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

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

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

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

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

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

'Ask him in Greek, man.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Asgard? What is Asgard?'

The beauty looked at the giant for further instructions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Why?' asked Wulf.

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

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

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

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

Whereupon the Amal rose.

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

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

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

Old Wulf sprang up fiercely enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he lifted up the prostrate monk.

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER IV: MIRIAM

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

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

'Well, what of her?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'From whom is this?'

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

'Great folks?—'

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

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

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

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

'My slave! and no name mentioned!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But, my child—my child,—an empire—'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Spare me, father—I have spared you.'

And she began to write her answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'When will that old witch be back?'

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

'Read them?'

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

'Why?'

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

'What in? Negro-boys?'

'Anything you like.'

'Taken. Come in, slaves?'

And Hypocorisma entered, pouting.

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

'Bring her in then. Quick!'

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

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

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

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

Orestes read it—and his countenance fell.

'I have won?'

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

'I have won then?'

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

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

And so the letter ended.

'What am I to do?'

'Take her at her word.'

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

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

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

'No one asked your excellency to apostatise.'

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

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

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

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

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

Raphael rose and bowed to the earth.

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

'Candid!'

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

'Candid again.'

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

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

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

'How?'

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

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

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

'What will you have me do then?'

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

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

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

And Raphael bowed himself out.

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

'Does the fool dare!'

'Who dare what?'

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

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

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

'Hell-fire.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What a glorious opal!'

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

'Your own included, eh?'

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

'Heaven forbid!' said Raphael, laughing.

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

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

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



CHAPTER V: A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA

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

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

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

Philammon turned and hesitated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What?' asked Pelagia eagerly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Yes.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'How? Is this a church?'

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

'But where is the archbishop's house?'

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

'But how far off?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he moved off.

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

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

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

So they went back together.

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

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

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

'And who are they?' asked Philammon.

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

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

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

'And is she a friend of the patriarch?'

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

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

'Is this the patriarch's house?'

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

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

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

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

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

'Which was plainly a prophecy!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'And I will.'

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

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

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

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

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

'I saw the murder—'

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

'I would avenge that man.'

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

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

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

'The brother Theopompus is especially sober and gentle.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Do you see those fellows in the shadow?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'So much the better.'

'And the Jews are murdering the Christians.'

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

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

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