black porter, made a polite obeisance to 
 
 E H
 
 50 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Philammon, and seemed on the point of taking his depar- 
 ture. 
 
 ' But where is the archbishop's house 1 ' 
 
 ' Close to the Serapeium. You cannot miss the place : four 
 hundred columns of marble, now ruined by Christian perse- 
 cutors, 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 non- 
 entity, 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. IT 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 ?'
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 51 
 
 ' 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 
 finger, and extending it playfully towards Philammon, per- 
 formed 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 philo- 
 sopher 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 
 earth worn drudge ; in a word, the theatre ; which your patri- 
 arch, 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
 
 52 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 Hicra \ ? 
 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 lie 
 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 philoso- 
 phically 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 differ- 
 ences, 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 further progress, but left a full view 
 01 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 or 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 suffer- 
 ing ceased for ever in the poor mangled body. 
 
 ' They have killed him ! Martyred him ! Back to the arch- 
 bishop ! To the patriarch's house : he will avenge us ! ' And 
 as the horrible news, and the watchword which followed it,
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 53 
 
 passed outwards througli 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 free- 
 masonry 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 Alex- 
 andria 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 out- 
 rages 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 ! '
 
 54 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' The prefect, your holiness 1 ' asked the other voice, slily. 
 
 1 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 look- 
 ing 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 some- 
 thing 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?'
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 55 
 
 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. Cleito- 
 phon 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 or- 
 ganised 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 m 
 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
 
 56 HYPATIA rii.\r 
 
 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, with- 
 out the least thought of doing anything noble or self-sacrificing, 
 he had truly done, being a monk. And so he thi ew 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 im- 
 pressions ; 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 
 or 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 out- 
 stripped 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 !
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 57 
 
 '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 signt, 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 hope- 
 ful. 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 iust in time to strike 
 his new weapon full into the third pursuer's face. The man put 
 liis 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,
 
 58 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 dis- 
 appearing 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 acquaint- 
 ances already ! True, Providence having sent into the world 
 about as many women as men, it may be difficult to keep out of 
 their way altogether. Perhaps, too, Providence may have in- 
 tended them to be of some use to that other sex, with whom it 
 has so mixed them up. Don't argue, poor Philammon ; Alex- 
 ander'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
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 59 
 
 at once, thought fit, either from Jewish obstinacy, or sheer be- 
 wilderment, 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 lane of glittering figures 
 poured across the road, dropped their spear-butts on the pave- 
 ment 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 1 Why are you not quietly in your 
 beds, you Alexandrian rascals ? ' 
 
 ' Alexander's church is on fire,' answered Philammon, think- 
 ing 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 re- 
 moved, 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 guardhouse.' A fine thing to boast of,' thought Phil- 
 ammon, 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 him- 
 self a not unimportant member, on the strength of his late
 
 60 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ftamsonic defeat of Jewish persecutors? At least, lie 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 j if it was on fire, it was either burnt down or saved 
 by this tune ; 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 f Where- 
 with, 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, bar- 
 ricade 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 oi footsteps was heard coming down 
 the street, and every window was crowded in an instant with 
 eager heads ; while reter rushed downstairs to heat the large 
 coppers, having some experience in the defensive virtues of
 
 v A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA 61 
 
 boiling water. The bright moon glittered on a long line of 
 helmets and cuirasses. Thank Heaven ! it was the soldiery. 
 
 ' Are the Jews coming 1 ' '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 ejacula- 
 tions, greeted the soldiers as they passed, and were answered 
 by a cool ' To your perches, and sleep, you noisy chickens, or 
 well 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 day- 
 break. 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, apologeti- 
 cally, '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 t my worthy friend 1 ' 
 
 ' 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, 
 boyf' 
 
 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
 
 62 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 ! ' com- 
 mented 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, any more 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 Mac- 
 cabeus, 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 slum- 
 bered like a child, till he was awakened in the grey 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 ! '
 
 vi THE NEW DIOGENES 63 
 
 ' 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 
 Judseus, 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 Abomina- 
 tion 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 an- 
 nounced, not the bath, but Miriam.
 
 64 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 sleepv 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 philo- 
 sophy 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 
 tome?' 
 
 ' 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
 
 vr THE NEW DIOGENES 65 
 
 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 
 further 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 fore- 
 fathers disobeyed the prophet ; and now we reap the harvest of 
 
 F H
 
 66 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 pave- 
 ment, 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 a foot 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
 
 vr THE NEW DIOGENES 67 
 
 ' 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 Gyrene, and go and study life in Italy with Heraclian's expe- 
 dition. 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
 
 68 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 back, so I shall not be disappointed if you do not. Why 
 should I ?' 
 
 ' Because because-^Oh, 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 1 1 How did I not 1 ' 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 ! 
 No ! 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 1 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 down 
 stairs 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,
 
 vi THE NEW DIOGENES 69 
 
 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 cloth- 
 ing, 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 accommo- 
 date 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 up stairs, my friends. Take care there, sir ! That porce- 
 lain, 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, he 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 awav ; 
 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." '
 
 70 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' 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 respect- 
 fully 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, per- 
 haps, 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 
 s it then familiarity with the great ones of
 
 vii THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME 71 
 
 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 1 
 
 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 stonework too hot to touch with the bare hand, watch- 
 ing 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 morn- 
 ing'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, represented the im- 
 mediate 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 tor- 
 menting his holiness the patriarch.' 
 
 The old priest mumbled some sort of excuse, and the arch- 
 deacon, without deigning a second look at him, said ' Find him 
 a man, brother Peter. Anybody will do. What is that boy 
 Philammon doing there 1 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 further 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 ques- 
 tioned his companions meekly enough, as to who Raphael was. 
 
 ' A friend 01 Hypatia ! ' that name, too, haunted him ; and 
 he began, as stealthily and indirectly as he could, to obtain
 
 72 HYPATIA OTA?. 
 
 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 sorceries ! She is the strange woman 01 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 
 
 Til *1 
 
 Philammon. 
 
 ' Her pupil in whatsoever she can find wherewith 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 Gyrene 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 repro- 
 bate 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
 
 vii THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME 73 
 
 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 informa- 
 tion. 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
 
 74 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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, Maro, Zosimus, and Martiiiian, 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 wher-^e 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 Constanti- 
 nople, or Rome itself. Look now ; there are but seven deacons 
 to this great city, and all its priests ; and they and the arch- 
 deacon are the masters of it and us. They and that Peter 
 manage Cyril's work for him, and when Cyril makes the arch- 
 deacon 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 hypo- 
 crite as lie 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
 
 viz THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME 75 
 
 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 shame- 
 lessness 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 1 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.'
 
 76 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' 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 
 it 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 Constanti- 
 nople 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 vou ! ' 
 
 An embroidered shoe, with a large gold cross on the instep,
 
 vii THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME 77 
 
 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. What- 
 ever 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 nead 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 proceed-
 
 78 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ing 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
 
 vii THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME 79 
 
 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 work- 
 shops, 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 child- 
 hood, 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 haying 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
 
 80 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 the true explanation. How could the Church work freely and 
 healthily while she was crushed and fettered by the rulers of 
 this world 1 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 1 
 Ir 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 luxuri- 
 ous 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 1 Ana 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 com*t, 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 invec- 
 tive ; 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 clays 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 ? '
 
 vii THOSE BY WHOM OFFENCES COME 81 
 
 ' 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 mar- 
 tyrs, 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 1 ' 
 
 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 lie entered. 
 
 ' So you wish to go into the heathen woman's lecture-room, 
 and defy her 1 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, ana rasher in forgetting them. Promise me that, 
 whatever happens, you will not strike the first blow.' 
 
 M do.' 
 
 ' Promise me again, that you will not argue with her.' 
 G H
 
 82 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 '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 martyr- 
 doms 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, Olympio- 
 dorus might have been master of Alexandria, and incense 
 burning before Serapis to this day. Ay, go, and let her con- 
 vert 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 
 Baalpeor, and eat the offerings of the dead ! ' 
 
 And with this encouraging sentence, the two parted for the 
 night. 
 
 CHAPTER VHI 
 
 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 villanous-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,
 
 vni THE EAST WIND 83 
 
 much less the contact, of anything squalid and degraded, re- 
 coiled a little, and bade the attendant slave get rid of the man, 
 with a coin. Several of the younger gentlemen, however, con- 
 sidered 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 further 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 sibyl, 
 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, thns ! ' 
 
 ' Why, then 1 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 . '. .
 
 84 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 1 ? 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 JEtna. 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 tlie 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 
 Macedonian mamma, and his Macedonian sisters, and horses, 
 and parrots, and peacocks, twice over, in any slave-market in
 
 vin THE EAST WIND 85 
 
 the world. Any gentleman who wishes to possess a jewel worth 
 ten thousand gold pieces, will only need to pick it out of the 
 
 Fatter into which I throw it. Scramble for it, you young 
 hsedrias 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 re- 
 stored the Rainbow of Solomon to its original possessor. Fare- 
 well, 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 ap- 
 proach 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 sne 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 ener- 
 vated Greeks who surrounded her. And even in those matters 
 in which he professed himself her pupil, she had long been al- 
 ternately delighted by finding that he alone, of all her school,
 
 86 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 certain- 
 ties ; 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 authori- 
 ties, 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 philo- 
 sophies 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 Gyrene, 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 pur- 
 pose 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 ! . . . 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
 
 viii THE EAST WIND 87 
 
 wrought any deliverance on the earth, as indeed the event 
 proved. Plutarch of Athens ? He was superannuated. Syri- 
 anus ? 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 sacri- 
 fice 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,
 
 88 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 were ever visible as phantoms of flesh and blood before the 
 eyes of men 1 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 Cata- 
 logue of ships. What has the philosopher lost, though the 
 former were proved to be contradictory, and the latter inter- 
 polated ? 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 uncon- 
 sciously 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 seem- 
 ing 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.
 
 viii THE EAST WIND 89 
 
 It was Philammon's. He had been listening to the whole 
 lecture, and yet not so much listening as watching, in bewilder- 
 ment, 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 1 ' 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,
 
 90 IIYl'ATIA ci 
 
 Whereby lie 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 ^Egis-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 Placos, 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 Idomenens,
 
 viii THE EAST WIND 91 
 
 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 mother's heart rejoice.' 
 Thus saying, on the hands of his dear wife
 
 92 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 He laid the child ; and she received liiin back 
 In fragrant bosom, smiling through her tears. 1 
 
 ' Such is the myth. Do you fancy that in it Homer meant to 
 hand down to the admiration of ages such earthly common- 
 places as a mother's brute affection, and the terrors 01 an infant ? 
 Surely the deeper insight of the philosopher may be allowed 
 without the reproach of fancif ulness, to see in it the adumbra- 
 tion 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 t 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, ^Ether 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 Keason ; unseen, tremendous, im- 
 movable, 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 Eeason 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 
 
 1 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 ' ?
 
 viir THE EAST WIND 93 
 
 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 in- 
 dividuals 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 per- 
 fect 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, them- 
 selves 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 wnich 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 Asty- 
 anax, 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 eye- 
 balls, 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 1 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
 
 94 HYPATIA (HAP. 
 
 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 1 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 con- 
 fessed 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 de- 
 gradation, 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 dewdrop which fell from 
 heaven shall rise to heaven again, shaking oft' 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 find 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 aspira- 
 tions awakened echoes in his own heart echoes too, just such 
 as the prayers and lessons of the Laura used to awaken 1 If 
 the fruit was so like, must not the root be like also ? . . . Could 
 that be a counterfeit 1 That a minister of Satan in the robes of 
 an angel of light ? Light, at least, it was : purity, simplicity,
 
 ix THE SNAPPING OF THE BOW 95 
 
 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 ! Eash 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 appre- 
 ciating 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 tor thee, insensate wretch ! Theon sent mebreath- 
 less 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 witli his companions,
 
 96 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 through lanes and alleys hideous with filth and poverty, com- 
 pulsory 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 send- 
 ing 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 had 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 neigh- 
 bouring 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 re- 
 ligious exercise, which by its proximity to the great city accus- 
 tomed 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, ana 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 or 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 anti- 
 podal to the government of the remote and needy, though no 
 less industrious commonwealths of Crenobites, who dotted the 
 lonely mountain-glens, far up into the heart of the Nubian 
 desert. In such a one Philammon had received, from a vener- 
 able 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
 
 ix THE SNAPPING OF THE BOW 97 
 
 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 Philam- 
 mon 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 Chris- 
 tian 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 him- 
 self 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 scan- 
 dalous 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 Sunday 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 Philammpn 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-hidden pride, a faith in their own infallibility, a con- 
 temptuous 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 desola- 
 tion 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, 
 
 II H
 
 98 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 when at some mention of Orestes, and of Hypatia as his coun- 
 sellor, they broke out into open imprecations of God's curse, 
 and comforted themselves with the prospect of everlasting tor- 
 ment 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 f ' 
 
 Faint, and low, and distant, was that whisper, like the mutter 
 of an earthquake miles below the soil. And yet, like the earth- 
 quake-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 re- 
 turned 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 
 first fruits 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 hanging 
 about the courtyard, talking earnestly and angrily. A large 
 party of monks fresh from Mtria, 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 de- 
 graded 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 com- 
 panions, in no measured terms, to revenge some insult offered 
 to the Church. 
 
 'What is the matter?' asked Philammon of a quiet portly
 
 ix THE SNAPPING OF THE BOW 99 
 
 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 plun- 
 dered 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 explo- 
 sion, 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 ex- 
 pression, 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 dis- 
 appointment and disgust, it was intolerable ; and in an instant
 
 100 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 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 deter- 
 mined 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 per- 
 secutors 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
 
 ix THE SNAPPING OF THE BOW 101 
 
 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 dark- 
 ness ; 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 1 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 
 Sungate 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
 
 102 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 tilled 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 1 
 . . . 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 ; 
 hut the full blaze ol 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 motion- 
 less, 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 Phil- 
 ammon, wearied out, found himself soon wandering back to the 
 Laura in quiet dreams, beneath the balmy, semi-tropic night.
 
 x THE INTERVIEW 103 
 
 CHAPTEK 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 
 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, arid 
 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 or 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 orabs, 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 Philamrnon was alone in the world with the two strug- 
 gling 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 dead-lock 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 1 ' 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, arid 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 
 Csesareum there, behind you.'
 
 104 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Philammon answered sulkily enough something inarticulate. 
 
 ' Ho, ho ! Quarrelled with the successor of the Apostles 
 already 1 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, charg- 
 ing 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 
 
 S'unge in the sea, followed the hospitable little fellow to 
 ypatia'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 Phil- 
 ammon's heart. 
 
 ' Judith ! Judith ! where lingerest thou ? Marble of Pen- 
 telicus ! 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 Phil- 
 ammon to a stool ; while she retreated, and stood humbly
 
 x THE INTERVIEW 105 
 
 waiting on her lord and master, who did not deign to intro- 
 duce 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 negress 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 par- 
 doned, 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 wert a 
 kindred spirit, my brother, though thou knewest it not. There- 
 fore 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. Simi- 
 lar 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
 
 106 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 question, but he had by no means stopped eating when lie 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 ir 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 descend- 
 ants 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 reverend ' 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 rem- 
 nants, 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
 
 x THE INTERVIEW 107 
 
 whose duties the want of an arm or a leg might have inter- 
 fered.' 
 
 ' 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 contempla- 
 tion of the ineffable ? I could not relinquish those luxuries. 
 So having, by the bounty of Hypatia and her pupils, saved a 
 small sum, 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 ! . . . Now ! ... At last ! . . . 
 His knees 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 ! . . . IJut 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 he 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 ;
 
 108 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 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 the 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 he kept his eyes 
 turned from the face, the more he 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, per- 
 haps, 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 in- 
 dignant, 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
 
 x THE INTERVIEW 109 
 
 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. 
 
 4 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 prose- 
 lyte, and when they have found him, make him twofold 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 sacra- 
 ment 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 sym- 
 bolism, 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. 
 
 ' GCH I forgive you. But know before you go, that the celes- 
 tial milk which fell from Here's bosom, bleaching the plant 
 which it touched to everlasting whiteness, was not more taint- 
 less 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
 
 110 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 that great ancient world of which I know nothing of whose 
 mysteries, they say, you alone possess the key ! I am a Chris- 
 tian ; 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 in- 
 wardly 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 for- 
 giveness, such as the richest and noblest in Alexandria are glad 
 to purchase with many an ounce of gold a ticket of free ad- 
 mission 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,
 
 x THE INTERVIEW 111 
 
 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 Boating 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 1 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 1 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 father's 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. 1 thought I had 
 found one and the moment that I had lost him, behold, I find
 
 112 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 instru- 
 ment, 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 counsellor. . . . 
 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 every- 
 thing 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 ap- 
 proaching 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 Auf ugus. 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 com- 
 panion, after watching him for some time in silence, recom- 
 menced 
 
 ' What is it, my brother ? I have remarked lately a melan- 
 choly 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."'
 
 XI 
 
 THE LAURA AGAIN 113 
 
 ' 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 there- 
 fore 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, 
 uke 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 behaved to us even as 
 they find us. If they see us cast down and faithless, they terrify 
 us still more, that they may plunge us in despair. But if they 
 see us full 01 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 vet things are revealed, to men upon their beds, in 
 visions 01 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 
 
 I H
 
 114 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 me, my friend, though I doubt not that such things are, it is the 
 clay, 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 disputa- 
 tions, which breed ortly 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 lire. 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 van- 
 ished, leaving the stream to sparkle round the rocks, like the 
 living, twinkling eye of the whoje 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
 
 xi THE LAURA AGAIN 115 
 
 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, hung 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 Scetis, 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 1 ' 
 
 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 1 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, com pleter 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 t But as for more abstraction, are we so worldly here in 
 Scetis? 7 
 
 ' 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
 
 116 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 will cling to me in spite of myself even here. I cannot help 
 watching the doings of others, studying their characters, plan- 
 ning 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 1 ' 
 
 '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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 witli 
 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 desper- 
 ately cast themselves from cliffs or ripped up their own bodies, 
 in the longing to escape from thoughts, from which one com- 
 panion, 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 per- 
 fect, 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 phan- 
 tasms, 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 dis- 
 cern 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
 
 xi THE LAURA AGAIN 117 
 
 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 be- 
 come 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 
 lea vest not the Laura for the desert with my good will. I would 
 rather, had I my wish, see thy wisdom installed somewhere
 
 118 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 Eeader. I come 
 from Cyril, with letters and messages to the brother Au- 
 fugus.' 
 
 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 Auf ugus ? ' 
 
 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 con- 
 sidered 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 1 ' 
 
 '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
 
 xi THE LAURA AGAIN 119 
 
 Peter, taking no notice of the interruption, went on to Ar- 
 senius 
 
 ' 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 pos- 
 sible, he thought, that your experience might undertake the 
 mission.' 
 
 ' Me ? Who am. I ? Alas ! alas ! fresh temptation 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 
 l^een with us three days before he beat me openly in the patri- 
 arch'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 Mm, and he
 
 120 HYPATIA 
 
 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 had 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 him, 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 trea- 
 sures 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
 
 xii THE BOWER OF ACRASIA 121 
 
 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 re- 
 bellion, and Orestes's 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 conscious- 
 ness 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 whicli to fulfil that lofty mis- 
 sion. 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
 
 122 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 Mtesogoths, 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 in- 
 tellectual 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 Gpderic. 
 ' 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 
 
 Sot their wind again, we found each pair of dogs with a deer 
 own between them and what can man want more, if he can- 
 not 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 1 '
 
 xii THE BOWER OF ACRASIA 123 
 
 ' No and I don't care.' 
 
 ' I do,' quoth Agilmund, with a look of superior wisdom ; ' I 
 saw a philosopher the other day.' 
 
 4 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 hit upon a great inductive law. 
 
 4 Ah,' said Pelagia, looking up with her most winning smile, 
 4 they are not such giants as you, who make a poor little woman 
 feel like a gazelle in the 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 ? ' 
 
 4 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.' 
 
 4 She was very much wasted then, on such soft - handed 
 starvelings. Why don't she marry some hero 1 ' 
 
 1 Because there are none here to marry,' said Pelagia ; * ex- 
 cept some who are fast netted, I fancy, already.' 
 
 4 But what do they talk about, and tell people to do, these 
 philosophers, Pelagia ? ' 
 
 4 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.' 
 
 4 She must have been an Alruna-maiden,' said Wulf, half to 
 himself.
 
 124 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 '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 Agilmuncl ; 'about ice, and pine- 
 trees, and snow-storms. 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 throw her arms round the 
 great bull-neck, and drew it down to her. 
 
 ' Will you hear my saga 1 ' 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 Air una- 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, '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, 
 lien 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,
 
 xii THE BOWER OF ACRASIA 125 
 
 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,
 
 126 HYPATIA 
 
 '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 
 1 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 ;
 
 xii THE BOWER OF ACRASIA 127 
 
 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-hairred 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. 
 1 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 ! ' 1 
 
 1 This punning legend may be seen in Paul Warnefrid's Oesia Langobar- 
 dorum. The metre and language are intended as imitations of those of 
 the earlier Eddaic poems.
 
 128 HYPATIA CIIAP. 
 
 ' There ! ' said Wulf, when the song was ended ; ' is that cool 
 enougli 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 JEsir 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 under- 
 stand, 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 sleep- 
 ing, to suck their blood, and steal along, and steal along, and 
 jump upon you so ! ' 
 
 Pelagia, during the saga, had remained looking into the foun- 
 tain, 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 crea- 
 tures, Amalric 1 '
 
 xii THE BOWER OF ACRASIA 129 
 
 ' 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 ? ' 
 
 ' 1 1 Afraid 1 ' 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 ! Look out 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.'
 
 130 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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. Sensa- 
 tions ? 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 any- 
 thing 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 1 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 
 deaa dolls, wooden, worked with wires, which are petitiones 
 princijrii. . . . Each philosopher begs the question in hand, and 
 then marches forward, as brave as a triumph, and prides him- 
 self 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 start- 
 ing, 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 
 Astronomies 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 TroO <TTU for the apex of my inverted pyramid. But she
 
 xin THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 131 
 
 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 1 How do I know 
 that there is any one else for me not to be 1 I, or rather some- 
 thing, 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 
 
 Siaintest ! Would it not be more philosophical to conclude 
 at 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 1 Hercules ! what 
 a creative genius my sensorium must be ! I'll take to writing 
 poetry a mock-epic, in seventy -two books, entitled " The Uni- 
 verse : 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 ? Hvpatia 
 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
 
 132 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 1 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 aoorless 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. 
 
 1 Brave old Sun ! ' said Raphael, ' how merrily he flashes off 
 the sword -blades yonder, and never cares that every tiny 
 sparkle 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 sen- 
 sations. 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 in- 
 fallibly 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-leggea phan- 
 tasm 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 sen- 
 sations of my eyeball or something else who cares 1 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 phan- 
 tasm seemed to come and plant me 1 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 !
 
 xin THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 133 
 
 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 ! 
 Oh, 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
 
 134 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 1 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 1 True ? 
 What is truth ? Why should a thing be the worse for being 
 illogical 1 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 1 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 me 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 wprld, 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 some- 
 thing to do instead of it ; and you are not I, and as good as I,
 
 xni THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 135 
 
 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 lellow, 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 trans- 
 formation? 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
 
 136 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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.
 
 xin THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 137 
 
 ... '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 ? What 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 con- 
 ceited 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 forefathers 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
 
 138 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 earth be an animal 1 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 1 . . . Look into a fisherman's net, and 
 see what forms are there ! Because it does not speak 1 . . . 
 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 
 
 farasites. . . . Positively, it looks more probable than anything 
 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 1 ' 
 
 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 retuni. 
 
 '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 be taken 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 up 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
 
 xni THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 139 
 
 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 1 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 com- 
 menced 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 stop- 
 ping to thank him, she ran to a heap of fallen stones and beams, 
 and began digging wildly with all her little strength, breath- 
 lessly 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.
 
 1 40 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 lace 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 neck ; 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, mar- 
 vellously 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 them- 
 selves 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 1 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. Philo- 
 sophy is superfluous in a world where all are fools.'
 
 xni THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS HI 
 
 ' Do you include yourself under that title 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 r 
 
 ' 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 1 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 him 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 him would lead them to Ostia by an unfre- 
 quented route. 
 
 ' If we arrive there before sundown, we are saved,' said lie. 
 
 ' 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 him 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 star- 
 vation. 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 him good-evening. And in the mean- 
 time 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.
 
 142 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Again and again he found himself looking at her. She was, un- 
 deniably, 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 him full-eyed, as free from 
 
 Erudery as it was from coquetry. . . . ' A lady she is,' said he to 
 imself ; ' but evidently no city one. There is nature or some- 
 thing 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 drank 
 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 1 
 
 ' 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
 
 xin THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 143 
 
 coins yherewith to prevent it, perhaps I may be able to find you 
 them in Ostia.' 
 
 She looked at him 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 cry- 
 ing ; 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 him 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 
 behowling your fate like Achilles on the shores of Styx, or pre- 
 tending 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 con- 
 fessed yourself a fool just now.' 
 
 ' And it would be long, would it not, before you made one of
 
 144 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 him that he is one, when he fancied himself the 
 wisest of the wise ? Listen to me, sir. Four months 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 vnl- 
 
 S'ne determination of his. . . . "An instrument in the hands of 
 od, my dear brother. . . . We must obey His call, even to the 
 death," etc. etc.' And Raphael laughed bitterly. 
 
 ' You know the Count 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 in- 
 spiration. 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 him 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!'
 
 xni THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 145 
 
 ' 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 thou- 
 sand ugly possibilities began to crowd up. 
 
 ' Suppose we found the gates of Ostia shut, and the Imperial- 
 ists 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 j the mule weary also ; and 
 as they crawled along, at a pace which made it certain that the 
 fast pa'ssing 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, had 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 him to eschew even sandals as unworthy the self-depend- 
 ence 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 ? 
 
 L 1!
 
 146 HYFATIA CHAP. 
 
 'I expected this,' said the Prefect, in a slow stately voice. 
 4 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 him 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. 
 
 4 How long have you learned to disobey me 1 Lift the old 
 disgraced man down, sir, and leave him to die in the right place 
 on the battle-field 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. 
 4 Authority vanishes before old age and humiliation. Victoria ! 
 has your father no sins to answer for already, that you will send 
 him 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. 
 
 4 1 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 him over 
 the bank, sir ! Lift him over, while I run forward and meet 
 them. My death will delay them long enough for you to save 
 him!' 
 
 ' Death 1 ' cried Raphael, seizing her by the arm. ' If that 
 were all ' 
 
 4 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 him up the steep bank : but 
 his knees knocked together ; a faint sweat seemed to melt every 
 limb. . . . There was a pause, which seemed ages long. . . . 
 Nearer and nearer came the trampling. ... A sudden gleam of 
 the moon revealed Victoria standing with outspread arms, right
 
 xin THE BOTTOM OF THE ABYSS 147 
 
 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 1 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 -justifi- 
 cation, 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 or the young Tribune, who 
 carried Victoria before him. Two soldiers in the meantime were 
 supporting the Prefect on his mule, and convincing that stub- 
 born 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 ana 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 volun- 
 teer to ride back into the enemy's ranks, on the chance of an 
 old man's breathing still.'
 
 148 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' 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 know- 
 ledge. 
 
 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 beauti- 
 ful 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 holv 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 him with counsel and 
 encouragement earth knows no fairer bonds than these, save 
 wedded love itself. And that second relation, motherly rather
 
 xiv THE ROCKS OF THE SIRENS 149 
 
 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 him 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 he 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 trans- 
 ferred, 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 
 Eudsemon'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 approba- 
 tion, and went home to pour out nis soul to his host on the one 
 inexhaustible theme which they had in common Hypatia and 
 her perfections. He would have raved often enougn 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
 
 150 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 lie 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
 
 xiv THE ROCKS OF THE SIRENS 151 
 
 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 1 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. 
 Eudaemon 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 that 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
 
 152 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 any- 
 thing for everything ! Would that he could have the enjoy- 
 ment 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, psycho- 
 logies, 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 per- 
 sonality 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 dis- 
 agreeable 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
 
 xv THE ROCKS OF THE SIRENS 153 
 
 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 organisa- 
 tion, 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 imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 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 Iphi- 
 genia- 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 genera- 
 tion 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 mar- 
 tyrdom, 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 lamblichus, 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 Philam- 
 mon any of those points on which she differed from his former 
 faith. She was content to let the divine light of philosophy
 
 154 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 penetrate by its own power, and educe its own conclusions. 
 But one day, at the very time at which this history re-opens, 
 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 unbiassed answer in my presence.' 
 
 4 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 faith- 
 fully based it ?' 
 
 ' Oh, as much as a living body differs from a dead one. In- 
 stead of mere dry disquisitions on the properties of lines and 
 curves, I found a mine of poetry and theology. Every dull mathe- 
 matical formula seemed transfigured, as if by a miracle, into the 
 symbol of some deep and noble principle of the unseen world.' 
 
 4 And do you think that he or 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 de- 
 generate days, must interpret and display each detail to the 
 dull ears of men.' 
 
 4 Do you think, my young friend,' asked Theon, ' that mathe- 
 matics 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.' 
 
 4 Or conic sections, that we may know better how to construct 
 machinery ; or rather to devise from them symbols of the rela- 
 tions of Deity to its various emanations 1 ' 
 
 '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 philo- 
 sophy was to be found in those minute investigations of words
 
 xv NEPHELOCOCCUGIA 155 
 
 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 en- 
 lightened soul might be led up to the inner sanctuary, to the Hes- 
 perid gardens and golden fruit of the Timseus 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." 1 
 
 ' 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 exalta- 
 tion of the soul which beholds it. But, consider, is it not, as the 
 one perfect figure, the very syjnbol 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 undefin- 
 able 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 
 
 1 This astounding speech is usually attributed to Proclus, Hypatia's 
 ' great ' successor.
 
 156 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 deter- 
 mined by the centre of that circle 1 ' 
 
 Philammon stood rebuked. 
 
 ' Do not be ashamed : you have only, unwittingly, laid open an- 
 other, and perhaps, as deep a symbol. Can you guess what it is 1 ' 
 
 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 thence- 
 forth, 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.' 
 
 4 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.
 
 xv NEPHELOCOCCUGIA 157 
 
 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 occu- 
 pies 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 re- 
 main of its loveliness. . . . 
 
 'Yes' she went on, after the method of her school, who pre- 
 ferred, 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 mis- 
 guided 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.'
 
 158 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' 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 t 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 philoso- 
 phers 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 explana- 
 tion, ' do you so dislike Christianity ? may it not be one of the 
 many methods '
 
 xv NEPHELOCOCCUGIA 159 
 
 'Because,' she answered, interrupting him impatiently, 'be- 
 cause 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 anthropo- 
 morphic adumbration of divine things fitted for the base and 
 toiling herd ; perhaps peculiarly fitted, because peculiarly 
 nattering 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 Eudsemon's house, as I do,' answered Philam- 
 mon 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 liainbow 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.
 
 160 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 '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 
 tilings by their money price. If that agate had been worth 
 money, I would never have accepted it.' 
 
 ' Take the ring, take it, my darling,' whispered Theon impati- 
 ently ; ' 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 bid- 
 ding. 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 say- 
 ing, " 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
 
 xvi VENUS AND PALLAS 161 
 
 avert ! And surely she has had the great daemon 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 after- 
 noon, 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 dis- 
 mount, 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 them anything more worth listen- 
 ing 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 re- 
 turned no answer. 
 
 ' I think my bodyguard will well bear comparison with yours. 
 
 M H
 
 162 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 under- 
 stood 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 under- 
 stand me 1 ' 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.' 
 
 1 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,
 
 xvi VENUS AND PALLUS 163 
 
 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 con- 
 tempt 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 her- 
 self, 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,
 
 164 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 had awakened in her a dread that perhaps 
 the Amal might despise her. . . . Why, she could not guess : 
 but what sort of women were those Alrunag, of whom Wulf 
 sung, of whom even the Amal and his men spoke with reverence, 
 as something nobler, not only than her, but even than them- 
 selves ? 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 bewilder- 
 ment 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 dis- 
 contented not with herself, for was she not Pelagia the 
 perfect 1 but with these strange fancies which came into other 
 people's heads. Why should not every one be as happy as they 
 could 1 And who knew better than she how to be happy, and 
 to make others happy ? . . . 
 
 ' Look at that ola 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 beauti- 
 ful as you are destined to the flames of hell for ever?' 
 
 ' The flames of hell ? ' said Pelagia, with a shudder. ' What 
 for?' 
 
 ' Dp you not know ? ' asked the old man, with a look of sad 
 surprise. ' Have you forgotten what you are ? ' 
 I never hurt a fly !' 
 
 ' Why do you look so terrified, my darling ? What have you
 
 xvi VENUS AND PALLUS 165 
 
 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 1 ' 
 
 ' Heaven forbia ! I have nothing in common with such 
 animals but flesh and blood, and a seat in the lecture-room ! ' 
 
 ' Of the heathen woman 1 ' 
 
 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 1 ' 
 
 ' I have, and 
 
 ' And,' went on Philammon, interrupting him, ' you have been
 
 166 HYPATIA (HAP. 
 
 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 
 
 lie, 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 false- 
 hoods, 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 Philam- 
 mon'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 mid- 
 night 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 sus- 
 picious 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 1 ' 
 
 'All Alexandria knows the shameless abomination,' inter- 
 rupted 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 old 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.'
 
 xvi VENUS AND PALLUS 167 
 
 'An evil-eyed old Jewess V 
 
 ' 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 jour- 
 ney, 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 1 ' 
 
 '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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 ana 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 f reedwoman 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 like- 
 wise : but he remembered his promise, and kept it. 
 
 ' Y ou both know something of her, I can f:ee. You cannot
 
 168 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 earnest 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 ? '
 
 xvi VENUS AND PALLUS 169 
 
 '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 helpmate, 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, Hy-
 
 170 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 patia herself what were they to him now 1 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 ! ' 
 
 'lleaven 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 foot- 
 steps 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 philo- 
 sopher ? ' 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 super- 
 fluous. 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.'
 
 xvi VENUS AND PALLUS 171 
 
 'Forgive and forget? That is my part not his. Will he 
 right me against that tyrant and his crew 1 Will he proclaim 
 me openly to be an innocent and persecuted man, unjustly 
 beaten and driven forth for obeying his own commands 1 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 or 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 con- 
 spiracy 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
 
 172 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 <lrag 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 aie 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 Eoman 
 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.
 
 xvi VENUS AND PALLUS 173 
 
 ' 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 snatch- 
 ing 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 pi 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 con-
 
 174 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 trary 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 toss- 
 ing 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 1 . . . And yet it was but one, and 
 that one of the least known and most trivial, of the tragedies 
 of that age of woe j one petty death -spasm among the un- 
 numbered 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
 
 xvn A STRAY GLEAM 175 
 
 so cunningly in them, had become her curse and her destruc- 
 tion. . . . 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 ful- 
 filled.' . . . 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 lag- 
 ging 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
 
 176 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 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 home- 
 less 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 awhile, ' 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 nurse'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 des- 
 tinies 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.' 
 
 'lam 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 
 
 ' 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.'
 
 xvn A STRAY GLEAM 177 
 
 ' 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 Syn- 
 esius 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 ques- 
 tionable arguments for 1 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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 unreasonmgly 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 demonstra- 
 tion 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, 
 
 N H
 
 178 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 sir, I began to suspect that the creed which could produce sucli 
 deeds as I have watched within the last few days, might have 
 on its side not merely a slight preponderance of probabilities, 
 but what we Jews used once to call, when we believed in it or 
 in anything the mighty power of God.' 
 
 And as he spoke, lie 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 base- 
 ness, 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 moi'e 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.' 
 
 ' V ictorius ! 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.
 
 xvir A STRAY GLEAM 179 
 
 ' 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 expedi- 
 tion. . . . 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 pur 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 toward 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. Recol- 
 lect 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 dp not yet believe in God 1 ' 
 
 Victoria sighed. ' I will not believe you. Why always pre- 
 tend 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.
 
 180 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' 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 dedi- 
 cate her to the service of God. And in such times as these, what 
 better lot for a defenceless girl 1 ' 
 
 ' Pardon me ! ' said Raphael ; ' but I am too dull to compre- 
 hend what benefit or pleasure your Deity will derive from the 
 celibacy of your daughter. . . . Except, indeed, on one supposi- 
 tion, 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 con- 
 tempt 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, tor 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
 
 xvni THE PREFECT TESTED 181 
 
 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 fulfil- 
 ment 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 creatures 
 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 he 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 tilings 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
 
 182 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 thought ! He blushed scarlet at the bare imagination : yet 
 why, in his secret heart, was that the most pleasant hypothesis 
 of them all ? Arid 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 charm- 
 ing 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 for 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 1 ' 
 
 ' 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.
 
 xvm THE PREFECT TESTED 183 
 
 '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 court-yard 
 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 back- 
 ward 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 pair 
 of the prettiest hands in Alexandria seized 011 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 up 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.
 
 184 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' 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 
 
 et who would not, on occasion, help to make away with a 
 ttle of the mutton which he guarded. Eh, my venerable sir 1 ' 
 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 
 
 4 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.'
 
 xvin THE PREFECT TESTED 185 
 
 ' 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 Csesars, 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 judi- 
 cial formalities, considered generally to be conducive to the 
 stability, if not necessary to the existence, of the Koman 
 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 f ' 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 to-night, 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
 
 186 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 shoulder, who hung back in perplexity, and cast a piteous look 
 towards Wulf. 
 
 Wulf answered it by a shake of the head, which gave Philam- 
 mon 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 at 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 ! '
 
 xviii THE PREFECT TESTED 187 
 
 ' 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 
 liim indignant at the notion ? 
 
 ' Beauty ? What's body without soul ? What's beauty without 
 wisdom ? What's beauty without chastity ? Beast ! fool ! wal- 
 lowing 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 r 
 
 ' Solomon, the king of Israel.' 
 
 ' I never heard of him. But he was a right Sagaman, who- 
 ever said it. And she is a pure maiden, that other one 1 ' 
 
 ' Spotless as the ' blessed Virgin, Philammon was going to 
 say but checked himself. There were sad recollections about 
 the words. 
 
 Wulf sat silent for a few minutes, while Philammon 's thoughts 
 reverted at once to the new purpose for which alone life seemed 
 worth having. ... To find his sister ! That one thought had 
 in a few hours changed and matured the bojr into the man. 
 Hitherto he had been only the leaf before the wind, the puppet 
 of every new impression ; but now circumstance, which had been 
 leading him along in such soft fetters for many a month, was 
 become his deadly foe ; and all his energy and cunning, all his 
 little knowledge of man and of society, rose up sturdily and 
 shrewdly to fight in this new cause. Wulf was now no longer a 
 phenomenon to be wondered at, but an instrument to be used. 
 The broken hints which he had just given of discontent with 
 Pelagia's presence inspired the boy with sudden hope, and
 
 188 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 cautiously he began to hint at the existence of persons who 
 would be glad to remove her. Wulf caught at the notion, and 
 replied to it with searching questions, till Philammon, finding 
 plain speaking the better part of cunning, told him openly the 
 whole events of the morning, and the mystery which Arsenius 
 had half revealed, and then shuddered with mingled joy and 
 horror, as Wulf, after ruminating over the matter for a weary 
 five minutes, made answer 
 
 ' And what if Pelagia herself were your sister ? ' 
 
 Philammon was bursting forth in some passionate answer, 
 when the old man stopped him, and went on slowly, looking him 
 through and through 
 
 ' Because, when a penniless young monk claims kin with a 
 woman who is drinking out of the wine-cups of the Csesars, and 
 filling a place for a share of which kings' daughters have been 
 thankful and will be again before long why then, though an 
 old man may be too good-natured to call it all a lie at first sight, 
 he can't help supposing that the young monk has an eye to his 
 own personal profit, eh 1 ' 
 
 ' My profit ? ' cried poor Philammon, starting up. ' Good God ! 
 what object on earth can I have, but to rescue her from this 
 infamy to purity and holiness 1 ' 
 
 He had touched the wrong chord. 
 
 ' Infamy ? you accursed Egyptian slave ! ' cried the Prince, 
 starting up in his turn, red with passion, and clutching at the 
 whip which hung over his head, ' Infamy ? As if she, and you 
 too, ought not to consider yourselves blest in her being allowed 
 to wash the feet of an Amal ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, forgive me ! ' said Philammon, terrified at the f ruits of 
 his own clumsiness. 'But you forget you forget, she is not 
 married to him ! ' 
 
 ' Married to him ? A f reedwoman ? No ; thank Freya ! he 
 has not fallen as low as that, at least : and never shall, if I kill 
 the witch with my own hands. A freedwoman ! ' 
 
 Poor Philammon ! And he had been told but that morning 
 that he was a slave. He hid his face in his hands, and burst into 
 an agony of tears. 
 
 'Come, come,' said the testy warrior, softened at once. 
 ' Woman's tears don't matter ; but somehow I never could bear 
 to make a man cry. When you are cool, and have learnt common 
 courtesy, we'll talk more about this. So ! Hush ; enough is 
 enough. Here comes the supper, and I am as hungry as Loke.' 
 
 And he commenced devouring like his namesake, ' the gray 
 beast of the wood,' and forcing, in his rough hospitable way, 
 Philammon to devour also, much against his will and stomach. 
 
 ' There. I feel happier now ! ' quoth Wulf, at last. ' There is 
 nothing to be done in this accursed place but to eat. I get no 
 fighting, no hunting. I hate women as they hate me. I don't 
 know anything, indeed, that I don't hate, except eating and
 
 xvin THE PREFECT TESTED 189 
 
 singing. And now, what with those girls' vile unmanly harps 
 and flutes, no one cares to listen to a true rattling war-song. 
 There they are at it now, with their catterwauling, squealing all 
 together like a set of starlings on a foggy morning ! We'll 
 have a song too, to drown the noise.' And he burst out with a 
 wild rich melody, acting, in uncouth gestures and a suppressed 
 tone of voice, the scene which the words described : 
 
 An elk looked out of the pine forest ; 
 He snuffed up east, he snuffed down west, 
 Stealthy and still. 
 
 His mane and his horns were heavy with snow ; 
 I laid my arrow across my bow, 
 
 Stealthy and still. 
 
 And then, quickening his yoice, as his whole face blazed up into 
 fierce excitement 
 
 The bow it rattled, the arrow flew, 
 It smote his blade-bones through and through, 
 Hurrah ! 
 
 I sprang at his throat like a wolf of the wood, 
 And I warmed my hands in the smoking blood, 
 Hurrah ! 
 
 And, with a shout that echoed and rang from wall to wall, and 
 pealed away above the roofs, he leapt to his feet with a gesture 
 and look of savage frenzy which made Philammon recoil. But 
 the passion was gone in an instant, and Wulf sat down again, 
 chuckling to himself 
 
 ' There that is something like a warrior's song. That makes 
 the old blood spin along again ! But this debauching furnace 
 of a climate ! no man can keep his muscle, or his courage, or his 
 money, or anything else in it. May the gods curse the day 
 when first I saw it ! ' 
 
 Philammon said nothing, but sat utterly aghast at an out- 
 break so unlike Wulf s usual caustic reserve, and stately self- 
 restraint, and shuddering at the thought that it might be an 
 instance of that daemoniac possession to which these barbarians 
 were supposed by Christians and by Neo-Platonists to be pecu- 
 liarly subject. But the horror was not yet at its height ; for in 
 another minute the doors of the women's court flew open, and, 
 attracted by Wulf's shout, out poured the whole Bacchanalian 
 crew, with Orestes, crowned with flowers, and led by the Amal 
 and Pelagia, reeling in the midst, wine-cup in hand. 
 
 ' There is my philosopher, my preserver, my patron saint ! ' 
 hiccuped he. Bring him to my arms, that I may encircle his 
 lovely neck with pearls of India, and barbaric gold ! '
 
 190 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' For God's sake let me escape ! ' whispered he to Wulf, as the 
 rout rushed upon him. Wulf opened the door in an instant, and 
 he dashed through it. As he went, the old man held out his 
 hand 
 
 ' Come and see me again, boy ! Me only. The old warrior 
 will not hurt you ! ' 
 
 There was a kindly tone in the voice, a kindly light in the 
 eye, which made Philammon promise to obey. He glanced one 
 look back through the gateway as he fled, and just saw a wild 
 whirl of Goths and girls, spinning madly round the court in the 
 world-old Teutonic waltz ; while, high above their heads, in the 
 uplifted arms of the mighty Amal, was tossing the beautiful 
 figure of Pelagia, tearing the garland from her floating hair to 
 pelt the dancers with its roses. And that might be his sister ! 
 He hid his face and fled, and the gate shut out the revellers from 
 his eyes ; and it is high time that it should shut them out from 
 ours also. 
 
 Some four hours more had passed. The revellers were sleep- 
 ing off their wine, and the moon shining bright and cold across 
 the court, when Wulf came out, carrying a heavy jar of wine, 
 followed by Smid, a goblet in each hand. 
 
 'Here, comrade, out into the middle, to catch a breath of 
 night-air. Are all the fools asleep ? ' 
 
 ' Every mother's son of them. Ah ! this is refreshing after 
 that room. What a pity it is that all men are not born with 
 heads like ours ! ' 
 
 ' Very sad indeed,' said Wulf, filling his goblet. 
 
 ' What a quantity of pleasure they lose in this life ! There 
 they are, snoring like hogs. Now, you and I are good to finish 
 this jar, at least. 
 
 ' And another after it, if our talk is not over by that time.' 
 
 ' Why, are you going to hold a council of war ? ' 
 
 ' That is as you take it. Now, look here, Smid. Whomsoever 
 I cannot trust, I suppose I may trust you, eh ? ' 
 
 ' Well ! ' quoth Smid, surlily putting down his goblet, ' that 
 is a strange question to ask of a man who has marched, and 
 hungered, and plundered, and conquered, and been well beaten 
 by your side for five-and-twenty years, through all lands between 
 the Wesel and Alexandria ! ' 
 
 'I am growing old, I suppose, and so I suspect every one. 
 But hearken to me, for between wine and ill-temper out it must 
 come. You saw that Alruna- woman ? ' 
 
 ' Of course.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Why, did not you think she would make a wife for any 
 man?' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 ' And why not for our Amal ? '
 
 xviii THE PREFECT TESTED 191 
 
 ' That's his concern as well as hers, and hers as well as ours.' 
 
 ' She 1 Ought she not to think herself only too much hon- 
 oured by marrying a son of Odin ? Is she going to be more 
 dainty than Placidia ? ' 
 
 ' What was good enough for an emperor's daughter must be 
 good enough for her.' 
 
 ' Good enough ? And Adolf only a Bait, while Amalric is a 
 full-blooded Amal Odin's son by both sides ? ' 
 
 ' I don't know whether she would understand that.' 
 
 ' Then we would make her. Why not carry her off, and marry 
 her to the Amal whether she chose or not ? She would be well 
 content enough with him in a week, I will warrant.' 
 
 ' But there is Pelagia in the way.' 
 
 ' Put her out of the way, then.' 
 
 ' Impossible.' 
 
 ' It was this morning ; a week hence it may not be. I heard 
 a promise made to-night which will do it, if there be the spirit 
 of a Goth left in the poor besotted lad whom we know of.' 
 
 ' Oh, he is all right at heart ; never fear him. But what was 
 the promise ? ' 
 
 ' I will not tell till it is claimed. I will not be the man to 
 shame my own nation and the blood of the gods. But if that 
 drunken Prefect recollects it why let him recollect it. And 
 what is more, the monk-boy who was here to-night ' 
 
 ' Ah, what a well-grown lad that is wasted ! ' 
 
 ' More than suspects and if his story is true, I more than 
 suspect too that Pelagia is his sister.' 
 
 ' His sister ! But what of that ? ' 
 
 'He wants, of course, to carry her off, and make a nun of 
 her.' 
 
 ' You would not let him do such a thing to the poor child ? ' 
 
 ' If folks get in my way, Smid, they must go down. So much 
 the worse for them : but old Wulf was never turned back yet 
 by man or beast, and he will not be now.' 
 
 ' After all, it will serve the hussy right. But Amalric ? ' 
 
 ' Out of sight, out of mind.' 
 
 ' But they say the Prefect means to marry the girl.' 
 
 ' He ? That scented ape ? She would not be such a wretch.' 
 
 ' But he does intend ; and she intends too. It is the talk of 
 the whole town. We should have to put him out of the way 
 first.' 
 
 ' Why not ? Easy enough, and a good riddance for Alexandria. 
 Yet if we made away with him we should be forced to take the 
 city too ; and I doubt whether we have hands enough for that.' 
 
 'The guards might join us. I will go down to the barracks 
 and try them, if you choose, to-morrow. I am a boon-companion 
 with a good many of them already. But, after all, Prince Wulf 
 of course you are always right ; we all know that but what's 
 the use of marrying this Hypatia to the Amal ? '
 
 192 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' Use ? ' said Wulf, smiting down his goblet on the pavement. 
 ' Use ? you purblind old hamster-rat, who think of nothing but 
 filling your own cheek-pouches ! to give him a wife worthy of 
 a hero, as he is, in spite of all a wife who will make him sober 
 instead of drunk, wise instead of a fool, daring instead of a 
 sluggard a wife who can command the rich people for us, and 
 give us a hold here, which if once we get, let us see who will 
 break it ! Why, with those two ruling in Alexandria, we might 
 be masters of Africa in three months. We'd send to Spain for 
 the Wendels, to move on Carthage ; we'd send up the Adriatic 
 for the Longbeards to land in Pentapolis ; we'd sweep the whole 
 coast without losing a man, now it is drained of troops by that 
 fool Heraclian's Roman expedition ; make the Wendels and 
 Longbeards shake hands here in Alexandria ; draw lots for 
 their shares of the coast ; and then ' 
 
 'And then what?' 
 
 ' Why, when we had settled Africa, I would call out a crew 
 of picked heroes, and sail away south for Asgarcl I'd try that 
 Red Sea this time and see Odin face to face, or die searching 
 for him.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' groaned Smid. ' And I suppose you would expect me 
 to come too, instead of letting me stop halfway, and settle there 
 among the dragons and elephants. Well, well, wise men are 
 like moorlands ride as far as you will on the sound ground, 
 you are sure to come upon a soft place at last. However, I will 
 go down to the guards to-morrow, if my head don't ache.' 
 
 ' And I will see the boy about Pelagia. Drink to our plot ! ' 
 
 And the two old iron-heads drank on, till the stars paled out, 
 and the eastward shadows of the cloister vanished in the blaze 
 of dawn. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS 
 
 THE little porter, after having carried Arsenius's message to 
 Miriam, had run back in search of Philammon and his foster- 
 father ; and not finding them, had spent the evening in such 
 frantic rushings to and fro, as produced great doubts of his 
 sanity among the people of the quarter. At last hunger sent 
 him home to supper ; at which meal he tried to find vent for 
 his excited feelings in his favourite employment of beating his 
 wife. Whereon Miriam's two Syrian slave-girls, attracted by 
 her screams, came to the rescue, threw a pail of water over him, 
 and turned him out of doors. He, nothing discomfited, likened 
 himself smilingly to Socrates conquered by Xantippe ; and, 
 philosophically yielding to circumstances, hopped about like a 
 tame magpie for a couple of hours at the entrance of the alley, 
 pouring forth a stream of light raillery on the passers-by, which
 
 xix JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS 193 
 
 several times endangered his personal safety - } till at last 
 Philammon, hurrying breathlessly home, rushed into his arms. 
 
 ' Hush ! Hither with me ! Your star still prospers. She 
 calls for you.' 
 
 'Who?' 
 
 ' Miriam herself. Be secret as the grave. You she will see 
 and speak with. The message of Arsenius she rejected in 
 language which it is unnecessary for philosophic lips to repeat. 
 Come ; but give her good words as are fit to an enchantress 
 who can stay the stars in their courses, and command the spirits 
 of the third heaven 
 
 Philammon hurried home with Eudsemon. Little cared he 
 now for Hypatia's warning against Miriam. . . . Was he not in 
 search of a sister ? 
 
 1 So, you wretch, you are back again ! ' cried one of the girls, 
 as they knocked at the outer door of Miriam's apartments. 
 ' What do you mean by bringing young men here at this time 
 of night?' 
 
 'Better go down, and beg pardon of that poor wife of yours. 
 She has been weeping and praying for you to her crucifix all 
 the evening, you ungrateful little ape ! ' 
 
 ' Female superstitions but I forgive her. . . . Peace, barbarian 
 women ! I bring this youthful philosopher hither by your 
 mistress's own appointment.' 
 
 ' He must wait, then, in the ante-room. There is a gentleman 
 with my mistress at present.' 
 
 So Philammon waited in a dark, dingy ante-room, luxuriously 
 furnished with faded tapestry, and divans which lined the walls ; 
 and fretted and fidgeted\ while the two girls watched him over 
 their embroidery out 01 the corners of their eyes, and agreed 
 that he was a very stupid person for showing no inclination to 
 return their languishing glances. 
 
 In the meanwhile, Miriam, within, was listening, with a 
 smile of grim delight, to a swarthy and weather-beaten young 
 Jew. 
 
 ' I knew, mother in Israel, that all depended on my pace ; and 
 night and day I rode from Ostia toward Tarentum : but the 
 messenger of the uncircumcised was better mounted than I ; I 
 therefore bribed a certain slave to lame his horse, and passed 
 him by a whole stage on the second day. Nevertheless, by night 
 the Philistine had caught me up again, the evil angels helping 
 him : and my soul was mad within me. 
 
 ' And what then, Jonadab Bar-Zebudah ? ' 
 
 'I bethought me of Ehud, and of Joab also, when he was 
 pursued by Asahel, and considered much of the lawfulness of 
 the deed, not being a man of blood. Nevertheless, we were 
 together in the darkness, and I smote him.' 
 
 Miriam clapped her hands. 
 
 'Then putting on his clothes, and taking his letters and
 
 194 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 credentials, as was but reasonable, I passed myself off for the 
 messenger of the emperor, and so rode the rest of that journey 
 at the expense of the heathen ; and I hereby return you the 
 balance saved.' 
 
 'Never mind the balance. Keep it, thou worthy son of 
 Jacob. What next?' 
 
 ' When I came to Tarentum, I sailed in the galley which I 
 had chartered from certain sea-robbers. Valiant men they 
 were, nevertheless, and kept true faith with me. For when 
 we had come halfway, rowing with all our might, behold another 
 galley coming in our wake and about to pass us by, which I 
 knew for an Alexandrian, as did the captain also, who assured 
 me that she had come from hence to Brundusium with letters 
 from Orestes.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 ' It seemed to me both base to be passed, and more base to 
 waste all the expense wherewith you and our elders had charged 
 themselves ; so 1 took counsel with the man of blood, offering 
 him, over and above our bargain, two hundred gold pieces of 
 my own, which please to pay to my account with llabbi Ezekiel, 
 who lives by the Watergate in relusium. Then the pirates, 
 taking counsel, agreed to run down the enemy ; for our galley 
 was a sharp -beaked Liburnian, while theirs was only a mes- 
 senger trireme.' 
 
 'And you did it?' 
 
 'Else had I not been here. They were delivered into our 
 hands, so that we struck them full in mid-length, and they sank 
 like Pharaoh and his host.' 
 
 ' So perish all the enemies of the nation ! ' cried Miriam. 
 ' And now it is impossible, you say, for fresh news to arrive for 
 these ten days 1 ' 
 
 'Impossible, the captain assured me, owing to the rising of 
 the wind, and the signs of southerly storm.' 
 
 ' Here, take this letter for the Chief Rabbi, and the blessing 
 of a mother in Israel. Thou hast played the man for thy 
 people ; and thou shalt go to the grave full of years and hon- 
 ours, with men-servants and maid -servants, gold and silver, 
 children and children's children, with thy foot on the necks of 
 heathens, and the blessing of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to eat 
 of the goose which is fattening in the desert, and the Leviathan 
 which lieth in the great sea, to be meat for all true Israelites at 
 the last day.' 
 
 And the Jew turned and went out, perhaps, in his simple 
 fanaticism, the happiest man in Egypt at that moment. 
 
 He passed out through the ante -chamber, leering at the 
 slave -girls, and scowling at Philammon ; and the youth was 
 ushered into the presence of Miriam. 
 
 She sat, coiled up like a snake, on a divan writing busily in 
 a tablet upon her knees, while on the cushions beside her glit-
 
 xix JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS 195 
 
 tered splendid jewels, which she had been fingering over as a 
 child might its toys. She did not look up for a few minutes ; 
 and Philammon could not help, in spite of his impatience, look- 
 ing round the little room and contrasting its dirty splendour, 
 and heavy odour of wine, and food, and perfumes, with the 
 sunny grace and cleanliness of Greek houses. Against the wall 
 stood presses and chests fretted with fantastic Oriental carving ; 
 illuminated rolls of parchment lay in heaps in a corner ; a lamp 
 of strange form hung from the ceiling, and shed a dim and lurid 
 light upon an object which chilled the youth's blood for a 
 moment a bracket against the wall, on which, in a plate of 
 gold, engraven with mystic signs, stood the mummy of an in- 
 fant's head ; one of those teraphim, from which, as Philammon 
 knew, the sorcerers of the East professed to evoke oracular 
 responses. 
 
 At last, she looked up, and spoke in a shrill, harsh voice. 
 
 ' Well, my fair boy, and what do you want with the poor old 
 proscribed Jewess? Have you coveted yet any of the pretty 
 things which she has had the wit to make her slave -demons 
 save from the Christian robbers ? ' 
 
 Philammon's tale was soon told. The old woman listened, 
 watching him intently with her burning eye ; and then answered 
 slowly 
 
 ' Well, and what if you are a slave 1 ' 
 
 'Am I one, then? Ami?' 
 
 ' Of course you are. Arsenius spoke truth. I saw him buy 
 you at Ravenna, just fifteen years ago. I bought your sister at 
 the same time. She is two-and-twenty now. You were four 
 years younger than her, I should say.' 
 
 ' Oh heavens ! and you know my sister still ! Is she Pelagia ?' 
 
 'You were a pretty boy,' went on the hag, apparently not 
 hearing him. ' If I had thought you were going to grow up as 
 beautiful and as clever as you are, I would have bought you 
 myself. The Goths were just marching, and Arsenius gave only 
 eighteen gold pieces for you or twenty I am growing old, 
 and forget everything, I think. But there would have been 
 the expense of your education, and your sister cost me in train- 
 ing oh what sums ? Not that she was not worth the money 
 no, no, the darling ! ' 
 
 ' And you know where she is ? Oh tell me in the name of 
 mercy, tell me ! ' 
 
 'Why, then?' 
 
 ' Why, then ? Have you not the heart of a human being in 
 you ? Is she not my sister ? ' 
 
 ' Well ? You have done very well for fifteen years without 
 your sister why can you not do as well now? You don't 
 recollect her you don't love her.' 
 
 ' Not love her ? I would die for her die for you if you will 
 but help ine to see her ! '
 
 196 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ' You would, would you ? And if I brought you to her, what 
 then ! What if she were Pelagia herself, what then ? She is 
 happy enough now, and rich enough. Could you make her 
 happier or richer ? ' 
 
 Can you ask ? I must I will reclaim her from the infamy 
 in which I am sure she lives.' 
 
 'Ah ha, sir monk ! I expected as much. I know, none 
 knows better, what those fine words mean. The burnt child 
 dreads the fire ; but the burnt old woman quenches it, you will 
 find. Now listen. I do not say that you shall not see her I 
 do not say that Pelagia herself is not the woman whom you 
 seek but you are in my power. Don't frown and pout. I 
 can deliver you as a slave to Arsenius when I choose. One 
 word from me to Orestes, and you are in fetters as a fugitive.' 
 
 ' I will escape ! ' cried he fiercely. 
 
 'Escape me?' She laughed, pointing to the teraph 'Me, 
 who, if you fled beyond Kaf, or dived to the depths of the ocean, 
 could make these dead lips confess where you were, and com- 
 mand demons to bear you back to me upon their wings ! 
 Escape me ! Better to obey me, and see your sister.' 
 
 Philammon shuddered, and submitted. The spell of the 
 woman's eye, the terror of her words, which he half believed, 
 and the agony of longing, conquered him, and he gasped out 
 
 ' I will obey you only only 
 
 ' Only you are not quite a man yet, but half a monk still, 
 eh ? I must know that before I help you, my pretty boy. Are 
 you a monk still, or a man ? ' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' Ah, ha, ha ! ' laughed she shrilly. ' And these Christian 
 dogs don't know what a man means ? Are you a monk, then 1 
 leaving the man alone, as above your understanding.' 
 
 ' I ? I am a student of philosophy.' 
 
 ' But no man ? ' 
 
 ' I am a man, I suppose.' 
 
 ' I don't ; if you had been, you would have been making love 
 like a man to that heathen woman many a month ago.' 
 
 'I to her?' 
 
 ' Yes, I to her ! ' said Miriam, coarsely imitating his tone of 
 shocked humility. 'I, the poor penniless boy -scholar, to her, 
 the great, rich, wise, worshipped she-philosopher, who holds the 
 sacred keys of the inner shrine of the east wind and just be- 
 cause I am a man, and the handsomest man in Alexandria, and 
 she a woman, and the vainest woman in Alexandria, and there- 
 fore I am stronger than she, and can twist her round my finger, 
 and bring her to her knees at my feet when I like, as soon as I 
 open my eyes, and discover that I am a man. Eh, boy 1 Did 
 she ever teach you that among her mathematics and metaphysics, 
 and gods and goddesses ? ' 
 
 Philammon stood blushing scarlet. The sweet poison had
 
 xix JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS 197 
 
 entered, and every vein glowed with it for the first time in his 
 life. Miriam saw her advantage. 
 
 ' There, there don't be frightened at your new lesson. After 
 all, I liked you from the first moment I saw you, and asked the 
 teraph about you, and I got an answer such an answer ! You 
 shall know it some day. At all events, it set the poor old soft- 
 hearted Jewess on throwing away her money. Did you ever 
 guess from whom your monthly gold-piece came 1 ' 
 
 Philammon started, and Miriam burst into loud, shrill 
 laughter. 
 
 ' From Hypatia, I'll warrant ! From the fair Greek woman, 
 of course vain child that you are never thinking of the poor 
 old Jewess.' 
 
 ' And did you ? did you 1 ' gasped Philammon. ' Have I to 
 thank you, then, for that strange generosity 1 ' 
 
 ' Not to thank me, but to obey me ; for mind, I can prove 
 your debt to me, every obol, and claim it if I choose. But don't 
 fear ; I won't be hard. on you, just because you are in my power. 
 I hate every one who is not so. As soon as I have a hold on 
 them, I begin to love them. Old folks, like children, are fond 
 of their own playthings.' 
 
 ' And I am yours, then ? ' said Philammon fiercely. 
 
 ' You are indeed, my beautiful boy,' answered she, looking up 
 with so insinuating a smile that he could not be angry. ' After 
 all, I know how to toss my balls gently and for these forty 
 years I have only lived to make young folks happy ; so you 
 need not be afraid of the poor soft-hearted old woman. Now 
 you saved Orestes's life yesterday.' 
 
 ' How did you find out that ? ' 
 
 'I? I know everything. I know what the swallows say 
 when they pass each other on the wing, and what the fishes 
 think of in the summer sea. You, too, will be able to guess 
 some day, without the teraph's help. But in the meantime you 
 must enter Orestes's service. Why ? What are you hesitating 
 about ? Do you not know that you are high in his favour ? He 
 will make you secretary raise you to be chamberlain some day, 
 if you know how to make good use of your fortune.' 
 
 Philammon stood in astonished silence ; and at last, 
 
 ' Servant to that man ? What care I for him or his honours ? 
 Why do you tantalise me thus ? I have no wish on earth but 
 to see my sister ! ' 
 
 ' You will be far more likely to see her if you belong to the 
 court of a great officer perhaps more than an officer than if 
 you remain a penniless monk. Not that I believe you. Your 
 only wish on earth, eh ? Do you not care, then, ever to see the 
 fair Hypatia again ? ' 
 
 ' I ? Why should I not see her ? Am I not her pupil ? ' 
 
 'She will not have pupils much longer, my child. If you 
 wish to hear her wisdom and much good may it do you you
 
 198 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 must go for it henceforth somewhat nearer to Orestes's palace 
 than the lecture-room is. Ah ! you start. Have I found you an 
 argument now ? No ask no questions. I explain nothing to 
 monks. But take these letters ; to-morrow morning at the 
 third hour go to Orestes's palace, and ask for his secretary, 
 Ethan the Chaldee. Say boldly that you bring important news 
 of state ; and then follow your star : it is a fairer one than you 
 fancy. Go ! obey me, or you see no sister.' 
 
 Philammon felt himself trapped ; but, after all, what might 
 not this strange woman do for him ? It seemed, if not his only 
 path, still his nearest path to Pelagia ; and in the meanwhile lie 
 was in the hag's power, and he must submit to his fate ; so he 
 took the letters and went out. 
 
 ' And so you think that you are going to have her ? ' chuckled 
 Miriam to herself, when Philammon went out. 'To make a 
 penitent of her, eh ? a nun, or a she-hermit ; to set her to 
 appease your God by crawling on all-fours among the mummies 
 for twenty years, with a chain round her neck and a clog at her 
 ankle, fancying herself all the while the bride of the Nazarene 1 
 And you think that old Miriam is going to give her up to you 
 for that ? No, no, sir monk ! Better she were dead ! . . . 
 Follow your dainty bait ! follow it, as the donkey does the 
 grass which his driver offers him, always an inch from his 
 nose. . . . You in my power ! and Orestes in my power ! . . . 
 I must negotiate that new loan to-morrow, I suppose. ... I 
 shall never be paid. The dog will ruin me, after all ! How 
 much is it, now ? Let me see.' . . . And she began fumbling in 
 her escritoire, over bonds and notes of hand. ' I shall never be 
 paid : but power ! to have power ! To see those heathen 
 slaves and Christian hounds plotting and vapouring, and 
 fancying themselves the masters of the world, and never dream- 
 ing that we are pulling the strings, and that they are our 
 puppets ! we, the children of the promises we, The Nation 
 we, the seed of Abraham ! Poor fools ! I could almost pity 
 them, as I think of their faces when Messiah comes, and they 
 find out who were the true lords of the world, after all ! . . . 
 He must be Emperor of the South, though, that Orestes : he 
 must, though I have to lend him Raphael's jewels to make him 
 so. For he must marry the Greek woman. He shall. She 
 hates him, of course. ... So much the deeper revenge for me. 
 And she loves that monk. I saw it in her eyes there in the 
 garden. So much the better for me, too. He will dangle 
 willingly enough at Orestes's heels for the sake of being near 
 her poor fool ! We will make him secretary, or chamberlain. 
 He has wit enough for it, they say, or for anything. So Orestes 
 and he shall be the two jaws of my pincers, to squeeze what I 
 want out of that Greek Jezebel. . . . And then, then for the 
 black agate ! 
 
 Was the end of her speech a bathos ? Perhaps not ; for as
 
 xix JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS 199 
 
 she spoke the last word, she drew from her bosom, where it 
 hung round her neck by a chain, a broken talisman, exactly 
 similar to the one which she coveted so fiercely, and looked at 
 it long and lovingly kissed it wept over it spoke to it 
 fondled it in her arms as a mother would a child murmured 
 over it snatches of lullabies ; and her grim, withered features 
 grew softer, purer, grander ; and rose ennobled, for a moment, 
 to their long-lost might-have-been, to that personal ideal which 
 every soul brings with it into the world, which shines, dim and 
 potential, in the face of every sleeping babe, before it has been 
 scarred, and distorted, and encrusted in the long tragedy of 
 life. Sorceress she was, pander and slave-dealer, steeped to the 
 lips in falsehood, ferocity, and avarice ; yet that paltry stone 
 brought home to her some thought, true, spiritual, impalpable, 
 unmarketable, before which all her treasures and all her 
 ambition. were as worthless in her own eyes as they were in the 
 eyes of the angels of God. 
 
 But little did Miriam think that at the same moment a 
 brawny, clownish monk was standing in Cyril's private chamber, 
 and indulged with the special honour of a cup of good wine in 
 the patriarch's very presence, was telling to him and Arsenius 
 the following history : 
 
 ' So I, finding that the Jews had chartered this pirate-ship, 
 went to the master thereof, and finding favour in his eyes, hired 
 myself to row therein, being sure, from what I had overheard 
 from the Jews, that she was destined to bring the news to 
 Alexandria as quickly as possible. Therefore, fulfilling the 
 work which his Holiness had intrusted to my incapacity, I 
 embarked, and rowed continually among the rest ; and being 
 unskilled in such labour, received many curses and stripes in 
 the cause of the Church the which I trust are laid to my 
 account hereafter. Moreover, Satan entered into me, desiring 
 to slay me, and almost tore me asunder, so that I vomited 
 much, and loathed all manner of meat. Nevertheless, I rowed 
 on valiantly, being such as I am, vomiting continually, till the 
 heathens were moved with wonder, and forbore to beat me, 
 giving me strong liquors in pity ; wherefore I rowed all the 
 more valiantly day and night, trusting that by my unworthi- 
 ness the cause of the Catholic Church might be in some slight 
 wise assisted.' 
 
 ' And so it is,' quoth Cyril. ' Why do you not sit down, man 1 ' 
 
 'Pardon me,' quoth the monk, with a piteous gesture; 'of 
 sitting as of all carnal pleasure, cometh satiety at the last.' 
 
 'And now,' said Cyril, 'what reward am I to give you for 
 your good service ? ' 
 
 ' It is reward enough to know that I have done good service. 
 Nevertheless if the holy patriarch be so inclined without 
 reason, there is an ancient Christian, my mother according to 
 the flesh '
 
 200 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ' Come to me to-morrow, and she shall be well seen to. And 
 mind look to it, if I make you not a deacon of the city, when I 
 promote Peter.' 
 
 The monk kissed his superior's hand and withdrew. Cyril 
 turned to Arsenius, betrayed for once into geniality by his 
 delight, and smiting his thigh 
 
 'We have beaten the heathen for once, eh?' And then, in 
 the usual artificial tone of an ecclesiastic ' And what would my 
 father recommend in furtherance of the advantage so merci- 
 fully thrown into our hand ? ' 
 
 Arsenius was silent. 
 
 'I,' went on Cyril, 'should be inclined to announce the news 
 this very night, in my sermon.' 
 
 Arsenius shook his head. 
 
 ' Why not 1 why not 1 ' asked Cyril impatiently. 
 
 ' Better to keep it secret till others tell it. Eeserved know- 
 ledge is always reserved strength ; and if the man, as I hope he 
 does not, intends evil to the Church, let him commit himself 
 before you use your knowledge against him. True, you may 
 have a scruple 01 conscience as to the lawfulness of allowing a 
 sin which you might prevent. To me it seems that the sin lies 
 in the will rather than in the deed, and that sometimes I only 
 say sometimes it may be a means of saving the sinner to 
 allow his root of iniquity to bear fruit, and fill him with his own 
 devices.' 
 
 ' Dangerous doctrine, my father.' 
 
 ' Like all sound doctrine a savour of life or of death, accord- 
 ing as it is received. I have not said it to the multitude, but to 
 a discerning brother. And even politically speaking let him 
 commit himself, if he be really plotting rebellion, and then 
 speak, and smite his Babel tower.' 
 
 ' You think, then, that he does not know of Heraclian's defeat 
 already ? ' 
 
 ' If he does, he will keep it secret from the people ; and our 
 chances of turning them suddenly will be nearly the same.' 
 
 'Good. After all, the existence of the Catholic Church in 
 Alexandria depends on this struggle, and it is well to be wary. 
 Be it so. It is well for me that I have you for an adviser.' 
 
 And thus Cyril, usually the most impatient and intractable 
 of plotters, gave in, as wise men should, to a wiser man than 
 himself, and made up his mind to keep the secret, and to 
 command the monk to keep it also. 
 
 Philammon, after a sleepless night, and a welcome visit to 
 the public baths, which the Roman tyranny, wiser in its gene- 
 ration than modern liberty, provided so liberally for its victims, 
 set forth to the Prefect's palace, and gave his message ; but 
 Orestes, who had been of late astonishing the Alexandrian 
 public by an unwonted display of alacrity, was already in the 
 adjoining Basilica. Thither the youth was conducted by an
 
 xix JEWS AGAINST CHRISTIANS 201 
 
 apparitor, and led up the centre of the enormous hall, gorgeous 
 with frescoes and coloured marbles, and surrounded by aisles 
 and galleries, in which the inferior magistrates were hearing 
 causes, and doing such justice as the complicated technicalities 
 of Roman law chose to mete out. Through a crowd of anxious 
 loungers the youth passed to the apse of the upper end, in which 
 the Prefect's throne stood empty, and then turned into a side 
 chamber, where he found himself alone with the secretary, a 
 portly Chaldee eunuch, with a sleek pale face, small pig's eyes, 
 and an enormous turban. The man of pen and paper took the 
 letter, opened it with solemn deliberation, and then, springing 
 to his feet, darted out of the room in most undignified haste, 
 leaving Philammon to wait and wonder. In half an hour he 
 returned, his little eyes growing big with some great idea. 
 
 ' Youth ! your star is in the ascendant ; you are the fortunate 
 bearer of fortunate news ! His Excellency himself commands 
 your presence.' And the two went out. 
 
 In another chamber, the door of which was guarded by armed 
 men, Orestes was walking up and down in high excitement, 
 looking somewhat the worse for the events of the past night, 
 and making occasional appeals to a gold goblet which stood 
 on the table. 
 
 ' Ha ! No other than my preserver himself ! Boy, I will 
 make your fortune. Miriam says that you wish to enter my 
 service.' 
 
 Philammon, not knowing what to say, thought the best 
 answer would be to bow as low as he could. 
 
 ' Ah, ha ! Graceful, but not quite according to etiquette. 
 You will soon teach him, eh, Secretary? Now to business. 
 Hand me the notes to sign and seal. To the Prefect of the 
 Stationaries 
 
 ' Here, your Excellency.' 
 
 ' To the Prefect of the Corn market how many wheat-ships 
 have you ordered to be unladen ?' 
 
 ' Two, your Excellency.' 
 
 ' Well, that will be largess enough for the time being. To the 
 Defender of the Plebs the devil break his neck ! ' 
 
 ' He may be trusted, most noble ; he is bitterly jealous of 
 Cyril's influence. And moreover, he owes my insignificance 
 much money.' 
 
 'Good! Now the notes to the Gaol -masters, about the 
 gladiators.' 
 
 ' Here, your Excellency.' 
 
 'To Hypatia. No. I will honour my bride elect with my 
 own illustrious presence. As I live, here is a morning's work 
 for a man with a racking headache ! ' 
 
 'Your Excellency has the strength of seven. May you live 
 for ever ! ' 
 
 And really, Orestes's power of getting through business, when
 
 202 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 he chose, was surprising enough. A cold head and a colder 
 heart make many things easy. 
 
 But Philammon's whole soul was fixed on those words. ' His 
 bride elect ! ' . . . Was it that Miriam's hints of the day before 
 had raised some selfish vision, or was it pity and horror at such 
 a fate for her for his idol ? But he passed five minutes in a 
 dream, from which he was awakened by the sound of another 
 and still dearer name. 
 
 ' And now, for Pelagia. We can but try.' 
 
 ' Your Excellency might offend the Goth.' 
 
 ' Curse the Goth ! He shall have his choice of all the beauties 
 in Alexandria, and be count of Pentapolis if he likes. But a 
 spectacle I must have ; and no one but Pelagia can dance Venus 
 Anadyomene.' 
 
 Philammon's blood rushed to his heart, and then back again 
 to his brow, as he reeled with horror and shame. 
 
 'The people will be mad with joy to see her on the stage once 
 more. Little they thought, the brutes, how I was plotting for 
 their amusement, even when as drunk as Silenus.' 
 
 ' Your nobility only lives for the good of your slaves.' 
 
 ' Here, boy ! So fair a lady requires a fair messenger. You 
 shall enter on my service at once, and carry this leter to Pelagia. 
 Why 1 why do you not come and take it 1 ' 
 
 ' To Pelagia ? ' gasped the youth. ' In the theatre ? Publicly ? 
 Venus Anadyomene ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, fool ! Were you, too, drunk last night after all 1 ' 
 
 ' She is my sister ! ' 
 
 ' Well, and what of that ? Not that I believe you, you villain ! 
 So ! ' said Orestes, who comprehended the matter in an instant. 
 ' Apparitors ! ' 
 
 The door opened, and the guard appeared. 
 
 ' Here is a good boy who is inclined to make a fool of himself. 
 Keep him out of harm's way for a few days. But don't hurt 
 him ; for, after all, he saved my life yesterday, when you 
 scoundrels ran away.' 
 
 And, without further ado, the hapless youth was collared, and 
 led down a vaulted passage into the guard -room, amid the jeers 
 of the guard, who seemed only to owe him a grudge for his yes- 
 terday's prowess, and showed great alacrity in fitting him with 
 a heavy set of irons ; which done, he was thrust head foremost 
 into a cell of the prison, locked in, and left to his meditations. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 
 
 ' BUT, fairest Hypatia, conceive yourself struck in the face by a 
 great stone, several hundred howling wretches leaping up at
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 203 
 
 you like wild beasts two minutes more, and you are torn limb 
 from limb. What would even you do in such a case ? ' 
 
 ' Let them tear me limb from limb, and die as I have lived.' 
 
 ' Ah, but When it came to fact, and death was staring 
 you in the face 1 ' 
 
 ' And why should man fear death ? ' 
 
 ' Ahem ! No, not death, of course ; but the act of dying. 
 That may be, surely, under such circumstances, to say the least, 
 disagreeable. If our ideal, Julian the Great, found a little dis- 
 simulation necessary, and was even a better Christian than I 
 have ever pretended to be, till he found himself able to throw 
 off the mask, why should not I ? Consider me as a lower being 
 than yourself one of the herd, if you will ; but a penitent 
 member thereof, who comes to make the fullest possible repara- 
 tion, by doing any desperate deed on which you may choose to 
 put him, and prove myself as able and willing, if once I have 
 the power, as Julian himself.' 
 
 Such was the conversation which passed between Hypatia 
 and Orestes half an hour after Philammon had taken possession 
 of his new abode. 
 
 Hypatia looked at the Prefect with calm penetration, not un- 
 mixed with scorn and fear. 
 
 'And pray what has produced this sudden change in your 
 Excellency's earnestness ? For four months your promises have 
 been lying fallow.' She did not confess how glad she would have 
 been at heart to see them lying fallow still. 
 
 ' Because This morning I have news ; which I tell to 
 you the first as a compliment. We will take care that all Alex- 
 andria knows it before sundown. Heraclian has conquered.' 
 
 ' Conquered 1 ' cried Hypatia, springing from her seat. 
 
 'Conquered, and utterly destroyed the emperor's forces at 
 Ostia. So says a messenger on whom I can depend. And even 
 if the news should prove false, I can prevent the contrary report 
 from spreading, or what is the use of being prefect? You 
 demur f Do you not see that if we can keep the notion alive 
 but a week our cause is won 1 ' 
 
 'How so?' 
 
 'I have treated already with all the officers of the city, and 
 every one of them has acted like a wise man, and given me a 
 promise of help, conditional of course on Heraclian's success, 
 being as tired as I am of that priest-ridden court at Byzantium. 
 Moreover, the stationeries are mine already. So are the soldiery 
 all the way up the Nile. Ah ! you have been fancying me idle 
 for these four months, but - Y ou forget that you yourself were 
 the prize of my toil. Could I be a sluggard with that goal in 
 sight?' 
 
 Hypatia shuddered, but was silent ; and Orestes went on : 
 
 ' I have unladen several of the wheat-ships for enormous 
 largesses of bread : though those rascally monks of Tabenne
 
 204 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 had nearly forestalled my benevolence, and I was forced to bribe 
 a deacon or two, buy up the stock they had sent down, and 
 retail it again as my own. It is really most officious of them to 
 persist in feeding gratuitously half the poor of the city ! What 
 possible business have they with Alexandria ? ' 
 
 ' The wish for popularity, I presume.' 
 
 'Just so; and then what hold can the government have on 
 a set of rogues whose stomachs are filled without our help ? ' 
 
 'Julian made the same complaint to the high priest of 
 Galatia, in that priceless letter or his.' 
 
 'Ah, you will set that all right, you know, shortly. Then again, 
 I do not fear Cyril's power just now. He has injured himself 
 deeply, I am happy to say, in the opinion of the wealthy and 
 educated, by expelling the Jews. And as for his mob, exactly 
 at the right moment, the deities there are no monks here, so 
 I can attribute my blessings to the right source have sent us 
 such a boon as may put them into as good a humour as we need.' 
 
 ' And what is that ? ' asked Hypatia. 
 
 ' A white elephant.' 
 
 ' A white elephant ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' he answered, mistaking or ignoring the tone of her 
 answer. ' A real, live, white elephant ; a thing which has not 
 been seen in Alexandria for a hundred years ! It was passing 
 through with two tame tigers, as a present to the boy at Byzan- 
 tium, from some hundred-wived kinglet of the Hyperborean 
 Taprobane, or other no-man's-land in the far East. I took the 
 liberty of laying an embargo on them, and, after a little argu- 
 mentation and a few hints of torture, elephant and tigers are at 
 our service.' 
 
 ' And of what service are they to be 1 ' 
 
 ' My dearest madam Conceive . . . How are we to win 
 
 the mob without a show ? . . . When were there more than two 
 ways of gaining either the whole or part of the Roman Empire 
 by force of arms or force of trumpery ? Can even you invent 
 a third? The former is unpleasantly exciting, and hardly 
 practicable just now. The latter remains, and, thanks to the 
 white elephant, may be triumphantly successful. I have to 
 exhibit something every week. The people are getting tired 
 of that pantomime ; and since the Jews were driven out, the 
 fellow has grown stupid and lazy, having lost the more enthusi- 
 astic half of his spectators. As for horse-racing, they are sick 
 of it. ... Now, suppose we announce, for the earliest possible 
 day a spectacle such a spectacle as never was seen before in 
 this generation. You and I I as exhibitor, you as representa- 
 tive for the time being only of the Vestals of old sit side by 
 side. . . . Some worthy friend has his instructions, when the 
 people are beside themselves with rapture, to cry, " Long live 
 Orestes Caesar ! " . . . Another reminds them of Heraclian's 
 victory another couples your name with mine . . . the people
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 205 
 
 applaud . . . some Mark Antony steps forward, salutes me as 
 Imperator, Augustus what you will the cry is taken up I 
 refuse as meekly as Julius Caesar himself am compelled, blush- 
 ing, to accept the honour I rise, make an oration about the 
 future independence of the southern continent union of Africa 
 and Egypt the empire no longer to be divided into Eastern 
 and Western, but Northern and Southern. Shouts of applause, 
 at two drachmas per man, shake the skies. Everybody believes 
 that everybody else approves, and follows the lead . . . And 
 the thing is won.' 
 
 ' And pray,' asked Hypatia, crushing down her contempt and 
 despair, how is this to bear on the worship of the gods ?' 
 
 'Why . . . why ... if you thought that people's minds were 
 sufficiently prepared, you might rise in your turn, and make an 
 oration you can conceive one. Set forth how these spectacles, 
 formerly the glory of the empire, had withered under Galilsean 
 superstition . . . How the only path toward the full enjoyment 
 of eye and ear was a frank return to those deities, from whose 
 worship they originally sprung, and connected with which they 
 could alone be enjoyed in their perfection. . . . But I need not 
 teach you how to do that which you have so often taught me : 
 so now to consider our spectacle, which, next to the largess, is 
 the most important part of our plans. I ought to have ex- 
 hibited to them the monk who so nearly killed me yesterday. 
 That would indeed have been a triumph of the laws over Chris- 
 tianity. He and the wild beasts might have given the people 
 ten minutes' amusement. But wrath conquered prudence; and 
 the fellow has been crucified these two hours. Suppose, then, 
 we had a little exhibition of gladiators. They are forbidden by 
 law, certainly.' 
 ' ' Thank Heaven, they are ! ' 
 
 ' But do you not see that is the very reason why we, to assert 
 our own independence, should employ them ? ' 
 
 ' No ! they are gone. Let them never reappear to disgrace 
 the earth.' 
 
 ' My dear lady, you must not in your present character say 
 that in public ; lest Cyril should be impertinent enough to 
 remind you that Christian emperors and bishops put them 
 down.' 
 
 Hypatia bit her lip, and was silent. 
 
 ' Well, I do not wish to urge anything unpleasant to you . . . 
 If we could but contrive a few martyrdoms but I really fear 
 we must wait a year or two longer, in the present state of public 
 opinion, before we can attempt that.' 
 
 ' Wait ? wait for ever ! Did not Julian and he must be our 
 model forbid the persecution of the Galilseans, considering 
 them sufficiently punished by their own atheism and self- 
 tormenting superstition ? ' 
 
 'Another small error of that great man. He should have
 
 206 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 recollected that for three hundred years nothing, not even the 
 gladiators themselves, had been found to put the mob in such 
 good humour as to see a few Christians, especially young and 
 handsome women, burned alive, or thrown to the lions.' 
 
 Hypatia bit her lip once more. ' I can hear no more of this, 
 sir. You forget that you are speaking to a woman.' 
 
 'Most supreme wisdom,' answered Orestes, in his blandest 
 tone, ' you cannot suppose that I wish to pain your ears. But 
 allow me to observe, as a general theorem, that if one wishes to 
 effect any purpose, it is necessary to use the means ; and on the 
 whole, those which have been tested by four hundred years' 
 experience will be the safest. I speak as a plain practical 
 statesman but surely your philosophy will not dissent 1 ' 
 
 Hypatia looked down in painful thought. What could she 
 answer 1 Was it not too true ? and had not Orestes fact and 
 experience on his side ? 
 
 ' Well, if you must but I cannot have gladiators. Why not 
 a one of those battles with wild beasts ? They are disgusting 
 enough : but still they are less inhuman than the others : and 
 you might surely take precautions to prevent the men being 
 hurt.' 
 
 ' Ah ! that would indeed be a scentless rose ! If there is 
 neither danger nor bloodshed, the charm is gone. But really 
 wild beasts are too expensive just now ; and if I kill down my 
 present menagerie, I can afford no more. Why not have some- 
 thing which costs no money, like prisoners 1 ' 
 
 1 What ! do you rank human beings below brutes 1 ' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! But they are practically less expensive. 
 Remember, that without money, we are powerless ; we must 
 husband pur resources for the cause of the gods.' 
 
 Hypatia was silent. 
 
 ' Now, there are fifty or sixty Libyan prisoners just brought 
 in from the desert. Why not let them fight an equal number 
 of soldiers ? They are rebels to the empire, taken in war.' 
 
 'Ah, then,' said Hypatia, catching at any thread of self -justi- 
 fication, ' their lives are forfeit in any case.' 
 
 ' Of course. So the Christians could not complain of us for 
 that. Did not the most Christian Emperor Constantino set 
 some three hundred German prisoners to butcher each other in 
 the amphitheatre of Treves ? ' 
 
 ' But they refused, and died like heroes, each falling on his 
 own sword. 
 
 ' Ah those Germans are always unmanageable. My guards, 
 now, are just as stiff-necked. To tell you the truth, J have 
 asked them already to exhibit their prowess on these Libyans, 
 and what do you suppose they answered ? ' 
 
 ' They refused, I hope.' 
 
 ' They told me in the most insolent tone that they were men, 
 and not stage-players ; and hired to fight, and not to butcher.
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 207 
 
 I expected a Socratic dialogue after such a display of dialectic, 
 and bowed myself out.' 
 
 ' They were right.' 
 
 ' Not a doubt of it, from a philosophic point of view ; from 
 a practical one they were great pedants, and I an ill-used 
 master. However, I can find unfortunate and misunderstood 
 heroes enough in the prisons, who, for the chance of their 
 liberty, will acquit themselves valiantly enough ; and I know 
 of a few old gladiators still lingering about the wine shops, 
 who will be proud enough to give them a week's training. So 
 that may pass. Now for some lighter species of representation 
 to follow something more or less dramatic.' 
 
 ' You forget that you speak to one who trusts to be, as soon 
 as she has the power, the high-priestess of Athene, and who in 
 the meanwhile is bound to obey her tutor Julian's commands to 
 the priests of his day, and imitate the Galilseans as much in 
 their abhorrence for the theatre as she hopes hereafter to do in 
 their care for the widow and the stranger.' 
 
 ' Far be it from me to impugn that great man's wisdom. But 
 allow me to remark, that to judge by the present state of the 
 empire, one has a right to say that he failed.' 
 
 ' The Sun-God whom he loved took him to himself, too early, 
 by a hero's death.' 
 
 'And the moment he was removed, the wave of Christian 
 barbarism rolled back again into its old channel.' 
 
 ' Ah ! had he but lived twenty years longer ! ' 
 
 ' The Sun-God, perhaps, was not so solicitous as we are for 
 the success of his high-priest's project.' 
 
 Hypatia reddened was Orestes, after all, laughing in his 
 sleeve at her and her hopes ? 
 
 ' Do not blaspheme ! ' she said solemnly. 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! I only offer one possible explanation of a 
 plain fact. The other is, that as Julian was not going quite the 
 right way to work to restore the worship of the Olympians, the 
 Sun-God found it expedient to withdraw him from his post, and 
 now sends in his place Hypatia the philosopher, who will be 
 wise enough to avoid Julian s error, and not copy the Galilaeans 
 too closely, by imitating a severity of morals at which they are 
 the only true and natural adepts. 
 
 ' So Julian's error was that of being too virtuous ? If it be 
 so, let me copy him, and fail like him. The fault will then not 
 be mine, but rate's.' 
 
 ' Not in being too virtuous himself, most stainless likeness of 
 Athene, but in trying to make others so. He forgot one half of 
 Juvenal's great dictum about "Panem and Circenses," as the 
 absolute and overruling necessities of rulers. He tried to give 
 the people the bread without the games. . . . And what thanks 
 he received for his enormous munificence, let himself and the 
 good folks of Antioch tell you just quoted his Misopogon '
 
 208 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ' Ay the lament of a man too pure for his age.' 
 'Exactly so. He should rather have been content to keep 
 liis purity to himself, and have gone to Antioch not merely as 
 a philosophic high-priest, with a beard of questionable cleanli- 
 ness, to offer sacrifices to a god in whom forgive me nobody 
 in Antioch had believed for many a year. If he had made his 
 entrance with ten thousand gladiators, and our white elephant, 
 built a theatre of ivory and glass in Daphnae, and proclaimed 
 games in honour of the Sun, or of any other member of the 
 
 Pantheon 
 
 ' He would have acted unworthily of a philosopher.' 
 'But instead of that one priest draggling up, poor devil, 
 
 ith 
 
 through the wet grass to the deserted altar with his solitary 
 goose under his arm, he would have had every goose in Antioch 
 forgive my stealing a pun from Aristophanes running open- 
 mouthed to worship any god, known or unknown and to see 
 the sights.' 
 
 'Well,' said Hypatia, yielding perforce to Orestes's cutting 
 arguments. 'Let us then restore the ancient glories of the 
 Greek drama. Let us give them a trilogy of ^Eschylus or 
 Sophocles.' 
 
 Too calm, my dear madam. The Eumenides might do cer- 
 tainly, or Philoctetes, if we could but put Philoctetes to real 
 pain, and make the spectators sure that he was yelling in good 
 earnest.' 
 
 ' Disgusting ! ' 
 
 ' But necessary, like many disgusting things.' 
 
 ' Why not try the Prometheus ? ' 
 
 'A magnificent field for stage effect, certainly. What with 
 those ocean nymphs in their winged chariot, and Ocean on his 
 griffin. . . . But I should hardly think it safe to re-introduce 
 Zeus and Hermes to the people under the somewhat ugly light 
 in which JEschylus exhibits them.' 
 
 ' I forgot that,' said Hypatia. ' The Orestean trilogy will be 
 best, after all.' 
 
 ' Best ? perfect-^divine ! Ah, that it were to be my fate to 
 go down to posterity as the happy man who once more revived 
 
 ^Eschylus's masterpieces on a Grecian stage ! But Is there 
 
 not, begging the pardon of the great tragedian, too much reserve 
 in the Agamemnon for our modern taste? If we could have 
 the bath scene represented on the stage, and an Agamemnon 
 who could be really killed though I would not insist on that, 
 because a good actor might make it a reason for refusing the 
 part but still the murder ought to take place in public.' 
 
 ' Shocking ! an outrage on all the laws of the drama. Does 
 not even the Roman Horace lay down as a rule the Necpueros 
 coram populo Medea trucidet ? ' 
 
 ' Fairest and wisest, I am as willing a pupil of the dear old 
 Epicurean as any man living even to the furnishing of my
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 209 
 
 chamber ; of which fact the Empress of Africa may some day 
 assure herself. But we are not now discussing the art of poetry, 
 but the art of reigning ; and, after all, while Horace was sitting 
 in his easy-chair, giving his countrymen good advice, a private 
 man, who knew somewhat better than he what the mass admired, 
 was exhibiting forty thousand gladiators at his mother's funeral.' 
 'But the canon has its foundation in the eternal laws of 
 beauty. It has been accepted and observed.' 
 
 ' Not by the people for whom it was written. The learned 
 Hypatia has surely not forgotten, that within sixty years after 
 the Ars Poetica was written, Annaeus Seneca, or whosoever 
 wrote that very bad tragedy called the Medea, found it 'so 
 necessary that she should, in despite of Horace, kill her children 
 before the people, that he actually made her do it ! ' 
 
 Hypatia was still silent foiled at every point, while Orestes 
 ran on with provoking glibness. 
 
 ' And consider, too, even if we dare alter ^Eschylus a little, 
 we could find no one to act him/ 
 ' Ah, true ! fallen, fallen days ! ' 
 
 ' And really, after all, omitting the questionable compliment 
 to me, as candidate for a certain dignity, of having my name- 
 sake kill his mother, and then be hunted over the stage by 
 
 furies ' 
 
 ' But Apollo vindicates and purifies him at last. What a noble 
 occasion that last scene would give for winning them back to 
 their old reverence for the god ! ' 
 
 'True, but at present the majority of spectators will believe 
 more strongly in the horrors of matricide and furies than in 
 Apollo's power to dispense therewith. So that I fear must be 
 one of your labours of the future.' 
 
 ' And it shall be,' said Hypatia. But she did not speak cheerfully. 
 'Do you not think, moreover,' went on the tempter, 'that 
 those old tragedies might give somewhat too gloomy a notion 
 of those deities whom we wish to re-introduce I beg pardon, 
 to re-honour ? The history of the house of Atreus is hardly 
 more cheerful, in spite of its beauty, than one of Cyril's sermons 
 on the day of judgment, and the Tartarus prepared for hapless 
 rich people?' 
 
 ' Well,' said Hypatia, more and more listlessly ; ' it might be 
 more prudent to show them first the fairer and more graceful 
 side of the old Myths. Certainly the great age of Athenian 
 tragedy had its playful reverse in the old comedy.' 
 
 ' And in certain Dionysiac sports and processions which shall 
 be nameless, in order to awaken a proper devotion for the gods 
 in those who might not be able to appreciate ^Eschylus and 
 Sophocles.' 
 
 ' You would not re-introduce them ? ' 
 
 'Pallas forbid ! but give as fair a substitute for them as we 
 can.'
 
 210 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 'And are we to degrade ourselves because the masses are 
 degraded ? ' 
 
 'Not in the least. For my own part, this whole business, 
 like the catering for the weekly pantomimes, is as great a bore 
 to me as it could have been to Julian himself. But, my dearest 
 madam " Panem and Circenses " they must be put into good 
 humour ; and there is but one way by " the lust of the flesh, 
 and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," as a certain 
 Galilaean correctly defines the time-honoured Roman method.' 
 
 ' Put them into good humour ? I wish to lustrate them afresh 
 for the service of the gods. If we must have comic representa- 
 tions, we can only have them conjoined to tragedy, which, as 
 Aristotle defines it, will purify their affections by pity and 
 terror.' 
 
 Orestes smiled. 
 
 ' I certainly can have no objection to so good a purpose. But 
 do you not think that the battle between the gladiators and the 
 Libyans will have done that sufficiently beforehand? I can 
 conceive nothing more fit for that end, unless it be Nero's 
 method of sending his guards among the spectators themselves, 
 and throwing them down to the wild beasts in the arena. How 
 thoroughly purified by pity and terror must every worthy shop- 
 keeper have been, when he sat uncertain whether he might not 
 follow his fat wife into the claws of the nearest lion ! ' 
 
 ' You are pleased to be witty, sir,' said Hypatia, hardly able 
 to conceal her disgust. 
 
 ' My dearest bride elect, I only meant the most harmless of 
 reductiones ad absurdum of an abstract canon of Aristotle, with 
 which I, who am a Platonist after my mistress's model, do not 
 happen to agree. But do, I beseech you, be ruled, not by me, 
 but by your own wisdom. You cannot bring the people to 
 appreciate your designs at the first sight. IL ou are too wise, 
 too pure, too lofty, too far-sighted for them. And therefore you 
 must get power to compel them. Julian, after all, found it 
 necessary to compel if he had lived seven years more he 
 would have found it necessary to persecute.' 
 
 'The gods forbid that that such a necessity should ever 
 arise here.' 
 
 ' The only way to avoid it, believe me, is to allure and to 
 indulge. After all, it is for their good.' 
 
 ' True,' sighed Hypatia. ' Have your way, sir.' 
 
 ' Believe me, you shall have yours in turn. I ask you to be 
 ruled by me now, only that you may be in a position to rule me 
 and Africa hereafter.' 
 
 'And such an Africa ! Well, if they are born low and earthly, 
 they must, I suppose, be treated as such ; and the fault of such 
 a necessity is Nature's, and not ours. Yet it is most degrading ! 
 But still, if the only method by which the philosophic few 
 can assume their rights, as the divinely-appointed rulers of the
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 211 
 
 world, is by indulging those lower beings whom they govern 
 for their good why be it so. It is no worse necessity than 
 many another which the servant of the gods must endure in 
 days like these.' 
 
 'Ah,' said Orestes, refusing to hear the sigh, or to see the 
 bitterness of the lip which accompanied the speech 'now 
 Hypatia is herself again ; and my counsellor, and giver of deep 
 and celestial reasons for all things at which poor I can only 
 snatch and guess by vulpine cunning. So now for our lighter 
 entertainment. What shall it be ? ' 
 
 ' What you will, provided it be not, as most such are, unfit 
 for the eyes of modest women. I have no skill in catering for 
 folly.' 
 
 ' A pantomime, then ? We may make that as grand and as 
 significant as we will, and expend too on it all our treasures in 
 the way of gewgaws and wild beasts.' 
 
 ' As you like.' 
 
 ' Just consider, too, what a scope for mythologic learning a 
 pantomime affords. Why not have a triumph of some deity ? 
 Could I commit myself more boldly to the service of the gods ! 
 Now who shall it be ? ' 
 
 ' Pallas unless, as I suppose, she is too modest and too sober 
 for your Alexandrians 1 ' 
 
 ' Yes it does not seem to me that she would be appreciated 
 at all events for the present. Why not try Aphrodite? 
 Christians as well as Pagans will thoroughly understand her ; 
 and I know no one who would not degrade the virgin goddess 
 by representing her, except a certain lady, who has already, I 
 hope, consented to sit in that very character, by the side of her 
 too much honoured slave ; and one Pallas is enough at a time 
 in any theatre.' 
 
 Hypatia shuddered. He took it all for granted, then and 
 claimed her conditional promise to the uttermost. Was there 
 no escape ? She longed to spring up and rush away, into the 
 streets, into the desert anything to break the hideous net 
 which she had wound around, herself. And yet was it not the 
 cause of the gods the one object of her life ? And after all, if 
 he the hateful was to be her emperor, she at least was to be an 
 empress ; and do what she would and half in irony, and half 
 in the attempt to hurl herself perforce into that which she 
 knew that she must go through, and forget misery in activity, 
 she answered as cheerfully as she could. 
 
 'Then, my goddess, thou must wait the pleasure of these 
 base ones ! At least the young Apollo will have charms even 
 for them.' 
 
 'Ah, but who will represent him? This puny generation 
 does not produce such figures as Pylades and Bathyllus except 
 among those Goths. Besides, Apollo must have golden hair ; 
 and our Greek race has intermixed itself so shamefully with
 
 212 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 these Egyptians, that our stage-troop is as dark as Andromeda, 
 and we should have to apply again to those accursed Goths, 
 who have nearly ' (with a bow) ' all the beauty, and nearly all 
 the money and the power, and will, I suspect, have the rest of 
 it before 1 am safe put of this wicked world, because they have 
 not nearly, but quite, all the courage. Now Shall we ask a 
 Goth to dance Apollo ? for we can get no one else.' 
 
 Hypatia smiled in spite of herself at the notion. 'That 
 would be too shameful ! I must forego the god of light himself, 
 if I am to see him in the person of a clumsy barbarian.' 
 
 'Then why not try my despised and rejected Aphrodite? 
 Suppose we had her triumph, finishing with a dance of Venus 
 Anadyomene. Surely that is a graceful myth enough.' 
 
 ' As a myth ; but on the stage in reality ? ' 
 
 ' Not worse than what this Christian city has been looking at 
 for many a year. We shall not run any danger of corrupting 
 morality, be sure.' 
 
 Hypatia blushed. 
 
 ' Then you must not ask for my help.' 
 
 ' Or for your presence at the spectacle ? For that be sure is 
 a necessary point. You are too great a person, my dearest 
 madam, in the eyes of these good folks to be allowed to absent 
 yourself on such an occasion. If my little stratagem succeeds, 
 it will be half owing to the fact of the people knowing that in 
 crowning me, they crown Hypatia. . . . Come now do you not 
 see that as you must needs be present at their harmless scrap 
 of mythology, taken from the authentic and undoubted histories 
 of those very gods whose worship we intend to restore, you will 
 consult your own comfort most in agreeing to it cheerfully, and 
 in lending me your wisdom towards arranging it ? Just con- 
 ceive now, a triumph of Aphrodite, entering preceded by wild 
 beasts led in chains by Cupids, the white elephant and all 
 what a field for the plastic art ! You might have a thousand 
 groupings, dispersions, regroupings, in as perfect bas-relief style 
 as those of any Sophoclean drama. Allow me only to take this 
 paper and pen 
 
 And he began sketching rapidly group after group. 
 
 ' Not so ugly, surely ? ' 
 
 ' They are very beautiful, I cannot deny,' said poor Hypatia. 
 
 ' Ah, sweetest Empress ! you forget sometimes that I, too, 
 world-worm as I am, am a Greek, with as intense a love of the 
 beautiful as even you yourself have. Do not fancy that every 
 violation of correct taste does not torture me as keenly as it 
 does you. Some day, I hope, you will have learned to pity and 
 to excuse the wretched compromise between that which ought 
 to be and that which can be, in which we hapless statesmen 
 must struggle on, half-stunted, and wholly misunderstood Ah, 
 well ! Look, now, at these fauns and dryads among the shrubs 
 upon the stage, pausing in startled wonder at the first blast of
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 213 
 
 music which proclaims the exit of the goddess from her 
 temple.' 
 
 ' The temple ? Why, where are you going to exhibit ? ' 
 
 ' In the Theatre, of course. Where else pantomimes ? ' 
 
 ' But will the spectators have time to move all the way from 
 the Amphitheatre after that those 
 
 ' The Amphitheatre ? We shall exhibit the Libyans, too, in 
 the Theatre/ 
 
 ' Combats in the Theatre sacred to Dionusos ? ' 
 
 ' My dear lady ' penitently ' I know it is an offence against 
 all the laws of the drama.' 
 
 ' Oh, worse than that ! Consider what an impiety toward 
 the god, to desecrate his altar with bloodshed ? ' 
 
 ' Fairest devotee, recollect that, after all, I may fairly borrow 
 Dionusos's altar in this my extreme need ; for I saved its very 
 existence for him, by preventing the magistrates from filling up 
 the whole orchestra with benches for the patricians, after the 
 barbarous Roman fashion. And besides, what possible sort of 
 representation, or misrepresentation, has not been exhibited in 
 every theatre of the empire for the last four hundred years ? 
 Have we not had tumblers, conjurers, allegories, martyrdoms, 
 marriages, elephants on the tight -rope, learned horses, and 
 learned asses too, if we may trust Apuleius of Madaura : with a 
 good many other spectacles of which we must not speak in the 
 presence of a vestal ? It is an age of execrable taste, and we 
 must act accordingly.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' answered Hypatia ; ' the first step in the downward 
 career of the drama began when the successors of Alexander 
 dared to profane theatres which had re-echoed the choruses of 
 Sophocles and Euripides by degrading the altar of Dionusos 
 into a stage for pantomimes ! ' 
 
 ' Which your pure mind must, doubtless, consider not so very 
 much better than a little fighting. But, after all, the Ptolemies 
 could not do otherwise. You can only have Sophoclean dramas 
 in a Sophoclean age ; and theirs was no more of one than ours 
 is, and so the drama died a natural death j and when that 
 happens to man or thing, you may weep over it if you will, but 
 you must, after all, bury it, and get something else in its place 
 except, of course, the worship of the gods.' 
 
 'I am glad that you except that, at least,' said Hypatia, 
 somewhat bitterly. 'But why not use the amphitheatre for 
 both spectacles ? ' 
 
 ' What can I do 1 I am over head and ears in debt already ; 
 and the amphitheatre is half in ruins, thanks to that fanatic 
 edict of the late emperor's against gladiators. There is no time 
 or money for repairing it ; and besides, how pitiful a poor 
 hundred of combatants will look in an arena built to hold two 
 thousand ! Consider, my dearest lady, in what fallen times we 
 live!'
 
 214 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' I do, indeed ! ' said Hypatia. ' But I will not see the altar 
 polluted by blood. It is the desecration which it has under- 
 gone already which has provoked the god to withdraw the 
 poetic inspiration.' 
 
 ' I do not doubt the fact. Some curse from Heaven, certainly, 
 lias fallen on our poets, to judge by their exceeding badness. 
 Indeed, I am inclined to attribute the insane vagaries of the 
 water -drinking monks and nuns, like those of the Argive 
 women, to the same celestial anger. But I will see that the 
 sanctity of the altar is preserved, by confining the combat to 
 the stage. And as for the pantomime which will follow, if you 
 would only fall in with my fancy of the triumph of Aphrodite, 
 Dionusos would hardly refuse his altar for the glorification of 
 his own lady-love.' 
 
 ' Ah that myth is a late, and in my opinion a degraded one.' 
 
 ' Be it so : but recollect, that another myth makes her, and 
 not without reason, the mother of all living beings. Be sure 
 that Dionusos will have no objection, or any other god either, 
 to allow her to make her children feel her conquering might 
 for they all know well enough, that if we can once get her well 
 worshipped here, all Olympus will follow in her train.' 
 
 ' That was spoken of the celestial Aphrodite, whose symbol is 
 the tortoise, the emblem of domestic modesty and chastity : not 
 of that baser Pandemic one.' 
 
 ' Then we will take care to make the people aware of whom 
 they are admiring by exhibiting in the triumph whole legions 
 of tortoises : and you yourself shall write the chant, while I will 
 see that the chorus is worthy of what it has to sing. No mere 
 squeaking double flute and a pair of boys : but a whole army of 
 cyclops and graces, with such trebles and such bass- voices ! It 
 shall make Cyril's ears tingle in his palace ! ' 
 
 ' The chant ! A noble office for me, truly ! That is the very 
 part of the absurd spectacle to which you used to say the people 
 never dreamed of attending. All which is worth settling you 
 seem to have settled for yourself before you deigned to con- 
 sult me.' 
 
 'I said so? Surely you must mistake. But if any hired 
 poetaster's chant do pass unheeded, what has that to dp with 
 Hypatia's eloquence and science, glowing with the treble inspir- 
 ation of Athene, Phoebus, and Dionusos? And as for having 
 arranged beforehand my adorable mistress, what more delicate 
 compliment could I have paid you ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot say that it seems to me to be one.' 
 
 ' How ? After saving you every trouble which I could, and 
 racking my overburdened wits for stage effects and properties, 
 have I not brought hither the darling children of my own brain, 
 and laid them down ruthlessly, for life or death, before the 
 judgment-seat of your lofty and unsparing criticism ?' 
 
 Hypatia felt herself tricked : but there was no escape now.
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 215 
 
 'And who, pray, is to disgrace herself, and me, as Venus 
 Anadyomene ? 
 
 ' Ah ! that is the most exquisite article in all my bill of fare ! 
 What if the kind gods have enabled me to exact a promise from 
 whom, think you ? ' 
 
 ' What care I ? How can I tell ? ' asked Hypatia, who sus- 
 pected and dreaded that she could tell. 
 
 ' Pelagia herself ! ' 
 
 Hypatia rose angrily. 
 
 ' This, sir, at least, is too much ! It was not enough for you, 
 it seems, to claim, or rather to take for granted, so imperiously, 
 so mercilessly, a conditional promise weakly, weakly made, in 
 the vain hope that you would help forward aspirations of mine 
 which you have let lie fallow for months in which I do not 
 believe that you sympathise now ! It was not enough for you 
 to declare yourself publicly yesterday a Christian, and to come 
 hither this morning to flatter me into the belief that you will 
 dare, ten days hence, to restore the worship of the gods whom 
 you have abjured ! It was not enough to plan without me all 
 those movements in which you told me I was to be your fellow- 
 counsellor the very condition which you yourself offered ! It 
 was not enough for you to command me to sit in that theatre, 
 as your bait, your puppet, your victim, blushing and shuddering 
 at sights unfit for the eyes of gods and men : but, over and above 
 all this, I must assist in the renewed triumph of a woman who 
 has laughed down my teaching, seduced away my scholars, 
 braved me in my very lecture-room who for four years has 
 done more than even Cyril himself to destroy all the virtue and 
 truth whicli I have toiled to sow and toiled in vain ! Oh, 
 beloved gods ! where will end the tortures through which your 
 martyr must witness for you to a fallen race ? ' 
 
 And, in spite of all her pride, and of Orestes's presence, her 
 eyes filled with scalding tears. 
 
 Orestes's eyes had sunk before the vehemence of her just 
 passion : but as she added the last sentence in a softer and 
 sadder tone, he raised them again, with a look of sorrow and 
 entreaty, as his heart whispered 
 
 ' Fool ! fanatic ! But she is too beautiful ! Win her I must 
 and will ! ' 
 
 ' Ah ! dearest, noblest Hypatia ! What have I done ? Un- 
 thinking fool that I was ! In the wish to save you trouble In 
 the hope that I could show you, by the aptness of my own 
 plans, that my practical statesmanship was not altogether an 
 unworthy helpmate for your loftier wisdom wretch that I am, 
 I have offended you ; and I have ruined the cause of those very 
 gods for whom, I swear, I am as ready to sacrifice myself as ever 
 you can be ! ' 
 
 The last sentence had the effect whicli it was meant to 
 have.
 
 216 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 'Ruined the cause of the gods?' asked she, in a startled 
 tone. 
 
 'Is it not ruined, without your help? And what am I to 
 understand from your words but that hapless man that I am ! 
 you leave me and them henceforth to our own unassisted 
 strength ? ' 
 
 ' The unassisted strength of the gods is omnipotence.' 
 
 ' Be it so. But why is Cyril, and not Hypatia, master of 
 the masses of Alexandria this day ? Why but because he and 
 his have fought, and suffered, and died top, many a hundred of 
 them, for their god, omnipotent as they believe him to be ? Why 
 are the old gods forgotten, my fairest logician ? for forgotten 
 they are.' 
 
 Hypatia trembled from head to foot, and Orestes went on 
 more blandly than ever. 
 
 ' I will not ask an answer to that question of mine. All I 
 entreat is forgiveness for what for I know not : but I have 
 sinned, and that is enough for me. What if I have been too 
 confident too hasty? Are you not the prize for which I 
 strain? And will not the preciousness of the victor's wreath 
 excuse some impatience in his struggle for it ? Hypatia has 
 forgotten who and what the gods have made her she has not 
 even consulted her own mirror, when she blames one of her 
 innumerable adorers for a forwardness which ought to be rather 
 imputed to him as a virtue.' 
 
 And Orestes stole meekly such a glance of adoration, that 
 Hypatia blushed, and turned her face away. . . . After all, she 
 was woman. . . . And she was a fanatic. . . . And she was to 
 be an empress. . . . And Orestes's voice was as melodious, and 
 his manner as graceful, as ever charmed the heart of woman. 
 
 ' But Pelagia ? ' she said, at last, recovering herself. 
 
 ' Would that I had never seen the creature ! But, after all, 
 I really fancied that in doing what I have done I should gratify 
 you.' 
 
 'Me?' 
 
 ' Surely if revenge be sweet, as they say, it could hardly find 
 a more delicate satisfaction than in the degradation of one 
 who ' 
 
 ' Revenge, sir ? Do you dream that I am capable of so base 
 a passion ? ' 
 
 ' I ? Pallas forbid ! ' said Orestes, finding himself on the 
 wrong path again. 'But recollect that the allowing this 
 spectacle to take place might rid you for ever of an unpleasant 
 I will not say rival.' 
 
 'How, then?' 
 
 ' Will not her re-appearance on the stage, after all her proud 
 professions of contempt for it, do something towards reducing 
 her in the eyes of this scandalous little town to her true and 
 native level? She will hardly dare thenceforth to go about
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 217 
 
 parading herself as the consort of a god -descended hero, or 
 thrusting herself unbidden into Hypatia's presence, as if she 
 were the daughter of a consul.' 
 
 ' But I cannot I cannot allow it even to her. After all, 
 Orestes, she is a woman. And can I, philosopher as I am, help 
 to degrade her even one step lower than she lies already ? ' 
 
 Hypatia had all but said ' a woman even as I am ' : but Neo- 
 Platonic philosophy taught her better ; and she checked the 
 hasty assertion of anything like a common sex or common 
 humanity between two beings so antipodal. 
 
 'Ah,' rejoined Orestes, 'that unlucky word degrade! Un- 
 thinking that I was, to use it, forgetting that she herself will 
 be no more degraded in her own eyes, or any one's else, by 
 hearing again the plaudits of those "dear Macedonians," on 
 whose breath she has lived for years, than a peacock when he 
 displays his train. Unbounded vanity and self-conceit are not 
 unpleasant passions, after all, for their victim. After all, she is 
 what she is, and her being so is no fault of yours. Oh, it must 
 be ! indeed it must ! ' 
 
 Poor Hypatia ! The bait was too delicate, the tempter too 
 wily ; and yet she was ashamed to speak aloud the philosophic 
 dogma which flashed a ray of comfort and resignation through 
 her mind, and reminded her that after all there was no harm in 
 allowing lower natures to develop themselves freely in that 
 direction which Nature had appointed for them, and in which 
 only they could fulfil the laws of their being, as necessary 
 varieties in the manifold whole of the universe. So she cut the 
 interview short with 
 
 ' If it must be, then ... I will now retire, and write the ode. 
 Only, I refuse to have any communication whatsoever with I 
 am ashamed of even mentioning her name. I will send the ode 
 to you, and she must adapt her dance to it as best she can. By 
 her taste, or fancy rather, I will not be ruled.' 
 
 ' And I,' said Orestes, with a profusion of thanks, ' will retire 
 to rack my faculties over the " dispositions." On this day week 
 we exhibit and conquer 1 Farewell, queen of wisdom ! Your 
 philosophy never shows to better advantage than when you 
 thus wisely and gracefully subordinate that which is beautiful 
 in itself to that which is beautiful relatively and practically.' 
 
 He departed ; and Hypatia, half dreading her own thoughts, 
 sat down at once to labour at the ode. Certainly it was a mag- 
 nificent subject. What etymologies, cosmogonies, allegories, 
 myths, symbolisms, between all neaven and earth, might she 
 not introduce if she could but banish that figure of relagia 
 dancing to it all, which would not be banished, but hovered, 
 like a spectre, in the background of all her imaginations. She 
 became quite angry, first with Pelagia, then with herself, for 
 being weak enough to think of her. Was it not positive defile- 
 ment of her mind to be haunted by the image of so defiled a
 
 218 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 being ? . She would purify her thoughts by prayer and medita- 
 tion. But to whom of all the gods should she address herself ? 
 To her chosen favourite, Athene ? She who had promised to 
 be present at that spectacle 1 Oh, how weak she had been to 
 yield ! And yet she had been snared into it. Snared there 
 was no doubt of it by the very man whom she had fancied 
 that she could guide and mould to her own purposes. He had 
 guided and moulded her now against her self-respect, her com- 
 passion, her innate sense of right. Already she was his tool. 
 True, she had submitted to be so for a great purpose. But 
 suppose she had to submit again hereafter always henceforth ? 
 Ana what made the thought more poignant was, her knowledge 
 that he was right ; that he knew what to do, and how to do it. 
 She could not help admiring him for his address, his quickness, 
 his clear practical insight : and yet she despised, mistrusted, 
 all but hated him. But what if his were the very qualities 
 which were destined to succeed ? What if her purer and loftier 
 aims, her resolutions now, alas ! broken never to act but on 
 the deepest and holiest principles and by the most sacred means, 
 were destined never to exert themselves in practice, except 
 conjointly with miserable stratagems and cajoleries such as 
 these ? What if statecrafts and not philosophy and religion, 
 were the appointed rulers of mankind ? Hideous thought ! 
 And yet she who had all her life tried to be self-dependent, 
 originative, to face and crush the hostile mob of circumstance 
 and custom, and do battle single-handed with Christianity and 
 a fallen age how was it that in her first important and critical 
 opportunity of action she had been dumb, irresolute, passive, 
 the victim, at last, of the very corruption which she was to 
 exterminate ? She did not know yet that those who have no 
 other means for regenerating a corrupted time than dogmatic 
 pedantries concerning the dead and unreturning past, must end, 
 in practice, by borrowing insincerely, and using clumsily, the 
 very weapons of that novel age which they deprecate, and 
 'sewing new cloth into old garments,' till the rent become 
 patent and incurable. But in the meanwhile, such meditations 
 as these drove from her mind for that day both Athene, and 
 the ode, and philosophy, and all things but Pelagia the 
 wanton. 
 
 In the meanwhile, Alexandrian politics flowed onward in 
 their usual pure and quiet course. The public buildings were 
 placarded with the news of Heraclian's victory ; and groups of 
 loungers expressed, loudly enough, their utter indifference as to 
 who might rule at Rome or even at Byzantium. Let Heraclian 
 or Honorius be emperor, the capitals must be fed ; and while 
 the Alexandrian wheat-trade was uninjured, what matter who 
 received the tribute? Certainly, as some friends of Orestes 
 found means to suggest, it might not be a bad thing for Egypt, 
 if she could keep the tribute in her own treasury, instead 01
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 219 
 
 sending it to Rome without any adequate return, save the 
 presence of an expensive army. . . . Alexandria had been once 
 the metropolis of an independent empire. . . . Why not again ? 
 Then came enormous largesses of corn, proving, more satisfac- 
 torily to the mob than to the shipowners, that Egyptian wheat 
 was better employed at home than abroad. Nay, there were 
 even rumours of a general amnesty for all prisoners ; and as, of 
 course, every evil-doer had a kind of friend, who considered him 
 an injured martyr, all parties were well content, on their own 
 accounts at least, with such a move. 
 
 And so Orestes's bubble swelled, and grew, and glittered 
 every day with fresh prismatic radiance ; while Hypatia sat 
 at home, with a heavy heart, writing her ode to Venus Urania, 
 and submitting to Orestes's daily visits. 
 
 One cloud, indeed, not without squalls of wind and rain, 
 disfigured that sky which the Prefect had invested with such 
 serenity by the simple expedient, well known to politicians, of 
 painting it bright blue, since it would not assume that colour 
 of its own accord. For a day or two after Ammonius's execu- 
 tion, the Prefect's guards informed him that the corpse of the 
 crucified man, with the cross on which it hung, had vanished. 
 The Nitrian monks had come down in a body, and carried them 
 off before the very eyes of the sentinels. Orestes knew well 
 enough that the fellows must have been bribed to allow the 
 theft ; but he dare not say so to men on whose good humour 
 his very life might depend ; so, stomaching the affront as best 
 he could, he vowed fresh vengeance against Cyril, and went on 
 his way. But, behold ! within four-and-twenty hours of the 
 theft, a procession of all the rascality, followed by all the piety, 
 of Alexandria, monks from Nitria counted by the thousand, 
 priests, deacons, archdeacons, Cyril himself, in full pontificals, 
 and, borne aloft in the midst, upon a splendid bier, the missing 
 corpse, its nail-pierced hands and feet left uncovered for the 
 pitying gaze of the Chu/rch. 
 
 Under the very palace windows, from which Orestes found 
 it expedient to retire for the time being, out upon the quays, 
 and up the steps of the Caesareum, defiled that new portent ; and 
 in another half-hour a servant entered, breathlessly, to inform 
 the shepherd of people that his victim was lying in state in the 
 centre of the nave, a martyr duly canonised, Ammonius now 
 no more, but henceforth Thaumasius the wonderful, on whose 
 heroic virtues and more heroic faithfulness unto the death, 
 Cyril was already descanting from the pulpit, amid thunders 
 or applause at every allusion to Sisera at the brook Kishon, 
 Sennacherib in the house of Nisroch, and the rest of the princes 
 of this world who come to nought. 
 
 Here was a storm ! To order a cohort to enter the church 
 and bring away the body was easy enough : to make them do 
 it, in the face of certain death, not so easy. Besides, it was too
 
 220 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 early yet for so desperate a move as would be involved in the 
 violation of a church. ... So Orestes added this fresh item to 
 the long column of accounts which he intended to settle with 
 the patriarch ; cursed for half an hour in the name of all 
 divinities, saints, and martyrs, Christian and Pagan ; and wrote 
 off a lamentable history of his wrongs and sufferings to the 
 very Byzantine court against which he was about to rebel, in 
 the comfortable assurance that Cyril had sent, by the same 
 post, a counterstatement, contradicting it in every particular. 
 . . . Never mind. ... In case he failed in rebelling, it was as 
 well to be able to prove his allegiance up to the latest possible 
 date ; and the more completely the two statements contradicted 
 each other, the longer it would take to sift the truth out of 
 them ; and thus so much time was gained, and so much the 
 more chance, meantime, of a new leaf being turned over in that 
 Sibylline oracle of politicians the Chapter of Accidents. And 
 for the time being, he would make a pathetic appeal to respect- 
 ability and moderation in general, of which Alexandria, wherein 
 some hundred thousand tradesmen and merchants had property 
 to lose, possessed a goodly share. 
 
 Respectability responded promptly to the appeal ; and loyal 
 addresses and deputations of condolence flowed in from every 
 quarter, expressing the extreme sorrow with which the citizens 
 had beheld the late disturbances of civil order, and the contempt 
 which had been so unfortunately evinced for the constituted 
 authorities : but taking, nevertheless, the liberty to remark, 
 that while the extreme danger to property which might ensue 
 from the further exasperation of certain classes, prevented their 
 taking those active steps on the side of tranquillity to which 
 their feelings inclined them, the known piety and wisdom of 
 their esteemed patriarch made it presumptuous in them to offer 
 any opinion on his present conduct, beyond the expression of 
 their firm belief that he had been unfortunately misinformed as 
 to those sentiments of affection and respect which his excellency 
 the Prefect was well known to entertain towards him. They 
 ventured, therefore, to express a humble hope that, by some 
 mutual compromise, to define which would be an unwarrant- 
 able intrusion on their part, a happy reconciliation would be 
 effected, and the stability of law, property, and the Catholic 
 Faith, ensured. . . . All which Orestes heard with blandest 
 smiles, while his heart was black with curses ; and Cyril 
 answered by a very violent though a very true and practical 
 harangue on the text, ' How hardly shall they that have riches 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven.' 
 
 So respectability and moderation met with its usual hapless 
 fate, and, soundly cursed by both parties, in the vain attempt 
 to please both, wisely left the upper powers to settle their own 
 affairs, and went home to their desks and counters, and did a 
 very brisk business all that week on the strength of the ap-
 
 xx SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER 221 
 
 preaching festival. One hapless innkeeper only tried to carry 
 out in practice the principles which the deputation from his 
 guild had so eloquently advocated ; and being convicted of 
 giving away bread in the morning to the Nitrian monks, and 
 wine in the evening to the Prefect's guards, had his tavern 
 gutted, and his head broken by a joint plebiscitum of both the 
 parties whom he had conciliated, who afterwards fought a little 
 together, and then, luckily for the general peace, mutually ran 
 away from each other. 
 
 Cyril in the meanwhile, though he was doing a foolish thing, 
 was doing it wisely enough. Orestes might curse, and respect- 
 ability might deplore, those nightly sermons, which shook the 
 mighty arcades of the Csesareum, but they could not answer 
 them. Cyril was right and knew that he was right. Orestes 
 was a scoundrel, hateful to God, and to the enemies of God. 
 The middle classes were lukewarm covetous cowards : the whole 
 system of government was a swindle and an injustice ; all men's 
 hearts were mad with crying, 'Lord, how long?' The fierce 
 bishop had only to thunder forth text on text, from every book 
 of scripture, old and new, in order to array on his side not 
 merely the common sense and right feeling, but the bigotry and 
 ferocity of the masses. 
 
 In vain did the good Arsenius represent to him not only the 
 scandal but the unrighteousness of his new canonisation. ' I must 
 have fuel, my good father ' was his answer, ' wherewith to keep 
 alight the flame of zeal. If I am to be silent as to Heraclian s 
 defeat, I must give them some other irritant, which will put 
 them in a proper temper to act on that defeat, when they are 
 told of it. If they hate Orestes, does he not deserve it ? Even 
 if he is not altogether as much in the wrong in this particular 
 case as they fancy he is, are there not a thousand other crimes 
 of his which deserve their abhorrence even more ? At all events, 
 he must proclaim the empire, as you. yourself say, or we shall 
 have no handle against him. He will not dare to proclaim it if 
 he knows that we are aware of the truth. And if we are to 
 keep the truth in reserve, we must have something else to serve 
 meanwhile as a substitute for it.' 
 
 And poor Arsenius submitted with a sigh, as he saw Cyril 
 making a fresh step in that alluring path of evil-doing that good 
 might come, which led him in after-years into many a fearful 
 sin, and left his name disgraced, perhaps for ever, in the judg- 
 ment of generations, who know as little of the pandemonium 
 against which he fought, as they do of the intense belief which 
 sustained him in his warfare ; and who have therefore neither 
 understanding nor pardon for the occasional outrages and errors 
 of a man no worse, even if no better, than themselves.
 
 222 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 
 
 IN a small and ill-furnished upper room of a fortified country- 
 house, sat Synesius, the Bishop of Gyrene. 
 
 A goblet of wine stood beside him, on the table, but it was 
 untasted. Slowly and sadly, by the light of a tiny lamp, he 
 went on writing a verse or two, and then burying his face 
 in his hand, while hot tears dropped between his fingers 
 on the paper ; till a servant entering, announced Raphael 
 Aben-Ezra. 
 
 Synesius rose, with a gesture of surprise, and hurried towards 
 the door. ' No, ask him to come hither to me. To pass through 
 those deserted rooms at night is more than I can bear.' And he 
 waited for his guest at the chamber door, and as he entered, 
 caught both his hands in his, and tried to speak ; but his voice 
 was choked within him. 
 
 ' Do not speak,' said Raphael gently, leading him to his chair 
 again. ' I know all.' 
 
 ' You know all 1 And are you, then, so unlike the rest of the 
 world, that you alone have come to visit the bereaved and the 
 deserted in his misery 1 ' 
 
 1 1 am like the rest of the world, after all ; for I came to you 
 on my own selfish errand, to seek comfort. Would that I could 
 give it instead ! But the servants told me all, below.' 
 
 ' And yet you persisted in seeing me, as if I could help you 1 
 Alas ! I can help no one now. Here I am at last, utterly alone, 
 utterly helpless. As I came from my mother's womb, so shall I 
 return again. My last child my last and fairest gone after 
 the rest! Thank God, that I have had even a day's peace 
 wherein to lay him by his mother and his brothers ; though He 
 alone knows now long the beloved graves may remain unrifled. 
 Let it have been shame enough to sit here in my lonely tower 
 and watch the ashes of my Spartan ancestors, the sons of Her- 
 cules himself, my glory and my pride, sinful fool that I was ! 
 cast to the winds by barbarian plunderers. . . . When wilt thou 
 make an end, O Lord, and slay me ? ' 
 
 ' And how did the poor boy die ? ' asked Raphael, in hope of 
 soothing sorrow by enticing it to vent itself in words. 
 
 4 The pestilence. What other fate can we expect, who breathe 
 an air tainted with corpses, and sit under a sky darkened with 
 carrion birds ? But I could endure even that, if I could work, if 
 I could help. But to sit here, imprisoned now for months be- 
 tween these hateful towers ; night after night to watch the sky, 
 red with burning homesteads ; day after day to have my ears 
 ring with the shrieks of the dying and the captives for they
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 223 
 
 have begun now to murder every male, down to the baby at the 
 breast and to feel myself utterly fettered, impotent, sitting 
 here like some palsied idiot, waiting for my end ! I long to rush 
 out, and fall fighting, sword in hand : but I am their last, their 
 only hope. The governors care nothing for our supplications. 
 In vain have I memorialised Gennadius and Innocent, with what 
 little eloquence my misery has not stunned in me. But there is 
 no resolution, no unanimity left in the land. The soldiery are 
 scattered in small garrisons, employed entirely in protecting 
 the private property of their officers. The Ausurians defeat 
 them piecemeal, and, armed with their spoils, actually have 
 begun to beleaguer fortified towns ; and now there is nothing 
 left for us, but to pray that, like Ulysses, we may be devoured 
 the last. What am I doing ? I am selfishly pouring out my own 
 sorrows, instead of listening to yours.' 
 
 ' Nay, friend, you are talking of the sorrows of your country, 
 not of your own. As for me I have no sorrow only a despair : 
 which, being irremediable, may well wait. But you oh, you 
 must not stay here. Why not escape to Alexandria ?' 
 
 ' I will die at my post as I have lived, the father of my people. 
 When the last ruin comes, and Gyrene itself is besieged, I shall 
 return thither from my present outpost, and the conquerors shall 
 find the bishop in his place before the altar. There I have 
 offered for years the unbloody sacrifice to Him, who will perhaps 
 require of me a bloody one, that so the sight of an altar polluted 
 by the murder of His priest, may end the sum of Pentapolitan 
 woe, and arouse Him to avenge His slaughtered sheep ! There, 
 we will talk no more of it. This at least I have left in my 
 power, to make you welcome. And after supper you shall tell 
 me what brings you hither.' 
 
 And the good bishop, calling his servant, set to work to show 
 his guest such hospitality as the invaders had left in his power. 
 
 Kaphael's usual insight had not deserted him when, in his 
 utter perplexity, he went, almost instinctively, straight to 
 Synesius. The Bishop of Gyrene, to judge from the charming 
 private letters which ne has left, was one of those many-sideo, 
 volatile, restless men, who taste joy and sorrow, if not deeply 
 or permanently, yet abundantly and passionately. He lived, as 
 Kaphael had told Orestes, in a whirlwind of good deeds, 
 meddling and toiling for the mere pleasure of action ; and as 
 soon as there was nothing to be done, which, till lately, had 
 happened seldom enough with him, paid the penalty for past 
 excitement in fits of melancholy. A man of magniloquent and 
 flowery style, not without a vein of self-conceit ; yet withal of 
 over-flowing kindliness, racy humour, and unflinching courage, 
 both physical and moral ; with a very clear practical faculty, 
 and a very muddy speculative one though, or course, like the 
 rest of the world, he was especially proud of his own weakest 
 side, and professed the most passionate affection for philosophic
 
 224 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 meditation ; while his detractors hinted, not without a show of 
 reason, that he was far more of an adept in soldiering and dog- 
 breaking than in the mysteries of the unseen world. 
 
 To him Raphael betook himself, he hardly knew why; 
 certainly not for philosophic consolation ; perhaps because 
 Synesius was, as Raphael used to say, the only Christian from 
 whom he had ever heard a hearty laugh ; perhaps because he 
 had some wayward hope, unconfessed even to himself, that he 
 might meet at Synesius's house the very companions from whom 
 he had just fled. He was fluttering round Victoria's new and 
 strange brilliance like a moth round the candle, as he confessed, 
 after supper, to his host ' } and now he was come hither, on the 
 chance of being able to singe his wings once more. 
 
 Not that his confession was extracted without much trouble 
 to the good old man, who, seeing at once that Raphael had 
 some weight upon his mind, which he longed to tell, and yet 
 was either too suspicious or too proud to tell, set himself to 
 ferret out the secret, and forgot all his sorrows for the time, as 
 soon as he found a human being to whom he might do good. 
 But Raphael was inexplicably wayward and unlike himself. 
 All his smooth and shallow persiflage, even his shrewd satiric 
 humour, had vanished. He seemed parched by some inward 
 fever ; restless, moody, abrupt, even peevish ; and Synesius's 
 curiosity rose with his disappointment, as Raphael went on 
 obstinately declining to consult the very physician before whom 
 he had presented himself as patient. 
 
 ' And what can you do for me, if I did tell you ? ' 
 
 ' Then allow me, my very dear friend, to ask this. As you 
 deny having visited me on my own account, on what account 
 did you visit me ? ' 
 
 ' Can you ask ? To enjoy the society of the most finished 
 gentleman of Pentapolis.' 
 
 ' And was that worth a week's journey in perpetual danger 
 of death?' 
 
 ' As for danger of death, that weighs little with a man who 
 is careless of life. And as for the week's journey, I had a dream 
 one night, on my way, which made me question whether I were 
 wise in troubling a Christian bishop with any thoughts or 
 questions which relate merely to poor human beings like my- 
 self, who marry and are given in marriage.' 
 
 'You forget, friend, that you are speaking to one who has 
 married, and loved and lost.' 
 
 1 1 did not. But you see how rude I am growing. I am no 
 fit company for you, or any man. I believe I shall end by 
 turning robber-chief, and heading a party of Ausurians.' 
 
 'But,' said the patient Synesius, 'you have forgotten your 
 dream all this while.' 
 
 ' Forgotten ! I did not promise to tell it you did I ? ' 
 
 ' No ; but as it seems to have contained some sort of accusa-
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 225 
 
 tion against my capacity, do you not think it but fair to tell 
 the accused what it was ? ' 
 
 Raphael smiled. 
 
 ' Well then. . . . Suppose I had dreamt this. That a philo- 
 sopher, an academic, and a believer in nothing and in no man, 
 had met at Berenice certain rabbis of the Jews, and heard them 
 reading and expounding a certain book of Solomon the Song 
 of Songs. You, as a learned man, know into what sort of 
 trumpery allegory they would contrive to twist it ; how the 
 bride's eyes were to mean the scribes who were full of wisdom, 
 as the pools of Heshbon were of water ; and her stature spread- 
 ing like a palm-tree, the priests who spread out their hands 
 when blessing the people ; and the left hand which should be 
 under her head, the Tephilim which these old pedants wore on 
 their left wrists ; and the right hand which should hold her, the 
 Mezuzah which they fixed on the right side of their doors to 
 keep off devils ; and so forth.' 
 
 ' I have heard such silly Cabbalisms, certainly.' 
 
 ' You have ? Then suppose that I went on, and saw in my 
 dream how this same academic and unbeliever, being himself 
 also a Hebrew of the Hebrews, snatched the roll out of the 
 rabbi's hand, and told them that they were a party of fools for 
 trying to set forth what the book might possibly mean, before 
 they had found out what it really did mean ; and that they 
 could only find out that by looking honestly at the plain words 
 to see what Solomon meant by it. And then, suppose that this 
 same apostate Jew, this member of the synagogue of Satan, in 
 his carnal and lawless imaginations, had waxed eloquent with 
 the eloquence of devils, and told them, that the book set forth, 
 to those who had eyes to see, how Solomon the great king, with 
 his threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins 
 without number, forgets all his seraglio and his luxury in pure 
 and noble love for the undefiled, who is but one ; and how as 
 his eyes are opened to see that God made the one man for the 
 one woman, and the one woman to the one man, even as it was 
 in the garden of Eden, so all his heart and thoughts become 
 pure, and gentle, and simple ; how the song of the birds, and 
 the scent of the grapes, and the spicy southern gales, and all 
 the simple country pleasures of the glens of Lebanon, which he 
 shares with his own vine -dressers and slaves, become more 
 precious in his eyes than all his palaces and artificial pomp ; 
 and the man feels that he is in harmony, for the first time in 
 his life, with the universe of God, and with the mystery of the 
 seasons ; that within him, as well as without him, the winter is 
 past, and the rain is over and gone : the flowers appear on the 
 earth, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. . . . And 
 suppose I saw in my dream how the rabbis, when they heard 
 those wicked words, stopped their ears with one accord, and ran 
 upon that son of Belial and cast him out, because he blasphemed 
 
 Q H
 
 226 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 their sacred books by his carnal interpretations. And suppose 
 I only say suppose that I saw in my dream how the poor 
 man said in his heart, " I will go to the Christians ; they 
 acknowledge the sacredness of this same book ; and they say 
 that their God taught them that ' in the beginning God made 
 man, male and female.' Perhaps they will tell me whether this 
 Song of Songs does not, as it seems to me to do, show the pas- 
 sage upwards from brutal polygamy to that monogamy which 
 they so solemnly command, and agree with me, that it is because 
 the Song preaches this that it has a right to take its place among 
 the holy writings ? " You, as a Christian bishop, should know 
 what answer such a man would receive. . . . You are silent ? 
 Then I will tell you what answer he seemed to receive in my 
 dream. " O blasphemous and carnal man, who pervertest Holy 
 Scripture into a cloak for thine own licentiousness, as if it 
 spoke of man's base and sensual affections, know that this book 
 is to be spiritually interpreted of the marriage between the soul 
 and its Creator, and that it is from this very book that the 
 Catholic Church derives her strongest arguments in favour of 
 holy virginity, and the glories of a celibate life." ' 
 
 Synesius was still silent. 
 
 ' And what do you think I saw in my dream that that man 
 did when he found these Christians enforcing, as a necessary 
 article of practice, as well as of faith, a baseless and bombastic 
 metaphor, borrowed from that very Neo-Platonism out of which 
 lie had just fled for his life ? He cursed the day he was born, 
 and the hour in which his father was told, " Thou hast gotten a 
 man-child," and said, " Philosophers, Jews, and Christians, 
 farewell for ever and a day ! The clearest words of your most 
 sacred books mean anything or nothing, as the case may suit 
 your fancies ; and there is neither truth nor reason under the 
 sun. What better is there for a man, than to follow the example 
 of his people, and to turn usurer, and money-getter, and cajoler 
 of fools in his turn, even as his father was before him ? " ' 
 
 Synesius remained a while in deep thought, and at last 
 
 ' And yet you came to me ? ' 
 
 ' I did, because you have loved and married ; because you 
 have stood out manfully against this strange modern insanity, 
 and refused to give up, when you were made a bishop, the wife 
 whom God had given you. You, I thought, could solve the 
 riddle for me, if any man could.' 
 
 ' Alas, friend ! I have begun to distrust, of late, my power of 
 solving riddles. After all, why should they be solved ? What 
 matters one more mystery in a world of mysteries ? " If thou 
 marry, thou hast not sinned," are St. Paul's own words ; and let 
 them be enough for us. Do not ask me to argue with you, but 
 to help you. Instead of puzzling me with deep questions, and 
 tempting me to set up my private judgment, as I have done too 
 often already, against the opinion of the Church, tell me your
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 227 
 
 story, and test my sympathy rather than my intellect. I shall 
 feel with you and work for you, doubt not, even though I am 
 unable to explain to myself why I do it.' 
 
 ' Then you cannot solve my riddle 1 ' 
 
 ' Let me help you,' said Synesius with a sweet smile, ' to solve 
 it for yourself. Y ou need not try to deceive me. You have a 
 love, an undefined, who is but one. When you possess her, you 
 will be able to judge better whether your interpretation of the 
 Song is the true one ; and if you still think that it is, Synesius, 
 at least, will have no quarrel against you. He has always 
 claimed for himself the right of philosophising in private, and 
 he will allow the same liberty to you, whether the mob do or 
 not.' 
 
 ' Then you agree with me ? Of course you do ! ' 
 
 ' Is it fair to ask me whether I accept a novel interpretation, 
 which I have only heard five minutes ago, delivered in a some- 
 what hasty and rhetorical form ? ' 
 
 ' You are shirking the question,' said Raphael peevishly. 
 
 ' And what if I am ? Tell me, point-blank, most self -torment- 
 ing of men, can I help you in practice, even though I choose to 
 leave you to yourself in speculation ? ' 
 
 'Well, then, if you will have my story, take it, and judge for 
 yourself of Christian common sense.' 
 
 And hurriedly, as if ashamed of his own confession, and yet 
 compelled, in spite of himself, to unbosom it, he told Synesius 
 all, from his first meeting with Victoria to his escape from her at 
 Berenice. 
 
 The good bishop, to Aben-Ezra's surprise, seemed to treat the 
 whole matter as infinitely amusing. He chuckled, smote his 
 hand on his thigh, and nodded approval at every pause perhaps 
 to give the speaker courage perhaps because he really thought 
 that Raphael's prospects were considerably less desperate than 
 he fancied. . . . 
 
 ' If you laugh at me, Synesius, I am silent. It is quite enough 
 to endure the humiliation of telling you that I am confound 
 it ! like any boy of sixteen.' 
 
 'Laugh at you? with you, you mean. A convent? Pooh, 
 pooh ! The old Prefect has enough sense, I will warrant him, 
 not to refuse a good match for his child.' 
 
 ' You forget that I have not the honour of being a Christian.' 
 
 ' Then we'll make you one. You won't let me convert you, I 
 know ; you always used to gibe and jeer at my philosophy. 
 But Augustine comes to-morrow.' 
 
 ' Augustine ? ' 
 
 ' He does indeed ; and we must be off by daybreak, with all 
 the armed men we can muster, to meet and escort him, and to 
 hunt, of course, going and coming ; for we have had no food 
 this fortnight, but what our own dogs and bows have furnished 
 us. He shall take you in hand, and cure you of all your Judaism
 
 228 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 in a week ; and then just leave the rest to me ; I will manage it 
 somehow or other. It is sure to come right. No ; do not be 
 bashful. It will be real amusement to a poor wretch who can 
 find nothing else to do Heigho ! And as for lying under an 
 obligation to me, why we can square that by your lending me 
 three or four thousand gold pieces Heaven knows I want them ! 
 on the certainty of never seeing them again.' 
 
 Raphael could not help laughing in his turn. 
 
 ' Synesius is himself still, I see, and not unworthy of his an- 
 cestor Hercules : and though he shrinks from cleansing the 
 Augean stable of my soul, paws like the war-horse in the valley 
 at the hope of undertaking any lesser labours in my behalf. 
 But, my dear generous bishop, this matter is more serious, and 
 I, the subject of it, have become more serious also, than you 
 fancy. Consider : by the uncorrupt honour of your Spartan 
 forefathers, Agis, Brasidas, and the rest of them, don't you think 
 that you are, in your hasty kindness, tempting me to behave in 
 a way which they would have called somewhat rascally ? ' 
 
 ' How then, my dear man ! You have a very honourable and 
 praiseworthy desire ; and I am willing to help you to compass 
 it.' 
 
 'Do you think that I have not cast about before now for 
 more than one method of compassing it for myself ? My good 
 man, I have been tempted a dozen times already to turn Chris- 
 tian : but there has risen up in me the strangest fancy about 
 conscience and honour. ... I never was scrupulous before, 
 Heaven knows I am not over-scrupulous now except about 
 her. I cannot dissemble before her. I dare not look in her 
 face when I had a lie in my right hand. . . . She looks through 
 one into one like a clear-eyed awful goddess. ... I never 
 was ashamed in my life till my eyes met hers. . . .' 
 
 ' But if you really became a Christian ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot. I should suspect my own motives. Here is an- 
 other of these absurd soul -anatomising scruples which have 
 risen up in me. I should suspect that I had changed my creed 
 because I wished to change it that if I was not deceiving her I 
 was deceiving myself. If I had not loved her it might have been 
 different : but now just because I do love her, I will not, I 
 dare not, listen to Augustine's arguments, or my own thoughts 
 on the matter.' 
 
 ' Most wayward of men ! ' cried Synesius, half peevishly ; 
 ' you seem to take some perverse pleasure in throwing yourself 
 into the waves again, the instant you have climbed a rock of 
 refuge ! ' 
 
 ' Pleasure ? Is there any pleasure in feeling oneself at death - 
 grips with the devil ? I had given up believing in him for many 
 a year. . . . And behold, the moment that I awaken to anything 
 noble and right, I find the old serpent alive and strong at my 
 throat! No wonder that I suspect him, you, myself I, who
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 229 
 
 have been tempted, every hour in the last week, temptations to 
 become a devil. Ay,' he went on, raising his voice, as all the 
 fire of his intense Eastern nature flashed from his black eyes, 
 ' to be a devil ! From my childhood till now never have I known 
 what it was to desire and not to possess. It is not often that I 
 have had to trouble any poor Naboth for his vineyard : but 
 when I have taken a fancy to it, Naboth has always found it 
 wiser to give way. And now. ... Do you fancy that I have 
 not had a dozen hellish plots flashing across me in the last week? 
 Look here ! This is the mortgage of her father's whole estate. 
 I bought it whether by the instigation of Satan or of God of 
 a banker in Berenice, the very day I left them ; and now they, 
 and every straw which they possess, are in my power. I can 
 ruin them sell them as slaves betray them to death as rebels 
 and last, but not least, cannot I hire a dozen worthy men to 
 carry her off", and cut the Gordian knot most simply and sum- 
 marily ? And yet I dare not. I must be pure to approach the 
 pure ; and righteous, to kiss the feet of the righteous. Whence 
 came this new conscience to me I know not, but come it has ; 
 and I dare no more do a base thing toward her, than I dare 
 toward a God, if there be one. This very mortgage I hate it, 
 curse it, now that I possess it the tempting devil ! ' 
 
 ' Burn it,' said Synesius quietly. 
 
 ' Perhaps I may. At least, used it never shall be. Compel 
 her ? I am too proud, or too honourable, or something or other, 
 even to solicit her. She must come to me : tell me with her own 
 lips that she loves me, that she will take me, and make me 
 worthy of her. She must have mercy on me, of her own free 
 will, or let her pine and die in that accursed prison ; and then 
 a scratch with the trusty old dagger for her father, and another 
 for myself, will save him from any more superstitions, and me 
 from any more philosophic doubts, for a few aeons of ages, till 
 we start again in new lives he, I suppose, as a jackass, and I 
 as a baboon. What matter ? but unless I possess her by fair 
 means, God do so to me, and more also, if I attempt base ones ! ' 
 
 ' God be with you, my son, in the noble warfare! ' said Synesius, 
 his eyes filling with kindly tears. 
 
 ' It is no noble warfare at all. It is a base coward fear, in 
 one who never before feared man or devil, and is now fallen 
 low enough to be afraid of a helpless girl ! ' 
 
 ' Not so,' cried Synesius, in his turn ; ' it is a noble and a 
 holy fear. You fear her goodness. Coula you see her goodness, 
 much less fear it, were there not a Divine Light within you 
 which showed you what, and how awful, goodness was ? Tell 
 me no more, Raphael Abcn-Ezra, that you do not fear God ; for 
 he who fears Virtue, fears Him whose likeness Virtue is. Go on 
 go on. ... Be brave, and His strength will be made manifest 
 in your weakness.'
 
 230 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 It was late that night before Synesius compelled his guest to 
 retire, after having warned him not to disturb himself if he 
 heard the alarm-bell ring, as the house was well garrisoned, and 
 having set the water -clock by which he and his servants 
 measured their respective watches. And then the good bishop, 
 having disposed his sentinels, took his station on the top of his 
 tower, close by the warning-bell ; and as he looked put over the 
 broad lands of his forefathers, and prayed that their desolation 
 might come to an end at last, he did not forget to pray for the 
 desolation of the guest who slept below, a happier and more 
 healthy slumber than he had known for many a week. For 
 before Raphael lay down that night, he had torn to shreds 
 Majoricus's mortgage, and felt a lighter and a better man as he 
 saw the cunning temptation consuming scrap by scrap in the 
 lamp-flame. And then, wearied out with fatigue of body and 
 mind, he forgot Synesius, Victoria, and the rest, and seemed to 
 himself to wander all night among the vine -clad glens of 
 Lebanon, amid the gardens of lilies, and the beds of spices ; 
 while shepherds' music lured him on and on, and girlish voices, 
 chanting the mystic idyl of his mighty ancestor, rang soft and 
 fitful through his weary brain. 
 
 Before sunrise the next morning, Raphael was faring forth 
 gallantly, well armed and mounted, by Synesius's side, followed 
 by four or five brace of tall brush-tailed greyhounds, and by 
 the faithful Bratf, whose lop-ears and heavy jaws, unique in 
 that land of prick-ears and fox -noses, formed the absorbing 
 subject of conversation among some twenty smart retainers, 
 who, armed to the teeth for chase and war, rode behind the 
 bishop on half -starved raw-boned horses, inured by desert 
 training and bad times to do the maximum of work upon the 
 minimum of food. 
 
 For the first few miles they rode in silence, through ruined 
 villages and desolated farms, from which here and there a 
 single inhabitant peeped forth fearfully, to pour his tale of woe 
 into the ears of the hapless bishop, and then, instead of asking 
 alms from him, to entreat his acceptance of some paltry 
 remnant of grain or poultry, which had escaped the hands of 
 the marauders: and as they clung to his hands, and blessed 
 him as their only hope and stay, poor Synesius heard patiently 
 again and again the same purposeless tale of woe, and mingled 
 his tears with theirs, and then spurred his horse on impatiently, 
 as if to escape from the sight of misery which he could not 
 relieve ; while a voice in Raphael's heart seemed to ask him 
 'Why was thy wealth given to thee, but that thou mightest 
 dry, if but for a day, such tears as these 1 ' 
 
 And he fell into a meditation which was not without its 
 fruit in due season, but which lasted till they had left the 
 enclosed country, and were climbing the slopes of the low
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 231 
 
 rolling hills, over which lay the road from the distant sea. But 
 as they left the signs of war behind them, the volatile temper 
 of the good bishop began to rise. He petted his hounds, chatted 
 to his men, discoursed on the most probable quarter for finding 
 game, and exhorted them cheerfully enough to play the man, 
 as their chance of having anything to eat at night depended 
 entirely on their prowess during the day. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Kaphael at last, glad of a pretext for breaking 
 his own chain of painful thought, ' there is a vein of your land- 
 salt. I suspect that you were all at the bottom of the sea once, 
 and that the old Earth-shaker Neptune, tired of your bad ways, 
 gave you a lift one morning, and set you up as dry land, in 
 order to be rid of you.' 
 
 ' It may really be so. They say that the Argonauts returned 
 back through this country from the Southern Ocean, which 
 must have been therefore far nearer us than it is now, and that 
 they carried their mystic vessel over these very hills to the 
 Syrtis. However, we have forgotten all about the sea tho- 
 roughly enough since that time. I well remember my first 
 astonishment at the sight of a galley in Alexandria, and the 
 roar of laughter with which my fellow-students greeted my not 
 unreasonable remark, that it looked very like a centipede.' 
 
 4 And do you recollect, too, the argument which I had once 
 with your steward about the pickled fish which I brought you 
 from Egypt ; and the way in which, when the jar was opened, 
 the servants shrieked and ran right and left, declaring that the 
 fish-bones were the spines of poisonous serpents ? ' 
 
 ' The old fellow is as obstinate as ever, I assure you, in his 
 disbelief in salt water. He torments me continually by asking 
 me to tell him the story of my shipwreck, and does not believe 
 me after all, though he has heard it a dozen times. "Sir," he 
 said to me solemnly, after you were gone, "will that strange 
 gentleman pretend to persuade me that anything eatable can 
 come out of his great pond there at Alexandria, when every one 
 can see that the best fountain in the country never breeds 
 anything but frogs and leeches ? " ' 
 
 As he spoke they left the last field behind them, and entered 
 upon a ^ast sheet of breezy down, speckled with shrubs and 
 copse, and split here and there by rocky glens, ending in fertile 
 valleys, once thick with farms and homesteads. 
 
 ' Here,' cried Synesius, ' are our hunting-grounds. And now 
 for one hour's forgetfulness, and the joys of the noble art. 
 What could old Homer have been thinking of when he forgot 
 to number it among the pursuits which are glorious to heroes, 
 and make man illustrious, and yet could laud in those very 
 words the forum ? ' 
 
 ' The forum 1 ' said Kaphael. ' I never saw it yet make men 
 anything but rascals.' 
 
 ' Brazen-faced rascals, my friend. I detest the whole breed
 
 232 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 of lawyers, and never meet one -without turning him into 
 ridicule ; effeminate pettifoggers, who shudder at the very 
 sight of roast venison, when they think of the dangers by 
 which it has been procured. But it is a cowardly age, my 
 friend a cowardly age. Let us forget it, and ourselves. 
 
 'And even philosophy and Hypatia ! ' said Raphael archly. 
 
 ' I have done with philosophy. To fight like an Heracleid, 
 and to die like a bishop, is all I have left except Hypatia, the 
 perfect, the wise ! I tell you, friend, it is a comfort to me, even 
 in my deepest misery, to recollect that the corrupt world yet 
 holds one being so divine - 
 
 And he was running on in one of his high-flown laudations 
 of his idol, when Raphael checked him. 
 
 'I fear our common sympathy on that subject is rather 
 weakened. I have began to doubt her lately nearly as much as 
 I doubt philosophy.' 
 
 ' Not her virtue ? ' 
 
 ' No, friend ; nor her beauty, nor her wisdom ; simply her 
 power of making me a better man. A selfish criterion, you will 
 say. Be it so. ... What a noble horse that is of yours ! ' 
 
 ' He has been he has been ; but worn out now, like his 
 master and his master's fortunes. . . .' 
 
 ' Not so, certainly, the colt on which you have done me the 
 honour to mount me.' 
 
 ' Ah, my poor boy's pet ! . . . You are the first person who 
 has crossed him since - ' 
 
 ' Is he of your own breeding ? ' asked Raphael, trying to turn 
 the conversation. 
 
 'A cross between that white Nisaean which you sent me, and 
 one of my own mares.' 
 
 'Not a bad cross ; though he keeps a little of the bull head 
 and greyhound flank of your Africans.' 
 
 'So much the better, friend. Give me bone bone and 
 endurance for this rough down country. Your delicate Nisseans 
 are all very well for a few minutes over those flat sands of 
 Egypt : but here you need a horse who will go forty miles a 
 day over rough ana smooth, and dine thankfully off thistles at 
 night. Aha, poor little man ! ' as a jerboa sprang up from a 
 tuft of bushes at his feet 'I fear you must help to fill our 
 soup-kettle in these hard times.' 
 
 And with a dexterous sweep of his long whip, the worthy 
 bishop entangled the jerboa's long legs, whisked him up to his 
 saddle-bow, and delivered him to the groom and the game-bag. 
 
 ' Kill him at once. Don't let him squeak, boy ! he cries too 
 like a child. . . .' 
 
 ' Poor little wretch ! ' said Raphael. ' What more right, now, 
 have we to eat him than he to eat us ? ' 
 
 ^ If he can eat us, let him try. How long have you 
 
 joined the Manichees ?'
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 233 
 
 ' Have no fears on that score. But, as I told you, since my 
 wonderful conversion by Bran, the dog, I have begun to hold 
 dumb animals in respect, as probably quite as good as myself.' 
 
 ' Then you need a further conversion, friend Raphael, and to 
 learn what is the dignity of man ; and when that arrives, you 
 will learn to believe, with me, that the life of every beast upon 
 the face of the earth would be a cheap price to pay in exchange 
 for the life of the meanest human being.' 
 
 ' Yes, if they be required for food : but really, to kill them 
 for our amusement ! ' 
 
 ' Friend, when I was still a heathen, I recollect well how I 
 used to haggle at that story of the cursing of the fig-tree ; but 
 when I learnt to know what man was, and that I had been all 
 my life mistaking for a part of nature that race which was 
 originally, and can be again, made in the likeness of God, then 
 I began to see that it were well if every fig-tree upon earth 
 were cursed, if the spirit of one man could be taught thereby a 
 single lesson. And so I speak of these, my darling field-sports, 
 on which I have not been ashamed, as you know, to write a 
 book.' 
 
 ' And a very charming one : yet you were still a pagan, re- 
 collect, when you wrote it.' 
 
 ' I was ; and then I followed the chase by mere nature and 
 inclination. But now I know I have a right to follow it, because 
 it gives me endurance, promptness, courage, self-control, as well 
 as health and cheerfulness : and therefore Ah ! a fresh ostrich- 
 track ! ' 
 
 And stopping short, Synesius began pricking slowly up the 
 hillside. 
 
 ' Back ! ' whispered he, at last. ' Quietly and silently. Lie 
 down on your horse's neck, as I do, or the long-necked rogues 
 may see you. They must be close to us over the brow. I know 
 that favourite grassv slope of old. Round under yon hill, or 
 they will get wind of us, and then farewell to them ! ' 
 
 And Synesius and his groom cantered on, hanging each to 
 their horses' necks by an arm and a leg, in a way which Raphael 
 endeavoured in vain to imitate. 
 
 Two or three minutes more of breathless silence brought 
 them to the edge of the hill, where Synesius halted, peered 
 down a moment, and then turned to Raphael, his face and limbs 
 quivering with delight, as he held up two fingers, to denote the 
 number of the birds. 
 
 ' Out of arrow-range ! Slip the dogs, Syphax ! ' 
 
 And in another minute Raphael found himself galloping 
 headlong down the hill, while two magnificent ostriches, their 
 outspread plumes waving in the bright breeze, their necks 
 stooped almost to the ground, and their long legs flashing out 
 behind them, were sweeping away before the greyhounds at a 
 pace which no mortal horse could have held for ten minutes.
 
 234 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' Baby that I am still ! ' cried Synesius, tears of excitement 
 glittering in his eyes ; . . . while Raphael gave himself up to 
 the joy, and forgot even Victoria, in the breathless rusli over 
 rock and bush, sandhill and watercourse. 
 
 ' Take care of that dry torrent-bed ! Hold up, old horse ! 
 This will not last two minutes more. They cannot hold their 
 pace against this breeze. . . . Well tried, good dog, though you 
 did miss him! Ah, that my boy were here! There they 
 double. Spread right and left, my children, and ride at them 
 as they pass ! ' 
 
 Ana the ostriches, unable, as Synesius said, to keep their 
 pace against the breeze, turned sharp 011 their pursuers, and 
 beating the air with outspread wings, came down the wind 
 again, at a rate even more wonderful than before. 
 
 'Ride at him, Raphael ride at him, and turn him into those 
 bushes ! ' cried Synesius, fitting an arrow to his bow. 
 
 Raphael obeyed, and the bird swerved into the low scrub ; 
 the well -trained horse leapt at him like a cat j and Raphael, 
 who dare not trust his skill in archery, struck with his whip at 
 the long neck as it struggled past him, and felled the noble 
 quarry to the ground. He was in the act of springing down to 
 secure his prize, when a shout from Synesius stopped him. 
 
 ' Are you mad 1 He will kick out your heart ! Let the dogs 
 hold him!' 
 
 ' Where is the other ? ' asked Raphael, panting. 
 
 ' Where he ought to be. I have not missed a running shot 
 for many a month.' 
 
 ' Really, you rival the Emperor Commodus himself.' 
 
 'Ah ! I tried his fancy of crescent -headed arrows once, and 
 decapitated an ostrich or two tolerably : but they are only fit 
 for the amphitheatre : they will not lie safely in the quiver on 
 horseback, I find. But what is that ? ' And he pointed to a 
 cloud of white dust, about a mile down the valley. ' A herd of 
 antelopes ? If so, God is indeed gracious to us ! Come down 
 whatsoever they are, we have no time to lose.' 
 
 And collecting his scattered forces, Synesius pushed on rapidly 
 towards the object which had attracted his attention. 
 
 ' Antelopes ! ' cried one. 
 
 ' Wild horses ! ' cried another. 
 
 ' Tame ones, rather ! ' cried Synesius, with a gesture of wrath. 
 ' I saw the flash of arms ! ' 
 
 ' The Ausurians ! ' And a yell of rage rang from the whole 
 troop. 
 
 ' Will you follow me, children ? ' 
 
 'To death ! ' shouted they. 
 
 ' I know it. Oh that I had seven hundred of you, as Abraham 
 had ! We would see then whether these scoundrels did not 
 share, within a week, the fate of Chedorlaomer's.' 
 
 ' Happy man, who can actually trust your own slaves ! ' said
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 235 
 
 Raphael, as the party galloped on, tightening their girdles and 
 getting ready their weapons. 
 
 ' Slaves 1 If the law gives me the power of selling one or 
 two of them who are not yet wise enough to be trusted to take 
 care of themselves, it is a fact which both I and they have long 
 forgotten. Their fathers grew gray at my father's table, and 
 God grant that they may grow gray at mine ! We eat together, 
 work together, hunt together, fight together, jest together, and 
 weep together. God help us all ! for we have but one common 
 weal. Now do you make out the enemy, boys ? ' 
 
 'Ausurians, your Holiness. The same party who tried 
 Myrsinitis last week. I know them by the helmets which they 
 took from the Markmen.' 
 
 ' And with whom are they fighting ? ' 
 
 No one could see. Fighting they certainly were : but their 
 victims were beyond them, and the party galloped on. 
 
 'That was a smart business at Myrsinitis. The Ausurians 
 appeared while the people were at morning prayers. The 
 soldiers, of course, ran for their lives, and hid in the caverns, 
 leaving the matter to the priests.' 
 
 ' If they were of your presbytery, I doubt not they proved 
 themselves worthy of their diocesan.' 
 
 ' Ah, if all my priests were but like them ! or my people 
 either ! ' said Synesius, chatting quietly in full gallop, like a 
 true son of the saddle. ' They offered up prayers for victory, 
 sallied out at the head of the peasants, and met the Moors in a 
 narrow pass. There their hearts failed them a little. Faustus, 
 the deacon, makes them a speech ; charges the leader of the 
 robbers, like young David, with a stone, beats his brains out 
 therewith, strips him in true Homeric fashion, and routs the 
 Ausurians with their leader's sword ; returns and erects a 
 trophy in due classic form, and saves the whole valley.' 
 
 ' You should make him archdeacon.' 
 
 ' I would send him and his townsfolk round the province, if 
 I could, crowned with laurel, and proclaim before them at every 
 market-place, " These are men of God." With whom can those 
 Ausurians be dealing? Peasants would have been all killed 
 long ago, and soldiers would have run away long ago. It is 
 truly a portent in this country to see a fight last ten minutes. 
 Who can they be 1 I see them now, and hewing away like men 
 too. They are all on foot but two ; and we have not a cohort 
 of infantry left for many a mile round.' 
 
 ' I know who they are ! ' cried Raphael, suddenly striking 
 spurs into his horse. 'I will swear to that armour among a 
 thousand. And there is a litter in the midst of them. On ! 
 and fight, men, if you ever fought in your lives ! ' 
 
 'Softly ! ' cried Synesius. 'Trust an old soldier, and perhaps 
 alas ! that he should have to say it the best left in this 
 wretched country. Round by the hollow, and take the bar-
 
 236 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 barians suddenly in flank. They will not see us then till we 
 are within twenty paces of them. Aha ! you have a thing or 
 two to learn yet, Aben-Ezra.' 
 
 And chuckling at the prospect of action, the gallant bishop 
 wheeled his little troop, and in five minutes more dashed out of 
 the copse with a shout and a flight of arrows, and rushed into 
 the thickest of the fight. 
 
 One cavalry skirmish must be very like another. A crash of 
 horses, a flashing of sword-blades, five minutes of blind confusion, 
 and then those who have not been knocked out of their saddles 
 by their neighbours' knees, and have not cut off their own 
 horses' heads instead of their enemy's, find themselves, they 
 know not how, either running away or being run away from 
 not one blow in ten having taken effect on either side. And 
 even so Raphael, having made vain attempts to cut down 
 several Moors, found himself standing on his head in an al- 
 together undignified posture, among innumerable horses' legs, 
 in all possible frantic motions. To avoid one was to get in the 
 way of another ; so he philosophically sat still, speculating on 
 the sensation of having his brains kicked out, till the cloud of 
 legs vanished, and he found himself kneeling abjectly opposite 
 the nose of a mule, on whose back sat, utterly unmoved, a tall 
 and reverend man, in episcopal costume. The stranger, instead 
 of bursting out laughing, as Raphael did, solemnly lifted his 
 hand, and gave him his blessing. The Jew sprang to his feet, 
 heedless of all such courtesies, and, looking round, saw the 
 Ausurians galloping off up the hill in scattered groups, and 
 Synesius standing close by him, wiping a bloody sword. 
 
 ' Is the litter safe ? ' were his first words. 
 
 ' Safe ; and so are all. I gave you up for killed, when I saw 
 you run through with that lance.' 
 
 ' Run through ? I am as sound in the hide as a crocodile,' 
 said Raphael, laughing. 
 
 ' Probably the fellow took the butt instead of the point, in 
 his hurry. So goes a cavalry scuffle. I saw you hit three or 
 four fellows running with the flat of your sword.' 
 
 ' Ah, that explains,' said Raphael. ' Why, I thought myself 
 once the best swordsman on the Armenian frontier. . . .' 
 
 ' I suspect that you were thinking of some one besides the 
 Moors,' said Synesius, archly pointing to the litter : and Raphael, 
 for the first time for many a year, blushed like a boy of fifteen, 
 and then turned haughtily away, and remounted his horse, 
 saying, ' Clumsy fool that I was ! ' 
 
 ' Thank God rather that you have been kept from the shed- 
 ding of blood,' said the stranger bishop, in a soft, deliberate 
 voice, with a peculiarly clear and delicate enunciation. ' If 
 God have given us the victory, why grudge His having spared 
 any other of His creatures besides ourselves ? ' 
 
 ' Because there are so many the more of them left to ravish,
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 237 
 
 burn, and slay,' answered Synesius. 'Nevertheless, I am not 
 going to argue with Augustine.' 
 
 Augustine ! Raphael looked intently at the man, a tall, 
 delicate-featured personage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, 
 scarred like his cheeks with the deep furrows of many a doubt 
 and woe. Eesolve, gentle but unbending, was expressed in his 
 thin close-set lips and his clear quiet eye ; but the calm of his 
 mighty countenance was the calm of a worn-out volcano, over 
 which centuries must pass before the earthquake-rents be filled 
 with kindly soil, and the cinder-slopes grow gay with grass and 
 flowers. The Jew's thoughts, however, were soon turned into 
 another channel by the hearty embraces of Majoricus and his 
 son. 
 
 ' We have caught you again, you truant ! ' said the young 
 Tribune ; ' you could not escape us, you see, after all.' 
 
 ' Rather, said the father, ' we owe him a second debt of grati- 
 tude for a second deliverance. We were right hard bestead when 
 you rode up.' 
 
 'Oh, he brings nothing but good with him whenever he 
 appears ; and then he pretends to be a bird of ill-omen,' said the 
 light-hearted Tribune, putting his armour to rights. 
 
 Raphael was in his secret heart not sorry to find that his old 
 friends bore him no grudge for his caprice : but all he answered 
 was 
 
 ' Pray thank any one but me ; I have, as usual, proved myself 
 a fool. But what brings you here, like Gods e Machina ? It is 
 contrary to all probabilities. One would not admit so astound- 
 ing an incident, even in the modern drama.' 
 
 ' Contrary to none whatsoever, my friend. We found Augus- 
 tine at Berenice, in act to set off to Synesius : we one of us, 
 that is were certain that you would be found with him ; and 
 we decided on acting as Augustine's guard, for none of the 
 dastard garrison dare stir out.' 
 
 'One of us,' thought Raphael, 'which one?' And, con- 
 quering his pride, he asked, as carelessly as he could, for 
 Victoria. 
 
 ' She is there in the litter, poor child ! ' said her father in a 
 serious tone. 
 
 'Surely not ill?' 
 
 ' Alas ! either the overwrought excitement of months of 
 heroism broke down when she found us safe at last, or some 
 
 stroke from God ... Who can tell what I may not have 
 
 deserved ? But she lias been utterly prostrate in body and mind, 
 ever since we parted from you at Berenice.' 
 
 The blunt soldier little guessed the meaning of his own 
 words. But Raphael, as he heard, felt a pang shoot through his 
 heart, too keen for him to discern whether it sprang from joy or 
 from despair. 
 
 'Come,' cried the cheerful voice of Synesius, 'come, Aben-
 
 238 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Ezra ; you have knelt for Augustine's blessing already, and now 
 you must enter into the fruition of it. Come, you two philoso- 
 phers must know each other. Most holy, I entreat you to preach 
 to this friend of mine, at once the wisest and the foolishest of 
 men.' 
 
 ' Only the latter,' said Raphael ; ' but open to any speech of 
 Augustine's, at least when we are safe home, and game enough 
 for Synesius's new guests killed.' 
 
 And turning away, he rode silent and sullen by the side of 
 his companions, who began at once to consult together as to the 
 plans of Majoricus and his soldiers. 
 
 In spite of himself, Raphael soon became interested in Augus- 
 tine's conversation. He entered into the subject of Cyrenian 
 misrule and ruin as heartily and shrewdly as any man of the 
 world ; and when all the rest were at a loss, the prompt prac- 
 tical hint which cleared up the difficulty was certain to come 
 from him. It was by his advice that Majoricus had brought his 
 soldiery hither ; it was his proposal that they should be employed 
 for a fixed period in defending these remote southern boundaries 
 of the province ; he checked the impetuosity of Synesius, cheered 
 the despair of Majoricus, appealed to the honour and the Chris- 
 tianity of the soldiers, and seemed to have a word and that the 
 right word for every man ; and after a while, Aben-Ezra quite 
 forgot the stiffness and deliberation of his manner, and the 
 quaint use of Scripture texts in far-fetched illustrations of 
 every opinion which he propounded. It had seemed at first a 
 mere affectation ; but the arguments which it was employed to 
 enforce were in themselves so moderate and so rational, that 
 Raphael began to feel, little by little, that his apparent pedantry 
 was only the result of a wish to refer every matter, even the 
 most vulgar, to some deep and divine rule of right and wrong. 
 
 'But you forget all this while, my friends,' said Majoricus at 
 last, 'the danger which you incur by sheltering proclaimed 
 rebels.' 
 
 ' The King of kings has forgiven your rebellion, in that while 
 He has punished you by the loss of your lands and honours, He 
 has given you your life for a prey in this city of refuge. It re- 
 mains for you to bring forth worthy fruits of penitence ; of 
 which I know none better than those which John the Baptist 
 commanded to the soldiery of old, " Do no violence to any man, 
 and be content with your wages." ' 
 
 ' As for rebels and rebellion,' said Synesius, ' they are matters 
 unknown among us ; for where there is no king there can be no 
 rebellion. Whosoever will help us against Ausurians is loyal in 
 our eyes. And as for our political creed, it is simple enough 
 namely, that the emperor never dies, and that his name is 
 Agamemnon, who fought at Troy; which any of my grooms 
 will prove to you syllogistically enough to satisfy Augustine 
 himself. As thus
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 239 
 
 'Agamemnon was the greatest and the best of kings. 
 
 ' The emperor is the greatest and the best of kings. 
 
 ' Therefore, Agamemnon is the emperor, and conversely.' 
 
 'It had been well,' said Augustine, with a grave smile, 'if 
 some of our friends had held the same doctrine, even at the 
 expense of their logic.' 
 
 ' Or if,' answered Synesius, ' they believed with us, that the 
 emperor's chamberlain is a clever old man, with a bald head like 
 my own, Ulysses by name, who was rewarded with the prefecture 
 of all lands north of the Mediterranean, for putting out the 
 Cy clop's eye two years ago. However, enougn of this. But, 
 you see, you are not in any extreme danger of informers and 
 intriguers. . . . The real difficulty is, how you will be able to 
 obey Augustine, by being content with your wages. For,' 
 lowering nis voice, you will get literally none.' 
 
 ' It will be as much as we deserve,' said the young Tribune ; 
 ' but my fellows have a trick of eating ' 
 
 ' They are welcome, then, to all deer and ostriches which they 
 can catch. But I am not only penniless, but reduced myself to 
 live, like the Lsestrygons, on meat and nothing else ; all crops 
 and stocks for miles round being either burnt or carried 
 offi' 
 
 ' E nihilo nihil ! ' said Augustine, having nothing else to say. 
 But here Raphael woke up on a sudden with 
 
 ' Did the rentapolitan wheat-ships go to Rome ? ' 
 
 ' No ; Orestes stopped them when he stopped the Alexandrian 
 convoy.' 
 
 ' Then the Jews have the wheat, trust them for it ; and what 
 they have I have. There are certain monies of mine lying at 
 interest in the seaports, which will set that matter to rights for 
 a month or two. Do you find an escort to-morrow, and I will 
 find wheat.' 
 
 'But, most generous of friends, I can neither repay you 
 interest nor principal.' 
 
 ' Be it so. I have spent so much money during the last thirty 
 years in doing nothing but evil, that it is hard if I may not at 
 last spend a little in doing good. Unless his Holiness of Hippo 
 thinks it wrong for you to accept the good will of an infidel ? ' 
 
 'Which of these three,' said Augustine, 'was neighbour to 
 him who fell among thieves, but he who had mercy on him ? 
 Verily, my friend Raphael Aben-Ezra, thou art not far from the 
 kingdom of God.' 
 
 ' Of which God ? ' asked Raphael slyly. 
 
 'Of the God of thy forefather Abraham, whom thou shalt 
 hear us worship this evening, if He will. Synesius, have you a 
 church wherein I can perform the evening service, and give a 
 word of exhortation to these my children ? ' 
 
 Synesius sighed. ' There is a ruin, which was last month a 
 church.'
 
 240 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' And is one still. Man did not place there the presence of 
 God, and man cannot expel it.' 
 
 And so, sending out hunting-parties right and left in chase of 
 everything which had animal life, and picking up before night- 
 fall a tolerably abundant supply of game, they went homewards, 
 where Victoria was intrusted, to the care of Synesius's old 
 stewardess, and the soldiery were marched straight into the 
 church ; while Synesius's servants, to whom the Latin service 
 would have been unintelligible, busied themselves in cooking 
 the still warm game. 
 
 Strangely enough it sounded to Raphael that evening to 
 hear, among those smoke-grimed pillars and fallen rafters, the 
 grand old Hebrew psalms of his nation ring aloft, to the very 
 chants, too, which were said by the rabbi to have been used in 
 the Temple-worship of Jerusalem. . . . They, and the invoca- 
 tions, thanksgivings, blessings, the very outward ceremonial 
 itself, were all Hebraic, redolent of the thoughts, the words of 
 his own ancestors. That lesson from the book of Proverbs, 
 which Augustine's deacon was reading in Latin the blood of 
 the man who wrote these words was flowing in Aben-Ezra's 
 veins. . . . Was it a mistake, an hypocrisy? or were they 
 indeed worshipping, as they fancied, the Ancient One who 
 spoke face to face with his forefathers, the Archetype of man, 
 the friend of Abraham and of Israel t 
 
 And now the sermon began ; and as Augustine stood for a 
 moment in prayer in front of the ruined altar, every furrow in 
 his worn face lit up by a ray of moonlight which streamed in 
 through the broken roof, Raphael waited impatiently for his 
 speech. What would he, the refined dialectician, the ancient 
 teacher of heathen rhetoric, the courtly and learned student, 
 the ascetic celibate and theosopher, have to say to those coarse 
 war-worn soldiers, Thracians and Markmen, Gauls and Belgians, 
 who sat watching there, with those sad earnest faces ? What 
 one thought or feeling in common could there be between 
 Augustine and his congregation ? 
 
 At last, after signing himself with the cross, he began. The 
 subject was one of the psalms which had just been read a 
 battle psalm, concerning Moab and Amalek, and the old border 
 wars of Palestine. What would he make of that ? 
 
 He seemed to start lamely enough, in spite of the exquisite 
 grace of his voice, and manner, and language, and the epigram- 
 matic terseness of every sentence. He spent some minutes 
 over the inscription of the psalm allegorised it made it mean 
 something which it never did mean in the writer's mind, and 
 which it, as Raphael well knew, never could mean, for his inter- 
 pretation was founded on a sheer mis-translation. He punned 
 on the Latin version derived the meaning of Hebrew words 
 from Latin etymologies. . . . And as he went on with the psalm 
 itself, the common sense of David seemed to evaporate in
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 241 
 
 mysticism. The most fantastic and far-fetched illusti'ations, 
 drawn from the commonest objects, alternated with mysterious 
 theosophic dogma. Where was that learning for which he was 
 so famed ? Where was that reverence for the old Hebrew 
 Scriptures which he professed 1 He was treating David as ill 
 as Hypatia used to treat Homer worse even than old Philo 
 did, when in the home life of the old Patriarchs, and in the 
 mighty acts of Moses and Joshua, he could find nothing but 
 spiritual allegories wherewith to pamper the private experiences 
 of the secluded theosophist. And Raphael felt very much 
 inclined to get up and go away, and still more inclined to say, 
 with a smile, in his haste, ' All men are liars.' . . . 
 
 And yet, what an illustration that last one was ! No mere 
 fancy, but a real deep glance into the working of the material 
 universe, as symbolic of the spiritual and unseen one. And not 
 drawn, as Hypatia's were, exclusively from some sublime or 
 portentous phenomenon, but from some dog, or kettle, or fish- 
 wife, with a homely insight worthy of old Socrates himself. 
 How personal he was becoming, too 1 . . . No long bursts of 
 declamation, but dramatic dialogue and interrogation, by-hints, 
 and unexpected hits at one and the other most commonplace 
 soldier's failing. . . . And yet each pithy rebuke was put in a 
 universal, comprehensive form, which made Raphael himself 
 wince which might, he thought, have made any man, or 
 woman either, wince in like manner. Well, whether or not 
 Augustine knew truths for all men, he at least knew sins for all 
 men, and for himself as well as his hearers. There was no 
 denying that. He was a real man, right or wrong. What he 
 rebuked in others, he had felt in himself, and fought it to the 
 death-grip, as the flash and quiver of that worn face proclaimed. 
 . . . But yet, why were the Edomites, by an utterly mistaken 
 pun on their name, to signify one sort of sin, and the Ammon- 
 ites another, and the Amalekites another ? What had that to do 
 with the old psalm ? What had it to do with the present audi- 
 tory ? Was not this the wildest and lowest form of that unreal, 
 subtilising, mystic pedantry, of which he had sickened long ago 
 in Hypatia's lecture-room, till he fled to Bran, the dog, for 
 honest practical realities ? 
 
 No. . . . Gradually, as Augustine's hints became more prac- 
 tical and pointed, Raphael saw that there was in his mind a 
 most real and organic connection, true or false, in what seemed 
 at first mere arbitrary allegory. Amalekites, personal sins, 
 Ausurian robbers and ravishers, were to him only so many 
 different forms of one and the same evil. He who helped any of 
 them fought against the righteous God : he who fought against 
 them fought for that God ; but he must conquer the Amalekites 
 within, if he expected to conquer the Amalekites without. 
 Could the legionaries permanently put clown the lust and greed 
 around them, while their own hearts were enslaved to lust and 
 
 R H
 
 242 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 greed within ? Would they not be helping it by example, while 
 they pretended to crush it by sword-strokes? Was it not a 
 mockery, an hypocrisy ? Could God's blessing be on it ? Could 
 they restore unity and peace to the country while there was 
 neither unity nor peace within them ? What had produced the 
 helplessness of the people, the imbecility of the military, but 
 inward helplessness, inward weakness ? They were weak against 
 Moors, because they were weak against enemies more deadly 
 than Moors. How could they fight for God outwardly, while 
 they were fighting against Him inwardly ? He would not go 
 forth with their hosts. How could He, when He was not among 
 their hosts ? He, a spirit, must dwell in their spirits. . . . And 
 then the shout of a king would be among them, and one of them 
 should chase a thousand. ... Or if not if both people and 
 soldiers required still further chastening and humbling what 
 matter, provided that they were chastened and humbled ? 
 What matter if their faces were confounded, if they were there- 
 by driven to seek His Name, who alone was the Truth, the 
 Light, and the Life ? What if they were slain ? Let them have 
 conquered the inward enemies, what matter to them if the out- 
 ward enemies seemed to prevail for a moment ? They should be 
 recompensed at the resurrection of the just, when death was 
 swallowed up in victory. It would be seen then who had really 
 conquered in the eyes of the just God they, God's ministers, 
 the defenders of peace and justice, or the Ausurians, the enemies 
 thereof. . . . And then, by some quaintest turn of fancy, he 
 introduced a word of pity and hope, even for the wild Moorish 
 robbers. It might be good for them to have succeeded thus far ; 
 they might learn from their Christian captives, purified by 
 affliction, truths which those captives had forgotten in pros- 
 perity. And, again, it might be good for them, as well as for 
 Christians, to be confounded and made like chaff before the 
 wind, that so they too might learn His Name. . . . And so on, 
 through and in spite of all conceits, allegories, overstrained 
 interpretations, Augustine went on evolving from the Psalms, 
 and from the past, and from the future, the assertion of a 
 Living, Present God, the eternal enemy of discord, injustice, and 
 evil, the eternal helper and deliverer of those who were enslaved 
 and crushed thereby in soul or body. ... It was all most 
 strange to Raphael. . . . Strange in its utter unlikeness to any 
 teaching, Platonist or Hebrew, which he had ever heard before, 
 and stranger still in its agreement with those teachings in the 
 instinctive ease with which it seemed to unite and justify them 
 all by the talisman of some one idea and what that might be, 
 his Jewish prejudices could not prevent his seeing, and yet 
 would not allow him to acknowledge. But, howsoever he might 
 redden with Hebrew pride ; howsoever he might long to persuade 
 himself that Augustine was building up a sound and right prac- 
 tical structure on the foundation of a sheer lie ; he could not
 
 xxi THE SQUIRE-BISHOP 243 
 
 help watching, at first with envy, and then with honest pleasure, 
 the faces of the rough soldiers, as they gradually lightened up 
 into fixed attention, into cheerful and solemn resolve. 
 
 ' What wonder ? ' said Raphael to himself, ' what wonder, after 
 all ? He has been speaking to these wild beasts as to sages and 
 saints ; he has been telling them that God is as much with them 
 as with prophets arid psalmists. ... I wonder if Hypatia, with 
 all her beauty, could have touched their hearts as he has done ? ' 
 
 And when Raphael rose at the end of this strange discourse, 
 he felt more like an old Hebrew than he had done since he sat 
 upon his nurse's knee, and heard legends about Solomon and 
 the Queen of Sheba. What if Augustine were right after all ? 
 What if the Jehovah of the old Scriptures were not merely the 
 national patron of the children of Abraham, as the Rabbis held ; 
 not merely, as Philo held, the Divine Wisdom which inspired a 
 few elect sages, even among the heathen : but the Lord of the 
 whole earth, and of the nations thereof? And suddenly, for 
 the first time in his life, passages from the psalms and prophets 
 flashed across him, which seemed to assert this. What else did 
 that whole book of Daniel and the history of Nebuchadnezzar 
 mean if not that? Philosophic latitudmarianism had long 
 ago cured him of the Rabbinical notion of the Babylonian 
 conqueror as an incarnate fiend, devoted to Tophet, like 
 Sennacherib before him. He had long in private admired the 
 man, as a magnificent human character, a fairer one, in his 
 eyes, than either Alexander or Julius Caesar. . . . What if 
 Augustine had given him a hint which might justify his 
 admiration ? . . . But more. . . . What if Augustine were right 
 in going even further than Philo and Hypatia ? What if this 
 same Jehovah, Wisdom, Logos, call Him what they might, were 
 actually the God of the spirits, as well as of the bodies of all 
 flesh ? What if He was as near Augustine said that He was 
 to the hearts of those wild Markmen, Gauls, Thracians, as to 
 Augustine's own heart ? What if He were Augustine said He 
 was yearning after, "enlightening, leading home to Himself, 
 the souls of the poorest, the most brutal, the most sinful? 
 What if He lovea man as man, and not merely one favoured 
 race or one favoured class of minds ? . . . And in the light of 
 that hypothesis, that strange story of the Cross of Calvary 
 seemed not so impossible after all. . . . But then, celibacy and 
 asceticism, utterly non-human as they were, what had they to 
 do with the theory of a human God ? 
 
 And filled with many questionings, Raphael was not sorry to 
 have the matter brought to an issue that very evening, in 
 Synesius's sitting-room. Majoricus, in his blunt, soldierlike 
 way, set Raphael and Augustine at each other without circum- 
 locution ; and Raphael, after trying to smile and pooh-pooh 
 away the subject, was tempted to make a jest on a seeming 
 fallacious conceit of Augustine's found it more difficult than
 
 244 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 he thought to trip up the serious and wary logician, lost his 
 temper a little a sign, perhaps, of returning health in a sceptic 
 and soon found himself fighting desperately, with Synesius 
 backing him, apparently for the mere pleasure of seeing a 
 battle, and Majoricus making him more and more cross by the 
 implicit dogmatic faith with which he hewed at one Gordian 
 knot after another, till Augustine had to save himself from his 
 friends by tripping the good Prefect gently up, and leaving him 
 miles behind the disputants, who argued on and on, till broad 
 daylight shone in, and the sight of the desolation below recalled 
 all parties to more material weapons, and a sterner warfare. 
 
 But little thought Raphael Abeii-Ezra, as he sat there, 
 calling up every resource of his wit and learning, in the hope, 
 half malicious, half honestly cautious, of upsetting the sage of 
 Hippo, and forgetting all heaven and earth in the delight of 
 battle with his peers, that in a neighbouring chamber, her 
 tender limbs outspread upon the floor, her face buried in her 
 dishevelled locks, lay Victoria, wrestling all night long for him 
 in prayer and bitter tears, as the murmur of busy voices 
 reached her eager ears, longing in vain to catch the sense of 
 words, on which hung now her hopes and bliss how utterly 
 and entirely, she had never yet confessed to herself, though she 
 dare confess it to that Son of Man to whom she prayed, as to 
 One who felt with tenderness and insight beyond that of a 
 brother, a father, even of a mother, for her maiden's blushes 
 and her maiden's woes. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 PANDEMONIUM 
 
 BUT where was Philammon all that week 1 
 
 For the first day or two of his imprisonment he had raved 
 like some wild beast entrapped. His new-found purpose and 
 energy, thus suddenly dammed back and checked, boiled up in 
 frantic rage. He tore at the bars of his prison ; he rolled him- 
 self, shrieking on the floor. He called in vain on Hypatia, on 
 Pelagia, on Arsenius on all but God. Pray he could not, and 
 dare not ; for to whom was he to pray ? To the stars ? to the 
 Abysses and the Eternities ? . . . 
 
 Alas ! as Augustine said once, bitterly enough, of his own 
 Manichaean teachers, Hypatia had taken away the living God, 
 and given him instead the four Elements. . . . And in utter 
 bewilderment and hopeless terror he implored the pity of every 
 guard and gaoler who passed along the corridor, and conjured 
 them, as brothers, fathers, men, to help him. Moved at once by 
 his agony and by his exceeding beauty, the rough Thracians, 
 who knew enough of their employer's character to have little
 
 xxir PANDEMONIUM 245 
 
 difficulty in believing his victim to be innocent, listened to him 
 and questioned him. But when they offered the very help which 
 he implored, and asked him to tell his story, the poor boy's 
 tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. How could he publish 
 his sister's shame ? And yet she was about to publish it her- 
 self ! . . . And instead of words, he met their condolences with 
 fresh agonies, till they gave him up as mad ; and, tired by his 
 violence, compelled him, with blows and curses, to remain 
 quiet ; and so the week wore out, in dull and stupefied despair, 
 which trembled on the very edge of idiocy. Night and day 
 were alike to him. The food which was thrust in through his 
 grate remained untasted : hour after hour, day after day, he sat 
 upon the ground, his head buried in his hands, half -dozing from 
 mere exhaustion of body and mind. Why should he care to 
 stir, to eat, to live ? He had but one purpose in heaven and 
 earth : and that one purpose was impossible. 
 
 At last his cell -door grated on its hinges. 'Up, my mad 
 youth ! ' cried a rough voice. ' Up, and thank the favour of the 
 gods, and the bounty of our noble ahem ! Prefect. To-day 
 he gives freedom to all prisoners. And I suppose a pretty boy 
 like you may go about your business, as well as uglier rascals ! ' 
 
 Philammon looked up in the gaoler's face with a dim, half- 
 comprehension of his meaning. 
 
 ' Do you hear 1 ' cried the man, with a curse. ' You are free. 
 Jump up, or I shut the door again, and your one chance is 
 over. 
 
 ' Did she dance Venus Anadyomene ? ' 
 
 'She! Who?' 
 
 ' My sister ! Pelagia ! ' 
 
 ' Heaven only knows what she has not danced in her time ! 
 But they say she dances to-day once more. Quick ! out, or I 
 shall not be ready in time for the sports. They begin an hour 
 hence. Free admission into the theatre to-day for all rogues 
 and honest men, Christians and heathens Curse the boy ! he's 
 as mad as ever.' 
 
 So indeed Philammon seemed ; for springing suddenly to his 
 feet, he rushed out past the gaoler, upsetting him into the 
 corridor, and fled wildly from the prison among the crowd of 
 liberated ruffians, ran from the prison home, from home to the 
 baths, from the baths to the theatre, and was soon pushing his 
 way, regardless of etiquette, towards the lower tiers of benches, 
 in order, he hardly knew why, to place himself as near as 
 possible to the very sight which he dreaded and abhorred. 
 
 As fate would have it, the passage by which he had entered 
 opened close to the Prefect's chair of state, where sat Orestes, 
 gorgeous in his robes of office, and by him to Philammon's 
 surprise and horror Hypatia herself. 
 
 More beautiful than ever, her forehead sparkling, like Juno's 
 own, with a lofty tiara of jewels, her white Ionic robe half
 
 246 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 hidden by a crimson shawl, there sat the vestal, the philosopher. 
 What did she there ? But the boy's eager eyes, accustomed but 
 too well to note every light and shade of feeling which crossed 
 that face, saw in a moment how wan and haggard was its 
 expression. She wore a look of constraint, of half -terrified 
 self -resolve, as of a martyr: and yet not an undoubting 
 martyr ; for as Orestes turned his head at the stir of Philam- 
 mon's intrusion, and flashing with anger at the sight, motioned 
 him fiercely back, Hypatia turned too, and as her eyes met her 
 pupil's, she blushed crimson, and started, and seemed in act to 
 motion him back also ; and then, recollecting herself, whispered 
 something to Orestes which quieted his wrath, and composed 
 herself, or rather sunk into her place again, as one who was 
 determined to abide the worst. 
 
 A knot of gay young gentlemen, Philammon's fellow-students, 
 pulled him down among them, with welcome and laughter ; and 
 before he could collect his thoughts, the curtain in front of the 
 stage had fallen, and the sport began. 
 
 The scene represented a background of desert mountains, 
 and on the stage itself, before a group of temporary huts, stood 
 huddling together the black Libyan prisoners, some fifty men, 
 women and children, bedizened with gaudy feathers and girdles 
 of tasselled leather, brandishing their spears and targets, and 
 glaring out with white eyes on the strange scene before them, 
 in childish awe and wonder. 
 
 Along the front of the stage a wattled battlement had been 
 erected, while below, the hyposcenium had been painted to 
 represent rocks, thus completing the rough imitation of a 
 village among the Libyan hills. 
 
 Amid breathless silence, a herald advanced, and proclaimed 
 that these were prisoners taken in arms against the Roman 
 senate and people, and therefore worthy of immediate death : 
 but that the Prefect, in his exceeding clemency toward them, 
 and especial anxiety to afford the greacest possible amusement 
 to the obedient and loyal citizens of Alexandria, had deter- 
 mined, instead of giving them at once to the beasts, to allow 
 them to fight for their lives, promising to the survivors a free 
 pardon if they acquitted themselves valiantly. 
 
 The poor wretches on the stage, when this proclamation was 
 translated to them, set up a barbaric yell of joy, and brandished 
 their spears and targets more fiercely than ever. 
 
 But their joy was short. The trumpets sounded the attack 
 a body of gladiators, equal in number to the savages, marched 
 out from one of the two great side -passages, made their 
 obeisance to the applauding spectators, and planting their 
 scaling-ladders against the front of the stage, mounted to the 
 attack. 
 
 The Libyans fought like tigers ; yet from the first Hypatia, 
 and Philammon also, could see that their promised chance of
 
 xxn PANDEMONIUM 247 
 
 life was a mere mockery. Their light darts and naked limbs 
 were no match for the heavy swords and complete armour of 
 their brutal assailants, who endured carelessly a storm of blows 
 and thrusts on heads and faces protected by visored helmets : 
 yet so fierce was the valour of the Libyans, that even they re- 
 coiled twice, and twice the scaling-ladders were hurled down 
 again, while more than one gladiator lay below, rolling in the 
 death-agony. 
 
 And then burst forth the sleeping devil in the hearts of that 
 great brutalised multitude. Yell upon yell of savage triumph, 
 and still more savage disappointment, rang from every tier of 
 that vast ring of seats, at each blow and parry, onslaught and 
 repulse ; and Philammon saw with horror and surprise that 
 luxury, refinement, philosophic culture itself, were no safe- 
 guards against the infection of blood thirstiness. Gay and 
 delicate ladies, whom he had seen three days before simpering 
 delight at Hypatia's heavenward aspirations, and some, too, 
 whom he seemed to recollect in Christian churches, sprang 
 from their seats, waved their hands and handkerchiefs, and 
 clapped and shouted to the gladiators. For, alas ! there was 
 no doubt as to which side the favour of the spectators inclined. 
 With taunts, jeers, applause, entreaties, the hired ruffians were 
 urged on to their work of blood. The poor wretches heard no 
 voice raised in their favour nothing but contempt, hatred, 
 eager lust of blood, glared from those thousands or pitiless 
 eyes ; and, broken-hearted, despairing, they flagged and drew 
 back one by one. A shout of triumph greeted the gladiators 
 as they climbed over the battlement, and gained a footing on 
 the stage. The wretched blacks broke up, and fled wildly from 
 corner to corner, looking vainly for an outlet. . . . 
 
 And then began a butchery. . . . Some fifty men, women, 
 and children were cooped together in that narrow space. . . . 
 And yet Hypatia's countenance did not falter. Why should 
 it ? What were their numbers, beside the thousands who had 
 perished year by year for centuries, by that and far worse 
 deaths, in the amphitheatres of that empire, for that faith 
 which she was vowed to re-establish. It was part of the great 
 system ; and she must endure it. 
 
 Not that she did not feel ; for she, too, was woman ; and her 
 heart, raised far above the brutal excitement of the multitude, 
 lay calmly open to the most poignant stings of pity. Again 
 and again she was in the act to entreat mercy for some shriek- 
 ing woman or struggling child ; but before her lips could shape 
 the words, the blow had fallen, or the wretch was whirled away 
 from her sight in the dense undistinguishable mass of slayers 
 and slain, i es, she had begun, and she must follow to the end. 
 . . . And, after all, what were the lives of those few semi-brutes, 
 returning thus a few years earlier to the clay from which they 
 sprang, compared with the regeneration of a world ? . . . And
 
 248 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 it would be over in a few minutes more, and that black writhing 
 heap be still for ever, and the curtain fall. . . . And then for 
 Venus Anadyomene, and art, and joy, and peace, and the grace- 
 ful wisdom and beauty of the old Greek art, calming and civilis- 
 ing all hearts, and softening them into pure devotion for the 
 immortal myths, the immortal deities, who had inspired their 
 forefathers in the glorious days of old. . . . But still the black 
 heap writhed ; and she looked away, up, down, and round, 
 everywhere, to avoid the sickening sight ; and her eye caught 
 Philammon's gazing at her with looks of horror and disgust. . . . 
 A thrill of shame rushed through her heart, and blushing 
 scarlet, she sank her head, and whispered to Orestes 
 
 ' Have mercy ! spare the rest ! ' 
 
 ' Nay, fairest vestal ! ^ The mob has tasted blood, and they 
 must have their fill of it, or they will turn on us for aught I 
 know. Nothing so dangerous as to check a brute, whether he 
 be horse, dog, or man, when once his spirit is up. Ha ! there is 
 a fugitive ! How well the little rascal runs ! ' 
 
 As he spoke, a boy, the only survivor, leaped from the stage, 
 and rushed across the orchestra toward them, followed by a 
 rough cur-dog. 
 
 'You shall have this youth, if he reaches us.' 
 
 Hypatia watched breathless. The boy had just arrived at 
 the altar in the centre of the orchestra, when he saw a gladiator 
 close upon him. The ruffian's arm was raised to strike, when, 
 to the astonishment of the whole theatre, boy and dog turned 
 valiantly to bay, and leaping on the gladiator, dragged him 
 between them to the ground. The triumph was momentary. 
 The uplifted hands, the shout of ' Spare him ! ' came too late. 
 The man, as he lay, buried his sword in the slender body of the 
 child, and then rising, walked coolly back to the side passages, 
 while the poor cur stood over the little corpse, licking its hands 
 and face, and making the whole building ring with his doleful 
 cries. The attendants entered, and striking their hooks into 
 corpse after corpse, dragged them out of sight, marking their 
 path by long red furrows in the sand ; while the dog followed, 
 until his inauspicious howlings died away down distant 
 passages. 
 
 Philammon felt sick and giddy, and half rose to escape. But 
 Pelagia ! . . . No he must sit it out, and see the worst, if worse 
 than this was possible. He looked round. The people were 
 coolly sipping wine and eating cakes, while they chatted admir- 
 ably about the beauty of the great curtain, which had fallen 
 and hidden the stage, and represented, on a ground of deep- 
 blue sea, Europa carried by the bull across the Bosphorus, 
 while Nereids and Tritons played around. 
 
 A single flute within the curtain began to send forth luscious 
 strains, deadened and distant, as if through far-off glens and 
 woodlands ; and from the side passages issued three Graces, led
 
 xxii PANDEMONIUM 249 
 
 by Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, bearing a herald's staff in 
 her hand. She advanced to the altar in the centre of the 
 orchestra, and informed the spectators that, during the absence 
 of Ares in aid of a certain great military expedition, which was 
 shortly to decide the diadem of Home, and the liberty, pros- 
 perity, and supremacy of Egypt and Alexandria, Aphrodite 
 had returned to her lawful allegiance, and submitted for the 
 time being to the commands of her husband, Hephaestus ; that 
 he, as the deity of artificers, felt a peculiar interest in the wel- 
 fare of the city of Alexandria, the workshop of the world, and 
 had, as a sign of his especial favour, prevailed upon his fair 
 spouse to exhibit, for this once, her beauties to the assembled 
 populace, and, in the unspoken poetry of motion, to represent 
 to them the emotions with which, as she arose new-born from 
 the sea, she first surveyed that fair expanse of heaven and earth 
 of which she now reigned undisputed queen. 
 
 A shout of rapturous applause greeted this announcement, 
 and forthwith limped from the opposite slip the lame deity 
 himself, hammer and pincers on shoulder, followed by a train 
 of gigantic Cyclops, who bore on their shoulders various pieces 
 of gilded metal work. 
 
 Hephaestus, who was intended to supply the comic element 
 in the vast pantomimic pageant, shambled forward with studied 
 uncouthness, amid roars of laughter ; surveyed the altar with 
 ludicrous contempt ; raised his mighty hammer, shivered it to 
 pieces with a single blow, and beckoned to his attendants to 
 carry off the fragments, and replace it with something more 
 fitting for his august spouse. 
 
 With wonderful quickness the metal open-work was put in 
 its place, and fitted together, forming a frame of coral branches 
 intermingled with dolphins, Nereids, and Tritons. Four gigan- 
 tic Cyclops then approached, staggering under the weight of a 
 circular slab of green marble, polished to a perfect mirror, which 
 they placed on the framework. The Graces wreathed its cir- 
 cumference with garlands of seaweed, shells, and corallines, and 
 the mimic sea was complete. 
 
 Peitho and the Graces retired a few steps, and grouped them- 
 selves with the Cyclops, whose grimed and brawny limbs, and 
 hideous one-eyed masks, threw out in striking contrast the 
 delicate hue and grace of the beautiful maiden figures ; while 
 Hephaestus turned toward the curtain, and seemed to await 
 impatiently the forthcoming of the goddess. 
 
 Every lip was breathless with expectation as the flutes 
 swelled louder and nearer ; horns and cymbals took up the 
 harmony; and, to a triumphant burst of music, the curtain 
 rose, and a simultaneous shout of delight burst from ten thou- 
 sand voices. 
 
 The scene behind represented a magnificent temple, half 
 hidden in an artificial wood of tropic trees and shrubs, which
 
 250 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 filled the stage. Fauns and Dryads peeped laughing from 
 among their stems, and gorgeous birds, tethered by unseen 
 threads, fluttered and sang among their branches. In the 
 centre an overarching avenue of palms led from the temple 
 doors to the front of the stage, from which the mimic battle- 
 ments had disappeared, and had been replaced, in those few 
 moments, by a broad slope of smooth greensward, leading 
 down into the orchestra, and fringed with myrtles, roses, 
 apple-trees, poppies, and crimson hyacinths, stained with the 
 life-blood of Adonis. 
 
 The folding doors of the temple opened slowly ; the crash 
 of instruments resounded from within ; and, preceded by the 
 musicians, came forth the triumph of Aphrodite, and passed 
 down the slope, and down the outer ring of the orchestra. 
 
 A splendid car, drawn by white oxen, bore the rarest and 
 gaudiest of foreign flowers and fruits, which young girls, 
 dressed as Hours and Seasons, strewed in front of the pro- 
 cession and among the spectators. 
 
 A long line of beautiful youths and maidens, crowned with 
 garlands, and robed in scarfs of purple gauze, followed by 
 two and two. Each pair carried or led a pair 01 wild animals, 
 captives of the conquering might of Beauty. 
 
 Foremost were borne, on the wrists of the actors, the birds 
 especially sacred to the goddess doves and sparrows, wrynecks 
 and swallows ; and a pair of gigantic Indian tortoises, each 
 ridden by a lovely nymph, showed that Orestes had not forgotten 
 one wish, at least of his intended bride. 
 
 Then followed strange birds from India, parakeets, peacocks, 
 pheasants silver and golden ; bustards and ostriches : the latter 
 bestridden each by a tiny cupid, were led on in golden leashes, 
 followed by antelopes and oryxes, elks from beyond the Danube, 
 four-horned rams from the Isles of the Hyperborean Ocean, and 
 the strange hybrid of the Libyan hills, believed by all spectators 
 to be half-bull half -horse. And then a murmur of delighted 
 awe ran through the theatre, as bears and leopards, lions and 
 tigers, fettered in heavy chains of gold, and made gentle for the 
 occasion by narcotics, paced sedately down the slope, obedient 
 to their beautiful guides ; while behind them, the unwieldy 
 bulk of two double -horned rhinoceroses, from the far south, 
 was over-topped by the long slender necks and large soft eyes 
 of a pair of giraffes, such as had not been seen in Alexandria 
 for more than fifty years. 
 
 A cry arose of ' Orestes ! Orestes ! Health to the illustrious 
 Prefect ! Thanks for his bounty ! ' And a hired voice or two 
 among the crowd cried, ' Hail to Orestes ! Hail, Emperor of 
 Africa ! ' . . . But there was no response. 
 
 ' The rose is still in the bud,' simpered Orestes to Hypatia. 
 He rose, beckoned and bowed the crowd into silence ; and then, 
 after a short pantomimic exhibition of rapturous gratitude and
 
 xxn PANDEMONIUM 251 
 
 humility, pointed triumphantly to the palm avenue, among the 
 shadows of which appeared the wonder of the day the huge 
 tusks and trunk of the white elephant himself. 
 
 There it was at last ! Not a doubt of it ! A real elephant, 
 and yet as white as snow. Sight never seen before in Alex- 
 andria never to be seen again ! ' Oh, thrice blest men of 
 Macedonia ! ' shouted some worthy on high, ' the gods are bounti- 
 ful to you this day ! ' And all mouths and eyes confirmed the 
 opinion, as they opened wider and yet wider to drink in the 
 inexhaustible joy and glory. 
 
 On he paced solemnly, while the whole theatre resounded to 
 his heavy tread, and the Fauns and Dryads fled in terror. A 
 choir of nymphs swung round him hand in hand, and sang, as 
 they danced along, the conquering might of Beauty, the tamer 
 of beasts and men and deities. Skirmishing parties of little 
 winged cupids spread themselves over the orchestra, from left 
 to right, and pelted the spectators with perfumed comfits, shot 
 among them from their tiny bows arrows of fragrant sandal 
 wood, or swung smoking censers, which loaded the air with in- 
 toxicating odours. 
 
 The procession came on down the slope, and the elephant 
 approached the spectators ; his tusks were wreathed with roses 
 arid myrtles ; his ears were pierced with splendid ear-rings, a 
 jewelled frontlet hung between his eyes ; Eros himself, a lovely 
 winged boy, sat on his neck, and guided him with the point of 
 a golden arrow. But what precious thing was it which that 
 shell -formed car upon his back contained 1 The goddess ! 
 Pelagia Aphrodite herself ? 
 
 Yes ; whiter than the snow-white elephant more rosy than 
 the pink-tipped shell in which she lay, among crimson cushions 
 and silver gauze, there shone the goddess, thrilling all hearts 
 with those delicious smiles, and glances of the bashful playful 
 eyes, and grateful wavings of her tiny hand, as the whole theatre 
 rose with one accord, and ten thousand eyes were concentrated 
 on the unequalled loveliness beneath them. 
 
 Twice the procession passed round the whole circumference 
 of the orchestra, and then returning from the foot of the slope 
 towards the central group around Hephaestus, deployed right 
 and left in front of the stage. The lions and tigers were led 
 away into the side passages : the youths and maidens combined 
 themselves with the gentler animals into groups lessening 
 gradually from the centre to the wings, and stood expectant, 
 while the elephant came forward, and knelt behind the platform 
 destined for the goddess. 
 
 The valves of the shell closed. The Graces unloosed the 
 fastenings of the car. The elephant turned his trunk over his 
 back, and guided by the hands of the girls, grasped the shell, 
 and lifting it high in air, deposited it on the steps at the back 
 of the platform.
 
 252 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Hephaestus limped forward, and with his most uncouth 
 gestures, signified the delight which he had in bestowing such 
 a sight upon his faithful artisans of Alexandria, and the un- 
 speakable enjoyment which they were to expect from the mystic 
 dance of the goddess ; and then retired, leaving the Graces to 
 advance in front of the platform, and with their arms twined 
 round each other, begin Hypatia's song of invocation. 
 
 As the first strophe died away, the valves of the shell re- 
 opened, and discovered Aphrodite crouching on one knee within. 
 She raised her head, and gazed around the vast circle of seats. 
 A mild surprise was on her countenance, which quickened into 
 delightful wonder, and bashfulness struggling with the sense 
 of new enjoyment and new powers. She glanced downward at 
 herself ; and smiled, astonished at her own loveliness ; then up- 
 ward at the sky ; and seemed ready, with an awful joy, to 
 spring up into the boundless void. Her whole figure dilated ; she 
 seemed to drink in strength from every object which met her in 
 the great universe around ; and slowly, from among the shells 
 and seaweeds, she rose to her full height, the mystic cestus 
 glittering round her waist, in deep festoons of emeralds and 
 pearls, and stepped forward upon the marble sea-floor, wring- 
 ing the dripping perfume from her locks, as Aphrodite rose 
 of old. 
 
 For the first minute the crowd was too breathless witli 
 pleasure to think of applause. But the goddess seemed to 
 require due homage ; ana when she folded her arms across her 
 bosom, and stood motionless for an instant, as if to demand the 
 worship of the universe, every tongue was loosed, and a thunder- 
 clap of ' Aphrodite ! ' rung out across the roofs of Alexandria, 
 and startled Cyril in his chamber at the Serapeium, and weary 
 muleteers on distant sand-hills, and dozing mariners far out 
 at sea. 
 
 And then began a miracle of art, such as was only possible 
 among a people of the free and exquisite physical training, and 
 the delicate aesthetic perception of those old Greeks, even in their 
 most fallen days. A dance, in which every motion was a word, 
 and rest as eloquent as motion ; in which every attitude was a 
 fresh motive for a sculptor of the purest school, and the highest 
 physical activity was manifested, not as in the coarser comic pan- 
 tomimes, in fantastic bounds and unnatural distortions, but in 
 perpetual delicate modulations of a stately and self-restraining 
 grace. The artist was for the moment transformed into the 
 goddess. The theatre, and Alexandria, and the gorgeous pageant 
 beyond, had vanished from her imagination, and therefore from 
 the imagination of the spectators, under the constraining inspira- 
 tion of her art, and they and she alike saw nothing but the 
 lonely sea around Cythera, and the goddess hovering above its 
 emerald mirror, raying forth on sea, and air, and shore, beauty, 
 and joy, and love. . . .
 
 xxn PANDEMONIUM 253 
 
 Pliilammon's eyes were bursting from his head with shame 
 and horror : and yet he could not hate her ; not even despise 
 her. He would have done so, had there been the faintest trace 
 of human feeling in her countenance to prove that some germ 
 of moral sense lingered within : but even the faint blush and 
 the downcast eye with which she had entered the theatre, were 
 gone ; and the only expression on her face was that of intense 
 enjoyment of her own activity and skill, and satisfied vanity, 
 as of a petted child. . . . Was she accountable 1 A reasonable 
 soul, capable of right or wrong at all ? He hoped not. . . . He 
 would trust not. . . . And still Pelagia danced on ; and for 
 a whole age of agony, he could see nothing in heaven or earth 
 but the bewildering maze of those white feet, as they twinkled 
 over their white image in the marble mirror. ... At last it was 
 over. Every limb suddenly collapsed, and she stood drooping 
 in soft self -satisfied fatigue, awaiting the burst of applause 
 which rang through Philammon's ears, proclaiming to heaven 
 and earth, as with a mighty trumpet-blast, his sister's shame. 
 
 The elephant rose, and moved forward to the side of the 
 slabs. His back was covered with crimson cushions, on which 
 it seemed Aphrodite was to return without her shell. She 
 folded her arms across her bosom, and stood smiling, as the 
 elephant gently wreathed his trunk around her waist, and lifted 
 her slowly from the slab, in act to place her on his back. . . . 
 
 The little feet, clinging half fearfully together, had just risen 
 from the marble The elephant started, dropped his delicate 
 burden heavily on the slab, looked down, raised his forefoot, and 
 throwing his trunk into the air, gave a shrill scream of terror 
 and disgust. . . . 
 
 The foot was red with blood the young boy's blood which 
 was soaking and bubbling up through the fresh sand where the 
 elephant had trodden, in a round, dark, purple spot. . . . 
 
 Philammon could bear no more. Another moment and he had 
 hurled down through the dense mass of spectators, clearing rank 
 after rank of seats by the sheer strength of madness, leaped the 
 balustrade into the orchestra below, and rushed across the space 
 to the foot of the platform. 
 
 ' Pelagia ! Sister ! My sister ! Have mercy on me ! on 
 yourself ! I will hide you ! save you ! and we will flee together 
 out of this infernal place ! this world of devils ! I am your 
 brother ! Come ! ' 
 
 She looked at him one moment with wide, wild eyes The 
 
 truth flashed on her 
 
 ' Brother ! ' 
 
 And she sprang from the platform into his arms. ... A vision 
 of a lofty window in Athens, looking out over far olive-yards 
 and gardens, and the bright roofs and basins of the Piraeus, and 
 the broad blue sea, with the purple peaks of vEgina beyond all. 
 . . . And a dark-eyed boy, with his arm around her neck, pointed
 
 254 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 laughing to the twinkling masts in the far harbour, and called 
 her sister. . . . The dead soul woke within her ; and with a wild 
 cry she recoiled from him in an agony of shame, and covering 
 her face with both her hands, sank down among the blood- 
 stained sand. 
 
 A yell, as of all hell broke loose, rang along that vast circle 
 
 ' Down with him ! ' ' Away with him ! ' ' Crucify the slave ! ' 
 ' Give the barbarian to the beasts ! ' 'To the beasts with him, 
 noble Prefect ! ' A crowd of attendants rushed upon him, and 
 many of the spectators sprang from their seats, and were on the 
 point of leaping down into the orchestra. 
 
 Philammon turned upon them like a lion at bay ; and clear 
 and loud his voice rose through the roar of the multitude. 
 
 ' Ay ! murder me as the Romans murdered Saint Telemachus ! 
 Slaves as besotted and accursed as your besotted and accursed 
 tyrants ! Lower than the beasts whom you employ as your 
 butchers ! Murder and lust go fitly hand in hand, and the 
 throne of my sister's shame is well built on the blood of inno- 
 cents ! Let my death end the devil's sacrifice, and fill up the 
 cup of your iniquity ! ' 
 
 ' To the beasts ! ' ' Make the elephant trample him to 
 powder ! ' 
 
 And the huge brute, goaded on by the attendants, rushed on 
 the youth, while Eros leaped from his neck, and fled weeping 
 up the slope. 
 
 He caught Philammon in his trunk and raised him high in 
 air. For an instant the great bellowing ocean of heads spun 
 round and round. He tried to breathe one prayer, and shut his 
 eyes Pelagia's voice rang sweet and clear, even in the shrill- 
 ness of intense agony 
 
 ' Spare him ! He is my brother ! Forgive him, men of Mace- 
 donia ! For Pelagia's sake Your Pelagia ! One boon only 
 this one ! ' 
 
 And she stretched her arms imploringly toward the specta- 
 tors, and then clasping the huge knees of the elephant, called 
 madly to it in terms of passionate entreaty and endearment. 
 
 The men wavered. The brute did not. Quietly he lowered 
 his trunk, and set down Philammon on his fe^t. The monk was 
 saved. Breathless and dizzy, he found himself hurried away by 
 the attendants, dragged through dark passages, and hurled out 
 into the street, with curses, warnings, and congratulations, 
 which fell on an unheeding ear. 
 
 But Pelagia kept her face still hidden in her hands, and rising, 
 walked slowly back, crushed by the weight of some tremendous 
 awe, across the orchestra, and up the slope ; and vanished 
 among the palms and oleanders, regardless of the applause and 
 entreaties, and jeers, and threats, and curses, of that great 
 multitude of sinful slaves. 
 
 For a moment all Orestes's spells seemed broken by this un-
 
 xxu PANDEMONIUM 255 
 
 expected catastrophe. A cloud, whether of disgust or of disap- 
 pointment, hung upon every brow. More than one Christian 
 rose hastily to depart, touched with real remorse and shame at 
 the horrors of which they had been the willing witnesses. The 
 common people behind, having glutted their curiosity witli all 
 that there was to see, began openly to murmur at the cruelty 
 and heathenry of it. Hypatia, utterly unnerved, hid her face 
 in both her hands. Orestes alone rose with the crisis. Now, or 
 never, was the time for action and stepping forward, with his 
 most graceful obeisance, waved his hand for silence, and began 
 his well-studied oration. 
 
 ' Let me not, O men of Macedonia, suppose that you can be 
 disturbed from that equanimity which befits politicians, by so 
 light an accident as the caprice of a dancer. The spectacle 
 which I have had the honour and delight of exhibiting to you 
 (Roars and applause from the liberated prisoners and the young 
 gentlemen) and on which it seemed to me you have deigned to 
 look with not altogether unkindly eyes (Fresh applause, in 
 which the Christian mob, relenting, began to join) is but a 
 pleasant prelude to that more serious business for which I have 
 drawn you here together. Other testimonials of my good in- 
 tentions have not been wanting in the release of suffering inno- 
 cence, and in the largess of food, the growth and natural 
 property of Egypt, destined by your late tyrants to pamper 
 the luxury of a distant court. . . . Why should I boast ? yet 
 even now this head is weary, these limbs fail me, worn out in 
 ceaseless efforts for your welfare, and in the perpetual adminis- 
 tration of the strictest justice. For a time has come in which 
 the Macedonian race, whose boast is the gorgeous city of Alex- 
 ander, must rise again to the political pre-eminence which they 
 held of old, and becoming once more the masters of one-third of 
 the universe, be treated by their rulers as freemen, citizens, 
 heroes, who have a right to choose and to employ their rulers 
 Rulers, did I say ? Let us forget the word, and substitute in its 
 place the more philosophic term of ministers. To be your 
 minister the servant of you all To sacrifice myself, my leisure, 
 health, life, if need be, to the one great object of securing the 
 independence of Alexandria This is my work, my hope, my 
 glory longed for through weary years ; now for the first time 
 possible by the fall of the late puppet Emperor of Rome. Men 
 of Macedonia, remember that Honorius reigns no more ! An 
 African sits on the throne of the Csesars ! Heraclian, by one 
 decisive victory, has gained, by the favour of of Heaven, the 
 imperial purple ; and a new era opens for the world. Let the 
 conqueror of Rome balance his account with that Byzantine 
 court, so long the incubus of our Trans-Mediterranean wealth 
 and civilisation ; and let a free, independent, and united Africa 
 rally round the palaces and docks of Alexandria, and find there 
 its natural centre of polity and of prosperity.'
 
 256 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 A roar of hired applause interrupted him : and not a few, 
 half for the sake of his compliments and tine words, half from a 
 natural wish to be on the right side namely, the one which 
 happened to be in the ascendant for the time being joined. 
 . . . The city authorities were on the point of crying, 'Imperator 
 Orestes ; ' but thought better of it ; and waited for some one 
 else to cry first being respectable. Whereon the Prefect of 
 the Guards, being a man of some presence of mind, and also not 
 in anywise respectable, pricked up the Prefect of the docks with 
 the point of his dagger, and bade him with a fearful threat, 
 take care how he played traitor. The worthy burgher roared 
 incontinently whether with pain or patriotism ; and the whole 
 array of respectabilities having found a Curtius who would leap 
 into the gulf, joined in unanimous chorus, and saluted Orestes 
 as Emperor ; while Hypatia, amid the shouts of her aristocratic 
 scholars, rose and knelt before him, writhing inwardly with 
 shame and despair, and entreated him to accept that tutelage of 
 Greek commerce, supremacy, and philosophy which was forced 
 on him by the unanimous voice of an adoring people. . . . 
 
 ' It is false ! ' shouted a voice from the highest tiers, appro- 
 priated to the women of the lower classes, which made all turn 
 their heads in bewilderment. 
 
 ' False ! false ! You are tricked ! He is tricked ! Heraclian 
 was utterly routed at Ostia, and is fled to Carthage, with the 
 emperor's fleet in chase.' 
 
 ' She lies ! Drag the beast down ! ' cried Orestes, utterly 
 thrown off his balance by the sudden check. 
 
 'She ? He ! I a monk, brought the news ! Cyril has known 
 it every Jew in the Delta has known it, for a week past ! So 
 perish all the enemies of the Lord, caught in their own snare ! ' 
 
 And bursting desperately through the women who surrounded 
 him, the monk vanished. 
 
 An awful silence fell on all who heard. For a minute every 
 man looked in his neighbour's face as if he longed to cut his 
 throat, and get rid of one witness, at least, of his treason. And 
 then arose a tumult, which Orestes in vain attempted to subdue. 
 Whether the populace believed the monk's words or not, they were 
 panic-stricken at the mere possibility of their truth. Hoarse 
 with denying, protesting, appealing, the would-be emperor had 
 at last to summon his guards around him and Hypatia, and 
 make his way out of the theatre as best he could ; while the 
 multitude melted away like snow before the rain, and poured 
 out into the streets in eddying and roaring streams, to find every 
 church placarded by Cyril with the particulars of Heraclian s 
 ruin.
 
 xxiir NEMESIS 257 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 NEMESIS 
 
 THAT evening was a hideous one in the palace of Orestes. His 
 agonies of disappointment, rage, and terror were at once so 
 shameful and so fearful, that none of his slaves dare approach 
 him ; and it was not till late that his confidential secretary, the 
 Chaldean eunuch, driven by terror of the exasperated Catholics, 
 ventured into the tiger's den, and represented to him the 
 immediate necessity for action. 
 
 What could he do? He was committed Cyril only knew 
 how deeply. What might not the wily archbishop have dis- 
 covered ? What might not he pretend to have discovered ? 
 What accusations might he not send off on the spot to the 
 Byzantine Court ? 
 
 ' Let the gates be guarded, and no one allowed to leave the 
 city,' suggested the Chaldee. 
 
 ' Keep in monks 1 as well keep in rats ! No ; we must send 
 off a counter-report, instantly.' 
 
 ' What shall I say, your Excellency 1 ' quoth the ready scribe, 
 pulling out pen and inkhorn from his sash. 
 
 ' What do I care ? Any lie which comes to hand. What in 
 the devil's name are you here for at all, but to invent a lie when 
 I want one ? ' 
 
 ' True, most noble,' and the worthy sat meekly down to his 
 paper . . . but did not proceed rapidly. 
 
 ' I don't see anything that would suit the emergency, unless 
 I stated, with your august leave, that Cyril, and not you, cele- 
 brated the gladiatorial exhibition ; which might hardly appear 
 credible ? ' 
 
 Orestes burst out laughing, in spite of himself. The sleek 
 Chaldee smiled and purred in return. The victory was won ; 
 and Orestes, somewhat more master of himself, began to turn 
 his vulpine cunning to the one absorbing question or the saving 
 of his worthless neck. 
 
 ' No, that would be too good. Write, that we had discovered 
 a plot on Cyril's part to incorporate the whole of the African 
 churches (mind and specify Carthage and Hippo) under his own 
 jurisdiction, and to throw off allegiance to the Patriarch of 
 Constantinople, in case of Heracliarvs success.' 
 
 The secretary purred delighted approval, and scribbled away 
 now with right good heart. 
 
 ' Heraclian's success, your Excellency.' 
 
 'We of course desired, by every means in our power, to 
 gratify the people of Alexandria, and, as was our duty, to 
 excite by every lawful method their loyalty toward the throne 
 
 S H
 
 258 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 of the Caesars (never mind who sat on it) at so critical a 
 moment.' 
 
 ' So critical a moment. . . .' 
 
 ' But as faithful Catholics, and abhorring, even in the ex- 
 tremest need, the sin of Uzzah, we dreaded to touch with the 
 unsanctified hands of laymen the consecrated ark of the Church, 
 even though for its preservation. . . .' 
 
 ' Its preservation, your Excellency. . . .' 
 
 'We, therefore, as civil magistrates, felt bound to confine 
 ourselves to those means which were already allowed by law 
 and custom to our jurisdiction ; and accordingly made use of 
 those largesses, spectacles, and public execution of rebels, which 
 have unhappily appeared to his holiness the patriarch (too 
 ready, perhaps, to find a cause of complaint against faithful 
 adherents pi the Byzantine See) to partake of the nature of 
 those gladiatorial exhibitions, which are equally abhorrent to 
 the spirit of the Catholic Church, and to the charity of the 
 sainted emperors by whose pious edicts they have been long 
 since abolished.' 
 
 'Your Excellency is indeed great . . . but pardon your 
 slave's remark my simplicity is of opinion that it may be 
 asked why you did not inform the Augusta Pulcheria of Cyril's 
 conspiracy?' 
 
 ' Say that we sent a messenger off three months ago, but that 
 . . . Make something happen to him, stupid, and save me the 
 trouble.' 
 
 ' Shall I kill him by Arabs in the neighbourhood of Palmyra, 
 your Excellency ? ' 
 
 'Let me see. . . . No. They may make inquiries there. 
 Drown him at sea. Nobody can ask questions of the 
 sharks.' 
 
 ' Foundered between Tyre and Crete, from which sad calamity 
 only one man escaped on a raft, and being picked up, after 
 three weeks' exposure to the fury of the elements, by a return- 
 ing wheat-ship By the bye, most noble, what am I to say 
 about those wheat-ships not having even sailed ? ' 
 
 ' Head of Augustus ! I forgot them utterly. Say that say 
 that the plague was making such ravages in the harbour quarter 
 that we feared carrying the infection to the seat of the empire ; 
 and let them sail to-morrow.' 
 
 The secretary's face lengthened. 
 
 ' My fidelity is compelled to remark, even at the risk of your 
 j ust indignation, that half of them have been unloaded again 
 for your munificent largesses of the last two days.' 
 
 Orestes swore a great oath. 
 
 1 Oh, that the mob had but one throat, that I might give 
 them an emetic ! Well, we must buy more corn, that's all.' 
 
 The secretary's face grew longer still. 
 
 ' The Jews, most august '
 
 xxin NEMESIS 259 
 
 'What of them?' yelled the hapless Prefect. 'Have they 
 been forestalling ? ' 
 
 ' My assiduity has discovered this afternoon that they have 
 been buying up and exporting all the provisions which they 
 could obtain.' 
 
 ' Scoundrels ! Then they must have known of Heraclian's 
 failure ! ' 
 
 ' Your sagacity has, I fear, divined the truth. They have 
 been betting largely against his success for the last week, both 
 in Canopus and relusium.' 
 
 ' For the last week ! Then Miriam betrayed me knowingly ! ' 
 And Orestes broke forth again into a paroxysm of fury. 
 
 'Here call the tribune of the guard! A hundred gold 
 pieces to the man who brings me the witch alive ! ' 
 
 ' She will never be taken alive.' 
 
 ' Dead, then in any way ! Go, you Chaldee hound ! what 
 are you hesitating about ? ' 
 
 ' Most noble lord,' said the secretary, prostrating himself upon 
 the floor, and kissing his master's feet in an agony of fear . . . 
 ' Remember, that if you touch one Jew you touch all ! Remem- 
 ber the bonds ! remember the the your own most august 
 reputation, in short.' 
 
 ' Get up, brute, and don't grovel there, but tell me what you 
 mean, like a human being. If old Miriam is once dead, her 
 bonds die with her, don't they ? ' 
 
 ' Alas, my lord, you do not know the customs of that accursed 
 folk. They have a damnable practice of treating every member 
 of their nation as a brother, and helping each freely and faith- 
 fully without reward ; whereby they are enabled to plunder all 
 the rest of the world, and thrive themselves, from the lea_st to 
 the greatest. Don't fancy that your bonds are in Miriam's 
 hands. They have been transferred months ago. Your real 
 creditors may be in Carthage, or Rome, or Byzantium, and they 
 will attack you from thence ; while all that you would find if 
 you seized the old witch's property, would be papers, useless to 
 you, belonging to Jews all over the empire, who would rise as 
 one man in defence of their money. I assure you, it is a net 
 without a bound. If you touch one you touch all. . . . And 
 besides, my diligence, expecting some such command, has 
 already taken the liberty of making inquiries as to Miriam's 
 place of abode ; but it appears, I am sorry to say, utterly 
 unknown to any of your Excellency's servants.' 
 
 * You lie ! ' said Orestes. . . . ' I would much sooner believe 
 that you have been warning the hag to keep out of the way.' 
 
 Orestes had spoken, for that once in his life, the exact truth. 
 
 The secretary, who had his own private dealings with Miriam, 
 felt every particular atom of his skin shudder at those words ; 
 and had he had hair on his head, it would certainly have be- 
 trayed him by standing visibly on end. But as he was, luckily
 
 260 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 for him, close shaven, his turban remained in its proper place, 
 as he meekly replied 
 
 'Alas! a faithful servant can feel no keener woe than the 
 causeless suspicion of that sun before whose rays he daily 
 prostrates his 
 
 ' Confound your periphrases ! Do you know where she is 1 ' 
 
 ' No ! ' cried the wretched secretary, driven to the lie direct 
 at last ; and confirmed the negation with such a string of oaths, 
 that Orestes stopped his volubility with a kick, borrowed of 
 him, under threat of torture, a thousand gold pieces as largess 
 to the soldiery, and ended by concentrating the stationaries 
 round his own palace, for the double purpose of protecting 
 himself in case of a riot, and of increasing the chances of 
 the said riot, by leaving the distant quarters of the city without 
 police. 
 
 ' If Cyril would but make a fool of himself, now that he is 
 in the full-blown pride of victory the rascal! about that 
 Ammonius, or about Hypatia, or anything else, and give me a 
 real handle against him ! After all, truth works better than 
 lying now and then. Oh, that I could poison him ! But one 
 can't bribe those ecclesiastics ; and as for the dagger, one could 
 not hire a man to be torn in pieces by monks. No ; I must 
 just sit still, and see -what Fortune's dice may turn up. Well ; 
 your pedants like Ai'istides or Epaminondas thank Heaven, 
 the race of them has died out long ago ! might call this no 
 very creditable piece of provincial legislation ; but, after all, it 
 is about as good as any now going, or likely to be going till the 
 world's end ; and one can't be expected to strike out a new 
 path. I shall stick to the wisdom of my predecessors, and oh, 
 that Cyril may make a fool of himself to-night ! ' 
 
 And Cyril did make a fool of himself that night, for the first 
 and last time in his life; and suffers for it, as wise men are 
 wont to do when they err, to this very day and hour : but how 
 much Orestes gained by his foe's false move cannot be decided 
 till the end of this story ; perhaps not even then. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV 
 
 LOST LAMBS 
 
 AND Philammon ? 
 
 For a long while he stood in the street outside the theatre, 
 too much maddened to determine on any course of action ; and, 
 ere he had recovered his self-possession, the crowd began to 
 pour from every outlet, and filling the street, swept him away 
 in its stream. 
 
 Then, as he heard his sister's name, in every tone of pity, 
 contempt, and horror mingle with their angry exclamations, he
 
 xxiv LOST LAMBS 261 
 
 awoke from his dream, and, bursting through the mob, made 
 straight for Pelagia's house. 
 
 It was fast closed ; and his repeated knocks at the gate 
 brought only, after long waiting, a surly negro face to a little 
 wicket. 
 
 He asked eagerly and instinctively for Pelagia : of course she 
 had not yet returned. For Wulf : he was not within. And 
 then he took his station close to the gateway, while his heart 
 beat loud with hope and dread. 
 
 At last the Goths appeared, forcing their way through the 
 mob in a close column. There were no litters with them. 
 Where, then, were Pelagia and her girls ? Where, too, was the 
 hated figure of the Amal ? and Wulf, and Smid ? The men 
 came on, led by Goderic and Agilmund, with folded arms, 
 knitted brows, downcast eyes : a stern disgust, not unmingled 
 with shame, on every countenance, told Philammon afresh of 
 his sister's infamy. 
 
 Goderic passed him close, and Philammon summoned up 
 courage to ask for Wulf . . , Pelagia he had not courage to 
 name. 
 
 'Out, Greek hound! we have seen enough of your accursed 
 race to-day ! What 1 are you trying to follow us in ? ' And the 
 
 ?oung man's sword flashed from its sheath so swiftly, that 
 hilammon had but just time enough to spring back into the 
 street, and wait there, in an agony of disappointment and 
 anxiety, as the gates slid together again, and the house was as 
 silent as before. 
 
 For a miserable hour he waited, while the mob thickened 
 instead of flowing away, and the scattered groups of chatterers 
 began to form themselves into masses, and parade the streets 
 with shouts of ' Down with the heathen ! ' ' Down with the 
 idolaters ! ' ' Vengeance on all blaspheming harlots ! ' 
 
 At last the steady tramp of legionaries, and in the midst of 
 the glittering lines of armed men oh, joy ! a string of litters ! 
 
 He sprang forward, and called Pelagia's name again and 
 again. Once he fancied he heard an answer : but the soldiers 
 thrust him back. 
 
 ' She is safe here, young fool, and has seen and been seen 
 quite enough to-day already. Back ! ' 
 
 ' Let me speak to her ! ' 
 
 ' That is her business. Ours is now to see her home safe.' 
 
 ' Let me go in with you, I beseech ! ' 
 
 ' If you want to go in, knock for yourself when we are gone. 
 If you have any business in the house, they will open to you, I 
 suppose. Out, you interfering puppy ! ' 
 
 And a blow of the spear-butt in his chest sent him rolling 
 back into the middle of the street, while the soldiers, having 
 delivered up their charge, returned with the same stolid 
 indifference. In vain Philammon, returning, knocked at the
 
 262 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 gate. Curses and threats from the negro were all the answer 
 which he received ; and at last, wearied into desperation, he 
 wandered away, up one street and down another, struggling in 
 vain to form some plan of action for himself, until the sun was 
 set. 
 
 Wearily he went homewards at last. Once the thought of 
 Miriam crossed his mind. It was a disgusting alternative to 
 ask help of her, the very author of his sister's shame : but yet 
 she at least could obtain for him a sight of Pelagia ; she had 
 promised as much. But then the condition which she had 
 appended to her help ! To see his sister, and yet to leave her 
 as she was ! Horrible contradiction ! But could he not employ 
 Miriam for his own ends? outwit her? deceive her? for it 
 came to that. The temptation was intense : but it lasted only 
 a moment. Could he defile so pure a cause by falsehood ? And 
 hurrying past the Jewess's dooi', hardly daring to Look at it, 
 lest the temptation should return, he darted upstairs to his own 
 little chamber, hastily flung open the door, and stopped short 
 in astonishment. 
 
 A woman covered from head to foot in a large dark veil, 
 stood in the centre of the chamber. 
 
 ' Who are you ? This is no place for you ! ' cried he, after a 
 minute's pause. She replied only by a shudder and a sob. . . . 
 He caught sight, beneath the folds of the veil, of a too-well- 
 known saffron shawl, and springing upon her like the lion on 
 the lamb, clasped to his bosom his sister. 
 
 The veil fell from her beautiful forehead. She gazed into his 
 eyes one moment with a look of terrified inquiry, and saw 
 nothing there but love. . . . And clinging heart to heart, 
 brother and sister mingled holy kisses, and strained nearer and 
 nearer still, as if to satisfy their last lingering doubts of each 
 other's kin. 
 
 Many a minute passed in silent joy. . . . Philammon dare 
 not speak he dare not ask her what brought her thither dare 
 not wake her to recollect the frightful present by questions of 
 the past, of his long-forgotten parents, their home, her history. 
 . . . And, after all, was it not enough for him that he held her 
 at last 1 her, there by her own will the lost lamb returned to 
 him ? and their tears mingled as their cheeks were pressed 
 together. 
 
 At last she spoke. 
 
 ' I ought to have known you, I believe I did know you from 
 the first day ! When they mentioned your likeness to me, my 
 heart leapt up within me ; and a voice whispered . . . but I 
 would not hear it ! I was ashamed ashamed to acknowledge 
 my brother, for whom I had sought and longed for years . . . 
 ashamed to think that I had a brother. . . . Ah, God ! and 
 ought I not to be ashamed ? ' 
 
 And she broke from him again, and threw herself on the floor.
 
 xxiv LOST LAMBS 263 
 
 Trample upon me ; curse me ! anything but part me from 
 him ! ' 
 
 Philammon had not the heart to answer her ; but he made 
 an involuntary gesture of sorrowful dissent. 
 
 ' No ! Call me what I am ! what he called me just now ! 
 but do not take me away ! Strike me, as he struck me ! 
 anything but parting ! ' 
 
 ' Struck you 1 The curse of God be on him ! ' 
 
 'Ah, do not curse him! not him! It was not a blow, 
 indeed ! only a push a touch and it was my fault all mine. 
 I angered him I upbraided him ; I was mad. . . . Oh, why 
 did he deceive me ? Why did he let me dance ? command me 
 to dance ? ' 
 
 ' Command you 1 ' 
 
 ' He said, that we must not break our words. He would not 
 hear me, when I told him that we could deny having promised. 
 I said that promises made over the wine need never be kept. 
 . . . Who ever heard of keeping them ? And Orestes was 
 drunk, too. But he said that I might teach a Goth to be what 
 I liked, except a liar. . . . Was not that a strange speech 1 . . . 
 And Wulf bade him be strong, and blest him for it.' 
 
 ' He was right,' sobbed Philammon. 
 
 ' Then I thought he would love me for obeying him, though 
 I loathed it ! Oh, God, how I loathed it ! ... But how could 
 I fancy that he did not like my doing it ? Who ever heard of 
 any one doing of their own will what they did not like ?' 
 
 Philammon sobbed again, as the poor civilised savage art- 
 lessly opened to him all her moral darkness. What could he 
 say ? . . . He knew what to say. The disease was so utterly 
 patent, that any of Cyril's school-children could have supplied 
 the remedy. But how to speak it ? how to tell her, before all 
 things, as he longed to do, that there was no hope of her marry- 
 ing the Amal, and, therefore, no peace for her till she left him 1 
 
 ' Then you did hate the the -' said he, at last, catching at 
 some gleam of light. 
 
 ' Hate it 1 Do I not belong, body and soul, to him ? him 
 only ? . . . And yet . . . Oh, I must tell you all ! When I and 
 the girls began to practise, all the old feelings came back the 
 love of being admired, and applauded, and cheered ; and danc- 
 ing is so delicious ! so delicious to feel that you are doing any- 
 thing beautiful perfectly, and better than every one else ! . . . 
 And he saw that I liked it, and despised me for it. ... And, 
 deceitful ! he little guessed how much of the pains which I 
 took were taken to please him, to do my best before him, to win 
 admiration, only that I might take it home and throw it all at 
 his beloved feet, and make the world say once more, " She has 
 all Alexandria to worship her, and yet she cares for that one 
 
 Goth more than for . But he deceived me, true man that 
 
 lie is ! He wished to enjoy my smiles to the last moment, and
 
 264 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 then to cast me off, when I had once given him an excuse. . . . 
 Too cowardly to upbraid me, he let me ruin myself, to save him 
 the trouble of ruining me. Oh, men, men ! all alike ! They 
 love us for their own sakes, and we love them for love's sake. 
 We live by love, we die for love, and yet we never find it, but 
 only selfishness dressed up in love's mask. . . . And then we 
 take up with that, poor, fond, self -blinded creatures that we 
 are ! and in spite of the poisoned hearts around us, persuade 
 ourselves that our latest asp's egg, at least, will hatch into a 
 dove, and that though all men are faithless, our own tyrant can 
 never change, for he is more than man ! ' 
 
 ' But he has deceived you ! You have found out your mis- 
 take. Leave him, then, as he deserves ! ' 
 
 Pelagia looked up, with something of a tender smile. ' Poor 
 darling ! Little do you know of love ! ' 
 
 Philammon, utterly bewildered by this newest and strangest 
 phase of human passion, could only gasp out 
 
 ' But do you not love me, too, my sister ? ' 
 
 ' Do I not love you ! But not as I love him ! Oh, hush, 
 hush ! you cannot understand yet ! ' And Pelagia hid her face 
 in her hands, while convulsive shudderings ran through every 
 limb. . . . 
 
 ' I must do it ! I must ! I will dare everything, stoop to 
 everything, for love's sake ! Go to her ! to the wise woman ! 
 to Hypatia ! She loves you ! I know that she loves you ! She 
 will hear you, though she will not me ! ' 
 
 ' Hypatia ? Do you know that she was sitting there unmoved 
 at in the theatre ? ' 
 
 ' She was forced ! Orestes compelled her ! Miriam told me 
 so. And I saw it in her face. As I passed beneath her, I 
 looked up ; and she was as pale as ivory, trembling in every 
 limb. There was a dark hollow round her eyes she had been 
 weeping, I saw. And I sneered in my mad self-conceit, and 
 said, " She looks as if she was going to be crucified, not married ! " 
 . . . But now, now ! Oh, go to her ! Tell her that I will give 
 her all I have jewels, money, dresses, house ! Tell her that I 
 I entreat her pardon, that I will crawl to her feet myself and 
 ask it, if she requires ! Only let her teach me teach me to be 
 wise and good, and honoured, and respected, as she is ! Ask 
 her to tell a poor broken-hearted woman her secret. She can 
 make old Wulf, and him, and Orestes even, and the magistrates, 
 respect her. . . . Ask her to teach me how to be like her, and 
 to make him respect me again, and I will give her all all ! ' 
 
 Philammon hesitated. Something within warned him, as the 
 Daemon used to warn Socrates, that his errand would be boot- 
 less. He thought of the theatre, and of that firm, compressed 
 lip ; and forgot the hollow eye of misery which accompanied it, 
 in his wrath against his lately- worshipped idol. 
 
 ' Oh, go ! go ! I tell you it was against her will. She felt
 
 xxiv LOST LAMBS 265 
 
 for me I saw it Oh, God ! when I did not feel for myself ! 
 And I hated her, because she seemed to despise me in my fool's 
 triumph ! She cannot despise me now in my misery. ... Go ! 
 Go ! or you will drive me to the agony of going myself.' 
 
 There was but one -thing to be done. 
 
 ' You will wait, then, here ? You will not leave me again ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. But you must be quick ! If he finds out that I am 
 away, he may fancy . . . Ah, heaven ! let him kill me, but 
 never let him be jealous of me ! Go now ! this moment ! Take 
 this as an earnest the cestus which I wore there. Horrid 
 thing ! I hate the sight of it ! But I brought it with me on 
 purpose, or I would have thrown it into the canal. There ; say 
 it is an earnest only an earnest of what I will give her ! ' 
 
 In ten minutes more Philammon was in Hypatia's hall. The 
 household seemed full of terror and disturbance ; the hall was 
 full of soldiers. At last Hypatia's favourite maid passed, and 
 knew him. Her mistress could not speak with any one. Where 
 was Theon, then ? He, too, had shut himself up. Never mind. 
 Philammon must, would speak with him. And he pleaded so 
 passionately and so sweetly, that the soft-hearted damsel, unable 
 to resist so handsome a suppliant, undertook his errand, and 
 led him up to the library, where Theon, pale as death, was 
 pacing to and fro, apparently half beside himself with terror. 
 
 Philammon's breathless message fell at first upon unheeding 
 ears. 
 
 ' A new pupil, sir ! Is this a time for pupils : when my 
 house, my daughter's life, is not safe ? Wretch that I am ! And 
 have I led her into the snare ? I, with my vain ambition and 
 covetousness ! Oh, my child ! my child ! my one treasure ! Oh, 
 the double curse which will light upon me, if 
 
 ' She asks for but one interview. 
 
 ' With my daughter, sir ? Pelagia ! Will you insult me ? 
 Do you suppose, even if her own pity should so far tempt her 
 to degrade herself, that I could allow her so to contaminate her 
 purity 1 
 
 'Your terror, sir, excuses your rudeness.' 
 
 ' Rudeness, sir ? the rudeness lies in your intruding on us 
 at such a moment ! ' 
 
 ' Then this, perhaps, may, in your eyes at least, excuse me in 
 my turn.' And Philammon held out the cestus. ' You are a 
 better judge of its value than I. But I am commissioned to 
 say, that it is only an earnest of what she will give willingly 
 and at once, even to the half of her wealth, for the honour of 
 becoming your daughter's pupil.' And he laid the jewelled 
 girdle on the table. 
 
 The old man halted in his walk. The emeralds and pearls 
 shone like the galaxy. He looked at them ; and walked on 
 again more slowly. . . . What might be their value ? What 
 might it not be ? At least, they would pay all his debts. . . .
 
 266 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 And after hovering to and fro for another minute before the 
 bait, he turned to Philammon. 'If you would promise to men- 
 tion the thing to no one ' 
 
 ' I will promise.' 
 
 ' And in case my daughter, as I have a right to expect, shall 
 refuse ' 
 
 'Let her keep the jewels. Their owner has learnt, thank 
 God, to despise and hate them ! Let her keep the newels and 
 my curse ! For God do so to me, and more also, if I ever see 
 her face again ! ' 
 
 The old man had not heard the latter part of Philammon's 
 speech. He had seized his bait as greedily as a crocodile, and 
 hurried off with it into Hypatia's chamber, while Philammon 
 stood expectant ; possessed with a new and fearful doubt. 
 ' Degrade herself ! ' ' Contaminate her purity ! ' If that notion 
 were to be the fruit of all her philosophy 1 If selfishness, pride, 
 Pharisaism, were all its outcome ? Why had they not been 
 its outcome already? When had he seen her helping, even 
 pitying, the poor, the outcast ? When had he heard from her 
 one word of real sympathy for the sorrowing ; for the sinful 1 
 . . . He was still lost in thought when Theon re-entered, bring- 
 ing a letter. 
 
 ' From Hypatia to her ivell-beloved pupil. 
 
 'I pity you how should I not ? And more, I thank you for 
 this your request, for it shows me that my unwilling presence 
 at the hideous pageant of to-day has not alienated from me a 
 soul of which I had cherished the noblest hopes, for which I 
 had sketched out the loftiest destiny. But how shall I say it ? 
 Ask yourself whether a change apparently impossible must 
 not take place in her for whom you plead, before she and I can 
 meet ? I am not so inhuman as to blame you for having asked 
 me ; I do not even blame her for being what she is. She does 
 but follow her nature ; who can be angry with her, if destiny 
 have informed so fair an animal with a too gross and earthly 
 spirit ? Why weep over her 1 Dust she is, and unto dust she 
 will return : while you, to whom a more divine spark was 
 allotted at your birth, must rise, and unrepining, leave below 
 you one only connected with you by the unreal and fleeting 
 bonds of fleshly kin.' 
 
 Philammon crushed the letter together in his hand, and 
 strode from the house without a word. 
 
 The philosopher had no gospel, then, for the harlot ! No 
 word for the sinner, the degraded ! Destiny forsooth ! She was 
 to follow her destiny, and be base, miserable, self-condemned. 
 She was to crush the voice of conscience and reason, as often as 
 it awoke within her, and compel herself to believe that she was 
 bound to be that which she knew herself bound not to be. She
 
 xxiv LOST LAMBS 267 
 
 was to shut her eyes to that present palpable misery which was 
 preaching to her, with the voice of God Himself, that the wages 
 of sin are death. Dust she was, and unto dust she will return ! 
 Oh, glorious hope for her, for him, who felt as if an eternity of 
 bliss would be worthless, if it parted him from his new-found 
 treasure ! Dust she was, and unto dust she must return ! 
 
 Hapless Hypatia ! If she must needs misapply, after the 
 fashion of her school, a text or two here and there from the 
 Hebrew scriptures, what suicidal fantasy set her on quoting 
 that one 1 For now, upon Philammon's memory flashed up in 
 
 letters of light, old words forgotten for months and ere he 
 
 was aware, he found himself repeating aloud and passionately, 
 'I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the 
 body, and the life everlasting,' . . . and then clear and fair arose 
 before him the vision of the God-man, as He lay at meat in. the 
 Pharisee's house ; and of her who washed His feet with tears, 
 and wiped them with the hairs of her head. . . . And from the 
 depths of his agonised heart arose the prayer, ' Blessed Magda- 
 lene, intercede for her ! ' 
 
 So high he could rise, but not beyond. For the notion of 
 that God-man was receding fast to more and more awful abys- 
 mal heights, in the minds of a generation who were forgetting 
 His love in His power, and practically losing sight of His 
 humanity in their eager doctrinal assertion of His Divinity. 
 And Philammon's heart re-echoed the spirit of his age, when he 
 felt that for an apostate like himself it were presumptuous to 
 entreat for any light or help from the fountain-head itself. He 
 who had denied his Lord, he who had voluntarily cut himself off 
 from the communion of the Catholic Church how could he re- 
 store himself 1 How could he appease the wrath of Him who 
 died on the cross, save by years or bitter supplication and self- 
 punishment? . . . 
 
 ' Fool ! Vain and ambitious fool that I have been ! For this 
 I threw away the faith of my childhood ! For this I listened to 
 words at which I shuddered ; crushed down my own doubts and 
 disgusts ; tried to persuade myself that I could reconcile them 
 with Christianity that I could make a lie fit into the truth ! 
 For this I puffed myself up in the vain hope of becoming not as 
 other men are superior, forsooth, to my kind ! It was not 
 enough for me to be a man made in the image of God : but I 
 must needs become a god myself, knowing good and evil. And 
 here is the end ! I call upon my fine philosophy to help me once, 
 in one real practical human struggle, and it folds its arms and 
 sits serene and silent, smiling upon my misery ! Oh ! fool, fool, 
 thou art filled with the fruit of thy own devices ! Back to the 
 old faith ! Home again, thou wanderer ! And yet how home 1 
 Are not the gates shut against me ? Perhaps against her too. 
 . . . What if she, like me, were a baptized Christian ? ' 
 
 Terrible and all but hopeless that thought flashed across him,
 
 268 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 as in the first revulsion of his conscience he plunged utterly and 
 implicitly back again into the faith of his childhood, and all the 
 dark and cruel theories popular in his day rose up before him 
 in all their terrors. In the innocent simplicity of the Laura he 
 had never felt their force ; but he felt them now. If Pelagia 
 were a baptized woman, what was before her but unceasing 
 penance ? Before her, as before him, a life of cold and hunger, 
 groans and tears, loneliness and hideous soul-sickening uncer- 
 tainty. Life was a dungeon for them both henceforth. Be it 
 so ! There was nothing else to believe in. No other rock of 
 hope in earth or heaven. That at least promised a possibility of 
 forgiveness, of amendment, of virtue, of reward ay, of everlast- 
 ing bliss and glory ; and even if she missed of that, better for 
 her the cell in the desert than a life of self-contented impurity ! 
 If that latter were her destiny, as Hypatia said, she should at 
 least die fighting against it, defying it, cursing it ! Better 
 virtue with hell, than sin with heaven ! And Hypatia had not 
 even promised her a heaven. The resurrection of the flesh was 
 too carnal a notion for her refined and lofty creed. And so, his 
 four months' dream swept away in a moment, he hurried back 
 to his chamber, with one fixed thought before him the desert : 
 a cell for Pelagia ; another for himself. There they would 
 repent, and pray, and mourn out life side by side, if perhaps 
 God would have mercy upon their souls. Yet perhaps, she 
 might not have been baptized after all. And then she was safe. 
 Like other converts from Paganism, she might become a catechu- 
 men, and go on to baptism, where the mystic water would wash 
 away in a moment all the past, and she would begin life afresh, 
 in the spotless robes of innocence. Yet he had been baptized, 
 he knew from Arsenius, before he left Athens ; and she was 
 older than he. It was all but impossible : yet he would hope ; 
 and breathless with anxiety and excitement, he ran up the 
 narrow stairs and found Miriam standing outside, her hand upon 
 the bolt, apparently inclined to dispute his passage. 
 
 ' Is she still within 1 ' 
 
 'What if she be?' 
 
 ' Let me pass into my own room.' 
 
 ' Yours ? Who has been paying the rent for you, these four 
 months past ? You ! What can you say to her ? What can 
 you do for her ? Young pedant, you must be in love yourself 
 before you can help poor creatures who are in love ! ' 
 
 But Philammon pushed past her so fiercely, that the old 
 woman was forced to give way, and with a sinister smile she 
 followed him into the chamber. 
 
 Pelagia sprang towards her brother. 
 
 ' Will she ? will she see me ? ' 
 
 ' Let us talk no more of her, my beloved,' said Philammon, 
 laying his hands gently on her trembling shoulders, and looking 
 earnestly into her eyes. . . . ' Better that we two should work
 
 XXIV 
 
 LOST LAMBS 269 
 
 out our deliverance for ourselves, without the help of strangers. 
 You can trust me 1 ' 
 
 ' You ? And can you help me 1 Will you teach me ? ' 
 
 'Yes, but not here. . . . We must escape Nay, hear me, one 
 moment ! dearest sister, hear me ! Are you so happy here that 
 you can conceive of no better place ! And and, oh, God ! that 
 it may not be true after all ! but is there not a hell hereafter ?' 
 
 Pelagia covered her face with her hands ' The old monk 
 warned me of it ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, take his warning. . . .' And Philammon was bursting 
 forth with some such words about the lake of fire and brimstone 
 as he had been accustomed to hear from Pambo and Arsenius, 
 when Pelagia interrupted him 
 
 ' Oh, Miriam ! Is it true ? Is it possible ? What will become 
 of me 1 ' almost shrieked the poor child. 
 
 ' What if it were true 1- Let him tell you how he will save 
 you from it,' answered Miriam quietly. 
 
 ' Will not the Gospel save her from it unbelieving Jew ? Do 
 not contradict me ! I can save her.' 
 
 ' If she does what 1 ' 
 
 ' Can she not repent ? Can she not mortify these base affec- 
 tions 1 Can she not be forgiven ? Oh, my Pelagia ! forgive me 
 for having dreamed one moment that I could make you a 
 philosopher, when you may be a saint of God, a 
 
 He stopped short suddenly, as the thought about baptism 
 flashed across him, and in a faltering voice asked, 'Are you 
 baptized ? ' 
 
 ' Baptized ? ' asked she, hardly understanding the term. 
 
 ' Yes by the bishop in the church.' 
 
 'Ah,' she said, 'I remember now. . . . When I was four or 
 five years old. ... A tank, and women undressing. . . . And I 
 was bathed too, and an old man dipped my head under the 
 water three times. ... I have forgotten what it all meant it 
 was so long ago. I wore a white dress, I know, afterwards.' 
 
 Philammon recoiled with a groan. 
 
 ' Unhappy child ! May God have mercy on you ! ' 
 
 ' Will He not forgive me, then ? You have forgiven me. He 1 
 He must be more good even than you. Why not ? ' 
 
 ' He forgave you then, freely, when you were baptized : and 
 there is no second pardon, unless 
 
 ' Unless I leave my love ! ' shrieked Pelagia. 
 
 ' When the Lord forgave the blessed Magdalene freely, and 
 told her that her faith had saved her did she live on in sin, or 
 even in the pleasures of this world ? No ! though God had for- 
 given her, she could not forgive herself. She fled forth into the 
 desert, and there, naked and barefoot, clothed only with her 
 hair, and feeding on the herb of the field, she stayed fasting and 
 praying till her dying day, never seeing the face of man, but 
 visited and comforted by angels and archangels. And if she,
 
 270 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 she who never fell again, needed that long penance to work out 
 her own salvation oh, Pelagia, what will not God require of 
 you, who have broken your baptismal vows, and denied the 
 white robes, which the tears of penance only can wash clean 
 once more ? ' 
 
 ' But I did not know ! I did not ask to be baptized ! Cruel, 
 cruel parents, to bring me to it ! And God ! Oh, why did He 
 forgive me so soon ? And to go into the deserts ! I dare not ! 
 I cannot ! See me, how delicate and tender I am ! I should die 
 of hunger and cold ! I should go mad with fear and loneliness ! 
 Oh ! brother, brother, is this the Gospel of the Christians 1 I 
 came to you to be taught how to be wise, and good, and 
 respected, and you tell me that all I can do is to live this 
 horrible life of torture here, on the chance of escaping torture 
 for ever ! And how do I know that I shall escape it ? How do 
 I know that I shall make myself miserable enough 1 How do 
 I know that He will forgive me after all ? Is this true, Miriam ? 
 Tell me, or I shall go mad ! ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Miriam, with a quiet sneer. ' This is the gospel 
 and good news of salvation, according to the doctrine of the 
 Nazarenes.' 
 
 ' I will go with you ! ' cried Philammon. ' I will go ! I will 
 never leave you ! I have my own sins to wash away ! Happy 
 for me if I ever do it ! And I will build you a cell near mine, 
 and kind men will teach us, and we will pray together night 
 and morning, for ourselves and for each other, and weep out 
 our weary lives together : 
 
 'Better end them here, at once ! ' said Pelagia, with a gesture 
 of despair, and dashed herself down on the floor. 
 
 Philammon was about to lift her up, when Miriam caught 
 him by the arm, and in a hurried whisper 'Are you mad? 
 Will you ruin your own purpose ? Why did you tell her this 1 
 Why did you not wait give her hope time to collect herself 
 time to wean herself from her lover, instead of terrifying and 
 disgusting her at the outset, as you have done ? Have you a 
 man's heart in you ? No word of comfort for that poor creature, 
 nothing but hell, hell, hell See to your own chance of hell first ! 
 It is greater than you fancy ! ' 
 
 ' It cannot be greater than I fancy ! ' 
 
 ' Then see to it. For her, poor darling ! why, even we Jews, 
 who know that all you Gentiles are doomed to Gehenna alike, 
 have some sort of hope for such a poor untaught creature as that.' 
 
 ' And why is she untaught ? Wretch that you are ! You 
 have had the training of her ! You brought her up to sin and 
 shame ! You drove from her recollection the faith in which she 
 was baptized ! ' 
 
 'So much the better for her, if the recollection of it is to 
 make her no happier than it does already. Better to wake un- 
 expectedly in Gehenna when you die, than to endure over and
 
 xxiv LOST LAMBS 271 
 
 above the dread of it here. And as for leaving her untaught, on 
 your own showing she has been taught too much already. 
 Wiser it would be in you to curse your parents for having had 
 her baptized, than me for giving her ten years' pleasure before 
 she goes to the pit of Tophet. Come now, don't be angry with 
 me. The old Jewess is your friend, revile her as you will. She 
 shall marry this Goth.' 
 
 ' An Arian heretic ! ' 
 
 ' She shall convert him and make a Catholic of him, if you 
 like. At all events, if you wish to win her, you must win her 
 my way. You have had your chance, and spoiled it. Let me 
 have mine. Pelagia, darling ! Up, and be a woman ! We will 
 find a philtre downstairs to give that ungrateful man, that shall 
 make him more mad about you, before a day is over, than ever 
 you were about him.' 
 
 ' No ! ' said Pelagia, looking up. ' No love-potions ! No 
 poisons ! ' 
 
 ' Poisons, little fool ! Do you doubt the old woman's skill 1 
 Do you think I shall make him lose his wits, as Callisphyra did 
 to her lover last year, because she would trust to old Megsera's 
 drugs, instead of coming to me ! ' 
 
 'No ! No drugs ; no magic ! He must love me really, or not 
 at all ! He must love me for myself, because I am worth loving, 
 because he honours, worships me, or let me die. I, whose boast 
 was, even when I was basest, that I never needed such mean tricks, 
 but conquered like Aphrodite, a queen in my own right ! I have 
 been my own love-charm : when I cease to be that, let me die ! ' 
 
 ' One as mad as the other ! ' cried Miriam, in utter perplexity. 
 ' Hist ! what is that tramp upon the stairs 1 ' 
 
 At this moment heavy footsteps were heard ascending the 
 stairs. . . . All three stopped aghast: Philammon, because he 
 thought the visitors were monks in search of him ; Miriam, be- 
 cause she thought they were Orestes's guards in search of her ; 
 and Pelagia, from vague dread of anything and everything. . . . 
 
 ' Have you an inner room 1 ' asked the Jewess. 
 
 'None/ 
 
 The old woman set her lips firmly, and drew her dagger. 
 Pelagia wrapped her face in her cloak, and stood trembling, 
 bowed down, as if expecting another blow. The door opened, 
 and in walked, neither monks nor guard, but Wulf and Smid. 
 
 ' Heyday, young monk ! ' cried tlie latter worthy, with a loud 
 laugh 'Veils here, too, eh? At your old trade, my worthy 
 portress of hell-gate ? Well, walk out now ; we have a little 
 business with this young gentleman.' 
 
 And slipping past the unsuspecting Goths, Pelagia and Miriam 
 hurried downstairs. 
 
 'The young one, at least, seems a little ashamed of her errand. 
 . . . Now, Wulf, speak low ; and I will see that no one is listen- 
 ing at the door.'
 
 272 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Philammon. faced his unexpected visitors with a look of angry 
 inquiry. What right had they, or any man, to intrude at such 
 a moment on his misery and disgrace ? . . . But he was disarmed 
 the next instant by old Wulf, who advanced to him, and looking 
 him fully in the face with an expression which there was no 
 mistaking, held out his broad, brown hand. 
 
 Philammon grasped it, and then covering his face with his 
 hands, burst into tears. 
 
 ' You did right. You are a brave boy. If you had died, no 
 man need have been ashamed to die your death.' 
 
 ' You were there, then 1 ' sobbed Philammon. 
 
 ' We were.' 
 
 'And what is more,' said Smid, as the poor boy writhed at 
 the admission, ' we were mightily minded, some of us, to have 
 leapt down to you and cut you a passage out. One man, at 
 least, whom I know of, felt his old blood as hot for the minute 
 as a four-year-old's. The foul curs ! And to hoot her, after all ! 
 Oh that I may have one good hour's hewing at them before I 
 die!' 
 
 ' And you shall ! ' said Wulf. ' Boy, you wish to get this sister 
 of yours into your power ? ' 
 
 ' It is hopeless hopeless ! She will never leave her the 
 
 Amal.' 
 
 ' Are you so sure of that 1 ' 
 
 ' She told me so with her own lips not ten minutes ago. That 
 was she who went put as you entered ! ' 
 
 A curse of astonishment and regret burst from Smid. . . . 
 
 ' Had I but known her ! By the soul of my fathers, she 
 should have found that it was easier to come here than to go 
 home again ! ' 
 
 ' Hush, Smid ! Better as it is. Boy, if I put her into your 
 power, dare you carry her off?' 
 
 Philammon hesitated one moment. 
 
 ' What I dare you know already. But it would be an un- 
 lawful thing, surely, to use violence.' 
 
 ' Settle your philosopher's doubts for yourself. I have made 
 my offer. I should have thought that a man in his senses could 
 give but one answer, much more a mad monk.' 
 
 'You forget the money matters, prince,' said Smid, with a 
 smile. 
 
 ' I do not. But I don't think the boy so mean as to hesitate 
 on that account.' 
 
 ' He may as well know, however, that we promise to send all 
 her trumpery after her, even to the Amal's presents. As for the 
 house, we won't trouble her to lend it us longer than we can 
 help. We intend shortly to move into more extensive premises, 
 and open business on a grander scale, as the shopkeepers say, 
 eh, prince ? ' 
 
 ' Her money ? That money ? God forgive her ! ' answered
 
 xxiv LOST LAMBS 273 
 
 Philammon. ' Do you fancy me base enough to touch it ? But 
 I am resolved. Tell me what to do, and I will do it.' 
 
 ' You know the lane which runs down to the canal, under the 
 left wall of the house 1 ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' And a door in the corner tower, close to the landing-place 1 ' 
 
 'I do.' 
 
 'Be there, with a dozen stout monks, to-morrow, an hour 
 after sundown, 'and take what we give you. After that, the 
 concern is yours, not purs.' 
 
 ' Monks ? ' said Philammon. ' I am at open feud with the 
 whole order.' 
 
 ' Make friends with them, then,' shortly suggested Smid. 
 
 Philammon writhed inwardly. 'It makes no difference to 
 you, I presume, whom I bring ? ' 
 
 ' No more than it does whether or not you pitch her into the 
 canal, and put a hurdle over her when you have got her,' an- 
 swered Smid ; ' which is what a Goth would do, if he were in 
 your place.' 
 
 ' Do not vex the poor lad, friend. If he thinks he can mend 
 her instead of punishing her, in Freya's name, let him try. 
 You will be there, then ? And mind, I like you. I liked you 
 when you faced that great river-hog. I like you better now 
 than ever ; for you have spoken to-day like a Sagaman, and 
 dared like a hero. Therefore mind ; if you do not bring a good 
 guard to-morrow night, your life will not be safe. The whole 
 city is out in the streets ; and Odin alone knows what will be 
 done, and who will be alive, eight-and-forty-hours hence. Mind 
 you ! The mob may do strange things, and they may see still 
 stranger things done. If you once find yourself safe back here, 
 stay where you are, if you value her life or your own. And 
 if you are wise, let the men whom you bring with you be monks, 
 though it cost your proud stomach ' 
 
 ' That's not fair, prince ! You are telling too much ! ' in- 
 terrupted Smid, while Philammon gulped down the said proud 
 stomach, and answered, ' Be it so ! ' 
 
 ' I have won my bet, Smid,' said the old man, chuckling, as 
 the two tramped out into the street, to the surprise and fear of 
 all the neighbours, while the children clapped their hands, and 
 the street dogs felt it their duty to bark lustily at the strange 
 figures of their unwonted visitors. 
 
 ' No play, no pay, Wulf. We shall see to-morrow.' 
 
 ' I knew that he would stand the trial ! I knew he was right 
 at heart ! ' 
 
 ' At all events, there is no fear of his ill-using the poor thing, 
 if he loves her well enough to go down on his knees to his sworn 
 foes for her.' 
 
 ' I don't know that,' answered Wulf, with a shake of the head. 
 ' These monks, I hear, fancy that their God likes them the better 
 
 T H
 
 274 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 the more miserable they are : so, perhaps they may fancy that 
 he will like them all the moi'e, the more miserable they make 
 other people. However, it's no concern of ours.' 
 
 'We have quite enough of our own to see to just now. But 
 mind, no play, no pay.' 
 
 ' Of course not. How the streets are filling ! We shall not 
 be able to see the guards to-night, if this mob thickens mucli more.' 
 
 ' We shall have enough to do to hold our own, perhaps. Do 
 you hear what they are crying there ? " Down with all heathens ! 
 Down with barbarians ! " That means us, you know.' 
 
 ' Do you fancy no one understands Greek but yourself ? Let 
 them come. ... It may give us an excuse. . . . And we can 
 hold the house a week.' 
 
 ' But how can we get speech of the guards ? ' 
 
 ' We will slip round by water. And, after all, deeds will win 
 them better than talk. They will be forced to fight on the same 
 side as we, and most probably be glad of our help ; for if the 
 mob attacks any one, it will begin with the Prefect.' 
 
 ' And then Curse their shouting ! Let the soldiers once 
 find our Amal at their head, and they will be ready to go with 
 him a mile, where they meant to go a yard.' 
 
 ' The Goths will, and the Markmen, and those Dacians, and 
 Thracians, or whatever the Romans call them. But I hardly 
 trust the Huns.' 
 
 ' The curse of heaven on their pudding faces and pigs' eyes ! 
 There will be no love lost between us. But there are not 
 twenty of them scattered in different troops ; one of us can 
 thrash three of them ; and they will be sure to side with the 
 winning party. Besides, plunder, plunder, comrade ! When 
 did you know a Hun turn back from that, even if he were only 
 on the scent of a lump of tallow ? ' 
 
 'As for the Gauls and Latins,' . . . went on Wulf meditat- 
 ively, ' they belong to any man who can pay them. . . .' 
 
 ' Which we can do, like all wise generals, one penny out of 
 our own pocket, and nine out of the enemy's. And the Amal is 
 staunch ? 
 
 ' Staunch as his own hounds, now there is something to be 
 done on the spot. His heart was in the right place after all. I 
 knew it all along. But he could never in his life see four-and- 
 twenty hours before him. Even now if that Pelagia gets him 
 under her spell again, he may throw down his sword, and fall 
 as fast asleep as ever.' 
 
 ' Never fear ; we have settled her destiny for her, as far as 
 that is concerned. Look at the mob before the door ! We 
 must get in by the postern-gate.' 
 
 ' Get in by the sewer, like a rat ! I go my own way. Draw, 
 old hammer and tongs ! or run away ! ' 
 
 ' Not this time.' And sword in hand, the two marched into the 
 heart of the crowd, who gave way before them like a flock of sheep.
 
 xxv SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 275 
 
 ' They know their intended shepherds already,' said Smid. 
 But at that moment the crowd, seeing them about to enter the 
 house, raised a yell of ' Goths ! Heathens ! Barbarians ! ' and a 
 rush from behind took place. 
 
 ' If you will have it, then ! ' said Wulf. And the two long 
 bright blades flashed round and round their heads, redder and 
 redder every time they swung aloft. . . . The old men never 
 even checked their steady walk, and knocking at the gate, went 
 in, leaving more than one lifeless corpse at the entrance. 
 
 ' We have put the coal in the thatch, now, witn a vengeance,' 
 said Smid, as they wiped their swords inside. 
 
 ' We have. Get me out a boat and half a dozen men, and I 
 and Goderic will go round by the canal to the palace, and settle 
 a thing or two with the guards.' 
 
 ' Why should not the Amal go, and offer our help himself to 
 the Prefect?' 
 
 ' What ? Would you have him after that turn against the 
 hound ? For troth and honour's sake, he must keep quiet in the 
 matter.' 
 
 ' He will have no objection to keep quiet trust him for that ! 
 But don't forget Sagaman Moneybag, the best of all orators,' 
 called Smid laughingly after him, as he went off" to man the boat. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 
 
 ' WHAT answer has he sent back, father ? ' asked Hypatia, as 
 Theon re-entered her chamber, after delivering that hapless 
 letter to Philammon. 
 
 ' Insolent that he is ! he tore it to fragments and fled forth 
 without a word.' 
 
 ' Let him go, and desert us like the rest, in our calamity ! ' 
 
 'At least, we have the jewels.' 
 
 ' The jewels 1 Let them be returned to their owner. Shall 
 we defile ourselves by taking them as wages for anything 
 above all, for that which is unperformed 1 ' 
 
 ' But, my child, they were given to us freely. He bade me 
 keep them ; and and, to tell you the truth, I must keep them. 
 After this unfortunate failure, be sure of it, every creditor we 
 have will be clamouring for payment.' 
 
 ' Let them take our house and furniture, and sell us as slaves, 
 then. Let them take all, provided we keep our virtue.' 
 
 ' Sell us as slaves ? Are you mad ? ' 
 
 ' Not quite mad yet, father,' answered she with a sad smile. 
 ' But how should we be worse than we are now, were we slaves ? 
 Raphael Aben-Ezra told me that he obeyed my precepts, when 
 he went forth as a houseless beggar ; and shall I not have
 
 276 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 courage to obey them myself, if the need come 1 The thought 
 of his endurance has shamed my luxury for this many a month. 
 After all, what does the philosopher require but bread and 
 water, and the clear brook in which to wash away the daily 
 stains of his earthly prison house? Let what is fated come. 
 Hypatia struggles with the stream no more ! ' 
 
 ' My daughter ! And have you given up all hope ? So soon 
 disheartened ! What ! Is this paltry accident to sweep away 
 the purposes of years? Orestes remains still faithful. His 
 guards have orders to garrison the house for as long as we shall 
 require them.' 
 
 Send them away, then. I have done no wrong, and I fear 
 no punishment.' 
 
 'You do not know the madness of the mob ; they are shout- 
 ing your name in the streets already, in company with Pelagia's.' 
 
 Hypatia shuddered. Her name in company with Pelagia's ! 
 And to this she had brought herself ! 
 
 ' I have deserved it ! I have sold myself to a lie and a dis- 
 grace ! I have stooped to truckle, to intrigue ! I have bound 
 myself to a sordid trickster ! Father ! never mention his name 
 to me again ! I have leagued myself with the impure and the 
 bloodthirsty, and I have my reward ! No more politics for 
 Hypatia from henceforth, my father ; no more orations and 
 lectures j no more pearls of Divine wisdom cast before swine. 
 I have sinned in divulging the secrets of the Immortals to the 
 mob. Let them follow their natures ! Fool that I was, to fancy 
 that my speech, my plots, could raise them above that which 
 the gods had made them ! ' 
 
 ' Then you give up our lectures ? Worse and worse ! We 
 shall be ruined utterly ! ' 
 
 ' We are ruined utterly already. Orestes ? There is no help 
 in him. I know the man too well, my father, not to know that 
 he would give us up to-morrow to the fury of the Christians 
 were his own base life even his own baser office in danger.' 
 
 ' Too true too true ! I fear,' said the poor old man, wringing 
 his hands in perplexity. 'What will become of us, of you, 
 rather ? What matter what happens to the useless old star- 
 
 Sizer 1 Let him die ! To-day or next year is alike to him. 
 ut you, you ! Let us escape by the canal. We may gather 
 up enough, even without these jewels, which you refuse, to pay 
 our voyage to Athens, and there we shall be safe with Plutarch 
 he will welcome you all Athens will welcome you we will 
 collect a fresh school and you shall be Queen of Athens, as 
 you have been Queen of Alexandria ! ' 
 
 'No, father. What I know, henceforth I will know for 
 myself only. Hypatia will be from this day alone with the 
 Immortal Gods ! 
 
 ' You will not leave me ? ' cried the old man, terrified. 
 
 ' Never on earth ! ' answered she, bursting into real human
 
 xxv SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 277 
 
 tears, and throwing herself on his bosom. 'Never never! 
 father of my spirit as well as of my flesh ! the parent who has 
 trained me, taught me, educated my soul from the cradle to use 
 her wings ! the only human being who never misunderstood 
 me never thwarted me never deceived me ! ' 
 
 ' My priceless child ! And I have been the cause of your 
 ruin ! 
 
 ' Not you ! a thousand times not you ! I only am to blame ! 
 I tampered with worldly politics. I tempted you on to fancy 
 that I could effect what I so rashly undertook. Do not accuse 
 yourself unless you wish to break my heart ! We can be happy 
 together yet. A palm -leaf hut in the desert, dates from the 
 grove, and water from the spring the monk dares be miserable 
 alone in such a dwelling, and cannot we dare to be happy 
 together in it ? ' 
 
 ' Then you will escape ? ' 
 
 ' Not to-day. It were base to flee before danger comes. We 
 must hold out at our post to the last moment, even if we dare 
 not die at it like heroes. And to-morrow I go to the lecture- 
 room, to the beloved Museum, for the last time, to take fare- 
 well of my pupils. Unworthy as they are, I owe it to myself 
 and to philosophy to tell them why I leave them.' 
 
 ' It will be too dangerous indeed it will ! ' 
 
 ' I could take the guards with me, then. And yet no. . . . 
 They shall never have occasion to impute fear to the philosopher. 
 Let them see her go forth as usual on her errand, strong in the 
 courage of innocence, secure in the protection of the gods. So, 
 perhaps, some sacred awe, some suspicion of her divineness, may 
 fall on them at last.' 
 
 ' I must go with you.' 
 
 ' No, I go alone. You might incur danger where I am safe. 
 After all, I am a woman. . . . And, fierce as they are, they will 
 not dare to harm me.' 
 
 The old man shook his head. 
 
 'Look now,' she said smilingly, laying her hands on his 
 shoulders, and looking into his face . . . ' You tell me that I am 
 beautiful, you know ; and beauty will tame the lion. Do you 
 not think that this face might disarm even a monk ? ' 
 
 And she laughed and blushed so sweetly, that the old man 
 forgot his fears, as she intended that he should, and kissed her 
 and went his way for the time being, to command all manner 
 of hospitalities to the soldiers, whom he prudently determined 
 to keep in his house as long as he could make them stay there ; 
 in pursuance of which wise purpose he contrived not to see a 
 great deal of pleasant flirtation between his valiant defenders 
 and Hypatia's maids, who, by no means so prudish as their 
 mistress, welcomed as a rare boon from heaven an afternoon's 
 chat with twenty tall men of war. 
 
 So they jested and laughed below, while old Theon, having
 
 278 HYPATIA 
 
 brouglit out the very best old wine, and actually proposed in 
 person, by way of mending matters, the health o the Emperor 
 of Africa, locked himself into the library, and comforted his 
 troubled soul with a tough problem of astronomy, which had 
 been haunting him the whole day, even in the theatre itself. 
 But Hypatia sat still in her chamber, her face buried in her 
 hands, her heart full of many thoughts, her eyes of tears. She 
 had smiled away her father's fears ; she could not smile away 
 her own. 
 
 She felt, she hardly knew why, but she felt as clearly as if a 
 god had proclaimed it to her bodily ears, that the crisis of her 
 life was come ; that her political and active career was over, 
 and that she must now be content to be for herself, and in her- 
 self alone, all that she was, or might become. The world might 
 be regenerated : but not in her day ; the gods restored ; but 
 not by her. It was a fearful discovery, and yet hardly a dis- 
 covery. Her heart had told her for years that she was hoping 
 against hope, that she was struggling against a stream too 
 mighty for her. And now the moment had come when she 
 must either be swept helpless down the current, or, by one 
 desperate effort, win firm land, and let the tide roll on its own 
 way henceforth . . . Its own way? . . . Not the way of the 
 gods, at least - } for it was sweeping their names from off the 
 earth. What if they did not care to be known ? What if they 
 were weary of worship and reverence from mortal men, and, 
 self-sufficing in their own perfect bliss, recked nothing for the 
 weal or woe of earth ? Must it not be so ? Had she not proof 
 of it in everything which she beheld 1 What did Isis care for 
 her Alexandria? What did Athene care for her Athens? . . . 
 And yet Homer and Hesiod, and those old Orphic singers, were 
 of another mind. . . . Whence got they that strange fancy of 
 gods counselling, warring, intermarrying, with mankind, as 
 with some kindred tribe ? 
 
 ' Zeus, father of gods and men.' . . . Those were words of hope 
 and comfort. . . . But were they true ? Father of men ? Im- 
 possible ! not father of Pelagia, surely. Not father of the 
 base, the foul, the ignorant. . . . Father of heroic souls, only, 
 the poets must have meant. . . . But where were the heroic 
 souls now ? Was she one ? If so, why was she deserted by the 
 upper powers in her utter need ? Was the heroic race indeed 
 extinct? Was she merely assuming, in her self-conceit, an 
 honour to which she had no claim ! Or was it all a dream of 
 these old singers ? Had they, as some bold philosophers had 
 said, invented gods in their own likeness, and palmed off on the 
 awe and admiration of men their own fair phantoms ? ... It 
 must be so. If there were gods, to know them was the highest 
 bliss of man. Then would they not teach men of themselves, 
 unveil their own loveliness to a chosen few, even for the sake 
 of their own honour, if not, as she had dreamed once, from love
 
 xxv SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 279 
 
 to those who bore a kindred flame to theirs ? . . . What if there 
 were no gods ? What if the stream of fate, which was sweeping 
 away their names, were the only real power 1 What if that old 
 Pyrrhonic notion were the true solution of the problem of the 
 Universe ? What if there were no centre, no order, no rest, no 
 goal but only a perpetual flux, a down-rushing change ? And 
 before her dizzying brain and heart arose that awful vision of 
 Lucretius, of the homeless Universe falling, falling, falling, for- 
 ever from nowhence toward nowhither through the unending 
 ages, by causeless and unceasing gravitation, while the changes 
 and efforts of all mortal things were but the jostling of the 
 dust-atoms amid the everlasting storm. . . . 
 
 It could not be ! There was a truth, a virtue, a beauty, a 
 nobleness, which could never change, but which were absolute, 
 the same for ever. The God -given instinct of her woman's 
 heart rebelled against her intellect, and, in the name of God, 
 denied its lie. . . . Yes, there was virtue, beauty. . . . And 
 yet might not they, too, be accidents of that enchantment, 
 which man calls mortal life ; temporary and mutable accidents 
 of consciousness ; brilliant sparks, struck out by the clashing 
 of the dust-atoms ? Who could tell ? 
 
 There were those once who could tell. Did not Plotinus 
 speak of a direct mystic intuition of the Deity, an enthusiasm 
 without passion, a still intoxication of the soul, in which she 
 rose above life, thought, reason, herself, to that which she con- 
 templated, the absolute and first One, and united herself with 
 that One, or, rather, became aware of that union which had 
 existed from the first moment in which she emanated from the 
 One ? Six times in a life of sixty years had Plotinus risen to 
 that height of mystic union, and known himself to be a part of 
 God. Once had Porphyry attained the same glory. Hypatia, 
 though often attempting, had never yet succeeded in attaining 
 to any distinct vision of a being external to herself ; though 
 practice, a firm will, and a powerful imagination, had long 
 since made her an adept in producing, almost at will, that 
 mysterious trance, which was the preliminary step to super- 
 natural vision. But her delight in the brilliant, and, as she 
 held, divine imaginations, in which at such times she revelled, 
 had been always checked and chilled by the knowledge that, in 
 such matters, hundreds inferior to her in intellect and in learn- 
 ing, ay, saddest of all, Christian monks and nuns, boasted them- 
 selves her equals, indeed, if their own account of their visions 
 was to be believed, her superiors by the same methods which 
 she employed. For by celibacy, rigorous fasts, perfect bodily 
 quiescence, and intense contemplation of one thought, they, 
 too, pretended to be able to rise above the body into the 
 heavenly regions, and to behold things unspeakable, which, 
 nevertheless, like most other unspeakable things, contrived to 
 be most carefully detailed and noised abroad. . . . And it was
 
 280 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 with a half feeling of shame that she prepared herself that 
 afternoon for one more, perhaps one last attempt, to scale the 
 heavens, as she recollected how many an illiterate monk and 
 nun, from Constantinople to the Thebaid, was probably em- 
 ployed at that moment exactly as she was. Still, the attempt 
 must be made. In that terrible abyss of doubt, she must have 
 something palpable, real ; something beyond her own thoughts, 
 and hopes, and speculations, whereon to rest her weary faith, 
 her weary heart. . . . Perhaps this time, at least, in her 
 extremest need, a god might vouchsafe some glimpse of his own 
 beauty. . . . Athene might pity at last. . . . Or, if not Athene, 
 some archetype, angel, demon. . . . And then she shuddered at 
 the thought of those evil and deceiving spirits, whose delight it 
 was to delude and tempt the votaries of the gods, in the forms 
 of angels of light. But even in the face of that danger, she 
 must make the trial once again. Was she not pure and 
 spotless as Athene's self ? Would not her innate purity 
 enable her to discern, by an instinctive antipathy, those foul 
 beings beneath the fairest mask ? At least, she must make the 
 trial. . . . 
 
 And so, with a look of intense humility, she began to lay 
 aside her jewels and her upper robes. Then, baring her bosom 
 and her feet, and shaking ner golden tresses loose, she laid her- 
 self down upon the couch, crossed her hands upon her breast, and, 
 with upturned ecstatic eyes, waited for that which might befall. 
 
 There she lay, hour after hour, as her eye gradually kindled, 
 her bosom heaved, her breath came fast : but there was no more 
 sign of life in those straight still limbs, and listless feet and 
 hands, than in Pygmalion's ivory bride, before she bloomed into 
 human flesh and blood. The sun sank towards his rest ; the 
 roar of the city grew louder and louder without ; the soldiers 
 revelled and laughed below : but every sound passed through 
 unconscious ears, and went its way unheeded. Faith, hope, 
 reason itself were staked upon the result of that daring effort 
 to scale the highest heaven. And, by one continuous effort of 
 her practised will, which reached its highest virtue, as mystics 
 hold, in its own suicide, she chained down her senses from every 
 sight and sound, and even her mind from every thought, and lay 
 utterly self -resigned, self -emptied, till consciousness of time and 
 place had vanished, and she seemed to herself alone in the abyss. 
 
 She dared not reflect, she dared not hope, she dared not 
 rejoice, lest she should break the spell. . . . Again and again 
 had she broken it at this very point, by some sudden and 
 tumultuous yielding to her own joy or awe; but now her will 
 held firm. . . . She did not feel her own limbs, hear her own 
 breath. ... A light bright mist, an endless network of glitter- 
 ing films, coming, going, uniting, resolving themselves, was 
 above her and around her. . . . Was she in the body or out of 
 the body 1 . . .
 
 SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 281 
 
 The network faded into an abyss of still clear light. ... A 
 still warm atmosphere was around her, thrilling through and 
 through her. . . . She breathed the light, and floated in it, 
 as a mote in the mid-day beam. . . . And still her will held 
 firm. 
 
 Far away, miles, and aeons, and abysses away, through the 
 interminable depths of glory, a dark and shadowy spot. It 
 neared and grew. ... A dark globe, grined with rainbows. . . . 
 What might it be ? She dared not hope. ... It came nearer, 
 nearer, nearer, touched her. . . . The centre quivered, flickered, 
 took form a face. ... A god's 1 No Pelagia's. 
 
 Beautiful, sad, craving, reproachful, indignant, awful. . . . 
 Hypatia could bear no more ; and sprang to her feet with a 
 shriek, to experience in its full bitterness the fearful revulsion 
 of the mystic, when the human reason and will which he has 
 spurned reassert their God-given rights ; and after the intoxica- 
 tion of the imagination, comes its prostration and collapse. 
 
 And this, then, was the answer of the gods ! The phantom 
 of her whom she had despised, exposed, spurned from her ! 
 ' No, not their answer the answer of my own soul ! Fool that 
 I have been ! I have been exerting my will most while I pre- 
 tended to resign it most ! I have been the slave of every mental 
 desire, while I tried to trample on them ! What if that network 
 of light, that blaze, that globe of darkness, have been, like the 
 face of Pelagia, the phantoms of my own imagination ay, even 
 of my own senses ? What if I have mistaken for Deity my own 
 self 1 What if I have been my own light, my own abyss ? . . . 
 Am I not my own abyss, my own light my own darkness 1 ' 
 And she smiled bitterly as she said it, and throwing herself 
 again upon the couch, buried her head in her hands, exhausted 
 equally in body and in mind. 
 
 At last she rose, and sat, careless of her dishevelled locks, 
 gazing out into vacancy. ' Oh, for a sign, for a token ! Oh, for 
 the golden days of which the poets sang, when gods walked 
 among men, fought by their side as friends ! And yet . . . are 
 those old stories credible, pious, even modest ? Does not my 
 heart revolt from them? Who has shared more than I in 
 Plato's contempt for the foul deeds, the degrading transforma- 
 tions, which Homer imputes to the gods of Greece ? Must I 
 believe them now ? Must I stoop to think that gods, who live 
 in a region above all sense, will deign to make themselves 
 palpable to those senses of ours which are whole seons of exist- 
 ence below them ? Degrade themselves to the base accidents of 
 matter ? Yes ! That, rather than nothing ! ... Be it even so. 
 Better, better, better, to believe that Ares fled shrieking and 
 wounded from a mortal man better to believe in Zeus's adul- 
 teries and Hermes's thefts than to believe that gods have never
 
 282 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 spoken face to face with men ! Let me think, lest I go mad, 
 that beings from that unseen world for which I hunger have 
 appeared, and held communion with mankind, such as no reason 
 nor sense could doubt even though those beings were more 
 capricious and baser than ourselves ! Is there, after all, an 
 unseen world ? Oh, for a sign, a sign ! ' 
 
 Haggard and dizzy, she wandered into her 'chamber of the 
 gods ' ; a collection or antiquities, which she kept there rather 
 as matters of taste than of worship. All around her they 
 looked out into vacancy with their white soulless eyeballs, their 
 dead motionless beauty, those cold dreams of the buried genera- 
 tions. Oh that they could speak, and set her heart at rest ! At 
 the lower end of the room stood a Pallas, completely armed with 
 segis, spear, and helmet ; a gem of Athenian sculpture, which 
 she had bought from some merchants after the sack of Athens 
 by the Goths. There it stood severely fair ; but the right hand, 
 alas ! was gone ; and there the maimed arm remained extended, 
 as if in sad mockery of the faith of which the body remained, 
 while the power was dead and vanished. 
 
 She gazed long and passionately on the image of her favourite 
 goddess, the ideal to which she had longed for years to assimilate 
 herself ; till was it a dream ? was it a frolic of the dying sun- 
 light ? or did those lips really bend themselves into a smile ? 
 
 Impossible ! No, not impossible. Had not, only a few years 
 before, the image of Hecate smiled on a philosopher ? Were 
 there not stories of moving images, and winking pictures, and 
 all the material miracles by which a dying faith strives desper- 
 ately not to deceive others but to persuade itself of its own 
 sanity ? It had been it might be it was ! 
 
 No ! there the lips were, as they had been from the begin- 
 ning, closed upon each other in that stony self-collected calm, 
 which was only not a sneer. The wonder, if it was one, had 
 passed : and now did her eyes play her false, or were the snakes 
 round that Medusa's head upon the shield all writhing, grinning, 
 glaring at her with stony eyes, longing to stiffen her with terror 
 into their own likeness 1 
 
 No ! that, too, passed. Would that even it had stayed, for it 
 would have been a sign of life ! She looked up at the face once 
 more : but in vain the stone was stone ; and ere she was aware, 
 she found herself clasping passionately the knees of the marble. 
 
 ' Athene ! Pallas ! Adored ! Ever Virgin ! Absolute reason, 
 springing unbegotten from the nameless One ! Hear me ! 
 Athene ! Have mercy on me ! Speak, if it be to curse me ! 
 Thou who alone wieldest the lightnings of thy father, wield 
 them to strike me dead, if thou wilt ; only do something ! 
 something to prove thine own existence something to 
 make me sure that anything exists beside this gross miser- 
 able matter, and my miserable soul. I stand alone in the 
 centre of the universe ! I fall and sicken down the abyss of
 
 xxv SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 283 
 
 ignorance, and doubt, and boundless blank and darkness ! Oh, 
 have mercy ! I know that thou art not this ! Thou art every- 
 where and in all things ! But I know that this is a form which 
 pleases thee, which symbolises thy nobleness ! I know that 
 thou hast deigned to speak to those who Oh ! what do I know 1 
 Nothing ! nothing ! nothing ! ' 
 
 And she clung there, bedewing with scalding tears the cold 
 feet of the image, while there was neither sign, nor voice, nor 
 any that answered. 
 
 On a sudden she was startled by a rustling near ; and, look- 
 ing round, saw close behind her the old Jewess. 
 
 ' Cry aloud ! ' hissed the hag, in a tone of bitter scorn ; ' cry 
 aloud, for she is a goddess. Either she is talking, or pursuing, 
 or she is on a journey ; or perhaps she has grown old, as we all 
 shall do some day, my pretty lady, and is too cross and lazy to 
 stir. What ! her naughty doll will not speak to her, will it not? 
 or even open its eyes, because the wires are grown rusty ? Well, 
 we will find a new doll for her, if she chooses.' 
 
 ' Begone, hag ! What do you mean by intruding here ? ' said 
 Hypatia, springing up ; but the old woman went on coolly 
 
 ' Why not try the fair young gentleman over there ? ' pointing 
 to a copy of the Apollo which we call Belvedere ' What is his 
 name? Old maids are always cross and jealous, you know. 
 But he he could not be cruel to such a sweet face as that. 
 Try the fair young lad ! Or, perhaps, if you are bashful, the 
 old Jewess might try him for you 1 ' 
 
 These last words were spoken with so marked a significance, 
 that Hypatia, in spite of her disgust, found herself asking the 
 hag what she meant. She made no answer for a few seconds, 
 but remained looking steadily into her eyes with a glance of 
 fire, before which even the proud Hypatia, as she had done once 
 before, quailed utterly, so deep was the understanding, so dogged 
 the purpose, so fearless the power, which burned within those 
 withered and sunken sockets. 
 
 ' Shall the old witch call him up, the fair young Apollo, with 
 the beauty -bloom upon his chin ? He shall come ! He shall 
 come ! I warrant him he must come, civilly enough when old 
 Miriam's finger is once held up.' 
 
 ' To you ? Apollo, the god of light, obey a Jewess ? ' 
 
 ' A Jewess ? And you a Greek I almost yelled the old woman. 
 ' And who are you who ask ? And who are your gods, your 
 heroes, your devils, you children of yesterday, compared with 
 us? You, who were a set of half-naked savages squabbling 
 about the siege of Troy, when our Solomon, amid splendours 
 such as Rome and Constantinople never saw, was controlling 
 demons and ghosts, angels and archangels, principalities and 
 powers, by the ineffable name ? What science nave you that you 
 have not stolen from the Egyptians and Chaldees? And what 
 had the Egyptians which Moses did not teach them ? And what
 
 284 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 have the Chaldees which Daniel did not teach them ? What 
 does the world know but from us, the fathers and the masters of 
 magic us, the lords of the inner secrets of the universe ! Come, 
 you Greek baby as the priests in Egypt said of your forefathers, 
 always children, craving for a new toy, and throwing it away 
 next day come to the fountain-head of all your paltry wisdom ! 
 Name what you will see, and you shall see it ! ' 
 
 Hypatia was cowed ; for of one thing there was no doubt, 
 that the woman utterly belitved her own words ; and that 
 was a state of mind of which she had seen so little, that it was 
 no wonder if it acted on her with that overpowering sympathetic 
 force, with which it generally does, and perhaps ought to, act on 
 the human heart. Besides, her school had always looked to the 
 ancient nations of the East for the primaeval founts of inspira- 
 tion, the mysterious lore of mightier races long gone by. Might 
 she not have found it now 1 
 
 The Jewess saw her advantage in a moment, and ran on, 
 without giving her time to answer 
 
 ' What sort shall it be, then ? By glass and water, or by the 
 moonlight on the wall, or by the sieve, or by the meal 1 By the 
 cymbals, or by the stars ? By the table of the twenty-four 
 elements, by which the empire was promised to Theodosius the 
 Great, or by the sacred counters of the Assyrians, or by the 
 sapphire of the Hecatic sphere ? Shall I threaten, as the Egyp- 
 tian priests used to do, to tear Osiris again in pieces, or to 
 divulge the mysteries of Isis ? I could do so, if I chose ; for I 
 know them all and more. Or shall I use the ineffable name on 
 Solomon's seal, which we alone, of all the nations of the earth, 
 know ? No ; it would be a pity to waste that upon a heathen. 
 It shall be by the sacred wafer. Look here ! here they are, the 
 wonder-working atomies ! Eat no food this day, except one of 
 these every three hours, and come to me to-night at the house 
 of your porter, Eudaemon, bringing with you the black agate ; and 
 then why then, what you have the heart to see, you shall see ! ' 
 
 Hypatia took the wafers, hesitating 
 
 ' But what are they ? ' 
 
 ' And you profess to explain Homer ? Whom did I hear the 
 other morning lecturing away so glibly on the nepenthe which 
 Helen gave the heroes, to fill them with the spirit of joy and 
 love ; how it was an allegory of the inward inspiration which 
 flows from spiritual beauty, and all that ? pretty enough, fair 
 lady ; but the question still remains, what was it ? and I say it 
 was this. Take it and try ; and then confess, that while you 
 can talk about Helen, I can act her ; and know a little more 
 about Homer than you do, after all.' 
 
 ' I cannot believe you ! Give me some sign of your power, or 
 how can I trust you 1 ' 
 
 ' A sign ? A sign 1 Kneel down then there, with your face 
 toward the north ; you are over tall for the poor old cripple.'
 
 xxv SEEKING AFTER A SIGN 28,5 
 
 ' I ? I never knelt to human being.' 
 
 ' Then consider that you kneel to the handsome idol there, 
 if you will but kneel ! ' 
 
 And constrained by that glittering eye, Hypatia knelt before 
 her. 
 
 ' Have you faith 1 Have you desire ? Will you submit ? Will 
 you obey ? Self-will and pride see nothing, know nothing. If 
 you do not give up yourself, neither God nor devil will care to 
 approach. Do you submit ? ' 
 
 ' I do ! I do ! cried poor Hypatia, in an agony of curiosity 
 and self -distrust, while she felt her eye quailing and her limbs 
 loosening more and more every moment under that intolerable 
 fascination. 
 
 The old woman drew from her bosom a crystal, and placed 
 the point against Hypatia's breast. A cold shiver ran through 
 her. . . . The witch waved her hands mysteriously round her 
 head, muttering from time to time, ' Down ! down, proud spirit ! ' 
 and then placed the tips of her skinny fingers on the victim's 
 forehead. Gradually her eyelids became heavy ; again and 
 again she tried to raise them, and dropped them again before 
 those fixed glaring eyes . . . and in another moment she lost 
 consciousness. . . . 
 
 When she awoke, she was kneeling in a distant part of the 
 room, with dishevelled hair and garments. What was it so cold 
 that she was clasping in her arms ? The feet of the Apollo ! The 
 hag stood by her, chuckling to herself and clapping her hands. 
 
 ' How came I here ? What have I been doing ? ' 
 
 ' Saying such pretty things ! paying the fair youth there 
 such compliments, as he will not be rude enough to forget in 
 his visit to-night. A charming prophetic trance you have had ! 
 Ah, ha ! you are not the only woman who is wiser asleep than 
 awake ! Well, you will make a very pretty Cassandra or a 
 Clytia, if you have the sense. ... It lies with you, my fair 
 lady. Are you satisfied now ? Will you have any more signs ? 
 Shall the old Jewess blast those blue eyes blind to show that she 
 knows more than the heathen ? ' 
 
 'Oh, I believe you I believe,' cried the poor exhausted 
 maiden. ' I will come ; and yet 
 
 ' Ah ! yes ! You had better settle first how he shall appear.' 
 
 ' As he wills ! let him only come ! only let me know that he 
 is a god. Abamnon said that gods appeared in a clear, steady, 
 unbearable light, amid a choir of all the lesser deities, archangels, 
 principalities, and heroes, who derive their life from them.' 
 
 'Abamnon was an old fool, then. Do you think young 
 Phoebus ran after Daphne with such a mob at his heels ? or that 
 Jove, when he swam up to Leda, headed a whole Nile-flock of 
 ducks, and plover, and curlews ? No, he shall come alone to 
 you alone ; and then you may choose for yourself between Cas- 
 sandra and Clytia. . . . Farewell. Do not forget your wafers,
 
 286 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 or the agate either, and talk with no one between now and sun- 
 set. And then my pretty lady ! ' 
 
 And laughing to herself, the old hag glided from the room. 
 
 Hypatia sat trembling with shame and dread. She, as a 
 disciple of the more purely spiritualistic school of Porphyry, had 
 always looked with aversion, with all but contempt, on those 
 theurgic arts which were so much lauded and employed by 
 lamblicus, Abamnon, and those who clung lovingly to the old 
 priestly rites of Egypt and Chaldsea. They had seemed to her 
 vulgar toys, tricks of legerdemain, suited only for the wonder 
 of the mob. . . . She began to think of them with more favour 
 now. How did she know that the vulgar did not require signs 
 and wonders to make them believe ? . . . How, indeed ? for 
 did she not want such herself? And she opened Abam- 
 non's famous letter to Porphyry, and read earnestly over, for the 
 twentieth time, his subtle justification of magic, and felt it to 
 be unanswerable. Magic ? What was not magical 1 The whole 
 universe, from the planets over her head to the meanest pebble 
 at her feet, was utterly mysterious, ineffable, miraculous, influ- 
 encing and influenced by affinities and repulsions as unexpected, 
 as unfathomable, as those which, as Abamnon said, drew the 
 gods towards those sounds, those objects, which, either in form, 
 or colour, or chemical properties, were symbolic of, or akin to, 
 themselves. What wonder in it, after all ? Was not love and 
 hatred, sympathy and antipathy, the law of the universe? 
 Philosophers, when they gave mechanical explanations of 
 natural phenomena, came no nearer to the real solution of 
 them. The mysterious 'Why?' remained untouched. . . . All 
 their analyses could only darken with big words the plain fact 
 that the water hated the oil with which it refused to mix, the 
 lime loved the acid which it eagerly received into itself, and, 
 like a lover, grew warm with the rapture of affection. Why 
 not ? What right had we to deny sensation, emotion, to them, 
 any more than to ourselves? Was not the same universal spirit 
 stirring in them as in us ? And was it not by virtue of that 
 spirit that we thought, and felt, and loved ? Then why not 
 they, as well as we ? If the one spirit permeated all things, if 
 its all-energising presence linked the flower with the crystal as 
 well as with the demon and the god, must it not link together 
 also the two extremes of the great chain of being ? bind even 
 the nameless One itself to the smallest creature which bore its 
 creative impress ? What greater miracle in the attraction of a 
 god or an angel, by material incense, symbols, and spells, than 
 in the attraction of one soul to another by the material sounds 
 of the human voice ? Was the affinity between spirit and 
 matter implied in that, more miraculous than the affinity be- 
 tween the soul and the body ? than the retention of that soul 
 within that body by the breathing of material air, the eating of 
 material food ? Or even, if the physicists were right, and the
 
 XXVI 
 
 MIRIAM'S PLOT 287 
 
 soul were but a material product or energy of the nerves, and 
 the sole law of the .universe the laws of matter, then was not 
 magic even more probable, more rational ? Was it not fair by 
 every analogy to suppose that there might be other, higher 
 beings than ourselves, obedient to those laws, and therefore 
 possible to be attracted, even as human beings were, by the 
 baits of material sights and sounds ? ... If spirit pervaded all 
 things, then was magic probable ; if nothing but matter had 
 existence, magic was morally certain. All that remained in 
 either case was the test of experience. . . . And had not that 
 test been applied in every age, and asserted to succeed ? What 
 more rational, more philosophic, action than to try herself those 
 methods and ceremonies which she was assured on every hand 
 had never failed but through the ignorance or unfitness of the 
 neophyte ? . . . Abamnon must be right. . . . She dared not 
 think him wrong : for if this last hope failed, what was there 
 left but to eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ? 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 MIRIAM'S PLOT 
 
 HE who has worshipped a woman, even against his will and 
 conscience, knows well how storm may follow storm, and earth- 
 quake earthquake, before his idol be utterly overthrown. And 
 so Philammon found that evening, as he sat pondering over the 
 strange chances of the day ; for, as he pondered, his old feelings 
 towards Hypatia began, in spite of the struggles of his con- 
 science and reason, to revive within him. Not only pure love 
 of her great loveliness, the righteous instinct which bids us 
 welcome and honour beauty, whether in man or woman, as 
 something of real worth divine, heavenly, ay, though we know 
 not how, in a most deep sense eternal ; which makes our reason 
 give the lie to all merely logical and sentimental maunderings 
 of moralists about ' the fleeting hues of this our painted clay ; 
 telling men, as the old Hebrew Scriptures tell them, that 
 physical beauty is the deepest of all spiritual symbols ; and 
 that though beauty without discretion be the jewel of gold in 
 the swine's snout, yet the iewel of gold it is still, the sacrament 
 of an inward beauty, which ought to be, perhaps hereafter may 
 be, fulfilled in spirit and in truth. Not only this, which 
 whispered to him and who shall say that the whisper was of 
 the earth, or of the lower world ? ' She is too beautiful to be 
 utterly evil ; ' but the very defect in her creed which he had just 
 discovered, drew him towards her again. She had no Gospel for 
 the Magdalene, because she was a Pagan. . . . That, then, was 
 the fault of her Paganism, not of herself. She felt for Pelagia : 
 but even if she had not, was not that, too, the fault of her
 
 2SS HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 Paganism ? And for that Paganism who was to be blamed ? 
 She ? . . . Was he the man to affirm that ? Had lie not seen 
 scandals, stupidities, brutalities, enough to shake even his faith, 
 educated a Christian 1 How much more excuse for her, more 
 delicate, more acute, more lofty than he ; the child, too, of a 
 heathen father ? Her perfections, wei'e they not her own ? 
 her defects, those of her circumstances ? . . . And had she not 
 welcomed him, guarded him, taught him, honoured him ? . . . 
 Could he turn against her ? above all now in her distress per- 
 haps her danger ? Was he not bound to her, if by nothing else, 
 by gratitude ? Was not he, of all men, bound to believe that 
 all she required to make her perfect was conversion to the true 
 faith ? . . . And that first dream of converting her arose almost 
 as bright as ever. . . . Then he was checked by the thought of 
 his first utter failure. ... At least, if he could not convert her, 
 he could love her, pray for her. . . . No, he could not even do 
 that ; for to whom could he pray ? He had to repent, to be for- 
 given, to humble himself by penitence, perhaps for years, ere he 
 could hope to be heard even for himself, much less for another. 
 . . . And so backwards and forwards swayed his hope and pur- 
 pose, till he was roused from his meditation by the voice of the 
 little porter summoning him to his evening meal ; and recollect- 
 ing, for the first time, that he had tasted no food that day, he 
 went down, half-unwillingly, and ate. 
 
 But as he, the porter, and his negro wife were sitting silently 
 and sadly enough together, Miriam came in, apparently in high 
 good humour, and lingered a moment on her way to her own 
 apartments upstairs. 
 
 ' Eh ? At supper ? And nothing but lentils and water- 
 melons, when the flesh-pots of Egypt have been famous any 
 time these two thousand years. An ! but times are changed 
 since then ! . . . You have worn out the old Hebrew hints, you 
 miserable Gentiles you, and got a Caesar instead of a Joseph ! 
 ' Hist, you hussies ! ' cried she to the girls upstairs, clapping her 
 hands loudly. ' Here ! bring us down one of those roast 
 chickens, ana a bottle of the wine of wines the wine with the 
 green seal, you careless daughters of Midian, you, with your 
 wits running on the men, I'll warrant, every minute I've been 
 out of the house ! Ah, you'll smart for it some day you'll 
 smart for it some day, you daughters of Adam's first wife ! ' 
 
 Down came, by the hands of one of the Syrian slave-girls, 
 the fowl and the wine. 
 
 ' There, now ; we'll all sup together. Wine, that maketh 
 glad the heart of man ! Youth, you were a monk once, so you 
 have read all about that, eh 1 and about the best wine which 
 goes down sweetly, causing the lips of them that are asleep to 
 speak. And rare wine it was, I warrant, which the blessed 
 Solomon had in his little country cellar up there in Lebanon. 
 We'll try if this is not a very fair substitute for it, though.
 
 XXVI 
 
 MIRIAM'S PLOT 289 
 
 Come, my little man-monkey, drink and forget your sorrow ! 
 You shall be temple-sweeper to Beelzebub yet, I promise you. 
 Look at it there, creaming and curdling, the darling ! purring 
 like a cat at the very thought of touching human lips ! As 
 sweet as honey, as strong as fire, as clear as amber ! Drink, ye 
 children of Gehenna ; and make good use of the little time that 
 is left you between this and the unquenchable fire ! ' 
 
 And tossing a cup of it down her own throat, as if it had 
 been water, she watched her companions with a meaning look, 
 as they drank. 
 
 The little porter followed her example gallantly. Philammon 
 looked, and longed, and sipped blushingly and bashfully, and 
 tried to fancy that he did not care for it ; and sipped again, 
 being willing enough to forget his sorrow also for a moment ; 
 the negress refused with fear and trembling ' She had a vow 
 on her.' 
 
 ' Satan possess you and your vow ! Drink, you coal out of 
 Tophet ! Do you think it is poisoned ? You, the only creature 
 in the world that I should not enjoy ill-using, because every 
 one else ill-uses you already without my help ! Drink, I say, 
 or I'll turn you pea-green from head to foot ! ' 
 
 The negress put the cup to her lips, and contrived, for her 
 own reasons, to spill the contents unobserved. 
 
 'A very fine lecture that of the Lady Hypatia's the other 
 morning, on Helen's nepenthe,' quoth the little porter, growing 
 philosophic as the wine-fumes rose. ' Such a power of extract- 
 ing the cold water of philosophy out of the bottomless pit of 
 Mythus, I never did hear. Did you ever, my Philammonidion ? ' 
 
 ' Aha ! she and I were talking about that half an hour ago,' 
 said Miriam. 
 
 ' What ! have you seen her ? ' asked Philammon, with a flutter 
 of the heart. 
 
 ' If you mean, did she mention you, why, then, yes ! ' 
 
 'How? how?' 
 
 'Talked of a young Phoebus Apollo without mentioning 
 names, certainly, but in the most sensible, and practical, and 
 hopeful way the wisest speech that I have heard from her this 
 twelvemonth.' 
 
 Philammon blushed scarlet. 
 
 ' And that,' thought he, ' in spite of what passed this morning ! 
 Why, what is the matter with our host ? ' 
 
 ' He has taken Solomon's advice, and forgotten his sorrow.' 
 
 And so, indeed, he had ; for he was sleeping sweetly, with 
 open lack-lustre eyes, and a maudlin smile at the ceiling 1 while 
 tne negress, with her head fallen on her chest, seemed equally 
 unconscious of their presence. 
 
 ' We'll see,' quoth Miriam ; and taking up the lamp, she held 
 the flame unceremoniously to the arm of each of them; but 
 neither winced nor stirred.
 
 290 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 'Surely your wine is not drugged?' said Philammon, in 
 trepidation. 
 
 'Why not? What has made them beasts, may make us 
 angels. You seem none the less lively for it ! Do I ? ' 
 
 ' But drugged wine ? ' 
 
 'Why not? The same who made wine made poppy- juice. 
 Both will make man happy. Why not use both ? ' 
 
 ' It is poison ! ' 
 
 'It is the nepenthe, as I told Hypatia, whereof she was 
 twaddling mysticism this morning. Drink, child, drink ! I 
 have no mind to put you to sleep to-night ! I want to make a 
 man of you, or rather, to see whether you are one ! ' 
 
 And she drained another cup, and then went on, half talking 
 to herself 
 
 ' Ay, it is poison ; and music is poison ; and woman is poison, 
 according to the new creed, Pagan and Christian ; and wine 
 will be poison, and meat will be poison, some day ; and we shall 
 have a world full of mad Nebuchadnezzars, eating grass like 
 oxen. It is poisonous, and brutal, and devilish, to be a man, 
 and not a monk, and an eunuch, and a dry branch. You are all 
 in the same lie, Christians and philosophers, Cyril and Hypatia ! 
 
 Don't interrupt me, but drink, young fool ! Ay, and the only 
 
 man who keeps his manhood, the only man who is not ashamed 
 to be what God has made him, is your Jew. You will find 
 yourselves in want of him after all, some day, you besotted 
 Gentiles, to bring you back to common sense and common 
 manhood. In want of him and his grand old books, which you 
 despise while you make idols of them, about Abraham, and 
 Jacob, and Moses, and David, and Solomon, whom you call 
 saints, you miserable hypocrites, though they did what you are 
 too dainty to do, and had their wives and their children, and 
 thanked God for a beautiful woman, as Adam did before them, 
 and their sons do after them Drink, I say and believed that 
 God had really made the world, and not the devil, and had given 
 them the lordship over it, as you will find out to your cost some 
 day!' 
 
 Philammon heard, and could not answer ; and on she 
 rambled. 
 
 'And music, too? Our priests were not afraid of sackbut 
 and psaltery, dulcimer and trumpet, in the house of the Lord ; 
 for they knew who had given them the cunning to make them. 
 Our prophets were not afraid of calling for music, when they 
 wished to prophesy, and letting it soften and raise their souls, 
 and open and quicken them till they saw into the inner 
 harmony of things, and beheld the future in the present ; for 
 they knew who made the melody and harmony, and made them 
 the outward symbols of the inward song which runs through 
 sun and stars, storm and tempest, fulfilling his word in that 
 these sham philosophers the heathen are wiser than those
 
 MIRIAM'S PLOT 291 
 
 Christian monks. Try it! try it! Come with me! Leave 
 these sleepers here, and come to my rooms. You long to be as 
 wise as Solomon. Then get at wisdom as Solomon did, and 
 give your heart first to know folly and madness. . . . You have 
 read the Book of the Preacher ? ' 
 
 Poor Philammon ! He was no longer master of himself. 
 The arguments the wine the terrible spell of the old woman's 
 voice and eye, and the strong overpowering will which showed 
 put through them, dragged him along in spite of himself. As 
 if in a dream, he followed her up the stairs. 
 
 ' There, throw away that stupid, ugly, shapeless philosopher's 
 cloak. So ! You have on the white tunic I gave you ? And 
 now you look as a human being should. And you have been to 
 the baths to-day ? Well you have the comfort of feeling now 
 like other people, and haying that alabaster skin as white as it 
 was created, instead of being tanned like a brute's hide. Drink, 
 I say ! Ay what was that face, that figure made for ? Bring 
 a mirror here, hussy ! There, look in that, and judge for your- 
 self ? Were those lips rounded for nothing ? Why were those 
 eyes set in your head, and made to sparkle bright as jewels, 
 sweet as mountain honey? Why were those curls laid ready 
 for soft fingers to twine themselves among them, and look all 
 the whiter among the glossy black knots ? Judge for yourself ! ' 
 
 Alas ! poor Philammon ! 
 
 'And after all,' thought he, 'is it not true, as well as 
 pleasant ? ' 
 
 ' Sing to the poor boy, girls ! sing to him ! and teach him 
 for the first time in his little ignorant life, the old road to 
 inspiration ! ' 
 
 One of the slave-girls sat down on the divan, and took up 
 a double flute ; while the other rose, and accompanying the 
 plaintive dreamy air with a slow dance, and delicate twinklings 
 of her silver armlets and anklets, and the sistrum which she 
 held aloft, she floated gracefully round and round the floor and 
 sang 
 
 Why were we born but for bliss ? 
 Why are we ripe, but to fall ? 
 Dream not that duty can bar thee from beauty, 
 Like water and sunshine, the heirloom of all. 
 
 Lips were made only to kiss ; 
 
 Hands were made only to toy ; 
 Eyes were made only to lure on the lonely, 
 The longing, the loving, and drown them in joy ! 
 
 Alas, for poor Philammon ! And yet no ! The very poison 
 brought witn it its own antidote : and, shaking off by one 
 strong effort of will the spell of the music and the wine, he 
 sprang to his feet. . . . 
 
 ' Never ! If love means no more than that if it is to be a
 
 292 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 mere delicate self-indulgence, worse than the brute's, because it 
 requires the prostration of nobler faculties, and a selfishness 
 the more huge in proportion to the greatness of the soul which 
 is crushed inward by it then I will have none of it ! I have 
 had my dream yes ! but it was of one who should be at once 
 my teacher and my pupil, my debtor and my queen who 
 should lean on me, and yet support me supply my defects, 
 although with lesser light, as the old moon fills up the circle of 
 the new labour with me side by side in some great work 
 rising with me for ever as I rose : and this is the base substitute ! 
 Never ! ' 
 
 Whether or not this was unconsciously forced into words by 
 the vehemence of his passion, or whether the old Jewess heard, 
 or pretended to hear a footstep coming up the stair, she at all 
 events sprang instantly to her feet. 
 
 ' Hist ! Silence, girls ! I hear a visitor. What mad maiden 
 has come to beg a love-charm of the poor old witch at this time 
 of night 1 Or have the Christian bloodhounds tracked the old 
 lioness of Judah to her den at last ? We'll see ! ' 
 
 And she drew a dagger from her girdle, and stepped boldly 
 to the door. 
 
 As she went out she turned 
 
 ' So ! my brave young Apollo ! You do not admire simple 
 woman? You must have something more learned and intel- 
 lectual and spiritual, and so forth. I wonder whether Eve, 
 when she came to Adam in the garden, brought with her a 
 certificate of proficiency in the seven sciences 1 Well, well like 
 must after like. Perhaps we shall be able to suit you after all. 
 Vanish, daughters of Midian ! ' 
 
 The girls vanished accordingly, whispering and laughing ; 
 and Philammon found himself alone. Although he was some- 
 what soothed by the old woman's last speech, yet a sense of 
 terror, of danger, of coming temptation, kept him standing 
 sternly on his feet, looking warily round the chamber, lest a 
 fresh siren should emerge from behind some curtain or heap of 
 pillows. 
 
 On one side of the room he perceived a doorway, filled by a 
 curtain of gauze, from behind which came the sound of whisper- 
 ing voices. His fear, growing with the general excitement of 
 his mind, rose into anger as he began to suspect some snare : 
 and he faced round towards the curtain, and stood like a wild 
 beast at bay, ready, with uplifted arm, for all evil spirits, male 
 or female. 
 
 'And he will show himself? How shall I accost him?' 
 whispered a well-known voice could it be Hypatia's? And 
 then the guttural Hebrew accent of the old woman answered 
 
 ' As you spoke of him this morning : 
 
 ' Oh ! I will tell him all, and he must he must have mercy ! 
 But he ? so awful, so glorious !
 
 MIRIAM'S PLOT 293 
 
 ' What the answer was, he could not hear : but the next 
 moment a sweet heavy scent, as of narcotic gums, filled the 
 room mutterings of incantations and then a blaze of light, in 
 which the curtain vanished, and disclosed to his astonished 
 eyes, enveloped in a glory of luminous smoke, the hag standing 
 by a tripod, and, kneeling by her, Hypatia herself, robed in 
 pure white, glittering with diamonds and gold, her lips parted, 
 her head thrown back, her arms stretched out in an agony of 
 expectation. 
 
 'In an instant, before he had time to stir, she had sprung 
 through the blaze, and was kneeling at his feet. 
 
 ' Phoebus ! beautiful, glorious, ever young ! Hear me ! only 
 a moment ! only this once ! ' 
 
 Her drapery had caught fire from the tripod, but she did not 
 heed it. Philammon instinctively clasped her in his arms, and 
 crushed it out, as she cried 
 
 ' Have mercy on me ! Tell me the secret ! I will obey thee ! 
 I have no self I am thy slave ! Kill me, if thou wilt : but 
 speak ! ' 
 
 The blaze sank into a soft, warm, mellow gleam, and beyond 
 it what appeared ? 
 
 The negro- woman, with one finger upon her lips, as with an 
 imploring, all but despairing look, she held up to him her little 
 crucifix. 
 
 He saw it. What thoughts flashed through him, like the 
 lightning bolt, at that blessed sign of infinite self-sacrifice, I say 
 not ; let those who know it judge for themselves. But in 
 another instant he had spurned from him the poor deluded 
 maiden, whose idolatrous ecstasies he saw instantly were not 
 meant for himself, and rushed desperately across the room, 
 looking for an outlet. 
 
 He round a door in the darkness a room a window and 
 in another moment he had leapt twenty feet into the street, 
 rolled over, bruised and bleeding, rose again like an Antaeus, 
 with new strength, and darted off towards the archbishop's house. 
 
 And poor Hypatia lay half senseless on the floor, with the 
 Jewess watching her bitter tears not merely of disappointment, 
 but of utter shame. For as Philammon fled she had recognised 
 those well-known features ; and the veil was lifted from her 
 eyes, and the hope and the self-respect of Theon's daughter 
 were gone for ever. 
 
 Her righteous wrath was top deep for upbraidings. Slowly 
 she rose ; returned into the inner room ; wrapped her cloak 
 deliberately around her ; and went silently away, with one 
 look at the Jewess of solemn scorn and defiance. 
 
 ' Ah ! I can afford a few sulky looks to-night ! ' said the old 
 woman to herself, with a smile, as she picked up from the floor 
 the prize for which she had been plotting so long Raphael's 
 half of the black agate.
 
 294 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' I wonder whether she will miss it ! Perhaps she will have 
 no fancy for its company any longer, now that she has dis- 
 covered what over-palpable archangels appear when she rubs 
 it. But if she does try to recover it ... why let her try her 
 strength with mine or, rather, with a Christian mob.' 
 
 And then, drawing from her bosom the other half of the 
 talisman, she fitted the two pieces together again and again, 
 fingering them over, and poring upon them with tear-brimming 
 eyes, till she had satisfied herself that the fracture still fitted 
 exactly ; while she murmured to herself from time to time 
 ' Oh, that he were here ! Oh, that he would return now now ! 
 It may be too late to-morrow ! Stay I will go and consult the 
 teraph ; it may know where he is. . . .' 
 
 And she departed to her incantations ; while Hypatia threw 
 herself upon her bed at home, and filled the chamber with a 
 long, low wailing, as of a child in pain, until the dreary dawn 
 broke on her shame and her despair. And then she rose, and 
 rousing herself for one great effort, calmly prepared a last 
 oration, in which she intended to bid farewell for ever to 
 Alexandria and to the schools. 
 
 Philammon meanwhile was striding desperately up the main 
 street which led towards the Serapeium. But he was not 
 destined to arrive there as soon as he had hoped to do. For ere 
 he had gone half a mile, behold a crowd advancing towards him 
 blocking up the whole street. 
 
 The mass seemed endless. Thousands of torches flared above 
 their heads, and from the heart of the procession rose a solemn 
 chant, in which Philammon soon recognised a well-known 
 Catholic hymn. He was half -minded to turn up some by-street, 
 and escape meeting them. But on attempting to do so, he 
 found every avenue which he tried similarly blocked up by a 
 tributary stream of people ; and, almost ere he was aware, was 
 entangled in the vanguard of the great column. 
 
 ' Let me pass ! ' cried he, in a voice of entreaty. 
 
 ' Pass, thou heathen 1 ' 
 
 In vain he protested his Christianity. 
 
 'Origenist, Donatist, heretic ! Whither should a good 
 Catholic be going to-night, save to the Caesareium ? ' 
 
 ' My friends, my friends, I have no business at the Csesareium !' 
 cried he, in utter despair. ' I am on my way to seek a private 
 interview with the patriarch, 011 matters of importance.' 
 
 'Oh, liar ! who pretends to be known to the patriarch, and 
 yet is ignorant that this night he visits at the Csesareium the 
 most sacred corpse of the martyr Ammonius ! ' 
 
 * What ! Is Cyril with you ? ' 
 
 ' He and all his clergy.' 
 
 'Better so; better in public,' said Philammon to himself; 
 and, turning, he joined the crowd. 
 
 Onward, with chant and dirge, they swept out through the
 
 MIRIAM'S PLOT 295 
 
 Sun-gate, upon the harbour esplanade, and wheeled to the right 
 along the quay, while the torchlight bathed in a red glare the 
 great front or the Csesareium, and the tall obelisks before it, 
 and the masts of the thousand ships which lay in the harbour 
 on their left ; and last, but not least, before the huge dim mass 
 of the palace which bounded the esplanade in front, a long line 
 of glittering helmets and cuirasses, behind a barrier of 
 cables which stretched from the shore to the corner of the 
 museum. 
 
 There was a sudden halt ; a low ominous growl ; and then 
 the mob pressed onward from behind, surged up almost to the 
 barrier. The soldiers dropped the points of their lances, and 
 stood firm. Again the mob recoiled again surged forward. 
 Fierce cries arose ; some of the boldest stooped to pick up 
 stones : but, luckily, the pavement was too firm for them. . . . 
 Another moment, and the whole soldiery of Alexandria would 
 have been fighting for life and death against fifty thousand 
 Christians. . . . 
 
 But Cyril had not forgotten his generalship. Reckless as 
 that night's events proved him to be about arousing the passions 
 of his subjects, he was yet far too wary to risk the odium and 
 the danger of a night attack, which even if successful, would 
 have cost the lives of hundreds. He knew well enough the 
 numbers and the courage of the enemy, and the certainty that, 
 in case of a collision, no quarter would be given or accepted on 
 either side. . . . Beside, if a battle must take place and that, 
 of course, must happen sooner or later it must not happen in 
 his presence and under his sanction. He was in the right now, 
 and Orestes in the wrong ; and in the right he would keep at 
 least till his express to Byzantium should have returned, and 
 Orestes was either proscribed or superseded. So looking for- 
 ward to some such chance as this, the wary prelate had schooled 
 his aides-de-camp, the deacons of the city, and went on his way 
 up the steps 01 the Csesareium, knowing that they could be 
 trusted to keep the peace outside. 
 
 And they did their work well. Before a blow had been 
 struck, or even an insult passed on either side, they had burst 
 through the front rank of the mob, and by stout threats of 
 excommunication, enjoined not only peace, but absolute silence 
 until the sacred ceremony which was about to take place should 
 be completed ; and enforced their commands by marching up 
 and down like sentries between the hostile ranks for the next 
 weary two hours, till the very soldiers broke out into expres- 
 sions of admiration, and the tribune of the cohort, who had no 
 great objection, but also no great wish, to fight, paid them a 
 high-flown compliment on their laudable endeavours to maintain 
 public order, and received the somewhat ambiguous reply, that 
 the 'weapons of their warfare were not carnal, that they 
 wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against principalities
 
 296 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 and powers,' ... an answer which the tribune, being now 
 somewhat sleepy, thought it best to leave unexplained. 
 
 In the meanwhile, there had passed up the steps of the 
 Temple a gorgeous line of priests, among whom glittered, more 
 gorgeous than all, the stately figure of the pontiff. They were 
 followed close by thousands of monks, not only from Alex- 
 andria and Nitria, but from all the adjoining towns and 
 monasteries. And as Philammon, unable for some half-hour 
 more to force his way into the church, watched their endless 
 stream, he could well believe the boast which he had so often 
 heard in Alexandria, that one-half of the population of Egypt 
 was at that moment in ' religious orders.' 
 
 After the monks, the laity began to enter: but even then so vast 
 was the crowd, and so dense the crush upon the steps, that before 
 he could force his way into the church, Cyril's sermon had begun. 
 
 'What went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft 
 raiment ? Nay, such are in king's palaces, and in the palaces of 
 prefects who would needs be emperors, and cast away the Lord's 
 bonds from them of whom it is written, that He that sitteth 
 in the heavens laugheth them to scorn, and taketh the wicked 
 in their own snare, and maketh the devices of princes of none 
 effect. Ay, in king's palaces, and in theatres too, where the rich 
 of this world, poor in faith, deny their covenant, and defile their 
 baptismal robes that they may do honour to the devourers of 
 the earth. Woe to them who think that they may partake of 
 the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. Woe to them 
 who will praise with the same mouth Aphrodite the fiend, and 
 her of whom it is written that He was born of a pure Virgin. 
 Let such be excommunicate from the cup of the Lord, and from 
 the congregation of the Lord, till they have purged away their 
 sins by penance and by almsgiving. But for you, ye poor of 
 this world, rich in faith, you whom the rich despise, hale before 
 the judgment seats, and blaspheme that holy name whereby ye 
 are called what went ye out into the wilderness to see ? A 
 prophet? Ay, and more than a prophet a martyr! More 
 than a prophet, more than a king, more than a prefect : whose 
 theatre was the sands of the desert, whose throne was the cross, 
 whose crown was bestowed, not by heathen philosophers and 
 daughters of Satan, deceiving men with the works of their 
 fathers, but by angels and archangels j a crown of glory, the 
 victor's laurel, which grows for ever in the paradise of the 
 highest heaven. Call him no more Ammonius, call him Thau- 
 masius, wonderful ! Wonderful in his poverty, wonderful in his 
 zeal, wonderful in his faith, wonderful in his fortitude, wonderful 
 in his death, most wonderful in the manner of that death. Oh, 
 thrice blessed, who has merited the honour of the cross itself ! 
 What can follow, but that one so honoured in the flesh should 
 also be honoured in the life which he now lives, and that from
 
 MIRIAM'S PLOT 297 
 
 the virtue of these thrice-holy limbs the leper should be cleansed, 
 the dumb should speak, the very dead be raised ? Yes ; it were 
 impiety to doubt it. Consecrated by the cross, this flesh shall 
 not only rest in hope but work in power. Approach, and be 
 healed ! Approach, and see the glory of the saints, the glory of 
 the poor. Approach, and learn that that which man despises, 
 God hath highly esteemed ; that that which man rejects, God 
 accepts ; that that which man punishes, God rewards. Ap- 
 proach, and see how God hath chosen the foolish things of this 
 world to confound the wise, and the weak things of this 
 world to confound the strong. Man abhors the cross : The 
 Son of God condescended to endure it ! Man tramples on the 
 poor : The Son of God hath not where to lay His head. Man 
 passes by the sick as useless : The Son of God chooses them to 
 be partakers of His sufferings, that the glory of God may be 
 made manifest in them. Man curses the publican, while he 
 employs him to fill his coffers with the plunder of the poor : 
 The Son of God calls him from the receipt of custom to be an 
 apostle, higher than the kings of the earth. Man casts away 
 the harlot like a faded flower, when he has tempted her to be- 
 come the slave of sin for a season : and the Son of God calls her, 
 the defiled, the despised, the forsaken, to Himself, accepts her 
 tears, blesses her offering, and declares that her sins are for- 
 given, for she hath loved much ; while to whom little is forgiven 
 the some loveth little. . . .' 
 
 Philammon heard no more. With the passionate and im- 
 pulsive nature of a Greek fanatic, he burst forward through the 
 crowd, towards the steps which led to the choir, and above 
 which, in front of the altar, stood the corpse of Ammonius, en- 
 closed in a coffin of glass, beneath a gorgeous canopy ; and 
 never stopping till he found himself in front of Cyril's pulpit, 
 he threw himself upon his face upon the pavement, spread out 
 his arms in the form of a cross, and lay silent and motionless 
 before the feet of the multitude. 
 
 There was a sudden whisper and rustle in the congregation : 
 but Cyril, after a moment's pause, went on 
 
 ' Man, in his pride and self-sufficiency, despises humiliation, 
 and penance, and the broken and the contrite heart ; and tells 
 thee that only as long as thou doest well unto thyself will he 
 speak well of thee : the Son of God says that he that humbleth 
 himself, even as this our penitent brother, he it is who shall be 
 exalted. He it is of whom it is written that his father saw him 
 afar off, and ran to meet him, and bade put the best robe on 
 him, and a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and make 
 merry and be glad with the choir of angels who rejoice over one 
 sinner that repenteth. Arise, my son, whosoever thou art ; and 
 go in peace for this night, remembering that he who said, " My 
 belly cleaveth unto the pavement," hath also said, " Rejoice not 
 against me, Satan, mine enemy, for when I fall I shall arise 1 " '
 
 298 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 A thunderclap of applause, surely as pardonable as any an 
 Alexandrian church ever heard, followed this dexterous, and 
 yet most righteous, turn of the patriarch's oratory : but Phil- 
 ammon raised himself slowly and fearfully to his knees, and 
 blushing scarlet endured the gaze of ten thousand eyes. 
 
 Suddenly, from beside the pulpit, an old man sprang forward, 
 and clasped him round the neck. It was Arsenius. 
 
 ' My son ! my son ! ' sobbed he, almost aloud. 
 
 ' Slave, as well as son, if you will ! ' whispered Philammon. 
 ' One boon from the patriarch ; and then home to the Laura for 
 ever ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, twice-blest night,' rolled on above the deep rich voice of 
 Cyril, ' which beholds at once the coronation of a martyr and 
 the conversion of a sinner ; which increases at the same time 
 the ranks of the church triumphant, and of the church militant ; 
 and pierces celestial essences with a twofold rapture of thanks- 
 giving, as they welcome on high a victorious, and on earth a 
 repentant, brother ! ' 
 
 And at a sign from Cyril, Peter the Reader stepped forward, 
 and led away, gently enough, the two weepers, who were wel- 
 comed as they passed by the blessings, and prayers, and tears 
 even of those fierce fanatics of Nitria. Nay, Peter himself, as 
 he turned to leave them together in the sacristy, held out his 
 hand to Philammon. 
 
 'I ask your forgiveness,' said the poor boy, who plunged 
 eagerly and with a sort of delight into any and every self-abase- 
 ment. 
 
 ' And I accord it,' quoth Peter ; and returned to the church, 
 looking, and probably feeling, in a far more pleasant mood than 
 usual. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVH 
 THE PKODIGAL'S RETURN 
 
 ABOUT ten o'clock the next morning, as Hvpatia, worn out with 
 sleepless sorrow, was trying to arrange her thoughts for the 
 farewell lecture, her favourite maid announced that a messenger 
 from Synesius waited below. A letter from Synesius 1 A gleam 
 of hope flashed across her mind. From him, surely, might come 
 something of comfort, of advice. Ah ! if he only knew how 
 sorely she was bested ! 
 
 ' Let him send up his letter.' 
 
 ' He refuses to deliver it to any one but yourself. And I 
 think,' added the damsel r who had, to tell the truth, at that 
 moment in her purse a substantial reason for so thinking ' I 
 think it might be worth your ladyship's while to see him.' 
 
 Hypatia shook her head impatiently. 
 
 4 He seems to know you well, madam, though he refuses to
 
 THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 299 
 
 tell his name : but he bade me put you in mind of a black agate 
 I cannot tell what he meant of a black agate, and a spirit 
 which was to appear when you rubbed it.' 
 
 Hvpatia turned pale as death. Was it Philammon again? 
 She felt for the talisman it was gone ! She must have lost it 
 last night in Miriam's chamber. Now she saw the true purpose 
 of the old hag's plot . . . deceived, tricked, doubly tricked ! 
 And what new plot was this ? 
 
 'Tell him to leave the letter, and begone . . . My father? 
 What ? Who is this ? Whom are you bringing to me at such a 
 moment ? 
 
 And as she spoke, Theon ushered into the chamber no other 
 than Raphael Aben-Ezra, and then retired. 
 
 He advanced slowly towards her, and falling on one knee, 
 placed in her hand Synesius's letter. 
 
 Hypatia trembled from head to foot at the unexpected ap- 
 parition. . . . Well ; at least he could know nothing of last 
 night and its disgrace. But not daring to look him in the face, 
 she took the letter and opened it. ... If she had hoped for 
 comfort from it, her hope was not realised. 
 ' Synesius to the Philosopher : 
 
 ' Even if Fortune cannot take from me all things, yet what 
 she can take she will. And yet of two things, at least, she shall 
 not rob me to prefer that which is best, and to succour the 
 oppressed. Heaven forbid that she should overpower my judg- 
 ment, as well as the rest of me ! Therefore I do hate injustice ; 
 for that I can do ; and my will is to stop it ; but the power to 
 do so is among the things of which she has bereaved me before, 
 too, she bereaved me of my children. . . . 
 
 ' " Once, in old times, Milesian men were strong." 
 
 And there was a time when I, too, was a comfort to my friends, 
 and when you used to call me a blessing to every one except 
 myself, as I squandered for the benefit of others the favour with 
 which the great regarded me. . . . My hands they were then. 
 . . . But now I am left desolate of all : unless you have any 
 power. For you and virtue I count among those good things, 
 of which none can deprive me. But you always have power, 
 and will have it, surely, now using it as nobly as you do. 
 
 'As for Nicaeus and Philolaus, two noble youths, and kins- 
 men of my own, let it be the business of all who honour you, 
 both private men and magistrates, to see that they return 
 possessors of their just rights.' 1 
 
 ' Of all who honour me ! ' said she, with a bitter sigh : and 
 then looked up quickly at Raphael, as if fearful of having 
 betrayed herself. She turned deadly pale. In his eyes was a 
 
 1 An authentic letter of Synesius to Hvpatia.
 
 300 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 look of solemn pity, which told her that he knew not all ? 
 surely not all ? 
 
 ' Have you seen the Miriam ? ' gasped she, rushing desper- 
 ately at that which she most dreaded. 
 
 ' Not yet. I arrived but one hour ago ; and Hypatia's wel- 
 fare is still more important to me than my own.' 
 
 ' My welfare ? It is gone ! ' 
 
 ' So much the better. I never found mine till I lost it.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 Raphael lingered, yet without withdrawing his gaze, as if he 
 had something of importance to say, which he longed and yet 
 feared to utter. At last 
 
 ' At least, you will confess that I am better drest than when 
 we met last. I have returned, you see, like a certain demoniac 
 of Gadara, about whom we used to argue, clothed and perhaps 
 also in my right mind. . . . God knows ! ' 
 
 ' Raphael ! are you come here to mock me 1 You know you 
 cannot have been here an hour without knowing that but 
 yesterday I dreamed of being ' and she drooped her eyes ' an 
 empress; that to-day I am ruined; to-morrow, perhaps, pro- 
 scribed. Have you no speech for me but your old sarcasms and 
 ambiguities ? ' 
 
 Raphael stood silent and motionless. 
 
 ' Why do you not speak ? What is the meaning of this sad, 
 earnest look, so different from your former self ? . . . You have 
 something strange to tell me ! ' 
 
 ' I have,' said he, speaking very slowly. ' What what would 
 Hypatia answer if, after all, Aben-Ezra said like the dying 
 Julian, "The Galilean has conquered" 1 ' 
 
 ' Julian never said it ! It is a monkish calumny.' 
 
 ' But I say it.' 
 
 ' Impossible ! ' 
 
 ' I say it ! ' 
 
 ' As your dying speech ? The true Raphael Aben-Ezra, then, 
 lives no more ! ' 
 
 ' But he may be born again.' 
 
 'And die to philosophy, that he may be born again into 
 barbaric superstition ! On worthy metempsychosis ! Farewell, 
 sir ! ' And she rose to go. 
 
 'Hear me! hear me patiently this once, noble, beloved 
 Hypatia ! One more sneer of yours, and I may become again the 
 same case-hardened fiend which you knew me of old to all, at 
 least, but you. Oh, do not think me ungrateful, forgetful ! 
 What do I not owe to you, whose pure and lofty words alone 
 kept smouldering in me the dim remembrance that there was a 
 Right, a Truth, an unseen world of spirits, after whose pattern 
 man should aspire to live ? ' 
 
 She paused, and listened in wonder. What faith had she 
 of her own ? She would at least hear what he had found. . . .
 
 xxvn THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 301 
 
 ' Hypatia, I am older than you wiser than you, if wisdom be 
 the fruit of the tree of knowledge. You know but one side of 
 the medal, Hypatia, and the fairer ; I have seen its reverse as 
 well as its obverse. Through every form of human thought, of 
 human action, of human sin and folly, have I been wandering, 
 for years, and found no rest as little in wisdom as in folly, in 
 spiritual dreams as in sensual brutality. I could not rest in 
 your Platonism I will tell you why hereafter. I went on to 
 Stoicism, Epicurism, Cynicism, Scepticism, and in that lowest 
 deep I found a lower depth, when I became sceptical of 
 Scepticism itself.' 
 
 'There is a lower deep still,' thought Hypatia to herself, as 
 she recollected last night's magic ; but she did not speak. 
 
 ' Then in utter abasement, I confessed myself lower than the 
 brutes, who had a law, and obeyed it, while I was my own law- 
 less God, devil, harpy, whirlwind. ... I needed even my own 
 dog to awaken in me the brute consciousness of my own 
 existence, or of anything without myself. I took her, the dog, 
 for my teacher, and obeyed her, for she was wiser than I. And 
 she led me back the poor dumb beast like a God-sent and 
 God -obey ing angel, to human nature, to mercy, to self-sacrifice, 
 to belief, to worship to pure and wedded love.' 
 
 Hypatia started. . . . And in the struggle to hide her own 
 bewilderment, answered almost without knowing it 
 
 ' Wedded love ? . . . Wedded love ? Is that, then, the paltry 
 bait by which Eaphael Aben-Ezra has been tempted to desert 
 philosophy ? ' 
 
 ' Thank Heaven ! ' said Raphael to himself. ' She does not care 
 for me, then ! If she had, pride would have kept her from 
 that sneer.' ' Yes, my dear lady,' answered he, aloud, ' to desert 
 philosophy, to search after wisdom ; because wisdom itself had 
 sought for me, and found me. But, indeed, I had hoped that 
 you would have approved of my following your example for 
 once in my life, and resolving, like you, to enter into the estate 
 of wedlock.' 
 
 'Do not sneer at me !' cried she, in her turn, looking up at 
 him with shame and horror, which made him repent of uttering 
 the words. ' If you do not know you will soon, too soon ! 
 Never mention that hateful dream to me, if you wish to have 
 speech of me more ! ' 
 
 A pang of remorse shot throught Raphael's heart. Who but 
 he himself had plotted that evfl marriage ? But she gave him 
 no opportunity of answering her, and went on hurriedly 
 
 'Speak to me rather about yourself. What is this strange 
 and sudden betrothal 1 What has it to do with Christianity ? 
 I had thought that it was rather by the glories of celibacy 
 gross and superstitious as their notions of it are that the 
 Galilseans tempted their converts.' 
 
 ' So had I, my dearest lady,' answered he, as, glad to turn the
 
 302 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 subject for a moment, and perhaps a little nettled by her con- 
 temptuous tone, he resumed something of his old arch and 
 careless manner. ' But there is no accounting for man's agree- 
 able inconsistencies one morning I found myself, to my 
 astonishment, seized by two bishops, and betrothed, whether I 
 chose or not. to a young lady who but a few days before had 
 been destined for a nunnery.' 
 
 'Two bishops?' 
 
 ' I speak simple truth. The one was Synesius of course ; 
 that most incoherent and most benevolent of busybodies chose 
 to betray me behind my back : but I will not trouble you with 
 that part of my story. The real wonder is, that the other 
 episcopal match-maker was Augustine of Hippo himself ! ' 
 
 ' Anything to bribe a convert,' said Hypatia contemptuously. 
 
 ' I assure you, no. He informed me, and her also, openly and 
 uncivilly enough, that he thought us very much to be pitied for 
 so great a fall . . . But as we neither of us seemed to nave any 
 call for the higher life of celibacy, he could not press it on us. 
 . . . We should have trouble in the flesh. But if we married 
 we had not sinned. To which I answered that my humility was 
 quite content to sit in the very lowest ranks : with Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob. . . . He replied by an encomium on virginity, 
 in which I seemed to hear again the voice of Hypatia her- 
 self.' 
 
 ' And sneered at it inwardly, as you used to sneer at me.' 
 
 ' Really I was in no sneering mood at that moment ; and 
 whatsoever I may have felt inclined to reply, he was kind 
 enough to say for me and himself the next minute,' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' He went on, to my utter astonishment, by such a eulogium 
 on wedlock as I never heard from Jew or heathen, and ended 
 by advice to young married folk so thoroughly excellent and to 
 the point, that I could not help telling him, when he stopped, 
 what a pity I thought it that he had not himself married, and 
 made some good woman happy by putting his own recipes into 
 practice. . . . And at that, Hypatia, I saw an expression on his 
 face which made me wish for the moment that I nad bitten out 
 this impudent tongue of mine, before I so rashly touched some 
 deep old wound. . . . That man has wept bitter tears ere now, 
 be sure ot it. ... But he turned the conversation instantly, 
 like a well-bred gentleman as he is, by saying, with the sweetest 
 smile, that though he had made it a solemn rule never to be a 
 party to making up any marriage, yet in our case Heaven had 
 so plainly pointed us out for each other, etc. etc., that he could 
 not refuse himself the pleasure. . . . and ended by a blessing as 
 kindly as ever came from the lips of man.' 
 
 'You seem wonderfully taken with the sophist of Hippo/ 
 said Hypatia impatiently; 'and forget, perhaps, that his 
 opinions, especially when, as you confess, they are utterly in-
 
 xxvn THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 303 
 
 consistent with themselves, are not quite as important to me as 
 they seem to have become to you.' 
 
 ' Whether he be consistent or not about marriage,' said 
 Kaphael, somewhat proudly, ' I care little. I went to him to 
 tell me, not about the relation of the sexes, on which point I am 
 probably as good a judge as he but about God ; and on that 
 subject he told me enough to bring me back to Alexandria, that 
 I might undo, if possible, somewhat of the wrong which I have 
 done to Hypatia. 
 
 ' What wrong have you done me ? . . . You are silent ? Be 
 sure, at least, that whatsoever it may be, you will not wipe it 
 out by trying to make a proselyte of me ! ' 
 
 ' Be not too sure of that. I have found too great a treasure 
 not to wish to share it with Theon's daughter.' 
 
 ' A treasure 1 ' said she half scornfully. 
 
 ' Yes, indeed. You recollect my last words, when we parted 
 there below a few months ago ? ' 
 
 Hypatia was silent. One terrible possibility at which he had 
 hinted flashed across her memory for the first time since ; . . . 
 but she spurned proudly from her the heaven-sent warning. 
 
 * I told you that, like Diogenes, I went forth to seek a man. 
 Did I not promise you, that when I had found one you should be 
 the first to hear of him 1 And I have found a man.' 
 
 Hypatia waved her beautiful hand. 'I know whom you 
 would say . . . that crucified one. Be it so. I want not a man, 
 but a god.' 
 
 ' What sort of a god, Hypatia 1 A god made up of our own 
 intellectual notions, or rather of negations of them of infinity 
 and eternity, and invisibility, and impassibility and why not 
 of immortality, too, Hypatia ? For I recollect we used to agree 
 that it was a carnal degrading of the Supreme One to predicate 
 of Him so merely human a thing as virtue.' 
 
 Hypatia was silent. 
 
 ' Now I have always had a sort of fancy that what we wanted, 
 as the first predicate of our Absolute One, was that He was to 
 be not merely an infinite God whatever that meant, which I 
 suspect we did not always see quite clearly or an eternal one 
 or an omnipotent one or even merely a one God at all ; none 
 of which predicates, I fear, did we understand more clearly 
 than the first : but that He must be a righteous God : or 
 rather, as we used sometimes to say that He was to have no 
 predicate Righteousness itself. And all along, I could not help 
 remembering that my old sacred Hebrew books told me of such 
 a one ; and feeling that they might have something to tell me 
 which ' 
 
 4 Which I did not tell you ! And this, then, caused your air 
 of reserve, and of sly superiority over the woman whom you 
 mocked by calling her your pupil ! I little suspected you ot so 
 truly Jewish a jealousy ! Why, oh why, did you not tell me this ? '
 
 304 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' Because I was a beast, Hypatia ; and had all but forgotten 
 what this righteousness was like ; and was afraid to find out 
 lest it should condemn me. Because I was a devil, Hypatia ; 
 and hated righteousness, and neither wished to see you 
 righteous, or God righteous either, because then you would both 
 have been unlike myself. God be merciful to me a sinner ! ' 
 
 She looked up in his face. The man was changed as if by 
 miracle and yet not changed. There was the same gallant 
 consciousness of power, the same subtle and humorous twinkle 
 in those strong ripe Jewish features and those glittering eyes ; 
 and yet every line in his face was softened, sweetened ; the 
 mask of sneering faineance was gone imploring tenderness 
 and earnestness beamed from his whole countenance. The 
 chrysalis case had fallen off, and disclosed the butterfly within. 
 She sat looking at him, and passed her hand across her eyes, as 
 if to try whether the apparition would not vanish. He, the 
 subtle ! he, the mocker ! he, the Lucian of Alexandria ! he 
 whose depth and power had awed her, even in his most polluted 
 days. . . . And this was the end of him. . . . 
 
 ' It is a freak of cowardly superstition. . . . Those Christians 
 have been frightening him about his sins and their Tartarus.' 
 
 She looked again into his bright, clear, fearless face, and was 
 ashamed of her own calumny. And this was the end of him of 
 Synesius of Augustine or learned and unlearned, Goth and 
 Roman. . . . The great flood would have its way, then. . . . 
 Could she alone fight against it ? 
 
 She could! Would she submit? She? Her will should 
 stand firm, her reason free, to the last to the death if need be. 
 . . . And yet last night ! last night ! 
 
 At last she spoke, without looking up. 
 
 ' And what if you have found a man in that crucified one ? 
 Have you found in him a God also ? ' 
 
 ' Does Hypatia recollect Glaucon's definition of the perfectly 
 righteous man ? . . . How, without being guilty of one un- 
 righteous act, he must labour his life long under the imputation 
 of being utterly unrighteous, in order that his disinterestedness 
 may be thoroughly tested, and by proceeding in such a course, 
 arrive inevitably, as Glaucon says, not only in Athens of old, or 
 in Judaea of old, but, as you yourself will agree, in Christian 
 Alexandria at this moment, at do you remember, Hypatia ? 
 bonds, and the scourge, and lastly, at the cross itself. ... If 
 Plato's idea of the righteous man be a crucified one, why may 
 not mine also ? If, as we both and old Bishop Clemens, too 
 as good a Platonist as we, remember and Augustine himself, 
 would agree, Plato in speaking those strange words, spoke not 
 of himself, but by the Spirit of God, why should not others 
 have spoken by the same Spirit when they spoke the same words?' 
 
 'A crucified man . . . Yes. But a crucified God, Eaphael ! 
 I shudder at the blasphemy.'
 
 THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 305 
 
 ' So do my poor dear fellow-countrymen. Are they the more 
 righteous in their daily doings, Hypatia, on account of their 
 fancied reverence for the glory of One who probably knows 
 best how to preserve and manifest His own glory? But you 
 assent to the definition ? Take care ! ' said he, with one of his 
 arch smiles, 'I have been fighting with Augustine, and have 
 become of late a terrible dialectician. Do you assent to it ? ' 
 
 ' Of course it is Plato's.' 
 
 ' But do you assent merely because it is written in the book 
 called Plato's, or because your reason tells you that it is true ? 
 . . . You will not tell me. Tell me this, then, at least. Is not 
 the perfectly righteous man the highest specimen of men ? ' 
 
 ' Surely,' said she half carelessly : but not unwilling, like a 
 philosopher and a Greek, as a matter of course, to embark in 
 anything like a word-battle, and to shut out sadder thoughts 
 for a moment. 
 
 ' Then must not the Autanthropos, the archetypal and ideal 
 man, who is more perfect than any individual specimen, be 
 perfectly righteous also ? ' 
 
 'Suppose, then, for the sake of one of those pleasant old 
 games of ours, an argument, that he wished to manifest his 
 righteousness to the world. . . . The only method for him, 
 according to Plato, would be Glaucon's, or calumny and per- 
 secution, the scourge and the cross ? ' 
 
 'What words are these, Raphael? Material scourges and 
 crosses for an eternal and spiritual idea ? ' 
 
 'Did you ever yet, Hypatia, consider at leisure what the 
 archetype of man might be like ? ' 
 
 Hypatia started, as at a new thought, and confessed as 
 every Neo-Platonist would have done that she had never 
 done so. 
 
 ' And yet our master, Plato, bade us believe that there was a 
 substantial archetype of each thing, from a flower to a nation, 
 eternal in the heavens. Perhaps we have not been faithful 
 Platonists enough heretofore, my dearest tutor. Perhaps, being 
 philosophers, and somewhat of Pharisees to boot, we began all 
 our lucubrations as we did our prayers, by thanking God that 
 we were not as other men were ; and so misread another 
 passage in the Republic, which we used in pleasant old days to 
 be fond of quoting.' 
 
 'What was that?' asked Hypatia, who became more and 
 more interested every moment. 
 
 ' That Philosophers were men.' 
 
 ' Are you mocking me ? Plato defines the philosopher as the 
 man who seeks after the objects of knowledge, while others seek 
 after those of opinion.' 
 
 'And most truly. But what if, in our eagerness to assert 
 that wherein the philosopher differed from other men, we had
 
 306 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 overlooked that in which he resembled other men ; and so 
 forgot that, after all, man was a genus whereof the philosopher 
 was only a species ? ' 
 
 Hypatia sighed. 
 
 'Do you not think, then, that as 'the greater contains the 
 less, and the archetype of the genus that of the species, we 
 should have been wiser if we had speculated a little more on 
 the archetype of man as man, before we meddled with a part of 
 that archetype, the archetype of the philosopher? . . . Cer- 
 tainly it would have been the easier course, for there are more 
 men than philosophers, Hypatia; and every man is a real man, 
 and a fair subject for examination, while every philosopher is 
 not a real philosopher our friends the Academics, for instance, 
 and even a Neo-Platonist or two whom we know 1 You seem 
 impatient. Shall I cease ? ' 
 
 You mistook the cause of my impatience,' answered she, 
 looking up at him with her great sad eyes. ' Go on.' 
 
 ' Now for I am going to be terribly scholastic is it not the 
 very definition of man, that he is, alone of all known things, a 
 spirit temporarily united to an animal body ? ' 
 
 ' Enchanted in it, as in a dungeon, rather,' said she sighing. 
 
 ' Be it so if you will. But must we not say that the arche- 
 type the very man that if he is the archetype, he too will be, 
 or must have been, once at least, temporarily enchanted into an 
 animal body? . . . You are silent. I will not press you. . . . 
 Only ask you to consider at your leisure whether Plato may 
 not justify somewhat from the charge of absurdity the fisherman 
 of Galilee, where he said that He in whose image man is made 
 was made flesh, and dwelt with him bodily there by the lake 
 side at Tiberias, and that he beheld His Glory, the glory as of 
 the only -begotten of the Father.' 
 
 ' That last question is a very different one. God made flesh ! 
 My reason revolts at it.' 
 
 ' Old Homer's reason did not.' 
 
 Hypatia started, for she recollected her yesterday's cravings 
 after those old, palpable, and human deities. And 'Go on,' 
 she cried eagerly. 
 
 ' Tell me, then This archetype of man, if it exists anywhere, 
 it must exist eternally in the mind of God? At least, Plato 
 would have so said ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'And derive its existence immediately from Him ? 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'But a man is one willing person, unlike to all others.' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' Then this archetype must be such.' 
 
 ' I suppose so.' 
 
 'But possessing the faculties and properties of all men in 
 their highest perfection.'
 
 xxvn THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 307 
 
 ' Of course.' 
 
 'How sweetly and obediently rny late teacher becomes my 
 pupil ! ' 
 
 Hypatia looked at him with her eyes full of tears. 
 
 ; I never taught you anything, Raphael.' 
 
 ' You taught me most, belovefl lady, when you least thought 
 of it. But tell me one thing more. Is it not the property of 
 every man to be a son ? For you can conceive of a man as not 
 being a father, but not as not being a son.' 
 
 ' Be it so.' 
 
 ' Then this archetype must be a son also.' 
 
 ' Whose son. Raphael 1 ' 
 
 ' Why not of " Zeus, father of gods and men 1 " For we agreed 
 that it we will call it he, now, having agreed that it is a person 
 could owe its existence to none but God Himself.' 
 
 'And what then?' said Hypatia, fixing those glorious eyes 
 full on his face, in an agony of doubt, but yet, as Raphael 
 declared to his dying day, of hope and joy. 
 
 ' Well, Hypatia, and must not a son be of the same species as 
 his father ? " Eagles," says the poet, " do not beget doves." Is 
 the word son anything but an empty and false metaphor, unless 
 the son be the perfect and equal likeness of his father ? ' 
 
 ' Heroes beget sons worse than themselves, says the poet.' 
 
 'We are not talking now of men as they are, whom Homer's 
 Zeus calls the most wretched of all the beasts of the field ; we 
 are talking are we not? of a perfect and archetypal Son, 
 and a perfect and archetypal Father, in a perfect and eternal 
 world, wherein is neither growth, decay, nor change ; and of a 
 perfect and archetypal generation, of which the only definition 
 can be, that like begets its perfect like ? . . . You are silent. Be 
 so, Hypatia. . . . We have gone up too far into the abysses. . . .' 
 
 And so they both were silent for a while. And Raphael 
 thought solemn thoughts about Victoria, and about ancient 
 signs of Isaiah's, which were to him none the less prophecies 
 concerning The Man whom he had found, because he prayed 
 and trusted that the same signs might be repeated to himself, 
 and a child given to him also, as a token that, in spite of all his 
 baseness, ' God was with him.' 
 
 But he was a Jew, and a man : Hypatia was a Greek, and a 
 woman and for that matter, so were the men of her school. 
 To her, the relations and duties of common humanity shone 
 with none of the awful and divine meaning which they did in 
 the eyes of the converted Jew, awakened for the first time in his 
 life to know the meaning of his own scriptures, and become an 
 Israelite indeed. And Raphael's dialectic, too, though it might 
 silence her, could not convince her. Her creed, like those of her 
 fellow -philosophers, was one of the fancv and the religious 
 sentiment, rather than of the reason and the moral sense. All 
 the brilliant cloud-world in which she had revelled for years,
 
 308 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 cosmogonies, emanations, affinities, symbolisms, hierarchies, 
 abysses, eternities, and the rest of it though she could not rest 
 in them, not even believe in them though they had vanished 
 into thin air at her most utter need, yet they were too pretty 
 to be lost sight of for ever : and, struggling against the growing 
 conviction of her reason, she answered at last 
 
 ' And you would have me give up, as you seem to have done, 
 the sublime, the beautiful, the heavenly, for a dry and barren 
 chain of dialectic in which, for aught I know, for after all, 
 Raphael, I cannot cope with you I am a woman a weak 
 woman ! ' 
 
 And she covered her face with her hands. 
 
 ' For aught you know, what ? ' asked Raphael gently. 
 
 ' You may have made the worse appear the better reason.' 
 
 'So said Aristophanes of Socrates. But hear me once more, 
 beloved Hypatia. You refuse to give up the beautiful, the 
 sublime, the heavenly ? What if Raphael Aben-Ezra, at least, 
 had never found them till now? Recollect what I said just 
 now what if our old Beautiful, and Sublime, and Heavenly, had 
 been the sheerest materialism, notions spun by our own brains 
 out of the impressions of pleasant things, and high things, and 
 low things, and awful things, which we had seen with our 
 bodily eyes ? What if I had discovered that the spiritual is not 
 the intellectual, but the moral ; and that the spiritual world is 
 not, as we used to make it, a world of our own intellectual 
 abstractions, or of our own physical emotions, religious or 
 other, but a world of righteous or unrighteous persons ? What 
 if I had discovered that one law of the spiritual world, in which 
 all others were contained, was righteousness - } and that dis- 
 harmony with that law, which we called unspirituality, was not 
 being vulgar, or clumsy, or ill-taught, or unimaginative, or dull, 
 but simply being unrighteous ? What if I had discovered that 
 righteousness, and it alone, was the beautiful righteousness, the 
 sublime, the heavenly, the Godlike ay, God Himself? And, 
 what if it had dawned on me, as by a great sunrise, what that 
 righteousness was like ? What if I had seen a human being, a 
 woman, too, a young weak girl, showing forth the glory and the 
 beauty of God ? Showing me that the beautiful was to mingle 
 unshrinking, for duty's sake, with all that is most foul and 
 loathsome ; that the sublime was to stoop to the most menial 
 offices, the most outwardly-degrading self -denials ; that to be 
 heavenly, was to know that the commonest relations, the most 
 vulgar duties, of earth, were God's commands, and only to be 
 performed aright by the help of the same spirit by which He 
 rules the Universe ; that righteousness was to love, to help, to 
 suffer for if need be, to die for those who, in themselves, 
 seem fitted to arouse no feelings except indignation and disgust? 
 What if, for the first time, I trust not for the last time, in my 
 life, I saw this vision; and at the sight of it my eyes were
 
 xxvii THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 309 
 
 opened, and I knew it for the likeness and the glory of God ? 
 What if I, a Platonist, like John of Galilee, and Paul of Tarsus, 
 yet, like them, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, had confessed to 
 myself If the creature can love thus, how much more its 
 archetype 1 If weak woman can endure thus, how much more 
 a Son of God ? If for the good of others, man has strength to 
 sacrifice himself in part, God will have strength to sacrifice 
 Himself utterly. If He has not done it, He will do it : or He 
 will be less beautiful, less sublime, less heavenly, less righteous 
 than my poor conception of Him, ay, than this weak playful 
 girl ! Why should I not believe those who tell me that He has 
 done it already ? What if their evidence be, after all, only pro- 
 bability ? I do not want mathematical demonstration to prove 
 to me that when a child was in danger his father saved him 
 neither do I here. My reason, my heart, every faculty of me, 
 except this stupid sensuous experience, which I find deceiving 
 me every moment, which cannot even prove to me my own 
 existence, accepts that story of Calvary as the most natural, 
 most probable, most necessary of earthly events, assuming only 
 that God is a righteous Person, and not some dream of an all- 
 pervading necessary spirit nonsense which, in its very terms, 
 confesses its own materialism.' 
 
 Hypatia answered with a forced smile. 
 
 'Raphael Aben- Ezra has deserted the method of the severe 
 dialectician for that of the eloquent lover.' 
 
 'Not altogether,' said he, smiling in return. 'For suppose 
 that I had said to myself, We Platonists agree that the sight of 
 God is the highest good.' 
 
 Hypatia once more shuddered at last night's recollections. 
 
 ' And if He be righteous, and righteousness be as I know it 
 to be identical with love, then He will desire that highest 
 good for men far more than they can desire it for themselves. 
 . . . Then He will desire to show Himself and His own righteous- 
 ness to them. . . . Will you make answer, dearest Hypatia, or 
 shall I ? ... or does your silence give consent ? At least let 
 me go on to say this, that if God do desire to show His righteous- 
 ness to men, His only perfect method, according to Plato, will 
 be that of calumny, persecution, the scourge, and the cross, 
 that so He, like Glaucon's righteous man, may remain for ever 
 free from any suspicion of selfish interest, or weakness of 
 endurance. . . . Am I deserting the dialectic method now, 
 Hypatia? . . . You are still silent? You will not hear me, I 
 see. ... At some future day, the philosopher may condescend 
 to lend a kinder ear to the words of her greatest debtor. . . . 
 Or ; rather, she may condescend to hear, in her own heart, the 
 voice of that Archetypal Man, who has been loving her, guiding 
 her, heaping her with every perfection of body and of mind, in- 
 spiring her with all pure and noble longings, and only asks of 
 her to listen to her own reason, her own philosophy, when they
 
 310 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 proclaim Him as the giver of them, and to impart them freely 
 and humbly, as He has imparted them to her, to the poor, and 
 the brutish, and the sinful, whom He loves as well as He loves 
 her. . . . Farewell ! ' 
 
 'Stay !' said she, springing up : 'whither are you going ?' 
 
 'To do a little good before I die, having done much evil. To 
 farm, plant, and build, and rescue a little corner of Ormuzd's 
 earth, as the Persians would say, out of the dominion of Ahri- 
 man. To fight Ausurian robbers, feed Thracian mercenaries, 
 save a few widows from starvation, and a few orphans from 
 slavery. . . . Perhaps to leave behind me a son of David's line, 
 who will be a better Jew, because a better Christian, than his 
 father. . . . We shall have trouble in the flesh, Augustine tells 
 us. ... But, as I answered him, I really have had so little 
 thereof yet, that my fair share may probably be rather a useful 
 education than otherwise. Farewell ! ' 
 
 'Stay!' said she. 'Come again! again! And her. . . . 
 Bring her. ... I must see her ! She must be noble, indeed, to 
 be worthy of you.' 
 
 ' She is many a hundred miles away.' 
 
 ' Ah ! Perhaps she might have taught something to me me, 
 the philosopher ! You need not have feared me. ... I have no 
 heart to make converts now. . . . Oh, Kaphael Aben-Ezra, why 
 break the bruised reed 1 My plans are scattered to the winds, 
 my pupils worthless, my fair name tarnished, my conscience 
 heavy with the thought of my own cruelty. ... If you do not 
 know all, you will know it but too soon. . . , My last hope, 
 Synesius, implores for himself the hope which I need from him. 
 . . . And, over and above it all. . . . You ! . . . Et tu, Brute ! 
 Why not fold my mantle round me, like Julius of old, and die ! ' 
 
 Raphael stood looking sadly at her, as her whole face sank 
 into utter prostration. 
 
 'Yes come. . . . The Galilsean. . . If he conquers strong 
 men, can the weak maid resist him? Come soon. . . . This 
 afternoon. . . . My heart is breaking fast.' 
 
 ' At the eighth hour this afternoon ?' 
 
 ' Yes. ... At noon I lecture . . . take my farewell, rather, 
 forever of the 'schools. . . . Gods! What have I to say? . . . 
 And tell me about Him of Nazareth. Farewell ! ' 
 
 ' Farewell, beloved lady ! At the ninth hour, you shall hear 
 of Him of Nazareth.' 
 
 Why did his own words sound to him strangely pregnant, all 
 but ominous ? He almost fancied that not he, but some third 
 person had spoken them. He kissed Hypatia's hand. It was 
 as cold as ice ; and his heart, too, in spite of all his bliss, felt 
 cold and heavy, as he left the room. 
 
 As he went down the steps into the street, a young man 
 sprang from behind one of the pillars, and seized his arm.
 
 THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 311 
 
 'Alia ! my young Coryphaeus of pious plunderers ! What do 
 you want with me V 
 
 Philammon, for it was he, looked at him an instant, and 
 recognised him. 
 
 ' Save her ! for the love of God, save her ! ' 
 
 'Whom?' 
 Hypatia!' 
 
 ' How long has her salvation been important to you, my good 
 friend ?' 
 
 ' For God's sake,' said Philammon, ' go back and warn her ! 
 She will hear you you are rich you used to be her friend I 
 know you I have heard of you. . . . Oh, if you ever cared for 
 her if you ever felt for her a thousandth part of what I feel 
 go in and warn her not to stir from home ! 
 
 ' I must hear more of this,' said Raphael, who saw that the 
 boy was in earnest. ' Come in with me, and speak to her father.' 
 
 ' No ! not in that house ! Never in that house again ! Do 
 not ask me why : but go yourself. She will not hear me. Did 
 you did you prevent her from listening ?' 
 
 ' What do you mean V 
 
 ' I have been here ages ! I sent a note in by her maid, and 
 she returned no answer. 
 
 Raphael recollected then, for the first time, a note which he 
 had seen brought to her during the conversation. 
 
 ' I saw her receive a note. She tossed it away. Tell me your 
 story. If there is reason in it, I will bear your message myself. 
 Of what is she to be warned ?' 
 
 ' Of a plot I know that there is a plot against her among 
 the monks and Parabolani As I lay in bed this morning in 
 Arsenius's room they thought I was asleep 
 
 ' Arsenius ? Has that venerable fanatic, then, gone the way 
 of all monastic flesh, and turned persecutor V 
 
 ' God forbid ! I heard him beseeching Peter the Reader to 
 refrain from something, I cannot tell what ; but I caught her 
 name ... I heard Peter say, " She that hindereth will hinder 
 till she be taken out of the way." And when he went out into 
 the passage I heard him say to another, " That thou doest, do 
 quickly !..."' 
 
 ' These are slender grounds, my friend.' 
 
 'Ah, you do not know of what those men are capable !' 
 
 ' Dp 1 not 1 Where did you and I meet last V 
 
 Philammon blushed and burst forth again. ' That was enough 
 for me. I know the hatred which they bear her, the crimes 
 which they attribute to her. Her house would have been 
 attacked last night had it not been for Cyril. . . . And I knew 
 Peter's tone. He spoke too gently and softly not to mean 
 something devilish. I watched all the morning for an oppor- 
 tunity of escape, and here I am ! Will you take my message, or 
 see her '
 
 312 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 'What?' 
 
 ' God only knows, and the devil whom they worship instead 
 of God.' 
 
 Raphael hurried back into the house 'Could he see Hypatia?' 
 She had shut herself up in her private room, strictly command- 
 ing that no visitor should be admitted. . . . ' Where was Theon, 
 then V He had gone out by the canal gate half an hour before, 
 with a bundle of mathematical papers under his arm, no one 
 knew whither . . . ' Imbecile old idiot ! ' and he hastily wrote 
 on his tablet 
 
 ' Do not despise the young monk's warning. I believe him to 
 speak the truth. As you love yourself and your father, Hypatia, 
 stir not out to-day.' 
 
 He bribed a maid to take the message upstairs ; and passed 
 his time in the hall in warning the servants. But they would 
 not believe him. It was true the shops were shut in some 
 quarters, and the Museum gardens empty ; people were a little 
 frightened after yesterday. But Cyril, they had heard for 
 certain, had threatened excommunication only last night to 
 any Christian who broke the peace ; and there had not been a 
 monk to be seen in the streets the whole morning. And as for 
 any harm happening to their mistress impossible ! ' The very 
 wild beasts would not tear her,' said the huge negro porter, ' if 
 she was thrown into the amphitheatre.' 
 
 Whereat a maid boxed his ears for talking of such a thing ; 
 and then, by way of mending it, declared that she knew for 
 certain that her mistress could turn aside the lightning, and 
 call legions of spirits to fight for her with a nod. . . . What 
 was to be done with such idolaters I And yet who could help 
 liking them the better for it ? 
 
 At last the answer came down, in the old graceful, studied, 
 self-conscious handwriting. 
 
 ' It is a strange way of persuading me to your new faith, to 
 bid me beware, on the very first day of your preaching, of the 
 wickedness of those who believe it. I thank you : but your 
 affection for me makes you timorous. I dread nothing. They 
 will hot dare. Did they dare now, they would have dared long 
 ago. As for that youth to obey or to believe his word, even 
 to seem aware of his existence, were shame to me henceforth. 
 Because he is insolent enough to warn me therefore I will go. 
 Fear not for me. You would not wish me, for the first time in 
 my life, to fear for myself. I must follow my destiny. I must 
 speak the words which I have to speak. Above all, I must let no 
 Christian say, that the philosopher dared less than the fanatic. 
 If my Gods are Gods, then will they protect me : and if not, let 
 your God prove His rule as seems to Him good.' 
 
 Raphael tore the letter to fragments. . . . The guards, at least, 
 were not gone mad like the rest of the world. It wanted half 
 an hour of the time of her lecture. In the interval he might
 
 THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 313 
 
 summon force enough to crush all Alexandria. And turning 
 suddenly, he darted out of the room and out of the house. 
 
 ' Quern Deus yult perdere !' cried he to Philammon, with 
 
 a gesture of grief. ' Stay here and stop her ! make a last 
 appeal ! Drag the horses' heads down, if you can ! I will be 
 back in ten minutes.' And he ran off for the nearest gate of the 
 Museum gardens. 
 
 On the other side of the gardens lay the court-yard of the 
 palace. There were gates in plenty communicating between 
 them. If he could but see Orestes, even alarm the guard in 
 time ! . . . 
 
 And he hurried through the walks and alcoves, now deserted 
 by the fearful citizens, to the nearest gate. It was fast, and 
 barricaded firmly on the outside. 
 
 Terrified, he ran on to the next ; it was barred also. He 
 saw the reason in a moment, and maddened as he saw it. The 
 guards, careless about the Museum, or reasonably fearing no 
 danger from the Alexandrian populace to the glory and wonder 
 of their city, or perhaps wishing wisely enough to concentrate 
 their forces in the narrowest space, had contented themselves 
 with cutting off all communication with the gardens, and so 
 converting the lofty partition- wall into the outer enceinte of 
 their marble citadel. At all events, the doors leading from the 
 Museum itself might be open. He knew them every one, every 
 hall, passage, statue, picture, almost every book in that vast 
 treasure-house of ancient civilisation. He found an entrance ; 
 hurried through well-known corridors to a postern through 
 which he and Orestes had lounged a hundred times, their lips 
 full of bad words, their hearts of worse thoughts, gathered in 
 those records of the fair wickedness of old. ... It was fast. 
 He beat upon it ; but no one answered. He rushed on and 
 tried another. No one answered there. Another still silence 
 and despair! ... He rushed upstairs, hoping that from the 
 windows above he might be able to call to the guard. The 
 prudent soldiers had locked and barricaded the entrances to 
 the upper floors of the whole right wing, lest the palace court 
 should be commanded from thence. Whither now 1 Back 
 and whither then ? Back, round endless galleries, vaulted halls, 
 staircases, doorways, some fast, some open, up and down, trying 
 this way and that, losing himself at whiles in that enormous 
 silent labyrinth. And his breath failed him, his throat was 
 parched, his face burned as with the simoom wind, his legs were 
 trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect, 
 failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted ; there was a spell 
 upon him. Was it a dream ? Was it all one of those hideous 
 nightmares of endless pillars beyond pillars, stairs above stairs, 
 rooms within rooms, changing, shifting, lengthening out for ever 
 and for ever before the dreamer, narrowing, closing in on him, 
 choking him ? Was it a dream i Was he doomed to wander for
 
 314 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ever and for ever in some palace of the dead, to expiate the sin 
 which he had learnt and done therein ? His brain, for the first 
 time in his life, began to reel. He could recollect nothing but 
 that something dreadful was to happen and that he had to 
 prevent it, and could not. . . . Where was he now ? In a little 
 by -chamber. . . . He had talked with her there a hundred times, 
 looking out over the Pharos and the blue Mediterranean. . . . 
 What was that roar below ? . . . A sea of weltering yelling heads, 
 thousands on thousands, down to the very beach ; and from 
 their innumerable throats one mighty war-cry ' God, and the 
 mother of God ! ' Cyril's hounds were loose. . . . He reeled from 
 the window, and darted frantically away again. . . . whither, 
 he knew not, and never knew until his dying day. 
 
 And Philammon ? . . . Sufficient for the chapter, as for the 
 day, is the evil thereof. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 WOMAN'S LOVE 
 
 PELAGIA had passed that night alone in sleepless sorrow, which 
 was not diminished by her finding herself the next morning 
 palpably a prisoner in her own house. Her girls told her that 
 they had orders they would not say from whom to prevent 
 her leaving her own apartments. And though some of them 
 made the announcement with sighs and tears of condolence, 
 yet more than one, she could see, was well inclined to make her 
 feel that her power was over, and that there were others besides 
 herself who might aspire to the honour of reigning favourite. 
 
 What matter to her ? Whispers, sneers, and saucy answers 
 fell on her ear unheeded. She had one idol, and she had lost 
 it ; one power, and it had failed her. In the heaven above, and 
 in the earth beneath, was neither peace, nor help, nor hope ; 
 nothing but black, blank, stupid terror and despair. The little 
 weak infant soul, which had just awakened in her, had been 
 crushed and stunned in its very birth-hour ; and instinctively 
 she crept away to the roof of the tower where her apartments 
 were, to sit and weep alone. 
 
 There she sat, hour after hour, beneath the shade of the large 
 windsail, which served in all Alexandrian houses the double 
 purpose of a shelter from the sun and a ventilator for the rooms 
 below ; and her eye roved carelessly over that endless sea of 
 roofs and towers, and masts, and glittering canals, and gliding 
 boats ; but she saw none of them nothing but one beloved 
 face, lost, lost for ever. 
 
 At last a low whistle roused her from her dream. She looked 
 up. Across the narrow lane, from one of the embrasures of the 
 opposite house -parapet bright eyes were peering at her. She 
 moved angrily to escape them.
 
 xxvin WOMAN'S LOVE 315 
 
 The whistle was repeated, and a head rose cautiously above 
 the parapet. ... It was Miriam's. Casting a careful look 
 around, Pelagia went forward. What could the old woman 
 want with her ? 
 
 Miriam made interrogative signs, which Pelagia understood 
 as asking her whether she was alone ; and the moment that an 
 answer in the negative was returned, Miriam rose, tossed over 
 to her feet a letter weighted with a pebble, and then vanished 
 again. 
 
 'I have watched here all day! They refused me admittance 
 below. Beware of Wulf, of every one. Do not stir from your 
 chamber. There is a plot to carry you off to-night, and give 
 you up to your brother the monk ; you are betrayed ; be 
 brave ! ' 
 
 Pelagia read it with blanching cheek and staring eyes; and 
 took, at least, the last part of Miriam's advice. For walking 
 down the stair, she passed proudly through her own rooms, and 
 commanding back the girls who would have stayed her, with a 
 voice and gesture at which they quailed, went straight down, 
 the letter in her hand, to the apartment where the Amal usually 
 spent his mid-day hours. 
 
 As she approached the door, she heard loud voices within. 
 . . . His ! -yes ; but Wulf's also. Her heart failed her, and she 
 stopped a moment to listen. . . . She heard Hypatia's name ; 
 and mad with curiosity, crouched down at the lock, and heark- 
 ened to every word. 
 
 ' She will not accept me, Wulf.' 
 
 ' If she will not, she shall go farther and fare worse. Besides. 
 I tell you, she is hard run. It is her last chance, and she will 
 jump at it. The Christians are mad with her ; if a storm blows 
 up, her life is not worth that ! ' 
 
 ' It is a pity that we have not brought her hither already.' 
 
 ' It is ; but we could not. We must not break with Orestes 
 till the palace is in our hands.' 
 
 ' And will it ever be in our hands, friend ? ' 
 
 ' Certain. We were round at every picquet last night, and 
 the very notion of an Amal's heading them made them so eager, 
 that we had to bribe them to be quiet rather than to rise.' 
 
 ' Odin ! I wish I were among them now ! ' 
 
 ' Wait till the city rises. If the day pass over without a riot, 
 I know nothing. The treasure is all on board, is it not ? ' 
 
 'Yes, and the galleys ready. I have been working like a 
 horse at them all the morning, as you would let me do nothing 
 else. And Goderic will not be back from the palace, you say, 
 till nightfall ! ' 
 
 ' If we are attacked first, we are to throw up a fire signal to 
 him, and he is to come off hither with what Goths he can muster. 
 If the palace is attacked first, he is to give us the signal, and we 
 are to pack up and row round thither. And in the meanwhile
 
 316 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 he is to make that hound of a Greek prefect as drunk as he 
 can.' 
 
 ' The Greek will see him under the table. He has drugs, I 
 know, as all these Roman rascals have, to sober him when he 
 likes ; and then he sets to work and drinks again. Send off old 
 Smid, and let him beat the armourer if he can.' 
 
 ' A very good thought ! ' said Wulf, and came out instantly 
 for the purpose of putting it in practice. 
 
 Pelagia had just time to retreat into an adjoining doorway : 
 but she had heard enough ; and as Wulf passed, she sprang to 
 him and caught him by the arm. 
 
 ' Oh, come in hither ! Speak to me one moment ; for mercy's 
 sake- speak to me ! ' and she drew him, half against his will, into 
 the chamber, and throwing herself at his feet, broke out into a 
 childlike wail. 
 
 Wulf stood silent, utterly discomfited by this unexpected 
 submission, where he had expected petulant and artful resist- 
 ance. He almost felt guilty and ashamed, as he looked down 
 into that beautiful imploring face, convulsed with simple sorrow, 
 as of a child for a broken toy. ... At last she spoke. 
 
 ' Oh, what have I done what have I done ? Why must you 
 take him from me ? What have I done but love him, honour 
 him, worship him ? I know you love him ; and I love you for 
 it. I do indeed ! But you what is your love to mine ? Oh, 
 I would die for him be torn in pieces for him now, this 
 moment ! . . .' 
 
 Wulf was silent. 
 
 ' What have I done but love him ? What could I wish but to 
 make him happy ? I was rich enough, praised, and petted ; . . . 
 and then he came, . . . glorious as lie is. like a god among men 
 among apes rather and I worshipped him : was I wrong in 
 that ? I gave up all for him : was I wrong in that ? I gave him 
 myself : what could I do more ? He condescended to like me he 
 the hero ? Could I help submitting ? I loved him : could I help 
 loving him ? Did I wrong him in that ? Cruel, cruel Wulf ! . . .' 
 
 Wulf was forced to be stern, or he would have melted at once. 
 
 ' And what was your love worth to him ? What has it done 
 for him ? It has made him a sot, an idler, a laughing-stock to 
 these Greek dogs, when he might have been their conqueror, 
 their king. Foolish woman, who cannot see that your love has 
 been his bane, his ruin ! He, who ought by now to have been 
 sitting upon the throne of the Ptolemies, the lord of all south of 
 the Mediterranean as he shall be still ! 
 
 Pelagia looked up at him wide-eyed, as if her mind was tak- 
 ing in slowly some vast new thought, under the weight of which 
 it reeled already. Then she rose slowly. 
 
 ' And he might be Emperor of Africa.' 
 
 ' And he shall be ; but not 
 
 ' Not with me ! ' she almost shrieked. 'No ! not with wretched,
 
 xxvin WOMAN'S LOVE 317 
 
 ignorant, polluted me ! I see oh, God, I see it all ! And this 
 is why you want him to marry her her ' 
 
 She could not utter the dreaded name. 
 
 Wulf could not trust himself to speak ; but he bowed his 
 head in acquiescence. 
 
 ' Yes I will go up into the desert with Philammon and 
 you shall never hear of me, again. And I will be a nun, and 
 pray for him, that he may be a great king, and conquer all the 
 world. You will tell him why I went away, will you not ? Yes, 
 I will go, now, at once ' 
 
 She turned away hurriedly, as if to act upon her promise, 
 and then she sprang again to Wulf with a sudden shudder. 
 
 ' I cannot, Wulf ! I cannot leave him ! I shall go mad if I 
 do ! Do not be angry I will promise anything take any 
 oath you like, if you will only let me stay here. Only as a slave 
 as anything if I may but look at him sometimes. No not 
 even that but to be under the same roof with him, only Oh, 
 let me be but a slave in the kitchen ! I will make over all I 
 have to him to you to any one ! And you shall tell him that 
 I am gone dead, if you will. Only let me stay ! And I will 
 wear rags, and grind in the mill. . . . Even that will be deli- 
 cious, to know that he is eating the bread which I have made ! 
 And if I ever dare speak to him even to come near him let 
 the steward hang me up by the wrists, and whip me, like the 
 slave which I deserve to be ! ... And then shall I soon grow 
 old and ugly with grief, and there will be no more danger then, 
 dear Wulf, will there, from this accursed face of mine 1 Only 
 
 promise me that, and There ! he is calling you ! Don't let 
 
 him come in and see me ! I cannot bear it ! Go to him, quick, 
 and tell him all. No, don't tell him yet. . . .' 
 
 And she sank down again on the floor, as Wulf went out 
 murmuring to himself 
 
 ' Poor child ! poor child ! well for thee this day if thou wert 
 dead, and at the bottom of Hela ! ' 
 
 And Pelagia heard what he said. 
 
 Gradually, amid sobs and tears, and stormy confusion of im- 
 possible hopes and projects, those words took root in her mind, 
 and spread, till they filled her whole heart and brain. 
 
 ' Well for me if I were dead ? ' 
 
 And she rose slowly. 
 
 ' Well for me if I were dead ? And why not ? Then it would 
 indeed be all settled. There would be no more danger from 
 poor little Pelagia then. . . .' 
 
 She went slowly, firmly, proudly, into the well-known chamber. 
 . . . She threw herself upon the bed, and covered the pillow with 
 kisses. Her eye fell on the Amal's sword, which hung across the 
 bed's-head, after the custom of Gothic warriors. She seized it, 
 and took it down, shuddering.
 
 318 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 ' Yes ! . . . Let it be with this, if it must be. And it must 
 be. I cannot bear it ! Anything but shame ! To have fancied 
 all my life vain fool that I was ! that every one loved and 
 admired me, and to find that they were despising me, hating 
 me, all along ! Those students at the lecture-room door told 
 me I was despised. The old monk told me so Fool that I was ! 
 I forgot it next day ! For he he loved me still ! Ah how 
 could I believe them, till his own lips had said it ? . . . Intoler- 
 able ! . . . And yet women as bad as I am have been honoured 
 when they were dead. What was that song which I used to 
 sing about Epicharis, who hung herself in the litter, and Leaina, 
 who bit out her tongue, lest the torture should drive them to 
 betray their lovers ? There used to be a statue of Leaina, they 
 say, at Athens, a lioness without a tongue. . . . And whenever 
 I sang the song, the theatre used to rise, and shout, and call 
 them noble and blessed. ... I never could tell why then ; but 
 I know now ! I know now ! Perhaps they may call me noble, 
 after all. At least, they may say " She was a a but she dare 
 die for the man she loved ! " . . . Ay, but God despises me too, 
 and hates me. He will send me to eternal fire. Philammon 
 said so though he was my brother. The old monk said so 
 though he wept as he said it. ... The flames of hell for ever ! 
 Oh, not for ever ! Great, dreadful God ! Not for ever ! In- 
 deed, I did not know ! No one taught me about right and 
 wrong, and I never knew that I had been baptized Indeed, 
 I never knew ! And it was so pleasant so pleasant to be 
 happy, and praised, and loved, and to see happy faces round 
 me. How could I help it ? The birds there who are singing in 
 the darling, beloved court they do what they like, and Thou 
 art not angry with them for being happy ? And Thou wilt not 
 be more cruel to me than to them, great God for what did I 
 know more than they ? Thou hast made the beautiful sunshine, 
 and the pleasant, pleasant world, and the flowers, and the birds 
 Thou wilt not send me to burn for ever and ever ? Will not 
 a hundred years be punishment enough or a thousand ? Oh, 
 God ! is not this punishment enough already, to have to leave 
 him, just as just as I am beginning to long to be good, and to 
 be worthy of him ? . . . Oh, have mercy mercy mercy and 
 let me go after I have been punished enough ! Why may I not 
 turn into a bird, or even a worm, and come back again out of 
 that horrible place, to see the sun shine, and the flowers grow 
 once more ? Oh, am I not punishing myself already 1 Will not 
 this help to atone ? . . . Yes I will die ! and perhaps so God 
 may pity me ! ' 
 
 And with trembling hands she drew the sword from its sheath 
 and covered the blade with kisses. 
 
 ' Yes on this sword with which he won his battles. That 
 is right his to the last ! How keen and cold it looks ! Will it 
 be very painful ? . . . No I will not try the point, or my heart
 
 WOMAN'S LOVE 319 
 
 might fail me. I will fall on it at once : let it hurt me as it 
 may, it will be too late to draw back then. And after all it is 
 his sword It will not have the heart to torture me much. And 
 yet he struck me himself this morning ! ' 
 
 And at that thought, a long wild cry of misery broke from 
 her lips, and rang through the house. Hurriedly she fastened 
 the sword upright to the foot of the bed, and tore open her 
 tunic. . . . ' Here under this widowed bosom, where his head 
 will never lie again ! There are footsteps in the passage ! 
 Quick, Pelagia ! Now ' 
 
 And she threw up her arms wildly, in act to fall. . . . 
 
 ' It is his step ! And he will find me, and never know that it 
 is for him I die ! ' 
 
 The Amal tried the door. It was fast. With a single blow 
 lie burst it open, and demanded - 
 
 ' What was that shriek 1 What is the meaning of this ? 
 Pelagia !' 
 
 Pelagia, like a child caught playing with a forbidden toy, hid 
 her face in her hands and cowered down. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' cried he, lifting her. 
 
 But she burst from his arms. 
 
 ' No, no ! never more ! I am not worthy of you ! Let me 
 die, wretch that I am ! I can only drag you down. You must 
 be a king. You must marry her the wise woman !' 
 
 ' Hypatia ! She is dead ! ' 
 
 'Dead V shrieked Pelagia. 
 
 ' Murdered, an hour ago, by those Christian devils.' 
 
 Pelagia put her hands over her eyes, and burst into tears. 
 Were they of pity or of joy ? ... She did not ask herself ; and 
 we will not ask her. 
 
 ' Where is my sword ? Soul of Odin ! Why is it fastened 
 here V 
 
 ' I was going to Do not be angry ! . . . They told me that I 
 had better die, and ' 
 
 The Amal stood thunderstruck for a moment. 
 
 ' Oh, do not strike me again ! Send me to the mill. Kill 
 me now with your own hand! Anything but another blow !' 
 
 'A blow? Noble woman !' cried the Amal, clasping her in 
 his arms. 
 
 The storm was past : and Pelagia had been nestling to that 
 beloved heart, cooing like a happy dove, for many a minute 
 before the Amal aroused himself and her. . . . 
 
 ' Now ! quick ! We have' not a moment to lose. Up to the 
 tower, where you will be safe ; and then to show these curs 
 what comes of snarling round the wild wolves' den ! '
 
 320 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 NEMESIS 
 
 AND was the Amal's news true, then ? 
 
 Philammon saw Raphael rush across the street into the 
 Museum gardens. His last words had been a command to stay 
 where he was ; and the boy obeyed him. The black porter who 
 let Raphael out told him somewhat insolently, that his mistress 
 would see no one, and receive no messages : but he had made 
 up his mind : complained of the sun, quietly ensconced himself 
 behind a buttress, and sat coiled up on the pavement, ready for 
 a desperate spring. The slave stared at him : but he was accus- 
 tomed to the vagaries of philosophers ; and thanking the gods 
 that he was not born in that station of life, retired to his porter's 
 cell, and forgot the whole matter. 
 
 There Philammon awaited a full half -hour. It seemed to 
 him hours, days, years. And yet Raphael did not return : and 
 yet no guards appeared. Was the strange Jew a traitor ? Im- 
 possible ! his face had shown a desperate earnestness of terror 
 as intense as Philammon's own. . . . Yet why did he not 
 return ? 
 
 Perhaps he had found out that the streets were clear ; their 
 mutual fears groundless. . . . What meant that black knot of 
 men some two hundred yards off, hanging about the mouth of 
 the side street, just opposite the door which led to her lecture- 
 room ? He moved to watch them : they had vanished. He lay 
 down again and waited. . . . There they were again. It was a 
 suspicious post. That street ran along the back of the Csesar- 
 eium, a favourite haunt of monks, communicating by innumer- 
 able entries and back buildings with the great Church itself. 
 . . . And yet, why should there not be a knot of monks there ? 
 What more common in every street of Alexandria 1 He tried 
 to laugh away his own fears. And yet they ripened, by the 
 very intensity of thinking on them, into certainty. He knew 
 that something terrible was at hand. More than once he looked 
 put from his hiding-place the knot of men were still there ; . . . 
 it seemed to have increased, to draw nearer. If they found 
 him, what would they not suspect? What did he care? He 
 would die for her, if it came to that not that it could come to 
 that : but still he must speak to her he must warn her. 
 Passenger after passenger, carriage after carriage passed along 
 the street : student after student entered the lecture-room ; but 
 he never saw them, not though they passed him close. The sun 
 rose higher and higher, and turned his whole blaze upon the 
 corner where Philammon crouched, till the pavement scorched 
 like hot iron, and his eyes were dazzled by the blinding glare :
 
 xxix NEMESIS 321 
 
 but he never heeded it. His whole heart, and sense, and sight, 
 were riveted upon that well-known door, expecting it to 
 open. . . . 
 
 At last a curricle, glittering with silver, rattled round the 
 corner and stopped opposite him. She must be coming now. 
 The crowd had vanished. Perhaps it was, after all, a fancy of his 
 own. No ; there they were, peeping round the corner, close to 
 the lecture-room the hell-hounds ! A slave brought out an em- 
 broidered cushion and then Hypatia herself came forth, look- 
 ing more glorious than ever ; her lips set in a sad firm smile ; 
 her eyes uplifted, inquiring, eager, and yet gentle, dimmed by 
 some great inward awe, as if her soul was far away aloft, and 
 face to face with God. 
 
 In a moment he sprang up to her, caught her robe convul- 
 sively, threw himself on his knees before her 
 
 ' Stop ! Stay ! You are going to destruction ! ' 
 
 Calmly she looked down upon him. 
 
 ' Accomplice of witches ! Would you make of Theon's 
 daughter a traitor like yourself V 
 
 He sprang up, stepped back, and stood stupefied with shame 
 and despair. . . . 
 
 She believed him guilty, then ! ... It was the will of God ! 
 
 The plumes of the horses were waving far down the street 
 before he recovered himself, and rushed after her, shouting he 
 knew not what. 
 
 It was too late ! A dark wave of men rushed from the am- 
 buscade, surged up round the car . . . swept forward . . . she 
 had disappeared ! and as Philammon followed breathless, the 
 horses galloped past him madly homeward witli the empty 
 carriage. 
 
 Whither were they dragging her ? To the Csesareium, the 
 Church of God Himself ! Impossible? Why thither of all places 
 of the earth ? Why did the mob, increasing momentarily by 
 hundreds, pour down upon the beach, and return brandishing 
 flints, shells, fragments of pottery ? 
 
 She was upon the church steps before he caught them up, 
 invisible among the crowd ; but he could track her by the frag- 
 ments of her dress. 
 
 Where were her gay pupils now ? Alas ! they had barricaded 
 themselves shamefully in the Museum, at the first rush which 
 swept her from the door of the lecture -room. Cowards! he 
 would save her ! 
 
 And he struggled in vain to pierce the dense mass of Para- 
 bolani and monks, who, mingled with the fishwives and dock- 
 workers, leaped and yelled around their victim. But what he 
 could not do another and a weaker did even the little porter. 
 Furiously no one knew how or whence he burst up as if from 
 the ground in the thickest of the crowd, with knife, teeth, and 
 nails, like a venomous wild-cat, tearing his way towards his 
 
 Y ii
 
 322 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 idol. Alas ! he was torn down himself, rolled over the steps, and 
 lay there half dead in an agony of weeping, as Philammon 
 sprang up past him into the church. 
 
 Yes. On into the church itself ! Into the cool dim shadow, 
 with its fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and 
 incense, and blazing altar, and great pictures looking from 
 the walls athwart the gorgeous gloom. And right in front, 
 above the altar, the colossal Christ watching unmoved from off 
 the wall, His right hand raised to give a blessing or a curse ? 
 
 On, up the nave, fresh shreds of her dress strewing the holy 
 pavement up the chancel steps themselves up to the altar 
 right underneath the great still Christ : and there even those 
 hell-hounds paused. . . . 
 
 She shook herself free from her tormentors, and springing 
 back, rose for one moment to her full height naked, snow-white 
 against the dusky mass around shame and indignation in those 
 wide clear eyes, but not a stain of fear. With one hand she 
 clasped her golden locks around her ; the other long white arm 
 was stretched upward toward the great still Christ appealing 
 and who dare say, in vain ? from man to God. Her lips were 
 opened to speak : but the words that should have come from 
 them reached God's ear alone ; for in an instant Peter struck 
 her down, the dark mass closed over her again . . . and then 
 wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted 
 roofs, and thrilled like the trumpet of avenging angels through 
 Philammon's ears. 
 
 Crushed against a pillar, unable to move in the dense mass, 
 he pressed his hands over his ears. He could not shut out those 
 shrieks ! When would they end ? What in the name of the 
 God of mercy were they doing ? Tearing her piecemeal ? Yes, 
 and worse than that. And still the shrieks rang on, and still 
 the great Christ looked down on Philammon with that calm, 
 intolerable eye, and would not turn away. And over His head 
 was written in the rainbow, ' I am the same, yesterday, to-day, 
 and for ever ! ' The same as He was in Judea of old, Philammon 1 
 Then what are these, and in whose temple? And he covered 
 his face with his hands, and longed to die. 
 
 It was over. The shrieks had died away into moans ; the 
 moans to silence. How long had he been there ? An hour, or 
 an eternity ? Thank God it was over ! For her sake but for 
 theirs 1 But they thought not of that as a new cry rose through 
 the dome. 
 
 ' To the Cinaron ! Burn the bones to ashes ! Scatter them 
 into the sea ! ' . . . And the mob poured past him again. . . . 
 
 He turned to flee : but, once outside the church, he sank 
 exhausted, and lay upon the steps, watching with stupid horror 
 the glaring of the fire, and the mob who leaped and yelled like 
 demons round their Moloch sacrifice. 
 
 A hand grasped his arm ; he looked up ; it was the porter.
 
 xxix NEMESIS 323 
 
 'And this, young butcher, is the Catholic and apostolic 
 Church?' 
 
 ' No ! Eudaemon, it is the church of the devils of hell ! ' And 
 gathering himself up, he sat upon the steps and buried his 
 head within his hands. He would have given life itself for the 
 power of weeping : but his eyes and brain were hot and dry as 
 the desert. 
 
 Eudsemon looked at him awhile. The shock had sobered the 
 poor fop for once. 
 
 ' I did what I could to die with her ! ' said he. 
 
 ' I did what I could to save her ! ' answered Philammon. 
 
 'I know it. Forgive the words which I just spoke. Did we 
 not both love her ? ' 
 
 And the little wretch sat down by Philammon's side, and as 
 the blood dripped from his wounds upon the pavement, broke 
 out into a bitter agony of human tears. 
 
 There are times when the very intensity of our misery is a 
 boon, and kindly stuns us till we are unable to torture ourselves 
 by thought. And so it was with Philammon then. He sat 
 there, he knew not how long. 
 
 ' She is with the gods,' said Eudsemon at last. 
 
 ' She is with the God of gods,' answered Philammon : and 
 they both were silent again. 
 
 Suddenly a commanding voice aroused them. They looked 
 up, and saw before them Raphael Aben-Ezra. 
 
 He was pale as death, but calm as death. One look into his 
 face told them that he knew all. 
 
 ' Young monk,' he said, between his closed teeth, ' you seem 
 to have loved her ? ' 
 
 Philammon looked up, but could not speak. 
 
 4 Then arise, and flee for your life into the farthest corner of 
 the desert, ere the doom of Sodom and Gomorrha fall upon this 
 accursed city. Have you father, mother, brother, sister, ay, 
 cat, dog, or bird for which you care, within its walls ? ' 
 
 Philammon started ; for he recollected Pelagia. . . . That 
 evening, so Cyril had promised, twenty trusty monks were to 
 have gone with him to seize her. 
 
 ' You have t Then take them with you, and escape, and re- 
 member Lot's wife. Eudsemon, come with me. You must lead 
 me to your house, to the lodging of Miriam the Jewess. Do not 
 deny ! I know that she is there. For the sake of her who is 
 gone I will hold you harmless, ay, reward you richly, if you 
 prove faithful. Rise ! ' 
 
 Eudaemon, who knew Raphael's face well, rose and led the 
 way trembling ; and Philammon was left alone. 
 
 They never met again. But Philammon knew that he had 
 been in the presence of a stronger man than himself, and of 
 one who hated even more bitterly than lie himself that deed at 
 which the very sun, it seemed, ought to have veiled his face.
 
 324 HYPATIA <HM-. 
 
 And his words, 'Arise, and flee for thy life,' uttered as they 
 were with the stern self-command and writhing lip of com- 
 pressed agony, rang through his ears like the trump of doom, 
 i es, he would flee. He had gone forth to see the world, and he 
 had seen it. Arsenius was in the right after all. Home to the 
 desert ! But first he would go himself, alone, to Pelagia, and 
 implore her once more to flee with him. Beast, fool, that he 
 had been to try to win her by force by the help 01 such as 
 these ! God's kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics yelling 
 for a doctrine, but of willing, loving obedient hearts. If he 
 could not win her heart, her will, he would go alone, and die 
 praying for her. 
 
 He sprang from the steps of the Csesareium, and turned up 
 the street of the Museum. Alas ! it was one roaring sea of 
 heads ! They were sacking Theon's house the house of so 
 many memories ! Perhaps the poor old man too had perished ! 
 Still his sister ! He must save her and flee. And he turned 
 up a side street and tried to make his way onward. 
 
 Alas again ! the whole of the dock-quarter was up and out. 
 Every street poured its tide of furious fanatics into the main 
 river ; and ere he could reach Pelagia's house the sun was set, 
 and close behind him, echoed by ten thousand voices, was 
 the cry of ' Down with all heathens ! Root out all Arian Goths ! 
 Down with idolatrous wantons ! Down with Pelagia Aphro- 
 dite!' 
 
 He hurried down the alley, to the tower door, where Wulf 
 had promised to meet him. It was half open, and in the dusk 
 he could see a figure standing in the doorway. He sprang up 
 the steps, and found, not Wulf, but Miriam. 
 
 ' Let me pass ! ' 
 
 'Wherefore?' 
 
 He made no answer, and tried to push past her. 
 
 ' Fool, fool, fool ! ' whispered the hag, holding the door 
 against him with all her strength. 'Where are your fellow- 
 kidnappers ? Where are your band of monks ? ' 
 
 Philammon started back. How had she discovered his plan 1 
 
 'Ay where are they? Besotted boy! Have you not seen 
 enough of monkery this afternoon, that you must try still to 
 make that poor girl even such a one as yourselves ? Ay, you 
 may root out your own human natures if you will, and make 
 yourselves devils in trying to become angels : but woman she is, 
 and woman she shall live or die ! ' 
 
 ' Let me pass ! ' cried Philammon furiously. 
 
 ' Raise your voice and I raise mine : and then your life is 
 not worth a moment's purchase. Fool, do you think I speak as 
 a Jewess ? I speak as a woman as a nun ! I was a nun once, 
 madman the iron entered into my soul ! God do so to me, 
 and more also, if it ever enter into another soul while I can 
 prevent it ! You shall not have her ! I will strangle her with
 
 xxix NEMESIS 325 
 
 my own hand first ! ' And turning from him, she darted up the 
 winding stair. 
 
 He followed : but the intense passion of the old hag hurled 
 her onward with the strength and speed of a young Msenad. 
 Once Philammon was near passing her. But he recollected that 
 he did not know his way, and contented himself with keeping 
 close behind, and making the fugitive his guide. 
 
 Stair after stair, he fled upward, till she turned suddenly 
 into a chamber door. Philammon paused. A few feet above 
 him the open sky showed at the stair-head. They were close 
 then to the roof ! One moment more, and the hag darted out 
 of the room again, and turned to flee upward still. Philammon 
 caught her by the arm, hurled her back into the empty chamber, 
 shut the door upon her ; and with a few bounds gained the 
 roof, and met Pelagia face to face. 
 
 ' Come ! ' gasped he breathlessly. ' Now is the moment ! 
 Come, while they are all below ! ' and he seized her hand. 
 
 But Pelagia only recoiled. 
 
 ' No, no,' whispered she in answer, ' I cannot, cannot he has 
 forgiven me all, all ! and I am his for ever ! And now, just as 
 he is in danger, when he may be wounded ah, heaven ! would 
 you have me do anything so base as to desert him ? ' 
 
 ' Pelagia, Pelagia, darling sister ! ' cried Philammon, in an 
 agonised voice, ' think of the doom of sin ! Think of the pains 
 of hell!' 
 
 ' I have thought of them this day : and I do not believe you ! 
 No I do not ! God is not so cruel as you say ! And if He were : 
 to lose my love, that is hell ! Let me burn hereafter, if I do 
 but keep him now ! ' 
 
 Philammon stood stupefied and shuddering. All his own 
 early doubts flashed across him like a thunderbolt, when in the 
 temple-cave lie had seen those painted ladies at their revels, 
 and shuddered, and asked himself, were they burning for ever 
 and ever ? 
 
 ' Come ! ' gasped lie once again ; and throwing himself on his 
 knees before her, covered her hands with kisses, wildly entreat- 
 ing : but in vain. 
 
 'What is this?' thundered a voice; not Miriam's, but the 
 Amal's. He was unarmed : but he rushed straight upon Phil- 
 ammon. 
 
 ' Do not harm him ! ' shrieked Pelagia ; ' he is my brother 
 my brother of whom I told you ! ' 
 
 'What does he here?' cried the Amal, who instantly divined 
 the truth. 
 
 Pelagia was silent. 
 
 'I wish to deliver my sister, a Christian, from the sinful 
 embraces of an Arian heretic ; and deliver her I will, or 
 die!' 
 
 ' An Arian T laughed the Amal. ' Say a heathen at once, and
 
 326 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 tell the truth, young fool ! Will you go with him, Pelagia, and 
 turn nun in the sand-heaps ?' 
 
 Pelagia sprang towards her lover : Philammon caught her by 
 the arm for one last despairing appeal : and in a moment, 
 neither knew how, the Goth and the Greek were locked in 
 deadly struggle, while Pelagia stood in silent horror, knowing 
 that a call for help would bring instant death to her brother. 
 
 It was over in a few seconds. The Goth lifted Philammon 
 like a baby in his arms, and bearing him to the parapet, 
 attempted to hurl him into the canal below. But the active 
 Greek had wound himself like a snake around him, and held 
 him by the throat with the strength of despair. Twice they 
 rolled and tottered on the parapet ; and twice recoiled. A third 
 fearful lunge the earthen wall gave way and down to the 
 dark depths, locked in each other's arms, fell Goth and Greek. 
 
 Pelagia rushed to the brink, and gazed downward into the 
 gloom, dumb and dry -eyed with horror. Twice they turned 
 over together in mid-air. . . . The foot of the tower, as was 
 usual in Egypt, sloped outwards towards the water. They must 
 strike upon that and then ! ... It seemed an eternity ere 
 they touched the masonry. . . The Amal was undermost. . . . 
 She saw his fair floating locks dash against the cruel stone. 
 His grasp suddenly loosened, his limbs collapsed two distinct 
 plunges broke the dark sullen water ; and then all was still but 
 the awakened ripple, lapping angrily against the wall. 
 
 Pelagia gazed down one moment more, and then, with a 
 shriek which rang along roof and river, she turned, and fled 
 down the stairs and out into the night. 
 
 Five minutes afterwards, Philammon, dripping, bruised, and 
 bleeding, was crawling up the water-steps at the lower end of 
 the lane. A woman rushed from the postern door, and stood on 
 the quay edge, gazing with clasped hands into the canal. The 
 moon fell full on her face. It was Pelagia. She saw him, knew 
 him, and recoiled. 
 
 ' Sister ! my sister ! Forgive me !' 
 
 ' Murderer ! ' she shrieked, and clashing aside his outspread 
 hands, fled wildly up the passage. 
 
 The way was blocked with bales of merchandise : but the 
 dancer bounded over them like a deer : while Philammon, half 
 stunned by his fall, and blinded by his dripping locks, stumbled, 
 fell, and lay, unable to rise. She held on for a few yards towards 
 the torch-lit mob, which was surging and roaring in the main 
 street above, then turned suddenly into a side alley, and 
 vanished ; while Philammon lay groaning upon the pavement, 
 without a purpose or a hope upon earth. 
 
 Five minutes more, and Wulf was gazing over the broken 
 
 Earapet, at the head of twenty terrified spectators, male and 
 jmale, whom Pelagia's shriek had summoned. 
 He alone suspected that Philammon had been there ; and
 
 xxix NEMESIS 327 
 
 shuddering at the thought of what might have happened, he 
 kept his secret. 
 
 But all knew that Pelagia had been on the tower ; all had 
 seen the Amal go up thither. Where were they now ? And 
 why was the little postern gate found open, and shut only just 
 in time to prevent the entrance of the mob ? 
 
 Wulf stood, revolving in a brain but too well practised in 
 such cases, all possible contingencies of death and horror. At 
 last 
 
 ' A rope and a light, Smid ! ' he almost whispered. 
 
 They were brought, and Wulf, resisting all the entreaties of 
 the younger men to allow them to go on the perilous search, 
 lowered himself through the breach. 
 
 ' He was about two-thirds down, when he shook the rope, 
 and called in a stifled voice, to those above 
 
 ' Haul up. I have seen enough.' 
 
 Breathless with curiosity and fear, they hauled him up. He 
 stood among them for a few moments, silent, as if stunned by 
 the weight of some enormous woe. 
 
 ' Is he dead V 
 
 ' Odin has taken his son home, wolves of the Goths ! ' And 
 he held out his right hand to the awe-struck ring, and burst 
 into an agony of weeping. ... A clotted tress of long fair hair 
 lay in his palm. 
 
 It was snatched ; handed from man to man. . . . One after - 
 another recognised the beloved golden locks. And then, to the 
 utter astonishment of the girls who stood round, the great simple 
 hearts, too brave to be ashamed of tears, broke out and wailed 
 like children. . . . Their Amal ! Their heavenly man ! Odin's 
 own son, their joy and pride, and glory ! Their ' Kingdom of 
 heaven,' as his name declared him, who was all that each wished 
 to be, and more, and yet belonged to them, bone of their bone, 
 flesh of their flesh ! Ah, it is bitter to all true human hearts to 
 be robbed of their ideal, even though that ideal be that of a 
 mere wild bull, and soulless gladiator. . . . 
 
 At last Smid spoke 
 
 ' Heroes, this is Odin's doom ; and the Allfather is just. Had 
 we listened to Prince Wulf four months ago, this had never 
 been. We have been cowards and sluggards, and Odin is angry 
 with his children. Let us swear to be Prince Wulf's men and 
 follow him to-morrow where he will !' 
 
 Wulf grasped his outstretched hand lovingly 
 
 ' No, Smid, son of Troll ! These words are not yours to 
 speak. Agilmurid son of Cniva, Goderic son of Ermenric, you 
 are Baits, and to you the succession appertains. Draw lots 
 here, which of you shall be our chieftain. 
 
 'No ! no ! Wulf !' cried both the youths at once. 'You are 
 the hero ! you are the Sagaman ! We are not worthy ; we have 
 been cowards and sluggards, like the rest. Wolves of the Goths,
 
 328 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 follow the Wolf, even though he lead you to the land of the 
 giants ! ' 
 
 A roar of applause followed. 
 
 ' Lift him on the shield,' cried Goderic, teai'ing off his buckler. 
 'Lift him on the shield! Hail, Wulf king! Wulf, king of 
 Egypt!' 
 
 And the rest of the Goths, attracted by the noise, rushed up 
 the tower-stairs in time to join in the mighty shout of ' Wulf, 
 king of Egypt ! ' as careless of the vast multitude which yelled 
 and surged without, as boys are of the snow against the window- 
 pane. 
 
 1 No ! ' said Wulf solemnly, as he stood on the uplifted shield. 
 ' If I be indeed your king, and ye my men, wolves of the Goths, 
 to-morrow we will go forth of this place, hated of Odin, rank 
 with the innocent blood of the Alruna maid. Back to Adolf ; 
 back to our own people ! Will you go ? ' 
 
 ' Back to Adolf ! ' shouted the men. 
 
 ' You will not leave us to be murdered ?' cried one of the girls. 
 'The mob are breaking the gates already ! ' 
 
 ' Silence, silly one ! Men we have one thing to do. The 
 Amal must not go to the Valhalla without fair attend- 
 ance.' 
 
 1 Not the poor girls ? ' said Agilmund, who took for granted 
 that Wulf would wish to celebrate the Amal's funeral in true 
 Gothic fashion by a slaughter of slaves. 
 
 'No. . . . One of them I saw behave this very afternoon 
 worthy of a Vala. And they, too they may make heroes' wives 
 after all, yet. . . . Women are better than I fancied, even the 
 worst of them. No. Go down, heroes, and throw the gates 
 open ; and call in the Greek hounds to the funeral supper of a 
 son of Odin.' 
 
 ' Throw the gates open ?' 
 
 ' Yes. Goderic, take a dozen men, and be ready in the east 
 hall. Agilmund, go with a dozen to the west side of the court 
 there in the kitchen ; and wait till you hear my war-cry. 
 Smid and the rest of you, come with me through the stables 
 close to the gate as silent as Hela.' 
 
 And they went down to meet, full on the stairs below, old 
 Miriam. 
 
 Breathless and exhausted by her exertion, she had fallen 
 heavily before Philammon's strong arm ; and lying half 
 stunned for a while, recovered just in time to meet her 
 doom. 
 
 She knew that it was come, and faced it like herself. 
 
 ' Take the witch ! ' said Wulf slowly ' Take the corrupter of 
 heroes the cause of all our sorrows ! 
 
 Miriam looked at him with a quiet smile. 
 
 'The witch is accustomed lon-^ ago to hear fools lay on her 
 the consequences of their own lust and laziness.'
 
 xxix NEMESIS 329 
 
 ' Hew her down, Smid, son of Troll, that she may pass the 
 Amal's soul and gladden it on her way to Niflheim.' 
 
 Smid did it : but so terrible were the eyes which glared upon 
 him from those sunken sockets, that his sight was dazzled. The 
 axe turned aside, and struck her shoulder. She reeled, but did 
 not fall. 
 
 ' It is enough,' she said quietly. 
 
 'The accursed Grendel's daughter numbed my arm ! ' said 
 Smid. 'Let her go ! No man shall say that I struck a woman 
 twice.' 
 
 ' Nidhogg waits for her, soon or late,' answered Wulf. 
 
 And Miriam, coolly folding her shawl around her, turned and 
 walked steadily down the stair ; while all men breathed more 
 freely, as if delivered from some accursed and supernatural 
 spell. 
 
 ' And now,' said Wulf, ' to your posts, and vengeance ! ' 
 
 The mob had weltered and howled ineffectually around the 
 house for some half -hour. But the lofty walls, opening on the 
 street only by a few narrow windows in the higher stories, 
 rendered it an impregnable fortress. Suddenly, the iron gates 
 were drawn back, disclosing to the front rank the court, glaring 
 empty and silent and ghastly in the moonlight. For an instant 
 they recoiled, with a vague horror, and dread of treachery : but 
 the mass behind pressed them onward, and in swept the mur- 
 derers of Hypatia, till the court was full of choking wretches, 
 surging against the walls and pillars in aimless fury. And then, 
 from under the archway on each side, rushed a body of tall 
 armed men, driving back all incomers more ; the gates slid 
 together again upon their grooves ; and the wild beasts of 
 Alexandria were trapped at last. 
 
 And then began a murder grim and great. From three 
 different doors issued a line of Goths, whose helmets and mail- 
 shirts made them invulnerable to the clumsy weapons of the 
 mob, and began hewing their way right through the living 
 mass, helpless from their close-packed array. True, they were 
 but as one to ten ; but what are ten curs before one lion ? . . . 
 And the moon rose higher and higher, staring down ghastly and 
 unmoved upon that doomed court of the furies, and still the bills 
 and swords hewed on and on, and the Goths drew the corpses, 
 as they found room, towards a dark pile in the midst, where 
 old Wulf sat upon a heap of slain, singing the praises of the 
 Amal and the glories of Valhalla, while the shrieks of his lute 
 rose shrill above the shrieks of the flying and the wounded, and 
 its wild waltz-time danced and rollicked on swifter and swifter 
 as the old singer maddened, in awful mockery of the terror and 
 agony around. 
 
 And so, by men and purposes which recked not of her, as is 
 the wont of Providence, was the blood of Hypatia avenged in 
 part that night.
 
 330 HYP AT I A CHAP. 
 
 In part only. For Peter the Reader, and his especial asso- 
 ciates, were safe in sanctuary at the Ciesareium, clinging to the 
 altar. Terrified at the storm which they had raised, and fear 
 ing the consequences of an attack upon the palace, they had 
 left the mob to run riot at its will ; and escaped the swords of 
 the Goths, to be reserved for the more awful punishment of 
 impunity. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 
 
 IT was near midnight. Raphael had been sitting some three 
 hours in Miriam's inner chamber, waiting in vain for her return. 
 To recover, if possible, his ancestral wealth ; to convey it, with- 
 out a day's delay, to Cyrene ; and, if possible, to persuade the 
 poor old Jewess to accompany him, and there to soothe, to 
 guide, perhaps to convert her, was his next purpose : at all 
 events, with or without his wealth, to flee from that accursed 
 city. And he counted impatiently the slow hours and minutes 
 which detained him in an atmosphere which seemed reeking 
 with innocent blood, black with the lowering curse of an aveng- 
 ing God. More than once, unable to bear the thought, he rose 
 to depart, and leave his wealth behind : but he was checked 
 again by the thought of his own past life. How had he added 
 his own sin to the great heap of Alexandrian wickedness ! How 
 had he tempted others, pampered others in evil ! Good God ! 
 how had he not only done evil with all his might, but had 
 pleasure in those who did the same ! And now, now he was 
 reaping the fruit of his own devices. For years past, merely to 
 please his lust of power, his misanthropic scorn, he had been 
 making that wicked Orestes wickeder than he was even by his 
 own base will and nature ; and his puppet had avenged itself 
 upon him ! He, he had prompted him to ask Hypatia's hand. 
 . . . He had laid, half in sport, half in envy of her excellence, 
 that foul plot against the only human being whom he loved. 
 . . . and he had destroyed her ! He, and not Peter, was the 
 murderer of Hypatia ! True, he had never meant her death. 
 . . . No ; but had he not meant for her worse than death 1 
 He had never foreseen. . . . No ; but only because he did not 
 choose to foresee. He had chosen to be a god ; to kill and to 
 make alive by his own will and law ; and behold, he had become 
 a devil by that very act. Who can and who dare, even if he 
 could withdraw the sacred veil from those bitter agonies of 
 inward shame and self-reproach, made all the more intense by 
 his clear and undoubting knowledge that he was forgiven 1 
 What dread of punishment, what blank despair, could have 
 pierced that great heart so deeply as did the thought that the 
 God whom he had hated and defied had i-eturned him good for
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 331 
 
 evil, and rewarded him not according to his iniquities ? That 
 discovery, as Ezekiel of old had warned his forefathers, filled 
 up the cup of his self-loathing. ... To have found at last the 
 hated and dreaded name of God : and found that it was Love ! 
 ... To possess Victoria, a living, human likeness, however im- 
 perfect, of that God ; and to possess in her a home, a duty, a 
 purpose, a fresh clear life of righteous labour, perhaps of final 
 victory. . . . That was his punishment ; that was the brand of 
 Cain upon his forehead ; and he felt it greater than he could 
 bear. 
 
 But at least there was one thing to be done. Where he had 
 sinned, there he must make amends ; not as a propitiation, not 
 even as a restitution ; but simply as a confession of the truth 
 which he had found. And as his purpose shaped itself, he 
 longed and prayed that Miriam might return, and make it 
 possible. 
 
 And Miriam did return. He heard her pass slowly through 
 the outer room, learn from the girls who was within, order them 
 out of the apartments, close the outer door upon them ; at last 
 she entered, and said quietly 
 
 4 Welcome ! I have expected you. You could not surprise 
 old Miriam. The teraph told me last night that you would be 
 here. . . .' 
 
 Did she see the smile of incredulity upon Raphael's face, or 
 was it some sudden pang of conscience which made her cry 
 out 
 
 ' . . . No ! I did not ! I never expected you ! I am a liar, a 
 miserable old liar, who cannot speak the truth, even if I try ! 
 Only look kind ! Smile at me, Raphael ! Raphael come back 
 at last to his poor, miserable, villanous old mother ! Smile on 
 me but once, my beautiful, my son ! my son ! ' 
 
 And springing to him, she clasped him in her arms. 
 
 4 Your son r 
 
 4 Yes, my son ! Safe at last ! Mine at last ! I can prove it 
 now ! The son of my womb, though not the son of my vows ! ' 
 And she laughed hysterically. ' My child, my heir, for whom I 
 have toiled and hoarded for three -and -thirty years ! Quick ! 
 here are my keys. In that cabinet are all my papers all I 
 have is yours. Your jewels are safe buried with mine. The 
 negro- woman, Eudsemon's wife, knows where. I made her 
 swear secrecy upon her little wooden idol, and, Christian as 
 she is, she has been honest. Make her rich for life. She hid 
 your poor old mother, and kept her safe to see her boy come 
 home. But give nothing to her little husband : he is a bad 
 fellow, and beats her. Go, quick ! take your riches, and away ! 
 . . . No ; stay one moment just one little moment that the 
 poor old wretch may feast her eyes with the sight of her darling 
 once more before she dies ! ' 
 
 ' Before you die ? Your son ? God of my fathers, what is the
 
 332 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 meaning of all this, Miriam ? This morning I was the son of 
 Ezra the merchant of Antioch ! ' 
 
 ' His son and heir, his son and heir ! He knew all at last. 
 We told him on his death-bed ! I swear that we told him, and 
 he adopted you ! ' 
 
 'We! Who?' 
 
 ' His wife and I. He craved for a child, the old miser, and 
 we gave him one a better one than ever came of his family. 
 But he loved you, accepted you, though he did know all. He 
 was afraid of being laughed at after he was dead afraid of 
 having it known that he was childless, the old dotard ! No 
 he was right true Jew in that, after all ! ' 
 
 ' Who was my father, then ? ' interrupted Raphael, in utter 
 bewilderment. 
 
 The old woman laughed a laugh so long and wild, that 
 Raphael shuddered. 
 
 ' Sit down at your mother's feet. Sit down . . . just to please 
 the poor old thing ! Even if you do not believe her, just play 
 at being her child, her darling, for a minute before she dies ; 
 and she will tell you all ... perhaps there is time yet ! ' 
 
 And he sat down. . . . ' What if this incarnation of all wicked- 
 ness were really my mother ? . . . And yet why should I shrink 
 thus proudly from the notion? Am I so pure myself as to 
 deserve a purer source ? ' . . . And the old woman laid her hand 
 fondly on his head, and her skinny fingers played with his soft 
 locks, as she spoke hurriedly and thick. 
 
 ' Of the house of Jesse, of the seed of Solomon ; not a rabbi 
 from Babylon to Rome dare deny that ! A king's daughter I 
 am, and a king's heart I had, and have, like Solomon's own, my 
 son ! . . . A kingly heart. ... It made me dread and scorn to 
 be a slave, a plaything, a soulless doll, such as Jewish women 
 are condemned to be by their tyrants, the men. I craved for 
 wisdom, renown, power power power ! and my nation refused 
 them to me ; because, forsooth, I was a woman ! So I left them. 
 I went to the Christian priests. . . . They gave me what I 
 asked. . . . They gave me more. . . . They pampered my 
 woman's vanity, my pride, my self-will, my scorn of wedded 
 bondage, and bade me be a saint, the judge of angels and arch- 
 angels, the bride of God ! Liars ! liars ! And so if you laugh, 
 you kill me, Raphael and so Miriam, the daughter of Jonathan 
 Miriam, of the house of David Miriam, the descendant of 
 Ruth and Rachab, of Rachel and Sara, became a Christian nun, 
 and shut herself up to see visions, and dream dreams, and 
 fattened her own mad self-conceit upon the impious fancy that 
 she was the spouse of the Nazarene, Joshua Bar-Joseph, whom 
 
 she called Jehovah Ishi Silence ! If you stop me a moment, 
 
 it may be too late. I hear them calling me already ; and I made 
 them promise not to take me before I had told all to my son 
 the son of my shame ! '
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 333 
 
 'Who calls you ?' asked Raphael; but after one strong shudder 
 she ran on, unheeding 
 
 ' But they lied, lied, lied ! I found them out that day. . . . 
 Do not look up at me, and I will tell you all. There was a riot 
 a fight between the Christian devils and the Heathen devils 
 and the convent was sacked, Raphael, my son ! Sacked ! . . . 
 Then I found out their blasphemy. . . . Oh, God ! I shrieked to 
 Him, Raphael ! I called on Him to rend His heavens and come 
 down to pour out His thunderbolts upon them to cleave the 
 earth and devour them to save the wretched helpless girl who 
 adored Him, who had given up father, mother, kinsfolk, wealth, 
 the light of heaven, womanhood itself for Him who worshipped, 
 meditated over Him, dreamed of Him night and day. . . . And, 
 Raphael, He did not hear me . . . He did not hear me . . . did 
 not hear me ! . . . And then I knew it all for a lie ! a 
 lie!' 
 
 ' And you knew it for what it is ! ' cried Raphael through his 
 sobs, as he thought of Victoria, and felt every vein burning 
 with righteous wrath. 
 
 'There was no mistaking that test, was there? . . . For 
 nine months I was mad. And then your voice, my baby, my 
 joy, my pride that brought me to myself once more ! And I 
 shook off the dust of my feet against those Galilean priests, and 
 went back to my own nation, where God had set me from the 
 beginning. I made them the Rabbis, my father, my kin I 
 made them all receive me. They could not stand before my eye. 
 I can make people do what I will, Raphael ! I could I could 
 make you emperor now, if I had but time left ! I went back. 
 I palmed you off on Ezra as his son, I and his wife, and made 
 him believe that you had been born to him while he was in 
 Byzantium. . . . And then to live for you ! And I did live for 
 you. For you I travelled from India to Britain, seeking wealth. 
 For you I toiled, hoarded, lied, intrigued, won money by every 
 means, no matter how base for was it not for you ? And I 
 have conquered ! You are the richest Jew south of the Medi- 
 terranean, you, my son ! And you deserve your wealth. You 
 have your mother's soul in you, my boy ! I watched you, 
 gloried in you in your cunning, your daring, your learning, 
 your contempt for these Gentile hounds. You felt the royal 
 blood of Solomon within you ! You felt that you were a young 
 lion of Judah, and they the jackals who followed to feed upon 
 your leavings ! And now, now ! Your only danger is past ! 
 The cunning woman is gone the sorceress who tried to take 
 my young lion in her pit-fall, and has fallen into the midst of it 
 herself ; and he is safe, and returned to take the nations for a 
 prey, and grind their bones to powder, as it is written, "He 
 couched like a lion, he lay down like a lioness's whelp, and who 
 dare rouse him up ?"' 
 
 'Stop!' said Raphael 'I must speak! Mother! I must!
 
 334 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 As you love me, as you expect me to love you, answer ! Had 
 you a hand in her death ? Speak ! ' 
 
 ' Did I not tell you that I was no more a Christian ? Had I 
 remained one who can tell what I might not have done 1 All 
 I, the Jewess, dare do was Fool that I am ! I have forgotten 
 all this time the proof the proof 
 
 'I need no proof, mother. Your words are enough,' said 
 Raphael, as he clasped her hand between his own, and pressed 
 it to his burning forehead. But the old woman hurried on 
 ' See ! See the black agate which you gave her in your 
 madness ! ' 
 
 ' How did you obtain that ? ' 
 
 'I stole it stole it, my son ; as thieves steal, and are cruci- 
 fied for stealing. What was the chance of the cross to a mother 
 yearning for her child ? to a mother who put round her baby's 
 neck, three-and -thirty black years ago, that broken agate, and 
 kept the other half next her own heart by day and night ? See ! 
 See how they fit ! Look, and believe your poor old sinful 
 mother ! Look, I say ! ' and she thrust the talisman into his 
 hands. 
 
 ' Now, let me die ! I vowed never to tell this secret but to 
 you : never to tell it to you, until the night I died. Farewell, 
 my son ! Kiss me but once once, my child, my joy ! Oh, this 
 makes up for all ! Makes up even for that day, the last on 
 which I ever dreamed myself the bride of the Nazarene ! ' 
 
 Raphael felt that he must speak, now or never. Though it 
 cost him the loss of all his wealth, and a mother's curse, he must 
 speak. And not daring to look up, he said gently 
 
 ' Men have lied to you about Him, mother : but has He ever 
 lied to you about Himself 1 He did not lie to me when He sent 
 me out into the world to find a man, and sent me back again to 
 you with the good news that The Man is born into the world.' 
 
 But to his astonishment, instead of the burst of bigoted indig- 
 nation which he had expected, Miriam answered in a low, con- 
 fused, abstracted voice 
 
 ' And did He send you hither 1 Well that was more like 
 what I used to fancy Him. ... A grand thought it is after all 
 a Jew the king of heaven and earth ! . . . Well I shall 
 know soon. ... I loved Him once, . . . and perhaps . . . 
 perhaps . . .' 
 
 Why did her head drop heavily upon his shoulder? He 
 turned a dark stream of blood was flowing from her lips ! He 
 sprang to his feet. The girls rushed in. They tore open her 
 shawl, and saw the ghastly wound, which she had hidden with 
 such iron resolution to the last. But it was too late. Miriam 
 the daughter of Solomon was gone to her own place. 
 
 Early the next morning, Raphael was standing in Cyril's 
 anteroom, awaiting an audience. There were loud voices within;
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 335 
 
 and after a while a tribune whom he knew well hurried out, 
 muttering curses 
 
 ' What brings you here, friend ? ' said Raphael. 
 
 ' The scoundrel will not give them up,' answered he, in an 
 undertone. 
 
 ' Give up whom ? ' 
 
 ' The murderers. They are in sanctuary now at the Csesar- 
 eium. Orestes sent me to demand them : and this fellow defies 
 him openly ! ' And the tribune hurried out. 
 
 Raphael, sickened with disgust, half-turned to follow him : 
 but his better angel conquered, and he obeyed the summons of 
 the deacon who ushered him in. 
 
 Cyril was walking up and down, according to his custom, 
 with great strides. When he saw who was his visitor, hs 
 stopped short with a look of fierce inquiry. Raphael entered 
 on business at once, with a cold calm voice. 
 
 'You know me, doubtless ; and you know what I was. I am 
 now a Christian catechumen. I come to make such restitution 
 as I can for certain past ill-deeds done in this city. You will 
 find among these papers the trust-deeds for such a yearly sum 
 of money as will enable you to hire a house of refuge for a 
 hundred fallen women, and give such dowries to thirty of them 
 yearly as will enable them to find suitable husbands. I have 
 set down every detail of my plan. On its exact fulfilment 
 depends the continuance of my gift.' 
 
 Cyril took the document eagerly, and was breaking out with 
 some commonplace about pious benevolence, when the Jew 
 stopped him. 
 
 'Your Holiness's compliments are unnecessary. It is your 
 office, not to yourself, that this business relates.' 
 
 Cyril, whose conscience was ill enough at ease that morning, 
 felt abashed before Raphael's dry and quiet manner, which be- 
 spoke, as he well knew, reproof more severe than all open 
 upbraidings. So looking down, not without something like a 
 blush, he ran his eye hastily over the paper ; and then said, in 
 his blandest tone 
 
 'My brother will forgive me for remarking, that while I 
 acknowledge his perfect right to dispose of his charities as he 
 will, it is somewhat startling to me, as Metropolitan of Egypt, 
 to find not only the Abbot Isidore of Pelusium, but the secular 
 Defender of the Plebs, a civil officer, implicated, too, in the late 
 conspiracy, associated with me as co-trustees.' 
 
 ' I have taken the advice of more than one Christian bishop 
 on the matter. I acknowledge your authority by my presence 
 here. If the Scriptures say rightly, the civil magistrates are as 
 much God's ministers as you ; and I am therefore bound to 
 acknowledge their authority also. I should have preferred 
 associating the Prefect with you in the trust: but as your 
 dissensions with the present occupant of that post might have
 
 33G IIYPATIA 
 
 crippled my scheme, I have named the Defender of the Plebs, 
 and have already put into his hands a copy of this document. 
 Another copy has been sent to Isidore, who is empowered to 
 receive all moneys from my Jewish bankers in Pelusium.' 
 
 'You doubt, then, either my ability or my honesty 1 ?' said 
 Cyril, who was becoming somewhat nettled. 
 
 ' If your Holiness dislikes my offer, it is easy to omit your 
 name in the deed. One word more. If you deliver up to justice 
 the murderers of my friend Hypatia, I double my bequest on 
 the spot.' 
 
 Cyril burst out instantly 
 
 ' Thy money perish with thee ! Do you presume to bribe me 
 into delivering up my children to the tyrant?' 
 
 ' I offer to give you the means of showing more mercy, pro- 
 vided that you will first do simple justice.' 
 
 'Justice?' cried Cyril. 'Justice? If it be just that Peter 
 should die, sir, see first whether it was not just that Hypatia 
 should die. Not that I compassed it. As I live, I would have 
 given my own right hand that this had not happened ! But now 
 that it is done let those who talk of justice look first in which 
 scale of the balance it lies ! Do you fancy, sir, that the people do 
 not know their enemies from their friends ? Do you fancy that 
 they are to sit with folded hands, while a pedant makes common 
 cause with a profligate, to drag them back again into the very 
 black gulf of outer darkness, ignorance, brutal lust, grinding 
 slavery, from which the Son of God died to free them, from 
 which they are painfully and slowly struggling upward to the 
 light of day ? You, sir, if you be a Christian catechumen, should 
 know for yourself what would have been the fate of Alexandria 
 had the devil's plot of two days since succeeded. What if the 
 people struck too fiercely? They struck in the right place. 
 What if they have given the reins to passions fit only for 
 heathens ? Recollect the centuries of heathendom which bred 
 those passions in them, and blame not my teaching, but the 
 teaching of their forefathers. That very Peter. . . . What if he 
 have for once given place to the devil, and avenged where he 
 should have forgiven ? Has he no memories which may excuse 
 him for fancying, in a just paroxysm of dread, that idolatry 
 and falsehood must be crushed at any risk ? He who counts 
 back for now three hundred years, in persecution after persecu- 
 tion, martyrs, sir ! martyrs if you know what that word im- 
 pliesof his own blood and kin ; who, when he was but a seven 
 years' boy, saw his own father made a sightless cripple to this 
 day, and his elder sister, a consecrated nun, devoured alive by 
 swine in the open streets, at the hands of those who supported 
 the very philosophy, the very gods, which Hypatia attempted 
 yesterday to restore. God shall judge such a man ; not I, nor you ! ' 
 
 'Let God judge him, then, by delivering him to God's 
 minister.'
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 337 
 
 ' God's minister ? That heathen and apostate prefect 1 When 
 he lias expiated his apostasy by penance, and returned publicly 
 to the bosom of the Church, it will be time enough to obey him : 
 till then he is the minister of none but the devil. And no ecclesi- 
 astic shall suffer at the tribunal of an infidel. Holy Writ forbids 
 us to go to law before the unjust. Let the world say of me 
 what it will. I defy it and its rulers. I have to establish the 
 kingdom of God in this city, and do it I will, knowing that 
 other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which 
 is Christ.' 
 
 ' Wherefore you proceed to lay it afresh. A curious method 
 of proving that it is laid already.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ?' asked Cyril angrily. 
 
 ' Simply that God's kingdom, if it exist at all, must be a sort 
 of kingdom, considering Who is The King of it, which would 
 have established itself without your help some time since ; 
 probably, indeed, if the Scriptures of my Jewish forefathers are 
 to be believed, before the foundation of the world ; and that 
 your business was to believe that God was King of Alexandria, 
 and had put the Roman law there to crucify all murderers, 
 ecclesiastics included, and that crucified they must be accord- 
 ingly, as high as Haman himself.' 
 
 ' I will hear no more of this, sir ! I am responsible to God 
 alone, and not to you : let it be enough that by virtue of the 
 authority committed to me, I shall cut off these men from the 
 Church of God, by solemn excommunication, for three years to 
 come.' 
 
 ' They are not cut off, then, it seems, as yet ?' 
 
 ' I tell you, sir, that I shall cut them off ! Do you come here 
 to doubt my word ? ' 
 
 ' Not in the least, most august sir. But I should have fancied 
 that, according to my carnal notions of God's Kingdom and The 
 Church, they nad cut off themselves most effectually already, 
 from the moment when they cast away the Spirit of God, and 
 took to themselves the spirit of murder and cruelty ; and that 
 all which your most just and laudable excommunication could 
 effect, would be to inform the public of that fact. However, 
 farewell ? My money shall be forthcoming in due time ; ana 
 that is the most important matter between us at this moment. 
 As for your client Peter and his fellows, perhaps the most fear- 
 ful punishment which can befall them, is to go on as they have 
 begun. I only hope that you will not follow in the same 
 direction.' 
 
 ' I ?' cried Cyril, trembling with rage. 
 
 'Really I wish your Holiness well when I say so. If my 
 notions seem to you somewhat secular, yours forgive me 
 seem to me somewhat atheistic ; and I advise you honestly to 
 take care lest while you are busy trying to establish God's king- 
 dom, you forget what it is like, by shutting your eyes to those 
 
 Z H
 
 338 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 of its laws which are established already. I have no doubt that 
 with your Holiness's great powers you will succeed in establish- 
 ing something. My only dread is, that when it is established, 
 you should discover to your horror that it is the devil's king- 
 dom and not God's.' 
 
 And without waiting for an answer, Raphael bowed himself 
 out of the august presence, and sailing for Berenice that very 
 clay, with Eudaemon and his negro wife, went to his own place ; 
 there to labour and to succour, a sad and stern, and yet a loving 
 and a much-loved man, for many a year to come. 
 
 And now we will leave Alexandria also, and taking a forward 
 leap of some twenty years, see how all other persons mentioned 
 in this history went, likewise, each to his own place. 
 
 A little more than twenty years after, the wisest and holiest 
 man in the East was writing of Cyril, just deceased 
 
 ' His death made those who survived him joyful ; but it 
 grieved most probably the dead ; and there is cause to fear, 
 lest, finding his presence too troublesome, they should send him 
 back to us. ... May it come to pass, by your prayers, that he 
 may obtain mercy and forgiveness, that the immeasurable 
 grace of God may prevail over his wickedness ! . . .' 
 
 So wrote Theodoret in days when men had not yet inter- 
 calated into Holy Writ that line of an obscure modern hymn, 
 which proclaims to man the good news that ' There is no repent- 
 ance in the grave.' Let that be as it may, Cyril has gone to his 
 own place. What that place is in history is but too well known. 
 What it is in the sight of Him unto whom all live for ever, is 
 no concern of ours. May He whose mercy is over all His works, 
 have mercy upon all, whether orthodox or unorthodox, Papist 
 or Protestant, who, like Cyril, begin by lying for the cause of 
 truth and setting off upon that evil road, arrive surely, with 
 the Scribes and Pharisees of old, sooner or later at their own 
 place ! 
 
 True, he and his monks had conquered ; but Hypatia did not 
 die unavenged. In the hour of that unrighteous victory, the 
 Church of Alexandria received a deadly wound. It had admitted 
 and sanctioned those habits of doing evil that good may come, 
 of pious intrigue, and at last of open persecution, which are 
 certain to creep in wheresoever men attempt to set up a merely 
 religious empire, independent of human relationships and civil 
 laws; to ' establish,' in short, a 'theocracy,' and by that very 
 act confess their secret disbelief that God is ruling already. 
 And the Egyptian Church grew, year by year, more lawless 
 and inhuman. Freed from enemies without, and from the 
 union which fear compels, it turned its ferocity inward, to prey 
 on its own vitals, and to tear itself in pieces by a voluntary 
 suicide, with mutual anathemas and exclusions, till it ended as 
 a mere chaos of idolatrous sects, persecuting each other for
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 339 
 
 metaphysical propositions, which, true or false, were equally 
 heretical in their mouths, because they used them only as watch- 
 words of division. Orthodox or unorthodox, they knew not 
 God, for they knew neither righteousness, nor love, nor peace. 
 . . . They ' hated their brethren, and walked on still in dark- 
 ness, not knowing whither they were going.' . . . till Amrou 
 and his Mohammedans appeared ; and whether they discovered 
 the fact or not, they went to their own place. . . . 
 
 Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small ; 
 Though He stands and waits with patience, with exactness grinds He 
 all 
 
 And so found, in due time, the philosophers as well as the 
 ecclesiastics of Alexandria. 
 
 Twenty years after Hypatia's death, philosophy was flicker- 
 ing down to the very socket. Hypatia's murder was its death- 
 blow. In language tremendous and unmistakable, philosophers 
 had been informed that mankind had done with them ; that 
 they had been weighed in the balances, and found wanting ; 
 that if they had no better Gospel than that to preach, they 
 must make way for those who had. And they did make way. 
 We hear little or nothing of them or their wisdom henceforth, 
 except at Athens, where Proclus, Marinus, Isidore, and others, 
 kept up ' the golden chain of the Platonic succession,' and de- 
 scended deeper and deeper, one after the other, into the realms 
 of confusion confusion of the material with the spiritual, of 
 the subject with the object, the moral with the intellectual ; 
 self-consistent in one thing only, namely, in their exclusive 
 Pharisaism ; utterly unable to proclaim any good news for man 
 as man, or even to conceive of the possibility of such, and 
 gradually looking with more and more complacency on all 
 superstitions which did not involve that one idea, which alone 
 they hated, namely, the Incarnation ; craving after signs and 
 wonders, dabbling in magic, astrology, and barbarian fetichisms ; 
 bemoaning the fallen age, and barking querulously at every 
 form of human thought except their own ; writing pompous 
 biographies, full of bad Greek, worse taste, and still worse 
 miracles. . . . 
 
 That last drear mood 
 
 Of envious sloth, and proud decrepitude ; 
 
 No faith, no art, no king, no priest, no God ; 
 
 While round the freezing founts of life in snarling ring, 
 
 Crouch'd on the bareworn sod, 
 
 Babbling about the unreturning spring, 
 
 And whining for dead gods, who cannot save, 
 
 The toothless systems shiver to their grave. 
 
 The last scene of their tragedy was not without a touch of 
 pathos. ... In the year 529, Justinian finally closed, by im- 
 perial edict, the schools of Athens. They had nothing more to
 
 340 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 tell the world, but what the world had yawned over a thousand 
 times before : why should they break the blessed silence by any 
 more such noises 1 The philosophers felt so themselves. They 
 had no mind to be martyrs, for they had nothing for which to 
 testify. They had no message for mankind, and mankind no 
 interest for them. All that was left for them was to take care 
 of their own souls and fancying that they saw something like 
 Plato's ideal republic in the pure monotheism of the Guebres, 
 their philosophic emperor the Khozroo, and his holy caste of 
 magi, seven of them set off to Persia, to forget the hateful 
 existence of Christianity in that realised ideal. Alas for the 
 facts ! The purest monotheism, they discovered, was perfectly 
 compatible with bigotry and ferocity, luxury and tyranny, 
 serails and bowstrings, incestuous marriages and corpses ex- 
 posed to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air ; and 
 in reasonable fear for their own necks, the last seven Sages of 
 Greece returned home weary -hearted, into the Christian Empire 
 from which they had fled, fully contented with the permission, 
 which the Khozroo had obtained for them from Justinian, to 
 hold their peace, and die among decent people. So among 
 decent people they died, leaving behind them, as their last 
 legacy to mankind, Simplicius's Commentaries on Epictetus's 
 Enchiridion, an essay on the art of egotism, by obeying which, 
 whosoever list may become as perfect a Pharisee as ever dark- 
 ened the earth of God. Peace be to their ashes ! . . . They are 
 gone to their own place. 
 
 Wulf, too, had gone to his own place, wheresoever that may 
 be. He died in Spain, full of years and honours, at the court 
 of Adolf and Placidia, having resigned his sovereignty into the 
 hands of his lawful chieftain, and having lived long enough to 
 see Goderic and his younger companions in arms settled with 
 their Alexandrian brides up on the sunny slopes from which 
 they had expelled the Vandals and the Suevi, to be the ances- 
 tors of ' bluest-blooded ' Castilian nobles. Wulf died, as he had 
 lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well, as she loved all 
 righteous and noble souls, had succeeded once in persuading 
 him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his 
 sponsors ; and the old warrior was in the act of stepping into 
 the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop, and asked 
 where were the souls of his heathen ancestors ? ' In hell,' replied 
 the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from the font, and threw 
 his bearskin cloak around him. . . . ' He would prefer, if Adolf 
 had no objection, to go to his own people.' 1 And so he died 
 unbaptized, and went to his own place. 
 
 Victoria was still alive and busy : but Augustine's warning 
 had come true she had found trouble in the flesh. The day of 
 
 1 A fact.
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 341 
 
 the Lord had come, and Vandal tyrants were now the masters 
 of the fair corn-lands of Africa. Her father and brother were 
 lying by the side of Raphael Aben-Ezra, beneath the ruined 
 walls of Hippo, slain, long years before, in the vain attempt to 
 deliver their country from the invading swarms. But they had 
 died the death of heroes : and Victoria was content. And it 
 was whispered, among the down-trodden Catholics, who clung 
 to her as an angel of mercy, that she, too, had endured strange 
 misery and disgrace ; that her delicate limbs bore the scars of 
 fearful tortures ; that a room in her house, into which none 
 ever entered but herself, contained a young boy's grave ; and 
 that she passed long nights of prayer upon the spot, where lay 
 her only child, martyred by the hands of Arian persecutors. 
 Nay, some of the few who, having dared to face that fearful 
 storm, had survived its fury, asserted that she herself, amid her 
 own shame and agony, had cheered the shrinking boy on to his 
 glorious death. But though she had found trouble in the flesh, 
 her spirit knew none. Clear-eyed and joyful as when she walked 
 by her father's side on the field of Ostia, she went to and fro 
 among the victims of Vandal rapine and persecution, spending 
 upon the maimed, the sick, the ruined, the small remnants of 
 her former wealth, and winning, by her purity and her piety, the 
 reverence and favour even of the barbarian conquerors. She 
 had her work to do, and she did it, and was content ; and, in 
 good time, she also went to her own place. 
 
 Abbot Pambo, as well as Arsenius, had been dead several 
 years ; the abbot's place was filled, by his own dying command, 
 by a hermit from the neighbouring deserts, who had made him- 
 self famous for many miles round, by his extraordinary auster- 
 ities, his ceaseless prayers, his loving wisdom, and, it was 
 rumoured, by various cures which could only be attributed to 
 miraculous powers. While still in the prime of his manhood, 
 he was dragged, against his own entreaties, from a lofty cranny 
 of the cliffs to preside over the Laura of Scetis, and ordained a 
 deacon at the advice of Pambo, by the bishop of the diocese, 
 who, three years afterwards, took on himself to command him 
 to enter the priesthood. The elder monks considered it an 
 indignity to be ruled by so young a man : but the monastery 
 throve and grew rapidly under his government. His sweetness, 
 patience, and humility, and above all, his marvellous under- 
 standing of the doubts and temptations of his own generation, 
 soon drew around him all whose sensitiveness or waywardness 
 had made them unmanageable in the neighbouring monasteries. 
 As to David in the mountains, so to him, every one who was 
 discontented, and every one who was oppressed, gathered them- 
 selves. The neighbouring abbots were at first inclined to shrink 
 from him, as one who ate and drank with publicans and sinners : 
 but they held their peace, when they saw those whom they had 
 driven out as reprobates labouring peacefully and cheerfully
 
 342 HYPATIA CHAP. 
 
 under Philammon. The elder generation of Scetis, too, s;nv, 
 with some horror, the new influx of sinners : but their abbot 
 had but one answer to their remonstrances ' Those who are 
 whole need not a physician, but those who are sick.' 
 
 Never was the young abbot heard to speak harshly of any 
 human being. ' When thou hast tried in vain for seven years/ 
 he used to say, ' to convert a sinner, then only wilt thou have a 
 right to suspect him of being a worse man than thyself.' That 
 there is a seed of good in all men, a Divine Word and Spirit 
 striving with all men, a gospel and good news which would 
 turn the hearts of all men, if abbots and priests could but 
 preach it aright, was his favourite doctrine, and one which he 
 used to defend, when, at rare intervals, he allowed himself to 
 discuss any subject, from the writings of his favourite theo- 
 logian, Clement of Alexandria. Above all, he stopped, by stern 
 rebuke, any attempt to revile either heretics or heathens. ' On 
 the Catholic Church alone,' he used to say, ' lies the blame of 
 all heresy and unbelief : for if she were but for one day that 
 which she ought to be, the world would be converted before 
 nightfall.' To one class of sins, indeed, he was inexorable all 
 but ferocious ; to the sins, namely, of religious persons. In 
 proportion to any man's reputation for orthodoxy and sanctity, 
 Philammon's judgment of him was stern and pitiless. Afore 
 than once events proved him to have been unjust : when he 
 saw himself to be so, none could confess his mistake more 
 frankly, or humiliate himself for it more bitterly : but from his 
 rule he never swerved ; and the Pharisees of the Nile dreaded 
 and avoided him, as much as the publicans and sinners loved 
 and followed him. 
 
 One thing only in his conduct gave some handle for scandal, 
 among the just persons who needed no repentance. It was well 
 known that in his most solemn devotions, on those long nights 
 of unceasing prayer and self -discipline, which won him a repu- 
 tation for superhuman sanctity, there mingled always with his 
 prayers the names of two women. And, when some worthy 
 elder, taking courage from his years, dared to hint kindly to 
 him that such conduct caused some scandal to the weaker 
 brethren, ' It is true,' answered he ; ' tell my brethren that I 
 pray nightly for two women : both of them young ; both of 
 them beautiful ; both of them beloved by me more than I love 
 my own soul ; and tell them, moreover, that one of the two was 
 a harlot, and the other a heathen.', The old monk laid his hand 
 on his mouth, and retired. 
 
 The remainder of his history it seems better to extract from 
 an unpublished fragment of the Hagioloyia Nilotica of Graidi- 
 ocolosyrtus Tabenniticus, the greater part of which valuable 
 work was destroyed at the taking of Alexandria under Amrou, 
 A.D. 640. 
 
 ' Now when the said abbot had ruled the monastery of Scetis
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 343 
 
 seven years with uncommon prudence, resplendent in virtue 
 and in miracles, it befell that one morning he was late for the 
 Divine office. Whereon a certain ancient brother, who was 
 also a deacon, being sent to ascertain the cause of so unwonted 
 a defection, found the holy man extended upon the floor of his 
 cell, like Balaam in the flesh, though far differing from him in 
 the spirit, having fallen into a trance, but having his eyes open. 
 Who, not daring to arouse him, sat by him until the hour of 
 noon, judging rightly that something from heaven had befallen 
 him. And at that hour, the saint arising without astonishment, 
 said, " Brother, make ready for me the divine elements, that I 
 may consecrate them." And he asking the reason wherefore, 
 the saint replied, "That I may partake thereof with all my 
 brethren, ere I depart hence. For know assuredly that, within 
 the seventh day, I shall migrate to the celestial mansions. For 
 this night stood by me in a dream, those two women, whom I 
 love, and for whom I pray ; the one clothed in a white, the 
 other in a ruby-coloured garment, and holding each other by 
 the hand ; who said to me, ' That life after death is not such a 
 one as you fancy : come, therefore, and behold with us what it 
 is like.' " Troubled at which words, the deacon went forth : 
 yet on account not only of holy obedience, but also of the 
 sanctity of the blessed abbot, did not hesitate to prepare ac- 
 cording to his command the divine elements : which the abbot 
 having consecrated, distributed among his brethren, reserving 
 only a portion of the most holy bread and wine ; and then, 
 having bestowed on them all the kiss of peace, he took the 
 paten and chalice in his hands, and went forth from the mon- 
 astery towards the desert ; whom the whole fraternity followed 
 weeping, as knowing that they should see his face no more. 
 But he, having arrived at the foot of a certain mountain, 
 stopped, and blessing them, commanded them that they should 
 follow him no farther, and dismissed them with these words : 
 "As ye have been loved, so love. As ye have been judged, so 
 judge. As ye have been forgiven, so forgive." And so ascend- 
 ing, was taken away from their eves. Now they, returning 
 astonished, watched three days with prayer and fasting : but 
 at last the eldest brother, being ashamed, like Elisha before the 
 entreaties of Elijah's disciples, sent two of the young men to 
 seek their master. 
 
 'To whom befell a thing noteworthy and full of miracles. 
 For ascending the same mountain where they had left the abbot, 
 they met with a certain Moorish people, not averse to the Chris- 
 tian verity, who declare that certain days before a priest had 
 passed by them, bearing a paten and chalice, and blessing them 
 in silence, proceeded across the desert in the direction of the 
 cave of the holy Amma. 
 
 'And they inquiring who this Amma might be, the Moors 
 answered that some twenty years ago there had arrived in those
 
 344 HYPATIA 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 mountains a woman more beautiful than had ever before been 
 seen in that region, dressed in rich garments ; who, after a short 
 sojourn among their tribe, having distributed among them the 
 jewels which she wore, had embraced the eremitic life, and 
 sojourned upon the highest peak of a neighbouring mountain ; 
 till, her garments failing her, she became invisible to mankind, 
 saving to a few women of the tribe, who went up from time to 
 time to carry her offerings of fruit and meal, and to ask the 
 blessing of her prayers. To whom she rarely appeared, veiled 
 down to her feet in black hair of exceeding length and 
 splendour. 
 
 ' Hearing these things, the two brethren doubted for a while : 
 but at last, determining to proceed, arrived at sunset upon the 
 summit of the said mountain. 
 
 ' Where, behold a great miracle. For above an open grave, 
 freshly dug in the sand, a cloud of vultures and obscene birds 
 hovered, whom two lions, fiercely contending, drove away with 
 their talons, as if from some sacred deposit therein enshrined. 
 Towards whom the two brethren, fortifying themselves with the 
 sign of the holy cross, ascended. Whereupon the lions, as having 
 fulfilled the term of their guardianship, retired ; and left to the 
 brethren a sight which they beheld with astonishment, and not 
 without tears. 
 
 ' For in the open grave lay the body of Philammon the abbot : 
 and by his side, wrapt in his cloak, the corpse of a woman of 
 exceeding beauty, such as the Moors had described. Whom 
 embracing straitly, as a brother a sister, and joining his lips to 
 hers, he had rendered up his soul to God ; not without bestow- 
 ing on her, as it seemed, the most holy sacrament ; for by the 
 grave-side stood the paten and the chalice emptied of their 
 divine contents. 
 
 'Having beheld which things awhile in silence, they con- 
 sidered that the right understanding of such matters pertained 
 to the judgment-seat above, and wa,s unnecessary to be compre- 
 hended by men consecrated to God. Whereon, filling in the 
 grave with all haste, they returned weeping to the Laura, and 
 declared to them the strange things which they had beheld, and 
 whereof I the writer, having collected these facts from sacro- 
 sanct and most trustworthy mouths, can only say that wisdom 
 is justified of all her children. 
 
 'Now, before they returned, one of the brethren searching 
 the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found there neither 
 food, furniture, nor other matters ; saying one bracelet of gold, 
 of large size and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign 
 characters, which no one could decipher. The which bracelet, 
 being taken home to the Laura of Scetis, and there dedicated in 
 the chapel to the memory of the holy Arnma, proved beyond all 
 doubt the sanctity of its former possessor, by the miracles which 
 its virtue worked ; the fame whereof spreading abroad through-
 
 xxx EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE 345 
 
 out the whole Thebaid, drew innumerable crowds of suppliants 
 to that holy relic. But it came to pass, after the Vandalic per- 
 secution wherewith Huneric and Genseric the king devastated 
 Africa, and enriched the Catholic Church with innumerable 
 martyrs, that certain wandering barbarians of the Vandalic 
 race, imbued with the Arian pravity, and made insolent by suc- 
 cess, boiled over from the parts of Mauritania into the Thebaid 
 region. Who plundering and burning all monasteries, and 
 insulting the consecrated virgins, at last arrived even at the 
 monastery of Scetis, where they not only, according to their 
 impious custom, denied the altar, and carried off the sacred 
 vessels, but also bore away that most holy relic, the chief glory 
 of the Laura, namely, the bracelet of the holy Amma, impiously 
 pretending that it had belonged to a warrior of their tribe, and 
 thus expounded the writing thereon engraven 
 
 ' For Amalric Amal's Son Smid Troll's Son Made Me. 
 
 Wherein whether they spoke truth or not, yet their sacrilege 
 did not remain unpunished ; for attempting to return home- 
 ward toward the sea by way of the Nile, they were set upon 
 while weighed down with wine and sleep, by the country people, 
 and to a man miserably destroyed. But the pious folk, restoring 
 the holy gold to its pristine sanctuary, were not unrewarded : 
 for since that day it grows glorious with ever fresh miracles 
 as of blind restored to sight, paralytics to strength, demoniacs 
 to sanity to the honour of the orthodox Catholic Church, and 
 of its ever-blessed saints.' 
 
 So be it. Pelagia and Philammon, like the rest, went to their 
 own place ; to the only place where such in such days could find 
 rest ; to the desert and the hermit's cell, and then forward into 
 that fairy land of legend and miracle, wherein all saintly lives 
 were destined to be enveloped for many a century thence- 
 forth. 
 
 And now, readers, farewell. I have shown you New Foes 
 under an old face your own likenesses in toga and tunic, instead 
 of coat and bonnet. One word before we part. The same devil 
 who tempted these old Egyptians tempts you. The same God 
 who would have saved these old Egyptians if they had willed, 
 will save you, if you will. Their sins are yours, their errors 
 yours, their doom yours, their deliverance yours. There is 
 nothing new under the sun. The thing which has been, it is 
 that which shall be. Let him that is without sin among you 
 cast the first stone, whether at Hypatia or Pelagia, Miriam or 
 Kaphael, Cyril or Philammon. 
 
 THE END
 
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