'Arsenius?' said the little porter, with a look of mingled awe and pity.

The old man smiled. 'Arsenius, who was once called the Father of the Emperors. Even she will trust that name.'

'I will go this moment' sir; I will fly!' and off rushed the little porter.

'The little fellow forgets,' said Arsenius, with a smile, 'to how much he has confessed already, and how easy it were now to trace him to the old hag's lair.... Philammon, my son.... I have many tears to weep over thee—but they must wait a while, I have thee safe now,' and the old man clutched his arm. 'Thou wilt not leave thy poor old father? Thou wilt not desert me for the heathen woman?'

'I will stay with you, I promise you, indeed! if—if you will not say unjust things of her.'

'I will speak evil of no one, accuse no one, but myself. I will not say one harsh word to thee, my poor boy. But listen now! Thou knowest that thou camest from Athens. Knowest thou that it was I who brought thee hither?'

'You?'

'I, my son: but when I brought thee to the Laura, it seemed right that thou, as the son of a noble gentleman, shouldest hear nothing of it. But tell me: dost thou recollect father or mother, brother or sister; or anything of thy home in Athens?'

'No.'

'Thanks be to God. But, Philammon, if thou hadst had a sister-hush! And if—I only say if—,

'A sister!' interrupted Philammon. 'Pelagia?'

'God forbid, my son! But a sister thou hadst once—some three years older than thee she seemed.'

'What! did you know her?'

'I saw her but once—on one sad day.—Poor children both! I will not sadden you by telling you where and how.'

'And why did you not bring her hither with me? You surely had not the heart to part us?'

'Ah, my son, what right had an old monk with a fair young girl? And, indeed, even had I had the courage, it would have been impossible. There were others, richer than I, to whose covetousness her youth and beauty seemed a precious prize. When I saw her last, she was in company with an ancient Jewess. Heaven grant that this Miriam may prove to be the one!'

'And I have a sister!' gasped Philammon, his eyes bursting with tears. 'We must find her! You will help me?—Now—this moment! There is nothing else to be thought of, spoken of, done, henceforth, till she is found!'

'Ah, my son, my son! Better, better, perhaps, to leave her in the hands of God! What if she were dead? To discover that, would be to discover needless sorrow. And what if—God grant that it be not so! she had only a name to live, and were dead, worse than dead, in sinful pleasure—'

'We would save her, or die trying to save her! Is it not enough for me that she is my sister?' Arsenius shook his head. He little knew the strange new light and warmth which his words had poured in upon the young heart beside him. 'A sister!' What mysterious virtue was there in that simple word, which made Philammon's brain reel and his heart throb madly? A sister! not merely a friend, an equal, a help-mate, given by God Himself, for loving whom none, not even a monk, could blame him.—Not merely something delicate, weak, beautiful—for of course she must be beautiful-whom he might cherish, guide, support, deliver, die for, and find death delicious. Yes—all that, and more than that, lay in the sacred word. For those divided and partial notions had flitted across his mind too rapidly to stir such passion as moved him now; even the hint of her sin and danger had been heard heedlessly, if heard at all. It was the word itself which bore its own message, its own spell to the heart of the fatherless and motherless foundling, as he faced for the first time the deep, everlasting, divine reality of kindred.... A sister! of his own flesh and blood—born of the same father, the same mother—his, his, for ever! How hollow and fleeting seemed all 'spiritual sonships,' 'spiritual daughterhoods,' inventions of the changing fancy, the wayward will of man! Arsenius—Pambo—ay, Hypatia herself—what were they to him now? Here was a real relationship .... A sister! What else was worth caring for upon earth?

'And she was at Athens when Pelagia was'—he cried at last—'perhaps knew her—let us go to Pelagia herself!'

'Heaven forbid!' said Arsenius. 'We must wait at least till Miriam's answer comes.'

'I can show you her house at least in the meanwhile; and you can go in yourself when you will. I do not ask to enter. Come! I feel certain that my finding her is in some way bound up with Pelagia. Had I not met her on the Nile, had you not met her in the street, I might never have heard that I had a sister. And if she went with Miriam, Pelagia must know her—she may be in that very house at this moment!'

Arsenius had his reasons for suspecting that Philammon was but too right. But he contented himself with yielding to the boy's excitement, and set off with him in the direction of the dancer's house.

They were within a few yards of the gate, when hurried footsteps behind them, and voices calling them by name, made them turn; and behold, evidently to the disgust of Arsenius as much as Philammon himself, Peter the Reader and a large party of monks!

Philammon's first impulse was to escape; Arsenius himself caught him by the arm, and seemed inclined to hurry on.

'No!' thought the youth, 'am I not a free man, and a philosopher?' and facing round, he awaited the enemy.

'Ah, young apostate! So you have found him, reverend and ill-used sir. Praised be Heaven for this rapid success!'

'My good friend,' asked Arsenius, in a trembling voice, 'what brings you here?'

'Heaven forbid that I should have allowed your sanctity and age to go forth without some guard against the insults and violence of this wretched youth and his profligate companions. We have been following you afar off all the morning, with hearts full of filial solicitude.'

'Many thanks; but indeed your kindness has been superfluous. My son here, from whom I have met with nothing but affection, and whom, indeed, I believe far more innocent than report declared him, is about to return peaceably with me. Are you not, Philammon?'

'Alas! my father'' said Philammon, with an effort, 'how can I find courage to say it'?—but I cannot return with you.'

'Cannot return?'

'I vowed that I would never again cross that threshold till—'

'And Cyril does. He bade me, indeed he bade me, assure you that he would receive you back as a son, and forgive and forget all the past.'

'Forgive and forget? That is my part—not his. Will he right me against that tyrant and his crew? Will he proclaim me openly to be an innocent and persecuted man, unjustly beaten and driven forth for obeying his own commands? Till he does that, I shall not forget that I am a free man.'

'A free man!' said Peter, with an unpleasant smile; 'that remains to be proved, my gay youth; and will need more evidence than that smart philosophic cloak and those well-curled locks which you have adopted since I saw you last.'

'Remains to be proved?'

Arsenius made an imploring gesture to Peter to be silent.

'Nay, sir. As I foretold to you, this one way alone remains; the blame of it, if there be blame, must rest on the unhappy youth whose perversity renders it necessary.'

'For God's sake, spare me!' cried the old man, dragging Peter aside, while Philammon stood astonished, divided between indignation and vague dread.

'Did I not tell you again and again that I never could bring myself to call a Christian man my slave? And him, above all, my spiritual son?'

'And, most reverend sir, whose zeal is only surpassed by your tenderness and mercy, did not the holy patriarch assure you that your scruples were groundless? Do you think that either he or I can have less horror than you have of slavery in itself? Heaven forbid! But when an immortal soul is at stake—when a lost lamb is to be brought back to the fold—surely you may employ the authority which the law gives you for the salvation of that precious charge committed to you? What could be more conclusive than his Holiness's argument this morning? "Christians are bound to obey the laws of this world for conscience' sake, even though, in the abstract, they may disapprove of them, and deny their authority. Then, by parity of reasoning, it must be lawful for them to take the advantage which those same laws offer them, when by so doing the glory of God may be advanced."'

Arsenius still hung back, with eyes brimming with tears; but Philammon himself put an end to the parley.

'What is the meaning of all this? Are you, too, in a conspiracy against me? Speak, Arsenius!'

'This is the meaning of it, blinded sinner!' cried Peter. 'That you are by law the slave of Arsenius, lawfully bought with his money in the city of Ravenna; and that he has the power, and, as I trust, for the sake of your salvation, the will also, to compel you to accompany him.'

Philammon recoiled across the pavement, with eyes flashing defiance. A slave! The light of heaven grew black to him.... Oh, that Hypatia might never know his shame! Yet it was impossible. Too dreadful to be true....

'You lie!' almost shrieked he. 'I am the son of a noble citizen of Athens. Arsenius told me so, but this moment, with his own lips!'

'Ah, but he bought you—bought you in the public market; and he can prove it!'

'Hear me—hear me, my son!' cried the old man, springing toward him. Philammon, in his fury, mistook the gesture and thrust him fiercely back.

'Your son!—your slave! Do not insult the name of son by applying it to me. Yes, sir; your slave in body, but not in soul! Ay, seize me—drag home the fugitive—scourge him—brand him—chain him in the mill, if you can; but even for that the free heart has a remedy. If you will not let me live as a philosopher, you shall see me die like one!'

'Seize the fellow, my brethren!' cried Peter, while Arsenius, utterly unable to restrain either party, hid his face and wept.

'Wretches!' cried the boy; 'you shall never take me alive, while I have teeth or nails left. Treat me as a brute beast, and I will defend myself as such!'

'Out of the way there, rascals! Place for the Prefect! What are you squabbling about here, you unmannerly monks?' shouted peremptory voices from behind. The crowd parted, and disclosed the apparitors of Orestes, who followed in his robes of office.

A sudden hope flashed before Philammon, and in an instant he had burst through the mob, and was clinging to the Prefect's chariot.

'I am a free-born Athenian, whom these monks wish to kidnap back into slavery! I claim your protection!'

'And you shall have it, right or wrong, my handsome fellow. By Heaven, you are much too good-looking to be made a monk of! What do you mean, you villains, by attempting to kidnap free men? Is it not enough for you to lock up every mad girl whom you can dupe, but you must—'

'His master is here present, your Excellency, who will swear to the purchase.'

'Or to anything else for the glory of God. Out of the way! And take care, you tall scoundrel, that I do not get a handle against you. You have been one of my marked men for many a month. Off!'

'His master demands the rights of the law as a Roman citizen,' said Peter, pushing forward Arsenius.

'If he be a Roman citizen, let him come and make his claim at the tribune to-morrow, in legal form. But I would have you remember, ancient sir, that I shall require you to prove your citizenship before we proceed to the question of purchase.'

'The law does not demand that,' quoth Peter.

'Knock that fellow down, apparitor!' Whereat Peter vanished, and an ominous growl rose from the mob of monks.

'What am I to do, most noble sir?' said Philammon.

'Whatever you like, till the third hour to-morrow—if you are fool enough to appear at the tribune. If you will take my advice' you will knock down these fellows right and left, and run for your life.' And Orestes drove on.

Philammon saw that it was his only chance, and did so; and in another minute he found himself rushing headlong into the archway of Pelagia's house, with a dozen monks at his heels. As luck would have it, the outer gates, at which the Goths had just entered, were still open; but the inner ones which led into the court beyond were fast. He tried them, but in vain. There was an open door in the wall on his right: he rushed through it, into a long range of stables, and into the arms of Wulf and Smid, who were unsaddling and feeding, like true warriors, their own horses.

'Souls of my fathers!' shouted Smid, 'here's our young monk come back! What brings you here head over heels in this way, young curly-pate?'

'Save me from those wretches!' pointing to the monks, who were peeping into the doorway.

Wulf seemed to understand it all in a moment; for, snatching up a heavy whip, he rushed at the foe, and with a few tremendous strokes cleared the doorway, and shut-to the door.

Philammon was going to explain and thank, but Smid stopped his mouth.

'Never mind, young one, you are our guest now. Come in, and you shall be as welcome as ever. See what comes of running away from us at first.'

'You do not seem to have benefited much by leaving me for the monks,' said old Wulf. 'Come in by the inner door. Smid! go and turn those monks out of the gateway.'

But the mob, after battering the door for a few minutes, had yielded to the agonised entreaties of Peter, who assured them that if those incarnate fiends once broke out upon them, they would not leave a Christian alive in Alexandria. So it was agreed to leave a few to watch for Philammon's coming out; and the rest, balked of their prey, turned the tide of their wrath against the Prefect, and rejoined the mass of their party, who were still hanging round his chariot, ready for mischief.

In vain the hapless shepherd of the people attempted to drive on. The apparitors were frightened and hung back; and without their help it was impossible to force the horses through the mass of tossing arms and beards in front. The matter was evidently growing serious.

'The bitterest ruffians in all Nitria, your Excellency,' whispered one of the guards, with a pale face; 'and two hundred of them at the least. The very same set, I will be sworn, who nearly murdered Dioscuros.'

'If you will not allow me to proceed, my holy brethren,' said Orestes, trying to look collected, 'perhaps it will not be contrary to the canons of the Church if I turn back. Leave the horses' heads alone. Why, in God's name, what do you want?'

'Do you fancy we have forgotten Hieracas?' cried a voice from the rear; and at that name, yell upon yell arose, till the mob, gaining courage from its own noise, burst out into open threats. 'Revenge for the blessed martyr Hieracas!' 'Revenge for the wrongs of the Church!' 'Down with the friend of Heathens, Jews, and Barbarians!' 'Down with the favourite of Hypatia!' 'Tyrant!' 'Butcher!' And the last epithet so smote the delicate fancy of the crowd, that a general cry arose of 'Kill the butcher!' and one furious monk attempted to clamber into the chariot. An apparitor tore him down, and was dragged to the ground in his turn. The monks closed in. The guards, finding the enemy number ten to their one, threw down their weapons in a panic, and vanished; and in another minute the hopes of Hypatia and the gods would have been lost for ever, and Alexandria robbed of the blessing of being ruled by the most finished gentleman south of the Mediterranean, had it not been for unexpected succour; of which it will be time enough, considering who and what is in danger, to speak in a future chapter.



CHAPTER XVII: A STRAY GLEAM

THE last blue headland of Sardinia was fading fast on the north-west horizon, and a steady breeze bore before it innumerable ships, the wrecks of Heraclian's armament, plunging and tossing impatiently in their desperate homeward race toward the coast of Africa. Far and wide, under a sky of cloudless blue, the white sails glittered on the glittering sea, as gaily now, above their loads of shame and disappointment terror and pain, as when, but one short month before, they bore with them only wild hopes and gallant daring. Who can calculate the sum of misery in that hapless flight?.... And yet it was but one, and that one of the least known and most trivial, of the tragedies of that age of woe; one petty death-spasm among the unnumbered throes which were shaking to dissolution the Babylon of the West. Her time had come. Even as Saint John beheld her in his vision, by agony after agony, she was rotting to her well-earned doom. Tyrannising it luxuriously over all nations, she had sat upon the mystic beast—building her power on the brute animal appetites of her dupes and slaves: but she had duped herself even more than them. She was finding out by bitter lessons that it was 'to the beast', and not to her, that her vassal kings of the earth had been giving their power and strength; and the ferocity and lust which she had pampered so cunningly in them, had become her curse and her destruction.... Drunk with the blood of the saints; blinded by her own conceit and jealousy to the fact that she had been crushing and extirpating out of her empire for centuries past all which was noble, purifying, regenerative, divine, she sat impotent and doting, the prey of every fresh adventurer, the slave of her own slaves.... 'And the kings of the earth, who had sinned with her, hated the harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and devoured her flesh, and burned her with fire. For God had put into their hearts to fulfil His will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be fulfilled.'.... Everywhere sensuality, division, hatred, treachery, cruelty, uncertainty, terror; the vials of God's wrath poured out. Where was to be the end of it all? asked every man of his neighbour, generation after generation; and received for answer only, 'It is better to die than to live.'

And yet in one ship out of that sad fleet, there was peace; peace amid shame and terror; amid the groans of the wounded, and the sighs of the starving; amid all but blank despair. The great triremes and quinqueremes rushed onward past the lagging transports, careless, in the mad race for safety, that they were leaving the greater number of their comrades defenceless in the rear of the flight; but from one little fishing-craft alone no base entreaties, no bitter execrations greeted the passing flash and roll of their mighty oars. One after another, day by day, they came rushing up out of the northern offing, each like a huge hundred-footed dragon, panting and quivering, as if with terror, at every loud pulse of its oars, hurling the wild water right and left with the mighty share of its beak, while from the bows some gorgon or chimaera, elephant or boar, stared out with brazen eyes toward the coast of Africa, as if it, too, like the human beings which it carried, was dead to every care but that of dastard flight. Past they rushed, one after another; and off the poop some shouting voice chilled all hearts for a moment, with the fearful news that the Emperor's Neapolitan fleet was in full chase.... And the soldiers on board that little vessel looked silently and steadfastly into the silent steadfast face of the old Prefect, and Victoria saw him shudder, and turn his eyes away—and stood up among the rough fighting men, like a goddess, and cried aloud that 'the Lord would protect His own'; and they believed her, and were still; till many days and many ships were passed, and the little fishing-craft, outstripped even by the transports and merchantmen, as it strained and crawled along before its single square-sail, was left alone upon the sea.

And where was Raphael Aben-Ezra?

He was sitting, with Bran's head between his knees, at the door of a temporary awning in the vessel's stern, which shielded the wounded men from sun and spray; and as he sat he could hear from within the tent the gentle voices of Victoria and her brother, as they tended the sick like ministering angels, or read to them words of divine hope and comfort-in which his homeless heart felt that he had no share....

'As I live, I would change places now with any one of those poor mangled ruffians to have that voice speaking such words to me....and to believe them.'.... And he went on perusing the manuscript which he held in his hand. ...............

'Well!' he sighed to himself after a while 'at least it is the most complimentary, not to say hopeful, view of our destinies with which I have met since I threw away my curse's belief that the seed of David was fated to conquer the whole earth, and set up a second Roman Empire at Jerusalem, only worse than the present one, in that the devils of superstition and bigotry would be added to those of tyranny and rapine.'

A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice asked' 'And what may this so hopeful view be?'

'Ah! my dear General!' said Raphael, looking up. 'I have a poor bill of fare whereon to exercise my culinary powers this morning. Had it not been for that shark who was so luckily deluded last night, I should have been reduced to the necessity of stewing my friend the fat decurion's big boots.'

'They would have been savoury enough, I will warrant, after they had passed under your magical hand.'

'It is a comfort, certainly, to find that after all one did learn something useful in Alexandria! So I will even go forward at once, and employ my artistic skill.'

'Tell me first what it was about which I heard you just now soliloquising, as so hopeful a view of some matter or other?'

'Honestly—if you will neither betray me to your son and daughter, nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself—it was Paul of Tarsus's notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!' And he held up a manuscript of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

'It is execrable Greek. But it is sound philosophy, I cannot deny. He knows Plato better than all the ladies and gentlemen in Alexandria put together, if my opinion on the point be worth having.'

'I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that point, sir. He may or may not know Plato; but I am right sure that he knows God.'

'Not too fast,' said Raphael with a smile. 'You do not know, perhaps, that I have spent the last ten years of my life among men who professed the same knowledge?'

'Augustine, too, spent the best ten years of his life among such; and yet he is now combating the very errors which he once taught.'

'Having found, he fancies, something better!'

'Having found it, most truly. But you must talk to him yourself, and argue the matter over, with one who can argue. To me such questions are an unknown land.'

'Well.... Perhaps I may be tempted to do even that. At least a thoroughly converted philosopher—for poor dear Synesius is half heathen still, I often fancy, and hankers after the wisdom of the Egyptian—will be a curious sight; and to talk with so famous and so learned a man would always be a pleasure; but to argue with him, or any other human being, none whatsoever.'

'Why, then?'

'My dear sir, I am sick of syllogisms, and probabilities, and pros and contras. What do I care if, on weighing both sides, the nineteen pounds weight of questionable arguments against, are overbalanced by the twenty pounds weight of equally questionable arguments for? Do you not see that my belief of the victorious proposition will be proportioned to the one over-balancing pound only, while the whole other nineteen will go for nothing?'

'I really do not.'

'Happy are you, then. I do, from many a sad experience. No, my worthy sir. I want a faith past arguments; one which, whether I can prove it or not to the satisfaction of the lawyers, I believe to my own satisfaction, and act on it as undoubtingly and unreasoningly as I do upon my own newly-rediscovered personal identity. I don't want to possess a faith. I want a faith which will possess me. And if I ever arrived at such a one, believe me, it would be by some such practical demonstration as this very tent has given me.'

'This tent?'

'Yes, sir, this tent; within which I have seen you and your children lead a life of deeds as new to me the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia the Gentile. I have watched you for many a day, and not in vain. When I saw you, an experienced officer, encumber your flight with wounded men, I was only surprised. But since I have seen you and your daughter, and, strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades of a son, starving yourselves to feed those poor ruffians—performing for them, day and night, the offices of menial slaves—comforting them, as no man ever comforted me—blaming no one but yourselves, caring for every one but yourselves, sacrificing nothing but yourselves; and all this without hope of fame or reward, or dream of appeasing the wrath of any god or goddess, but simply because you thought it right.... When I saw that, sir, and more which I have seen; and when, reading in this book here, I found most unexpectedly those very grand moral rules which you were practising, seeming to spring unconsciously, as natural results, from the great thoughts, true or false, which had preceded them; then, sir, I began to suspect that the creed which could produce such deeds as I have watched within the last few days, might have on its side not merely a slight preponderance of probabilities, but what the Jews used once to call, when we believed in it—or in anything—the mighty power of God.'

And as he spoke, he looked into the Prefect's face with the look of a man wrestling in some deadly struggle; so intense and terrible was the earnestness of his eye, that even the old soldier shrank before it.

'And therefore,' he went on, 'therefore, sir, beware of your own actions, and of your children's. If, by any folly or baseness, such as I have seen in every human being whom I ever met as yet upon this accursed stage of fools, you shall crush my new-budding hope that there is something somewhere which will make me what I know that I ought to be, and can be—If you shall crush that, I say, by any misdoing of yours, you had better have been the murderer of my firstborn; with such a hate—a hate which Jews alone can feel—will I hate you and yours.'

'God help us and strengthen us!'said the old warrior in a tone of noble humility.

'And now,' said Raphael, glad to change the subject, after this unwonted outburst, 'we must once more seriously consider whether it is wise to hold on our present course. If you return to Carthage, or to Hippo—'

'I shall be beheaded.'

'Most assuredly. And how much soever you may consider such an event a gain to yourself, yet for the sake of your son and your daughter—'

'My dear sir,' interrupted the Prefect, 'you mean kindly. But do not, do not tempt me. By the Count's side I have fought for thirty years, and by his side I will die, as I deserve.'

'Victorius! Victoria!' cried Raphael; 'help me! Your father,' he went on, as they came out from the tent, 'is still decided on losing his own head, and throwing away ours, by going to Carthage.'

'For my sake—for our sakes—father!' cried Victoria, clinging to him.

'And for my sake, also, most excellent sir,' said Raphael, smiling quietly. 'I have no wish to be so uncourteous as to urge any help which I may have seemed to afford you. But I hope that you will recollect that I have a life to lose, and that it is hardly fair of you to imperil it as you intend to do. If you could help or save Heraclian, I should be dumb at once. But now, for a mere point of honour to destroy fifty good soldiers, who know not their right hands from their left—Shall I ask their opinion?'

'Will you raise a mutiny against me, sir?' asked the old man sternly.

'Why not mutiny against Philip drunk, in behalf of Philip sober? But really, I will obey you.... only you must obey us.... What is Hesiod's definition of the man who will neither counsel himself nor be counselled by his friends?.... Have you no trusty acquaintances in Cyrenaica, for instance?'

The Prefect was silent.

'Oh, hear us, my father! Why not go to Euodius? He is your old comrade—a well-wisher, too, to this.... this expedition.... And recollect, Augustine must be there now. He was about to sail for Berenice, in order to consult Synesius and the Pentapolitan bishops, when we left Carthage.'

And at the name of Augustine the old man paused.

'Augustine will be there; true. And this our friend must meet him. And thus at least I should have his advice. If he thinks it my duty to return to Carthage, I can but do so, after all. But the soldiers!'

'Excellent sir,' said Raphael, 'Synesius and the Pentapolitan landlords—who can hardly call their lives their own, thanks to the Moors—will be glad enough to feed and pay them, or any other brave fellows with arms in their hands, at this moment. And my friend Victorius, here, will enjoy, I do not doubt, a little wild campaigning against marauding blackamoors.'

The old man bowed silently. The battle was won.

The young tribune, who had been watching his father's face with the most intense anxiety caught at the gesture, and hurrying forward, announced the change of plan to the soldiery. It was greeted with a shout of joy, and in another five minutes the sails were about, the rudder shifted, and the ship on her way towards the western point of Sicily, before a steady north-west breeze.

'Ah!' cried Victoria, delighted. 'And now you will see Augustine! You must promise me to talk to him!'

'This, at least, I will promise, that whatsoever the great sophist shall be pleased to say, shall meet with a patient hearing from a brother sophist. Do not be angry at the term. Recollect that I am somewhat tired, like my ancestor Solomon, of wisdom and wise men, having found it only too like madness and folly. And you cannot surely expect me to believe in man, while I do not yet believe in God?'

Victoria sighed. 'I will not believe you. Why always pretend to be worse than you are?'

'That kind souls like you may be spared the pain of finding me worse than I seem.... There, let us say no more; except that I heartily wish that you would hate me!'

'Shall I try?'

'That must be my work, I fear, not yours. However, I shall give you good cause enough before long' doubt it not.'

Victoria sighed again, and retired into the tent to nurse the sick.

'And now, sir,' said the Prefect, turning to Raphael and his son; 'do not mistake me. I may have been weak, as worn-out and hopeless men are wont to be; but do not think of me as one who has yielded to adversity in fear for his own safety. As God hears me, I desire nothing better than to die; and I only turn out of my course on the understanding that if Augustine so advise, my children hold me free to return to Carthage and meet my fate. All I pray for is, that my life may be spared until I can place my dear child in the safe shelter of a nunnery.'

'A nunnery?'

'Yes, indeed; I have intended ever since her birth to dedicate her to the service of God. And in such times as these, what better lot for a defenceless girl?'

'Pardon me!' said Raphael; 'but I am too dull to comprehend what benefit or pleasure your Deity will derive from the celibacy of your daughter.... Except, indeed, on one supposition, which, as I have some faint remnants of reverence and decency reawakening in me just now, I must leave to be uttered only by the pure lips of sexless priests.'

'You forget, sir, that you are speaking to a Christian.'

'I assure you, no! I had certainly been forgetting it till the last two minutes, in your very pleasant and rational society. There is no danger henceforth of my making so silly a mistake.'

'Sir!' said the Prefect, reddening at the undisguised contempt of Raphael's manner...., 'When you know a little more of St. Paul's Epistles, you will cease to insult the opinions and feelings of those who obey them, by sacrificing their most precious treasures to God.'

'Oh, it is Paul of Tarsus, then, who gives you the advice! I thank you for informing me of the fact; for it will save me the trouble of any future study of his works. Allow me, therefore, to return by your hands this manuscript of his with many thanks from me to that daughter of yours, by whose perpetual imprisonment you intend to give pleasure to your Deity. Henceforth the less communication which passes between me and any member of your family, the better.' And he turned away.

'But, my dear sir!' said the honest soldier, really chagrined, 'you must not!—we owe you too much, and love you too well, to part thus for the caprice of a moment. If any word of mine has offended you—forget it, and forgive me, I beseech you!' and he caught both Raphael's hands in his own.

'My very dear sir,' answered the Jew quietly; 'let me ask the same forgiveness of you; and believe me, for the sake of past pleasant passages, I shall not forget my promise about the mortgage.... But-here we must part. To tell you the truth, I half an hour ago was fearfully near becoming neither more nor less than a Christian. I had actually deluded myself into the fancy that the Deity of the Galileans might be, after all, the God of our old Hebrew forefathers—of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and David, and of the rest who believed that children and the fruit of the womb were an heritage and gift which cometh of the Lord—and that Paul was right—actually right—in his theory that the church was the development and fulfilment of our old national polity.... I must thank you for opening my eyes to a mistake which, had I not been besotted for the moment, every monk and nun would have contradicted by the mere fact of their existence, and reserve my nascent faith for some Deity who takes no delight in seeing his creature: stultify the primary laws of their being. Farewell!'

And while the Prefect stood petrified with astonishment, he retired to the further extremity of the deck, muttering to himself—

'Did I not know all along that this gleam was too sudden and too bright to last? Did I not know that he, too, would prove himself like all the rest—an ass?.... Fool! to have looked for common sense on such an earth as this!.... Back to chaos again, Raphael Aben-Ezra, and spin ropes of sand to the end of the farce!'

And mixing with the soldiers, he exchanged no word with the Prefect and his children, till they reached the port of Berenice; and then putting the necklace into Victoria's hands, vanished among the crowds upon the quay, no one knew whither.



CHAPTER XVIII: THE PREFECT TESTED

WHEN we lost sight of Philammon, his destiny had hurled him once more among his old friends the Goths, in search of two important elements of human comfort, freedom and a sister. The former be found at once, in a large hall where sundry Goths were lounging and toping, into the nearest corner of which he shrank, and stood, his late terror and rage forgotten altogether in the one new and absorbing thought—His sister might be in that house!.... and yielding to so sweet a dream, he began fancying to himself which of all those gay maidens she might be who had become in one moment more dear, more great to him, than all things else in heaven or earth. That fair-haired, rounded Italian? That fierce, luscious, aquiline-faced Jewess? That delicate, swart, sidelong-eyed Copt? No. She was Athenian, like himself. That tall, lazy Greek girl, then, from beneath whose sleepy lids flashed, once an hour, sudden lightnings, revealing depths of thought and feeling uncultivated, perhaps even unsuspected, by their possessor. Her? Or that, her seeming sister? Or the next?.... Or—Was it Pelagia herself, most beautiful and most sinful of them all? Fearful thought! He blushed scarlet at the bare imagination: yet why, in his secret heart, was that the most pleasant hypothesis of them all? And suddenly flashed across him that observation of one of the girls on board the boat, on his likeness to Pelagia. Strange, that he had never recollected it before! It must be so! and yet on what a slender thread, woven of scattered hints and surmises, did that 'must' depend! He would be sane! he would wait; he would have patience. Patience, with a sister yet unfound, perhaps perishing? Impossible!

Suddenly the train of his thoughts was changed perforce:—

'Come! come and see! There's a fight in the streets,' called one of the damsels down the stairs, at the highest pitch of her voice.

'I shan't go,' yawned a huge fellow, who was lying on his back on a sofa.

'Oh come up, my hero,' said one of the girls. 'Such a charming riot, and the Prefect himself in the middle of it! We have not had such a one in the street this month.'

'The princes won't let me knock any of these donkey-riders on the head, and seeing other people do it only makes me envious. Give me the wine-jug—curse the girl! she has run upstairs!'

The shouting and trampling came nearer; and in another minute Wulf came rapidly downstairs, through the hall into the harem-court, and into the presence of the Amal.

'Prince—here is a chance for us. These rascally Greeks are murdering their Prefect under our very windows.'

'The lying cur! Serve him right for cheating us. He has plenty of guards. Why can't the fool take care of himself?'

'They have all run away, and I saw some of them hiding among the mob. As I live, the man will be killed in five minutes more.'

'Why not?'

'Why should he, when we can save him and win his favour for ever? The men's fingers are itching far a fight; it's a bad plan not to give hounds blood now and then, or they lose the knack of hunting.'

'Well, it wouldn't take five minutes.'

'And heroes should show that they can forgive when an enemy is in distress.'

'Very true! Like an Amal too!' And the Amal sprang up and shouted to his men to follow him.

'Good-bye, my pretty one. Why, Wulf,' cried he, as he burst out into the court, 'here's our monk again! By Odin, you're welcome, my handsome boy! come along and fight too, young fellow; what were those arms given you for?'

'He is my man,' said Wulf, laying his hand on Philammon's shoulder, 'and blood he shall taste.' And out the three hurried, Philammon, in his present reckless mood, ready for anything.

'Bring your whips. Never mind swords. Those rascals are not worth it,' shouted the Amal, as he hurried down the passage brandishing his heavy thong, some ten feet in length, threw the gate open, and the next moment recoiled from a dense crush of people who surged in—and surged out again as rapidly as the Goth, with the combined force of his weight and arm, hewed his way straight through them, felling a wretch at every blow, and followed up by his terrible companions.

They were but just in time. The four white blood-horses were plunging and rolling over each other, and Orestes reeling in his chariot, with a stream of blood running down his face, and the hands of twenty wild monks clutching at him. 'Monks again!' thought Philammon and as he saw among them more than one hateful face, which he recollected in Cyril's courtyard on that fatal night, a flush of fierce revenge ran through him.

'Mercy!' shrieked the miserable Prefect—'I am a Christian! I swear that I am a Christian! the Bishop Atticus baptized me at Constantinople!'

'Down with the butcher! down with the heathen tyrant, who refuses the adjuration on the Gospels rather than be reconciled to the patriarch! Tear him out of the chariot!' yelled the monks.

The craven hound!' said the Amal, stopping short, 'I won't help him!' But in an instant Wulf rushed forward, and struck right and left; the monks recoiled, and Philammon, burning to prevent so shameful a scandal to the faith to which he still clung convulsively, sprang into the chariot and caught Orestes in his arms.

'You are safe, my lord; don't struggle,' whispered he, while the monks flew on him. A stone or two struck him, but they only quickened his determination, and in another moment the whistling of the whips round his head, and the yell and backward rush of the monks, told him that he was safe. He carried his burden safely within the doorway of Pelagia's house, into the crowd of peeping and shrieking damsels, where twenty pairs of the prettiest hands in Alexandria seized on Orestes, and drew him into the court.

'Like a second Hylas, carried off by the nymphs!' simpered he, as he vanished into the harem, to reappear in five minutes, his head bound rip with silk handkerchiefs, and with as much of his usual impudence as he could muster.

'Your Excellency—heroes all—I am your devoted slave. I owe you life itself; and more, the valour of your succour is only surpassed by the deliciousness of your cure. I would gladly undergo a second wound to enjoy a second time the services of such hands, and to see such feet busying themselves on my behalf.'

'You wouldn't have said that five minutes ago, quoth the Amal, looking at him very much as a bear might at a monkey.

'Never mind the hands and feet, old fellow, they are none of yours!' bluntly observed a voice from behind' probably Smid's, and a laugh ensued.

'My saviours, my brothers!' said Orestes, politely ignoring the laughter. 'How can I repay you? Is there anything in which my office here enables me—I will not say to reward, for that would be a term beneath your dignity as free barbarians—but to gratify you?'

'Give us three days' pillage of the quarter!' shouted some one.

'Ah, true valour is apt to underrate obstacles; you forget your small numbers.'

'I say,' quoth the Amal—'I say, take care, Prefect.—If you mean to tell me that we forty couldn't cut all the throats in Alexandria in three days, and yours into the bargain, and keep your soldiers at bay all the time—'

'Half of them would join us!' cried some one. 'They are half our own flesh and blood after all!'

'Pardon me, my friends, I do not doubt it a moment. I know enough of the world never to have found a sheep-dog yet who would not, on occasion, help to make away with a little of the mutton which he guarded. Eh, my venerable sir?' turning to Wulf with a knowing bow.

Wulf chuckled grimly, and said something to the Amal in German about being civil to guests.

'You will pardon me, my heroic friends,' said Orestes, 'but, with your kind permission, I will observe that I am somewhat faint and disturbed by late occurrences. To trespass on your hospitality further would be an impertinence. If, therefore, I might send a slave to find some of my apparitors-'

'No, by all the gods!' roared the Amal, 'you're my guest now—my lady's at least. And no one ever went out of my house sober yet if I could help it. Set the cooks to work, my men! The Prefect shall feast with us like an emperor, and we'll send him home to-night as drunk as he can wish. Come along, your Excellency; we're rough fellows, we Goths; but by the Valkyrs, no one can say that we neglect our guests!'

'It is a sweet compulsion,' said Orestes, as he went in.

'Stop, by the bye! Didn't one of you men catch a monk.?'

'Here he is, prince, with his elbows safe behind him.' And a tall, haggard, half-naked monk was dragged forward.

'Capital! bring him in. His Excellency shall judge him while dinner's cooking' and Smid shall have the hanging of him. He hurt nobody in the scuffle; he was thinking of his dinner.'

'Some rascal bit a piece out of my leg, and I tumbled down,' grumbled Smid.

'Well, pay out this fellow for it, then. Bring a chair, slaves! Here, your Highness, sit there and judge.'

'Two chairs!' said some one; 'the Amal shan't stand before the emperor himself.'

'By all means, my dear friends. The Amal and I will act as the two Caesars, with divided empire. I presume we shall have little difference of opinion as to the hanging of this worthy.'

'Hanging's too quick for him.'

'Just what I was about to remark—there are certain judicial formalities, considered generally to be conducive to the stability, if not necessary to the existence, of the Roman empire—'

'I say, don't talk so much,' shouted a Goth, 'If you want to have the hanging of him yourself, do. We thought we would save you trouble.'

'Ah, my excellent friend, would you rob me of the delicate pleasure of revenge? I intend to spend at least four hours to-morrow in killing this pious martyr. He will have a good time to think, between the beginning and the end of the rack.'

'Do you hear that, master monk?' said Smid, chucking him under the chin, while the rest of the party seemed to think the whole business an excellent joke, and divided their ridicule openly enough between the Prefect and his victim.

'The man of blood has said it. I am a martyr,' answered the monk in a dogged voice.

'You will take a good deal of time in becoming one.'

'Death may be long, but glory is everlasting.'

'True. I forgot that, and will save you the said glory, if I can help it, for a year or two. Who was it struck me with the stone?'

No answer.

'Tell me, and the moment he is in my lictors' hands I pardon you freely.'

The monk laughed. 'Pardon? Pardon me eternal bliss, and the things unspeakable, which God has prepared for those who love Him? Tyrant and butcher! I struck thee, thou second Dioclesian—I hurled the stone—I, Ammonius. Would to heaven that it had smitten thee through, thou Sisera, like the nail of Jael the Kenite!'

'Thanks, my friend. Heroes, you have a cellar for monks as well as for wine? I will trouble you with this hero's psalm-singing tonight, and send my apparitors for him in the morning.'

'If he begins howling when we are in bed, your men won't find much of him left in the morning,' said the Amal. 'But here come the slaves, announcing dinner.'

'Stay,' said Orestes; 'there is one more with whom I have an account to settle—that young philosopher there.'

'Oh, he is coming in, too. He never was drunk in his life, I'll warrant, poor fellow, and it's high time for him to begin.' And the Amal laid a good-natured bear's paw on Philammon's shoulder, who hung back in perplexity, and cast a piteous look towards Wulf.

Wulf answered it by a shake of the head which gave Philammon courage to stammer out a courteous refusal. The Amal swore an oath at him which made the cloister ring again, and with a quiet shove of his heavy hand, sent him staggering half across the court: but Wulf interposed.

'The boy is mine, prince. He is no drunkard, and I will not let him become one. Would to heaven,' added he, under his breath, 'that I could say the same to some others. Send us out our supper here, when you are done. Half a sheep or so will do between us, and enough of the strongest to wash it down with. Smid knows my quantity.'

'Why in heaven's name are you not coming in?'

'That mob will be trying to burst the gates again before two hours are out; and as some one must stand sentry, it may as well be a man who will not have his ears stopped up by wine and women's kisses. The boy will stay with me.'

So the party went in, leaving Wulf and Philammon alone in the outer hall.

There the two sat for some half hour, casting stealthy glances at each other, and wondering perhaps, each of them vainly enough, what was going on in the opposite brain. Philammon, though his heart was full of his sister, could not help noticing the air of deep sadness which hung about the scarred and weather-beaten features of the old warrior. The grimness which he had remarked on their first meeting seemed to be now changed into a settled melancholy. The furrows round his mouth and eyes had become deeper and sharper. Some perpetual indignation seemed smouldering in the knitted brow and protruding upper lip. He sat there silent and motionless for some half hour, his chin resting on his hands, and they again upon the butt of his axe, apparently in deep thought, and listening with a silent sneer to the clinking of glasses and dishes within.

Philammon felt too much respect, both for his age and his stately sadness, to break the silence. At last some louder burst of merriment than usual aroused him.

'What do you call that?' said he, speaking in Greek.

'Folly and vanity.'

'And what does she there—the Alruna—the prophet-woman, call it?'

'Whom do you mean?'

'Why, the Greek woman whom we went to hear talk this morning.'

'Folly and vanity.'

'Why can't she cure that Roman hairdresser there of it, then?'

Philammon was silent—'Why not, indeed!'

'Do you think she could cure any one of it?'

'Of what?'

'Of getting drunk, and wasting their strength and their fame, and their hard-won treasures upon eating and drinking, and fine clothes, and bad women.'

'She is most pure herself, and she preaches purity to all who hear her.'

'Curse preaching. I have preached for these four months.'

'Perhaps she may have some more winning arguments—perhaps—'

'I know. Such a beautiful bit of flesh and blood as she is might get a hearing, when a grizzled old head-splitter like me was called a dotard. Eh? Well. It's natural.'

A long silence.

'She is a grand woman. I never saw such a one, and I have seen many. There was a prophetess once, lived in an island in the Weser-stream—and when a man saw her, even before she spoke a word, one longed to crawl to her feet on all fours, and say, "There, tread on me; I am not fit for you to wipe your feet upon." And many a warrior did it.... Perhaps I may have done it myself, before now .... And this one is strangely like her. She would make a prince's wife, now.'

Philammon started. What new feeling was it, which made him indignant at the notion?

'Beauty? What's body without soul? What's beauty without wisdom? What's beauty without chastity? Best! fool! wallowing in the mire which every hog has fouled!'

'Like a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman who is without discretion.'

'Who said that?'

'Solomon, the king of Israel.'

'I never heard of him. But he was a right Sagaman, whoever said it. And she is a pure maiden, that other one?'

'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 boy 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 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 Caesars, 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?'

'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?'

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 fruits of his own clumsiness. 'But you forget—you forget, she is not married to him!'

'Married to him? A freedwoman? 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 singing. And now, what with those girls' vile unmanly harps and flutes, no one cares to listen to a true rattling warsong. There they are at it now, with their caterwauling, 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 voice, 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 outbreak 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 peculiarly 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!' hiccupped he. 'Bring him to my arms, that I may encircle his lovely neck with pearls of India, and barbaric gold!'

'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 wen, 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 sleeping 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?'

'That's his concern as well as hers, and hers as well as ours.'

'She? Ought she not to think herself only too much honoured 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 Balt, 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?'

'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 Asgard—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 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 Eudaimon. Little cared he now for Hypatia's warning against Miriam.... Was he not in search of a sister?

'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 of 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 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 I 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 Rabbi Ezekiel, who lives by the watergate in Pelusium. Then the pirates, taking counsel, agreed to run down the enemy; for our galley was a sharp-beaked Liburnian, while theirs was only a messenger 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?'

'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 Last played the man for thy people; and thou shalt go to the grave full of years and honours, 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 glittered 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, looking 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 infant'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?'

'Am I one, then? Am I?'

'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 training—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 me to see her!'

'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 command 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? 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 because I am a man, and the handsomest man in Alexandria, and she a woman, and the vainest woman in Alexandria; and therefore 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 I open my eyes, and discover that I am a man. Eh, boy! Did she ever teach you that among her mathematics and metaphysics, and gods and goddesses?'

Philammon stood blushing scarlet. The sweet poison had 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?'

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?' gasped Philammon.

'Have I to thank you, then, for that strange generosity?'

'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 mean time 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 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 he 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? 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 dreaming 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 the 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 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 entrusted 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 unworthiness 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?'

'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—'

'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 mercifully 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? why not?' asked Cyril impatiently.

'Better to keep it secret till others tell it. Reserved knowledge 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 of 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, according 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 generation 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 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 aside 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.