'That was a smart business at Myrsinitis. The Ausurians appeared while the people were at morning prayers. The soldiers, of course, ran for their lives, and hid in the caverns, leaving the matter to the priests.'

'If they were of your presbytery, I doubt not they proved themselves worthy of their diocesan.'

'Ah, if all my priests were but like them! or my people either!' said Synesius, chatting quietly in full gallop, like a true son of the saddle. 'They offered up prayers for victory, sallied out at the head of the peasants, and met the Moors in a narrow pass. There their hearts failed them a little. Faustus, the deacon, makes them a speech; charges the leader of the robbers, like young David, with a stone, beats his brains out therewith, strips him in true Homeric fashion, and routs the Ausurians with their leader's sword; returns and erects a trophy in due classic form, and saves the whole valley.'

'You should make him archdeacon.'

'I would send him and his townsfolk round the province, if I could, crowned with laurel, and proclaim before them at every market-place, "These are men of God." With whom can those Ausurians be dealing? Peasants would have been all killed long ago, and soldiers would have run away long ago. It is truly a portent in this country to see a fight last ten minutes. Who can they be? I see them now, and hewing away like men too. They are all on foot but two; and we have not a cohort of infantry left for many a mile round.'

'I know who they are!' cried Raphael, suddenly striking spurs into his horse. 'I will swear to that armour among a thousand. And there is a litter in the midst of them. On! and fight, men, if you ever fought in your lives!'

'Softly!' cried Synesius. 'Trust an old soldier, and perhaps—alas! that he should have to say it—the best left in this wretched country. Round by the hollow, and take the barbarians suddenly in flank. They will not see us then till we are within twenty paces of them. Aha! you have a thing or two to learn yet, Aben-Ezra.'

And chuckling at the prospect of action, the gallant bishop wheeled his little troop and in five minutes more dashed out of the copse with a shout and a flight of arrows, and rushed into the thickest of the fight.

One cavalry skirmish must be very like another. A crash of horses, a flashing of sword-blades, five minutes of blind confusion, and then those who have not been knocked out of their saddles by their neighbours' knees, and have not cut off their own horses' heads instead of their enemies', find themselves, they know not how, either running away or being run away from—not one blow in ten having taken effect on either side. And even so Raphael, having made vain attempts to cut down several Moors, found himself standing on his head in an altogether undignified posture, among innumerable horses' legs, in all possible frantic motions. To avoid one was to get in the way of another; so he philosophically sat still, speculating on the sensation of having his brains kicked out, till the cloud of legs vanished, and he found himself kneeling abjectly opposite the nose of a mule, on whose back sat, utterly unmoved, a tall and reverend man, in episcopal costume. The stranger, instead of bursting out laughing, as Raphael did, solemnly lifted his hand, and gave him his blessing. The Jew sprang to his feet, heedless of all such courtesies, and, looking round, saw the Ausurians galloping off up the hill in scattered groups, and Synesius standing close by him, wiping a bloody sword.

'Is the litter safe'?' were his first words.

'Safe; and so are all. I gave you up for killed when I saw you run through with that lance.

'Run through? I am as sound in the hide as a crocodile, said Raphael, laughing.

'Probably the fellow took the butt instead of the point, in his hurry. So goes a cavalry scuffle. I saw you hit three or four fellows running with the flat of your sword.'

Ah, that explains,' said Raphael, why, I thought myself once the best swordsman on the Armenian frontier....'

'I suspect that you were thinking of some one besides the Moors,' said Synesius, archly pointing to the litter; and Raphael, for the first time for many a year, blushed like a boy of fifteen, and then turned haughtily away, and remounted his horse, saying, 'Clumsy fool that I was!'

'Thank God rather that you have been kept from the shedding of blood,' said the stranger bishop, in a soft, deliberate voice, with a peculiarly clear and delicate enunciation. 'If God have given us the victory, why grudge His having spared any other of His creatures besides ourselves?'

'Because there are so many the more of them left to ravish, burn, and slay,' answered Synesius. 'Nevertheless, I am not going to argue with Augustine.'

Augustine! Raphael looked intently at the man, a tall, delicate-featured personage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, scarred like his cheeks with the deep furrows of many a doubt and woe. Resolve, gentle but unbending, was expressed in his thin close-set lips and his clear quiet eye; but the calm of his mighty countenance was the calm of a worn-out volcano, over which centuries must pass before the earthquake-rents be filled with kindly soil, and the cinder-slopes grow gay with grass and flowers. The Jew's thoughts, however, were soon turned into another channel by the hearty embraces of Majoricus and his son.

'We have caught you again, you truant!' said the young Tribune; 'you could not escape us, you see, after all.'

'Rather,' said the father, 'we owe him a second debt of gratitude for a second deliverance. We were right hard bested when you rode up.'

'Oh, he brings nothing but good with him whenever he appears; and then he pretends to be a bird of ill-omen,' said the light-hearted Tribune, putting his armour to rights.

Raphael was in his secret heart not sorry to find that his old friends bore him no grudge for his caprice; but all he answered was— 'Pray thank any one but me; I have, as usual, proved myself a fool. But what brings you here, like Gods e Machina? It is contrary to all probabilities. One would not admit so astounding an incident, even in the modern drama.'

'Contrary to none whatsoever, my friend. We found Augustine at Berenice, in act to set off to Synesius: we—one of us, that is—were certain that you would be found with him; and we decided on acting as Augustine's guard, for none of the dastard garrison dare stir out.'

'One of us,' thought Raphael,—'which one?' And, conquering his pride, he asked, as carelessly as he could, for Victoria.

'She is there in the litter, poor child!' said her father in a serious tone.

'Surely not ill?'

'Alas! either the overwrought excitement of months of heroism broke down when she found us safe at last' or some stroke from God—.... Who can tell what I may not have deserved?—But she has been utterly prostrate in body and mind, ever since we parted from you at Berenice.'

The blunt soldier little guessed the meaning of his own words. But Raphael, as he heard, felt a pang shoot through his heart, too keen for him to discern whether it sprang from joy or from despair.

'Come,' cried the cheerful voice of Synesius, 'come, Aben-Ezra; you have knelt for Augustine's blessing already, and now you must enter into the fruition of it. Come, you two philosophers must know each other. Most holy, I entreat you to preach to this friend of mine, at once the wisest and the foolishest of men.'

'Only the latter,' said Raphael; 'but open to any speech of Augustine's, at least when we are safe home, and game enough for Synesius's new guests killed.'

And turning away, he rode silent and sullen by the side of his companions, who began at once to consult together as to the plans of Majoricus and his soldiers.

In spite of himself, Raphael soon became interested in Augustine's conversation. He entered into the subject of Cyrenian misrule and ruin as heartily and shrewdly as any man of the world; and when all the rest were at a loss, the prompt practical hint which cleared up the difficulty was certain to come from him. It was by his advice that Majoricus had brought his soldiery hither; it was his proposal that they should be employed for a fixed period in defending these remote southern boundaries of the province; he checked the impetuosity of Synesius, cheered the despair of Majoricus, appealed to the honour and the Christianity of the soldiers, and seemed to have a word—and that the right word—for every man; and after a while, Aben-Ezra quite forgot the stiffness and deliberation of his manner, and the quaint use of Scripture texts in far-fetched illustrations of every opinion which he propounded. It had seemed at first a mere affectation; but the arguments which it was employed to enforce were in themselves so moderate and so rational that Raphael began to feel, little by little, that his apparent pedantry was only the result of a wish to refer every matter, even the most vulgar, to some deep and divine rule of right and wrong.

'But you forget all this while, my friends,' said Majoricus at last, 'the danger which you incur by sheltering proclaimed rebels.'

'The King of kings has forgiven your rebellion, in that while He has punished you by the loss of your lands and honours, He has given you your life for a prey in this city of refuge. It remains for you to bring forth worthy fruits of penitence; of which I know none better than those which John the Baptist commanded to the soldiery of old, "Do no violence to any man, and be content with your wages."'

'As for rebels and rebellion,' said Synesius, 'they are matters unknown among as; for where there is no king there can be no rebellion. Whosoever will help us against Ausurians is loyal in our eyes. And as for our political creed, it is simple enough—namely, that the emperor never dies, and that his name is Agamemnon, who fought at Troy; which any of my grooms will prove to you syllogistically enough to satisfy Augustine himself. As thus—

'Agamemnon was the greatest and the best of kings.

'The emperor is the greatest and the best of kings.

'Therefore, Agamemnon is the emperor, and conversely.'

'It had been well,' said Augustine, with a grave smile, 'if some of our friends had held the same doctrine, even at the expense of their logic.'

'Or if,' answered Synesius, 'they believed with us, that the emperor's chamberlain is a clever old man, with a bald head like my own, Ulysses by name, who was rewarded with the prefecture of all lands north of the Mediterranean, for putting out the Cyclop's eye two years ago. However, enough of this. But you see, you are not in any extreme danger of informers and intriguers.... The real difficulty is, how you will be able to obey Augustine, by being content with your wages. For,' lowering his voice, 'you will get literally none.'

'It will be as much as we deserve,' said the young Tribune: 'but my fellows have a trick of eating—'

'They are welcome, then, to all deer and ostriches which they can catch. But I am not only penniless, but reduced myself to live, like the Laestrygons, on meat and nothing else; all crops and stocks for miles round being either burnt or carried off.'

'E nihilo nihil!' said Augustine, having nothing else to say. But here Raphael woke up on a sudden with—

'Did the Pentapolitan wheat-ships go to Rome?'

'No; Orestes stopped them when he stopped the Alexandrian convoy.'

'Then the Jews have the wheat, trust them for it; and what they have I have. There are certain moneys of mine lying at interest in the seaports, which will set that matter to rights for a month or two. Do you find an escort to-morrow, and I will find wheat.'

'But; most generous of friends, I can neither repay you interest nor principal.'

'Be it so. I have spent so much money during the last thirty years in doing nothing but evil, that it is hard if I may not at last spend a little in doing good.—Unless his Holiness of Hippo thinks it wrong for you to accept the goodwill of an infidel?'

'Which of these three,' said Augustine, 'was neighbour to him who fell among thieves, but he who had mercy on him? Verily, my friend Raphael Aben-Ezra, thou art not far from the kingdom of God.'

'Of which God?' asked Raphael slyly.

'Of the God of thy forefather Abraham, whom thou shalt hear us worship this evening, if He will. Synesius, have you a church wherein I can perform the evening service, and give a word of exhortation to these my children?'

Synesius sighed. 'There is a ruin, which was last month a church.'

'And is one still. Man did not place there the presence of God, and man cannot expel it.'

And so, sending out hunting-parties right and left in chase of everything which had animal life, and picking up before nightfall a tolerably abundant supply of game, they went homewards, where Victoria was entrusted to the care of Synesius's old stewardess, and the soldiery were marched straight into the church; while Synesius's servants, to whom the Latin service would have been unintelligible, busied themselves in cooking the still warm game.

Strangely enough it sounded to Raphael that evening to hear, among those smoke-grimed pillars and fallen rafters, the grand old Hebrew psalms of his nation ring aloft, to the very chants, too, which were said by the rabbi to have been used in the Temple-worship of Jerusalem.... They, and the invocations, thanksgivings, blessings, the very outward ceremonial itself, were all Hebraic, redolent of the thoughts, the words of his own ancestors. That lesson from the book of Proverbs, which Augustine's deacon was reading in Latin—the blood of the man who wrote these words was flowing in Aben-Ezra's veins.... Was it a mistake, an hypocrisy? or were they indeed worshipping, as they fancied, the Ancient One who spoke face to face with his forefathers, the Archetype of man, the friend of Abraham and of Israel?

And now the sermon began; and as Augustine stood for a moment in prayer in front of the ruined altar, every furrow in his worn face lit up by a ray of moonlight which streamed in through the broken roof, Raphael waited impatiently for his speech. What would he, the refined dialectician, the ancient teacher of heathen rhetoric, the courtly and learned student, the ascetic celibate and theosopher, have to say to those coarse war-worn soldiers, Thracians and Markmen, Gauls and Belgians, who sat watching there, with those sad earnest faces? What one thought or feeling in common could there be between Augustine and his congregation?

At last, after signing himself with the cross, he began. The subject was one of the psalms which had just been read—a battle psalm, concerning Moab and Amalek, and the old border wars of Palestine. What would he make of that?

He seemed to start lamely enough, in spite of the exquisite grace of his voice, and manner, and language, and the epigrammatic terseness of every sentence. He spent some minutes over the inscription of the psalm—allegorised it—made it mean something which it never did mean in the writer's mind, and which it, as Raphael well knew, never could mean, for his interpretation was founded on a sheer mis-translation. He punned on the Latin version—derived the meaning of Hebrew words from Latin etymologies.... And as he went on with the psalm itself, the common sense of David seemed to evaporate in mysticism. The most fantastic and far-fetched illustrations, drawn from the commonest objects, alternated with mysterious theosophic dogma. Where was that learning for which he was so famed? Where was that reverence for the old Hebrew Scriptures which he professed? He was treating David as ill as Hypatia used to treat Homer—worse even than old Philo did, when in the home life of the old Patriarchs, and in the mighty acts of Moses and Joshua, he could find nothing but spiritual allegories wherewith to pamper the private experiences of the secluded theosophist. And Raphael felt very much inclined to get up and go away, and still more inclined to say, with a smile, in his haste, 'All men are liars.'....

And yet, what an illustration that last one was! No mere fancy, but a real deep glance into the working of the material universe, as symbolic of the spiritual and unseen one. And not drawn, as Hypatia's were, exclusively from some sublime or portentous phenomenon, but from some dog, or kettle, or fishwife, with a homely insight worthy of old Socrates himself. How personal he was becoming, too!... No long bursts of declamation, but dramatic dialogue and interrogation, by-hints, and unexpected hits at one and the other most commonplace soldier's failing.... And yet each pithy rebuke was put in a universal, comprehensive form, which made Raphael himself wince—which might, he thought, have made any man, or woman either, wince in like manner. Well, whether or not Augustine knew truths for all men, he at least knew sins for all men, and for himself as well as his hearers. There was no denying that. He was a real man, right or wrong. What he rebuked in others, he had felt in himself, and fought it to the death-grip, as the flash and quiver of that worn face proclaimed.... But yet, why were the Edomites, by an utterly mistaken pun on their name, to signify one sort of sin, and the Ammonites another, and the Amalekites another? What had that to do with the old psalm? What had it to do with the present auditory? Was not this the wildest and lowest form of that unreal, subtilising, mystic pedantry, of which he had sickened long ago in Hypatia's lecture-room, till he fled to Bran, the dog, for honest practical realities?

No.... Gradually, as Augustine's hints became more practical and orated, Raphael saw that there was in his mind most real and organic connection, true or false, in what seemed at first mere arbitrary allegory. Amalekites, personal sins, Ausurian robbers and ravishers, were to him only so many different forms of one and the same evil. He who helped any of them fought against the righteous God: he who fought against them fought for that God; but he must conquer the Amalekites within, if he expected to conquer the Amalekites without. Could the legionaries permanently put down the lust and greed around them, while their own hearts were enslaved to lust and greed within? Would they not be helping it by example, while they pretended to crush it by sword-strokes? Was it not a mockery, an hypocrisy? Could God's blessing be on it? Could they restore unity and peace to the country while there was neither unity nor peace within them? What had produced the helplessness of the people, the imbecility of the military, but inward helplessness, inward weakness? They were weak against Moors, because they were weak against enemies more deadly than Moors. How could they fight for God outwardly, while they were fighting against him inwardly? He would not go forth with their hosts. How could He, when He was not among their hosts? He, a spirit, must dwell in their spirits .... And then the shout of a king would be among them, and one of them should chase a thousand.... Or if not—if both people and soldiers required still further chastening and humbling—what matter, provided that they were chastened and humbled? What matter if their faces were confounded, if they were thereby driven to seek His Name, who alone was the Truth, the Light, and the Life? What if they were slain? Let them have conquered the inward enemies, what matter to them if the outward enemies seemed to prevail for a moment? They should be recompensed at the resurrection of the just, when death was swallowed up in victory. It would be seen then who had really conquered in the eyes of the just God—they, God's ministers, the defenders of peace and justice, or the Ausurians, the enemies thereof.... And then, by some quaintest turn of fancy, he introduced a word of pity and hope, even for the wild Moorish robbers. It might be good for them to have succeeded thus far; they might learn from their Christian captives, purified by affliction, truths which those captives had forgotten in prosperity. And, again, it might be good for them, as well as for Christians, to be confounded and made like chaff before the wind, that so they too might learn His Name....And so on, through and in spite of all conceits, allegories, overstrained interpretations, Augustine went on evolving from the Psalms, and from the past, and from the future, the assertion of a Living, Present God, the eternal enemy of discord, injustice, and evil, the eternal helper and deliverer of those who were enslaved and crushed thereby in soul or body.... It was all most strange to Raphael.... Strange in its utter unlikeness to any teaching, Platonist or Hebrew, which he had ever heard before, and stranger still in its agreement with those teachings; in the instinctive ease with which it seemed to unite and justify them all by the talisman of some one idea—and what that might be, his Jewish prejudices could not prevent his seeing, and yet would not allow him to acknowledge. But, howsoever he might redden with Hebrew pride; howsoever he might long to persuade himself that Augustine was building up a sound and right practical structure on the foundation of a sheer lie; he could not help watching, at first with envy, and then with honest pleasure, the faces of the rough soldiers, as they gradually lightened up into fixed attention, into cheerful and solemn resolve.

'What wonder?' said Raphael to himself, 'what wonder, after all? He has been speaking to these wild beasts as to sages and saints; he has been telling them that God is as much with them as with prophets and psalmists.... I wonder if Hypatia, with all her beauty, could have touched their hearts as he has done?'

And when Raphael rose at the end of this strange discourse, he felt more like an old Hebrew than he had done since he sat upon his nurse's knee, and heard legends about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. What if Augustine were right after all? What if the Jehovah of the old Scriptures were not merely the national patron of the children of Abraham, as the Rabbis held; not merely, as Philo held, the Divine Wisdom which inspired a few elect sages, even among the heathen; but the Lord of the whole earth, and of the nations thereof?—And suddenly, for the first time in his life, passages from the psalms and prophets flashed across him, which seemed to assert this. What else did that whole book of Daniel and the history of Nebuchadnezzar mean—if not that? Philosophic latitudinarianism had long ago cured him of the Rabbinical notion of the Babylonian conqueror as an incarnate fiend, devoted to Tophet, like Sennacherib before him. He had long in private admired the man, as a magnificent human character, a fairer one, in his eyes, than either Alexander or Julius Caesar.... What if Augustine had given him a hint which might justify his admiration?.... But more. .... What if Augustine were right in going even further than Philo and Hypatia? What if this same Jehovah, Wisdom, Logos, call Him what they might, were actually the God of the spirits, as well as of the bodies of all flesh? What if he was as near—Augustine said that He was—to the hearts of those wild Markmen, Gauls, Thracians, as to Augustine's own heart? What if He were—Augustine said He was—yearning after, enlightening, leading home to Himself, the souls of the poorest, the most brutal, the most sinful?—What if He loved man as man, and not merely one favoured race or one favoured class of minds?.... And in the light of that hypothesis, that strange story of the Cross of Calvary seemed not so impossible after all.... But then, celibacy and asceticism, utterly non-human as they were, what had they to do with the theory of a human God?

And filled with many questionings, Raphael was not sorry to have the matter brought to an issue that very evening in Synesius's sitting-room. Majoricus, in his blunt, soldierlike way, set Raphael and Augustine at each other without circumlocution; and Raphael, after trying to smile and pooh-pooh away the subject, was tempted to make a jest on a seeming fallacious conceit of Augustine's—found it more difficult than he thought to trip up the serious and wary logician, lost his temper a little—a sign, perhaps, of returning health in a sceptic—and soon found himself fighting desperately, with Synesius backing him, apparently for the mere pleasure of seeing a battle, and Majoricus making him more and more cross by the implicit dogmatic faith with which he hewed at one Gordian knot after another, till Augustine had to save himself from his friends by tripping the good Prefect gently up, and leaving him miles behind the disputants, who argued on and on, till broad daylight shone in, and the sight of the desolation below recalled all parties to more material weapons, and a sterner warfare.

But little thought Raphael Aben-Ezra, as he sat there, calling up every resource of his wit and learning, in the hope, half malicious, half honestly cautious, of upsetting the sage of Hippo, and forgetting all heaven and earth in the delight of battle with his peers, that in a neighbouring chamber, her tender limbs outspread upon the floor, her face buried in her dishevelled locks; lay Victoria, wrestling all night long for him in prayer and bitter tears, as the murmur of busy voices reached her eager ears, longing in vain to catch the sense of words, on which hung now her hopes and bliss-how utterly and entirely, she lead never yet confessed to herself, though she dare confess it to that Son of Man to whom she prayed, as to One who felt with tenderness and insight beyond that of a brother, a father, even of a mother, for her maiden's blushes and her maiden's woes.



CHAPTER XXII: PANDEMONIUM

But where was Philammon all that week?

For the first day or two of his imprisonment he had raved like some wild beast entrapped. His new-found purpose and energy, thus suddenly dammed back and checked, boiled up in frantic rage. He tore at the bars of his prison; he rolled himself, shrieking, on the floor. He called in vain on Hypatia, on Pelagia, on Arsenius—on all but God. Pray he could not, and dare not; for to whom was he to pray? To the stars?—to the Abysses and the Eternities?....

Alas! as Augustine said once, bitterly enough, of his own Manichaean teachers, Hypatia had taken away the living God, and given him instead the four Elements.... And in utter bewilderment and hopeless terror he implored the pity of every guard and gaoler who passed along the corridor, and conjured them, as brothers, fathers, men, to help him. Moved at once by his agony and by his exceeding beauty, the rough Thracians, who knew enough of their employer's character to have little difficulty in believing his victim to be innocent, listened to him and questioned him. But when they offered the very help which he implored, and asked him to tell his story, the poor boy's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. How could he publish his sisters shame? And yet she was about to publish it herself!.... And instead of words, he met their condolences with fresh agonies, till they gave him up as mad; and, tired by his violence, compelled him, with blows and curses, to remain quiet; and so the week wore out, in dull and stupefied despair, which trembled on the very edge of idiocy. Night and day were alike to him. The food which was thrust in through his grate remained untasted; hour after hour, day after day, he sat upon the ground, his head buried in his hands, half-dozing from mere exhaustion of body and mind. Why should he care to stir, to eat, to live? He had but one purpose in heaven and earth: and that one purpose was impossible.

At last his cell-door grated on its hinges.

'Up, my mad youth!' cried a rough voice. 'Up, and thank the favour of the gods, and the bounty of our noble—ahem!—Prefect. To-day he gives freedom to all prisoners. And I suppose a pretty boy like you may go about your business, as well as uglier rascals!'

Philammon looked up in the gaoler's face with a dim half-comprehension of his meaning.

'Do you hear?' cried the man with a curse. 'You are free. Jump up, or I shut the door again, and your one chance is over.'

'Did she dance Venus Anadyomene?'

'She! Who?'

'My sister! Pelagia!'

'Heaven only knows what she has not danced in her time! But they say she dances to-day once more. Quick! out, or I shall not be ready in time for the sports. They begin an hour hence. Free admission into the theatre to-day for all—rogues and honest men, Christians and heathens—Curse the boy! he's as mad as ever.'

So indeed Philammon seemed; for, springing suddenly to his feet, he rushed out past the gaoler, upsetting him into the corridor, and fled wildly from the prison among the crowd of liberated ruffians, ran from the prison home, from home to the baths, from the baths to the theatre, and was soon pushing his way, regardless of etiquette, towards the lower tiers of benches, in order, he hardly knew why, to place himself as near as possible to the very sight which he dreaded and abhorred.

As fate would have it, the passage by which he had entered opened close to the Prefect's chair of state, where sat Orestes, gorgeous in his robes of office, and by him—to Philammon's surprise and horror—Hypatia herself.

More beautiful than ever, her forehead sparkling, like Juno's own, with a lofty tiara of jewels, her white Ionic robe half hidden by a crimson shawl, there sat the vestal, the philosopher. What did she there? But the boy's eager eyes, accustomed but too well to note every light and shade of feeling which crossed that face, saw in a moment how wan and haggard was its expression. She wore a look of constraint, of half-terrified self-resolve, as of a martyr: and yet not an undoubting martyr; for as Orestes turned his head at the stir of Philammon's intrusion, and flashing with anger at the sight, motioned him fiercely back, Hypatia turned too, and as her eyes met her pupil's she blushed crimson, and started, and seemed in act to motion him back also; and then, recollecting herself, whispered something to Orestes which quieted his wrath, and composed herself, or rather sank into her place again, as one who was determined to abide the worst.

A knot of gay young gentlemen, Philammon's fellow-students, pulled him down among them, with welcome and laughter; and before he could collect his thoughts, the curtain in front of the stage had fallen, and the sport began.

The scene represented a background of desert mountains, and on the stage itself, before a group of temporary huts, stood huddling together the black Libyan prisoners, some fifty men, women, and children, bedizened with gaudy feathers and girdles of tasselled leather, brandishing their spears and targets, and glaring out with white eyes on the strange scene before them, in childish awe and wonder.

Along the front of the stage a wattled battlement had been erected, while below, the hyposcenium had been painted to represent rocks, thus completing the rough imitation of a village among the Libyan hills.

Amid breathless silence, a herald advanced, and proclaimed that these were prisoners taken in arms against the Roman senate and people, and therefore worthy of immediate death: but that the Prefect, in his exceeding clemency toward them, and especial anxiety to afford the greatest possible amusement to the obedient and loyal citizens of Alexandria, had determined, instead of giving them at once to the beasts, to allow them to fight for their lives, promising to the survivors a free pardon if they acquitted themselves valiantly.

The poor wretches on the stage, when this proclamation was translated to them, set up a barbaric yell of joy, and brandished their spears and targets more fiercely than ever.

But their joy was short. The trumpets sounded the attack: a body of gladiators, equal in number to the savages, marched out from one of the two great side passages, made their obeisance to the applauding spectators, and planting their scaling-ladders against the front of the stage, mounted to the attack.

The Libyans fought like tigers; yet from the first, Hypatia, and Philammon also, could see that their promised chance of life was a mere mockery. Their light darts and naked limbs were no match for the heavy swords and complete armour of their brutal assailants, who endured carelessly a storm of blows and thrusts on heads and faces protected by visored helmets: yet so fierce was the valour of the Libyans, that even they recoiled twice, and twice the scaling-ladders were hurled down again, while more than one gladiator lay below, rolling in the death-agony.

And then burst forth the sleeping devil in the hearts of that great brutalised multitude. Yell upon yell of savage triumph, and still more savage disappointment, rang from every tier of that vast ring of seats, at each blow and parry, onslaught and repulse; and Philammon saw with horror and surprise that luxury, refinement, philosophic culture itself, were no safeguards against the infection of bloodthirstiness. Gay and delicate ladies, whom he had seen three days before simpering delight at Hypatia's heavenward aspirations, and some, too, whom he seemed to recollect in Christian churches, sprang from their seats, waved their hands and handkerchiefs, and clapped and shouted to the gladiators. For, alas! there was no doubt as to which side the favour of the spectators inclined. With taunts, jeers, applause, entreaties, the hired ruffians were urged on to their work of blood. The poor wretches heard no voice raised in their favour: nothing but contempt, hatred, eager lust of blood, glared from those thousands of pitiless eyes; and, broken-hearted, despairing, they flagged and drew back one by one. A shout of triumph greeted the gladiators as they climbed over the battlement, and gained a footing on the stage. The wretched blacks broke up, and fled wildly from corner to corner, looking vainly for an outlet....

And then began a butchery.... Some fifty men, women, and children were cooped together in that narrow space.... And yet Hypatia's countenance did not falter. Why should it? What were their numbers, beside the thousands who had perished year by year for centuries, by that and far worse deaths, in the amphitheatres of that empire, for that faith which she was vowed to re-establish. It was part of the great system; and she must endure it.

Not that she did not feel; for she, too, was woman; and her heart, raised far above the brutal excitement of the multitude, lay calmly open to the most poignant stings of pity. Again and again she was in the act to entreat mercy for some shrieking woman or struggling child; but before her lips could shape the words, the blow had fallen, or the wretch was whirled away from her sight in the dense undistinguishable mass of slayers and slain. Yes, she had begun, and she must follow to the end.... And, after all, what were the lives of those few semi-brutes, returning thus a few years earlier to the clay from which they sprang, compared with the regeneration of a world?.... And it would be over in a few minutes more, and that black writhing heap be still for ever, and the curtain fall .... And then for Venus Anadyomene, and art, and joy, and peace, and the graceful wisdom and beauty of the old Greek art, calming and civilising all hearts, and softening them into pure devotion for the immortal myths, the immortal deities, who had inspired their forefathers in the glorious days of old.... But still the black heap writhed; and she looked away, up, down, and round, everywhere, to avoid the sickening sight; and her eye caught Philammon's gazing at her with looks of horror and disgust.... A thrill of shame rushed through her heart, and blushing scarlet, she sank her head, and whispered to Orestes—

'Have mercy!—spare the rest!'

'Nay, fairest vestal! The mob has tasted blood, and they must have their fill of it, or they will turn onus for aught I know. Nothing so dangerous as to check a brute, whether he be horse, dog, or man, when once his spirit is up. Ha! there is a fugitive! How well the little rascal runs!'

As he spoke, a boy, the only survivor, leaped from the stage, and rushed across the orchestra toward them, followed by a rough cur-dog.

'You shall have this youth, if he reaches us.'

Hypatia watched breathless. The boy had just arrived at the altar in the centre of the orchestra, when he saw a gladiator close upon him. The ruffian's arm was raised to strike, when, to the astonishment of the whole theatre, boy and dog turned valiantly to bay, and leaping on the gladiator, dragged him between them to the ground. The triumph was momentary. The uplifted hands, the shout of 'Spare him!' came too late. The man, as he lay, buried his sword in the slender body of the child, and then rising, walked coolly back to the side passages, while the poor cur stood over the little corpse, licking its hands and face, and making the whole building ring with his doleful cries. The attendants entered, and striking their hooks into corpse after corpse, dragged them out of sight, marking their path by long red furrows in the sand; while the dog followed, until his inauspicious howlings died away down distant passages.

Philammon felt sick and giddy, and half rose to escape. But Pelagia!.... No—he must sit it out, and see the worst, if worse than this was possible. He looked round. The people were coolly sipping wine and eating cakes, while they chatted admirably about the beauty of the great curtain, which had fallen and hidden the stage, and represented, on a ground of deep-blue sea, Europa carried by the bull across the Bosphorus, while Nereids and Tritons played around.

A single flute within the curtain began to send forth luscious strains, deadened and distant, as if through far-off glens and woodlands; and from the side passages issued three Graces, led by Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, bearing a herald's staff in her hand. She advanced to the altar in the centre of the orchestra, and informed the spectators that, during the absence of Ares in aid of a certain great military expedition, which was shortly to decide the diadem of Rome, and the liberty, prosperity, and supremacy of Egypt and Alexandria, Aphrodite had returned to her lawful allegiance, and submitted for the time being to the commands of her husband, Hephaestus; that he, as the deity of artificers, felt a peculiar interest in the welfare of the city of Alexandria, the workshop of the world, and had, as a sign of his especial favour, prevailed upon his fair spouse to exhibit, for this once, her beauties to the assembled populace, and, in the unspoken poetry of motion, to represent to them the emotions with which, as she arose new-born from the sea, she first surveyed that fair expanse of heaven and earth of which she now reigned undisputed queen.

A shout of rapturous applause greeted this announcement, and forthwith limped from the opposite slip the lame deity himself, hammer and pincers on shoulder, followed by a train of gigantic Cyclops, who bore on their shoulders various pieces of gilded metal work.

Hephaestus, who was intended to supply the comic element in the vast pantomimic pageant, shambled forward with studied uncouthness, amid roars of laughter; surveyed the altar with ludicrous contempt; raised his mighty hammer, shivered it to pieces with a single blow, and beckoned to his attendants to carry off the fragments, and replace it with something more fitting for his august spouse.

With wonderful quickness the metal open-work was put in its place, and fitted together, forming a frame of coral branches intermingled with dolphins, Nereids, and Tritons. Four gigantic Cyclops then approached, staggering under the weight of a circular slab of green marble, polished to a perfect mirror, which they placed on the framework. The Graces wreathed its circumference with garlands of sea-weed, shells, and corallines, and the mimic sea was complete.

Peitho and the Graces retired a few steps, and grouped themselves with the Cyclops, whose grimed and brawny limbs, and hideous one-eyed masks, threw out in striking contrast the delicate hue and grace of the beautiful maiden figures; while Hephaestus turned toward the curtain, and seemed to await impatiently the forthcoming of the goddess.

Every lip was breathless with expectation as the flutes swelled louder and nearer; horns and cymbals took up the harmony; and, to a triumphant burst of music, the curtain rose, and a simultaneous shout of delight burst from ten thousand voices.

The scene behind represented a magnificent temple, half hidden in an artificial wood of tropic trees and shrubs, which filled the stage. Fauns and Dryads peeped laughing from among their stems, and gorgeous birds, tethered by unseen threads, fluttered and sang among their branches. In the centre an overarching avenue of palms led from the temple doors to the front of the stage, from which the mimic battlements had disappeared, and had been replaced, in those few moments, by a broad slope of smooth greensward, leading down into the orchestra, and fringed with myrtles, roses, apple-trees, poppies, and crimson hyacinths, stained with the life-blood of Adonis.

The folding doors of the temple opened slowly, the crash of instruments resounded from within; and, preceded by the musicians, came forth the triumph of Aphrodite, and passed down the slope, and down the outer ring of the orchestra.

A splendid car, drawn by white oxen, bore the rarest and gaudiest of foreign flowers and fruits, which young girls, dressed as Hours and Seasons, strewed in front of the procession and among the spectators.

A long line of beautiful youths and maidens, crowned with garlands, and robed in scarfs of purple gauze, followed by two and two. Each pair carried or led a pair of wild animals, captives of the conquering might of Beauty.

Foremost were borne, on the wrists of the actors, the birds especially sacred to the goddess—doves and sparrows, wrynecks and swallows; and a pair of gigantic Indian tortoises, each ridden by a lovely nymph, showed that Orestes had not forgotten one wish, at least, of his intended bride.

Then followed strange birds from India, parakeets, peacocks, pheasants silver and golden; bustards and ostriches: the latter, bestridden each by a tiny cupid, were led on in golden leashes, followed by antelopes and oryxes, elks from beyond the Danube, four-horned rams from the Isles of the Hyperborean Ocean, and the strange hybrid of the Libyan hills, believed by all spectators to be half-bull half-horse. And then a murmur of delighted awe ran through the theatre, as bears and leopards, lions and tigers, fettered in heavy chains of gold, and made gentle for the occasion by narcotics, paced sedately down the slope, obedient to their beautiful guides; while behind them, the unwieldy bulk of two double-horned rhinoceroses, from the far south, was overtopped by the long slender necks and large soft eyes of a pair of giraffes, such as had not been seen in Alexandria for more than fifty years.

A cry arose of 'Orestes! Orestes! Health to the illustrious Prefect! Thanks for his bounty!' And a hired voice or two among the crowd cried, 'Hail to Orestes! Hail, Emperor of Africa!'.... But there was no response.

'The rose is still in the bud,' simpered Orestes to Hypatia. He rose, beckoned and bowed the crowd into silence; and then, after a short pantomimic exhibition of rapturous gratitude and humility, pointed triumphantly to the palm avenue, among the shadows of which appeared the wonder of the day—the huge tusks and trunk of the white elephant himself.

There it was at last! Not a doubt of it! A real elephant, and yet as white as snow. Sight never seen before in Alexandria—never to be seen again! 'Oh, thrice blest men of Macedonia!' shouted some worthy on high, 'the gods are bountiful to you this day!' And all mouths and eyes confirmed the opinion, as they opened wider and yet wider to drink in the inexhaustible joy and glory.

On he paced solemnly, while the whole theatre resounded to his heavy tread, and the Fauns and Dryads fled in terror. A choir of nymphs swung round him hand in hand, and sang, as they danced along, the conquering might of Beauty, the tamer of beasts and men and deities. Skirmishing parties of little winged cupids spread themselves over the orchestra, from left to right, and pelted the spectators with perfumed comfits, shot among them from their tiny bows arrows of fragrant sandal-wood, or swung smoking censers, which loaded the air with intoxicating odours.

The procession came on down the slope, and the elephant approached the spectators; his tusks were wreathed with roses and myrtles; his ears were pierced with splendid earrings, a jewelled frontlet hung between his eyes; Eros himself, a lovely winged boy, sat on his neck, and guided him with the point of a golden arrow. But what precious thing was it which that shell-formed car upon his back contained? The goddess! Pelagia Aphrodite herself?

Yes; whiter than the snow-white elephant—more rosy than the pink-tipped shell in which she lay, among crimson cushions and silver gauze, there shone the goddess, thrilling all hearts with those delicious smiles, and glances of the bashful playful eyes, and grateful wavings of her tiny hand, as the whole theatre rose with one accord, and ten thousand eyes were concentrated on the unequalled loveliness beneath them.

Twice the procession passed round the whole circumference of the orchestra, and then returning from the foot of the slope towards the central group around Hephaestus, deployed right and left in front of the stage. The lions and tigers were led away into the side passages; the youths and maidens combined themselves with the gentler animals into groups lessening gradually from the centre to the wings, and stood expectant, while the elephant came forward, and knelt behind the platform destined for the goddess.

The valves of the shell closed. The Graces unloosed the fastenings of the car. The elephant turned his trunk over his back, and, guided by the hands of the girls, grasped the shell, and lifting it high in air, deposited it on the steps at the back of the platform.

Hephaestus limped forward, and, with his most uncouth gestures, signified the delight which he had in bestowing such a sight upon his faithful artisans of Alexandria, and the unspeakable enjoyment which they were to expect from the mystic dance of the goddess; and then retired, leaving the Graces to advance in front of the platform, and with their arms twined round each other, begin Hypatia's song of invocation.

As the first strophe died away, the valves of the shell reopened, and discovered Aphrodite crouching on one knee within. She raised her head, and gazed around the vast circle of seats. A mild surprise was on her countenance, which quickened into delightful wonder, and bashfulness struggling with the sense of new enjoyment and new powers. She glanced downward at herself; and smiled, astonished at her own loveliness; then upward at the sky; and seemed ready, with an awful joy, to spring up into the boundless void. Her whole figure dilated; she seemed to drink in strength from every object which met her in the great universe around; and slowly, from among the shells and seaweeds, she rose to her full height, the mystic cestus glittering round her waist, in deep festoons of emeralds and pearls, and stepped forward upon the marble sea-floor, wringing the dripping perfume from her locks, as Aphrodite rose of old.

For the first minute the crowd was too breathless with pleasure to think of applause. But the goddess seemed to require due homage; and when she folded her arms across her bosom, and stood motionless for an instant, as if to demand the worship of the universe, every tongue was loosed, and a thunder-clap of 'Aphrodite!' rang out across the roofs of Alexandria, and startled Cyril in his chamber at the Serapeium, and weary muleteers on distant sand-hills, and dozing mariners far out at sea.

And then began a miracle of art, such as was only possible among a people of the free and exquisite physical training, and the delicate aesthetic perception of those old Greeks, even in their most fallen days. A dance, in which every motion was a word, and rest as eloquent as motion; in which every attitude was a fresh motive for a sculptor of the purest school, and the highest physical activity was manifested, not as in the coarser comic pantomimes, in fantastic bounds and unnatural distortions, but in perpetual delicate modulations of a stately and self-restraining grace. The artist was for the moment transformed into the goddess. The theatre, and Alexandria, and the gorgeous pageant beyond, had vanished from her imagination, and therefore from the imagination of the spectators, under the constraining inspiration of her art, and they and she alike saw nothing but the lonely sea around Cytherea, and the goddess hovering above its emerald mirror, saying forth on sea, and air, and shore, beauty, and joy, and love....

Philammon's eyes were bursting from his head with shame and horror: and yet he could not hate her; not even despise her. He would have done so, had there been the faintest trace of human feeling in her countenance to prove that some germ of moral sense lingered within: but even the faint blush and the downcast eye with which she had entered the theatre were gone; and the only expression on her face was that of intense enjoyment of her own activity and skill, and satisfied vanity, as of a petted child.... Was she accountable? A reasonable soul, capable of right or wrong at all? He hoped not .... He would trust not.... And still Pelagia danced on; and for a whole age of agony, he could see nothing in heaven or earth but the bewildering maze of those white feet, as they twinkled over their white image in the marble mirror.... At last it was over. Every limb suddenly collapsed, and she stood drooping in soft self-satisfied fatigue, awaiting the burst of applause which rang through Philammon's ears, proclaiming to heaven and earth, as with a mighty trumpet-blast, his sister's shame.

The elephant rose, and moved forward to the side of the slabs. His back was covered with crimson cushions, on which it seemed Aphrodite was to return without her shell. She folded her arms across her bosom, and stood smiling, as the elephant gently wreathed his trunk around her waist, and lifted her slowly from the slab, in act to place her on his back....

The little feet, clinging half fearfully together, had Just risen from the marble-The elephant started, dropped his delicate burden heavily on the slab, looked down, raised his forefoot, and throwing his trunk into the air, gave a shrill scream of terror and disgust....

The foot was red with blood—the young boy's blood—which was soaking and bubbling up through the fresh sand where the elephant had trodden, in a round, dark, purple spot....

Philammon could bear no more. Another moment and he had hurled down through the dense mass of spectators, clearing rank after rank of seats by the sheer strength of madness, leaped the balustrade into the orchestra below, and rushed across the space to the foot of the platform.

'Pelagia! Sister! My sister! Have mercy on me! on yourself! I will hide you! save you! and we will flee together out of this infernal place! this world of devils! I am your brother! Come!'

She looked at him one moment with wide, wild eyes—The truth flashed on her—

'Brother!'

And she sprang from the platform into his arms.... A vision of a lofty window in Athens, looking out over far olive-yards and gardens, and the bright roofs and basins of the Piraeus, and the broad blue sea, with the purple peaks of Aegina beyond all.... And a dark-eyed boy, with his arm around her neck, pointed laughing to the twinkling masts in the far harbour, and called her sister.... The dead soul woke within her; and with a wild cry she recoiled from him in an agony of shame, and covering her face with both her hands, sank down among the blood-stained sand.

A yell, as of all hell broke loose, rang along that vast circle—

'Down with him!' 'Away with him!' 'Crucify the slave!' 'Give the barbarian to the beasts!' 'To the beasts with him, noble Prefect!' A crowd of attendants rushed upon him, and many of the spectators sprang from their seats, and were on the point of leaping down into the orchestra.

Philammon turned upon them like a lion at bay; and clear and loud his voice rose through the roar of the multitude.

'Ay! murder me as the Romans murdered Saint Telemachus! Slaves as besotted and accursed as your besotted and accursed tyrants! Lower than the beasts whom you employ as your butchers! Murder and lust go fitly hand in hand, and the throne of my sister's shame is well built on the blood of innocents! Let my death end the devil's sacrifice, and fill up the cup of your iniquity!'

'To the beasts!' 'Make the elephant trample him to powder!'

And the huge brute, goaded on by the attendants, rushed on the youth, while Eros leaped from his neck, and fled weeping up the slope.

He caught Philammon in his trunk and raised him high in air. For an instant the great bellowing ocean of heads spun round and round. He tried to breathe one prayer, and shut his eyes—Pelagia's voice rang sweet and clear, even in the shrillness of intense agony—

'Spare him! He is my brother! Forgive him, men of Macedonia! For Pelagia's sake— Your Pelagia! One boon—only this one!'

And she stretched her arms imploringly toward the spectators, and then clasping the huge knees of the elephant, called madly to it in terms of passionate entreaty and endearment.

The men wavered. The brute did not. Quietly he lowered his trunk, and set down Philammon on his feet. The monk was saved. Breathless and dizzy, he found himself hurried away by the attendants, dragged through dark passages, and hurled out into the street, with curses, warnings, and congratulations, which fell on an unheeding ear.

But Pelagia kept her face still hidden in her hands, and rising, walked slowly back, crushed by the weight of some tremendous awe, across the orchestra, and up the slope; and vanished among the palms and oleanders, regardless of the applause and entreaties, and jeers, and threats, and curses, of that great multitude of sinful slaves.

For a moment all Orestes's spells seemed broken by this unexpected catastrophe. A cloud, whether of disgust or of disappointment, hung upon every brow. More than one Christian rose hastily to depart, touched with real remorse and shame at the horrors of which they had been the willing witnesses. The common people behind, having glutted their curiosity with all that there was to see, began openly to murmur at the cruelty and heathenry of it. Hypatia, utterly unnerved, hid her face in both her hands. Orestes alone rose with the crisis. Now, or never, was the time for action; and stepping forward, with his most graceful obeisance, waved his hand for silence, and began his well-studied oration.

'Let me not, O men of Macedonia, suppose that you can be disturbed from that equanimity which befits politicians, by so light an accident as the caprice of a dancer. The spectacle which I have had the honour and delight of exhibiting to you—(Roars and applause from the liberated prisoners and the young gentlemen)—and on which it seemed to me you have deigned to look with not altogether unkindly eyes—(Fresh applause, in which the Christian mob, relenting, began to join)—is but a pleasant prelude to that more serious business for which I have drawn you here together. Other testimonials of my good intentions have not been wanting in the release of suffering innocence, and in the largess of food, the growth and natural property of Egypt, destined by your late tyrants to pamper the luxury of a distant court.... Why should I boast?—yet even now this head is weary, these limbs fail me, worn out in ceaseless efforts for your welfare, and in the perpetual administration of the strictest justice. For a time has come in which the Macedonian race, whose boast is the gorgeous city of Alexander, must rise again to the political pre-eminence which they held of old, and becoming once more the masters of one-third of the universe, be treated by their rulers as freemen, citizens, heroes, who have a right to choose and to employ their rulers—Rulers, did I say? Let us forget the word, and substitute in its place the more philosophic term of ministers. To be your minister—the servant of you all—To sacrifice myself, my leisure, health, life, if need be, to the one great object of securing the independence of Alexandria—This is my work, my hope, my glory—longed for through weary years: now for the first time possible by the fall of the late puppet Emperor of Rome. Men of Macedonia, remember that Honorius reigns no more! An African sits on the throne of the Caesars! Heraclian, by one decisive victory, has gained, by the favour of—of Heaven, the imperial purple; and a new era opens for the world. Let the conqueror of Rome balance his account with that Byzantine court, so long the incubus of our Trans-Mediterranean wealth and civilisation; and let a free, independent, and united Africa rally round the palaces and docks of Alexandria, and find there its natural centre of polity and of prosperity.'

A roar of hired applause interrupted him and not a few, half for the sake of his compliments and fine words, half from a natural wish to be on the right side—namely, the one which happened to be in the ascendant for the time being—joined.... The city authorities were on the point of crying, 'Imperator Orestes,' but thought better of it; and waited for some one else to cry first—being respectable. Whereon the Prefect of the Guards, being a man of some presence of mind, and also not in anywise respectable, pricked up the Prefect of the docks with the point of his dagger, and bade him, with a fearful threat, take care how he played traitor. The worthy burgher roared incontinently—whether with pain or patriotism; and the whole array of respectabilities—having found a Curtius who would leap into the gulf, joined in unanimous chorus, and saluted Orestes as Emperor; while Hypatia, amid the shouts of her aristocratic scholars, rose and knelt before him, writhing inwardly with shame and despair, and entreated him to accept that tutelage of Greek commerce, supremacy, and philosophy which was forced on him by the unanimous voice of an adoring people....

'It is false!' shouted a voice from the highest tiers, appropriated to the women of the lower classes, which made all turn their heads in bewilderment.

'False! false! you are tricked! He is tricked! Heraclian was utterly routed at Ostia, and is fled to Carthage, with the emperor's fleet in chase.'

'She lies! Drag the beast down!' cried Orestes, utterly thrown off his balance by the sudden check.

'She? He! I, a monk, brought the news! Cyril has known it—every Jew in the Delta has known it, for a week past! So perish all the enemies of the Lord, caught in their own snare!'

And bursting desperately through the women who surrounded him, the monk vanished.

An awful silence fell on all who heard. For a minute every man looked in his neighbour's face as if he longed to cut his throat, and get rid of one witness, at least, of his treason. And then arose a tumult, which Orestes in vain attempted to subdue. Whether the populace believed the monk's words or not, they were panic-stricken at the mere possibility of their truth. Hoarse with denying, protesting, appealing, the would-be emperor had at last to summon his guards around him and Hypatia, and make his way out of the theatre as best he could; while the multitude melted away like snow before the rain, and poured out into the streets in eddying and roaring streams, to find every church placarded by Cyril with the particulars of Heraclian's ruin.



CHAPTER XXIII: NEMESIS

That evening was a hideous one in the palace of Orestes. His agonies of disappointment, rage, and terror were at once so shameful and so fearful, that none of his slaves dare approach him; and it was not till late that his confidential secretary, the Chaldean eunuch, driven by terror of the exasperated Catholics, ventured into the tiger's den, and represented to him the immediate necessity for action.

What could he do? He was committed—Cyril only knew how deeply. What might not the wily archbishop have discovered? What might not he pretend to have discovered? What accusations might he not send off on the spot to the Byzantine Court?

'Let the gates be guarded, and no one allowed to leave the city,' suggested the Chaldee.

'Keep in monks? as well keep in rats! No; we must send off a counter-report, instantly.'

'What shall I say, your Excellency?' quoth the ready scribe, pulling out pen and inkhorn from his sash.

'What do I care? Any lie which comes to hand. What in the devil's name are you here for at all, but to invent a lie when I want one?'

'True, most noble,' and the worthy sat meekly down to his paper.... but did not proceed rapidly.

'I don't see anything that would suit the emergency, unless I stated, with your august leave, that Cyril, and not you, celebrated the gladiatorial exhibition; which might hardly appear credible?'

Orestes burst out laughing, in spite of himself. The sleek Chaldee smiled and purred in return. The victory was won; and Orestes, somewhat more master of himself, began to turn his vulpine cunning to the one absorbing question of the saving of his worthless neck.

'No, that would be too good. Write, that we had discovered a plot on Cyril's part to incorporate the whole of the African churches (mind and specify Carthage and Hippo) under his own jurisdiction, and to throw off allegiance to the Patriarch of Constantinople, in case of Heraclian's success.'

The secretary purred delighted approval, and scribbled away now with right good heart.

'Heraclian's success, your Excellency.'

'We of course desired, by every means in our power, to gratify the people of Alexandria, and, as was our duty, to excite by every lawful method their loyalty toward the throne of the Caesars (never mind who sat on it) at so critical a moment.'

'So critical a moment....'

'But as faithful Catholics, and abhorring even in the extremest need, the sin of Uzzah, we dreaded to touch with the unsanctified hands of laymen the consecrated ark of the Church, even though for its preservation....'

'Its preservation, your Excellency....'

'We, therefore, as civil magistrates, felt bound to confine ourselves to those means which were already allowed by law and custom to our jurisdiction; and accordingly made use of those largesses, spectacles, and public execution of rebels, which have unhappily appeared to his holiness the patriarch (too ready, perhaps, to find a cause of complaint against faithful adherents of the Byzantine See) to partake of the nature of those gladiatorial exhibitions, which are equally abhorrent to the spirit of the Catholic Church, and to the charity of the sainted emperors by whose pious edicts they have been long since abolished.'

'Your Excellency is indeed great.... but—pardon your slave's remark—my simplicity is of opinion that it may be asked why you did not inform the Augusta Pulcheria of Cyril's conspiracy?'

'Say that we sent a messenger off three months ago, but that.... Make something happen to him, stupid, and save me the trouble.'

'Shall I kill him by Arabs in the neighbourhood of Palmyra, your Excellency?'

'Let me see.... No. They may make inquiries there. Drown him at sea. Nobody can ask questions of the sharks.'

'Foundered between Tyre and Crete, from which sad calamity only one man escaped on a raft, and being picked tip, after three weeks' exposure to the fury of the elements, by a returning wheat-ship—By the bye, most noble, what am I to say about those wheat-ships not having even sailed?'

'Head of Augustus! I forgot them utterly. Say that—say that the plague was making such ravages in the harbour quarter that we feared carrying the infection to the seat of the empire; and let them sail to-morrow.'

The secretary's face lengthened.

'My fidelity is compelled to remark, even at the risk of your just indignation, that half of them have been unloaded again for your munificent largesses of the last two days.'

Orestes swore a great oath.

'Oh, that the mob had but one throat, that I might give them an emetic! Well, we must buy more corn, that's all.'

The secretary's face grew longer still.

'The Jews, most August—'

'What of them?' yelled the hapless Prefect. 'Have they been forestalling?'

'My assiduity has discovered this afternoon that they have been buying up and exporting all the provisions which they could obtain.'

'Scoundrels! Then they must have known of Heraclian's failure!'

'Your sagacity has, I fear, divined the truth. They have been betting largely against his success for the last week, both in Canopus and Pelusium.'

'For the last week! Then Miriam betrayed me knowingly!' And Orestes broke forth again into a paroxysm of fury.

'Here—call the tribune of the guard! A hundred gold pieces to the man who brings me the witch alive!'

'She will never be taken alive.'

'Dead, then—in any way! Go, you Chaldee hound! what are you hesitating about?'

'Most noble lord,' said the secretary, prostrating himself upon the floor, and kissing his master's feet in an agony of fear....

'Remember, that if you touch one Jew you touch all! Remember the bonds! remember the—the—your own most august reputation, in short.'

'Get up, brute, and don't grovel there, but tell me what you mean, like a human being. If old Miriam is once dead, her bonds die with her, don't they?'

'Alas, my lord, you do not know the customs of that accursed folk. They have a damnable practice of treating every member of their nation as a brother, and helping each freely and faithfully without reward; whereby they are enabled to plunder all the rest of the world, and thrive themselves, from the least to the greatest. Don't fancy that your bonds are in Miriam's hands. They have been transferred months ago. Your real creditors may be in Carthage, or Rome, or Byzantium, and they will attack you from thence; while all that you would find if you seized the old witch's property, would be papers, useless to you, belonging to Jews all over the empire, who would rise as one man in defence of their money. I assure you, it is a net without a bound. If you touch one you touch all.... And besides, my diligence, expecting some such command, has already taken the liberty of making inquiries as to Miriam's place of abode; but it appears, I am sorry to say, utterly unknown to any of your Excellency's servants.'

'You lie!' said Orestes.... 'I would much sooner believe that you have been warning the hag to keep out of the way.'

Orestes had spoken, for that once in his life, the exact truth.

The secretary, who had his own private dealings with Miriam, felt every particular atom of his skin shudder at those words; and had he had hair on his head, it would certainly have betrayed him by standing visibly on end. But as he was, luckily for him, close shaven, his turban remained in its proper place, as he meekly replied— 'Alas! a faithful servant can feel no keener woe than the causeless suspicion of that sun before whose rays he daily prostrates his—'

'Confound your periphrases! Do you know where she is?'

'No!' cried the wretched secretary, driven to the lie direct at last; and confirmed the negation with such a string of oaths, that Orestes stopped his volubility with a kick, borrowed of him, under threat of torture, a thousand gold pieces as largess to the soldiery, and ended by concentrating the stationaries round his own palace, for the double purpose of protecting himself in case of a riot, and of increasing the chances of the said riot, by leaving the distant quarters of the city without police.

'If Cyril would but make a fool of himself, now that he is in the full-blown pride of victory—the rascal!—about that Ammonius, or about Hypatia, or anything else, and give me a real handle against him! After all, truth works better than lying now and then. Oh, that I could poison him! But one can't bribe those ecclesiastics; and as for the dagger, one could not hire a man to be torn in pieces by monks. No; I must just sit still, and see what Fortune's dice may turn up. Well, your pedants like Aristides or Epaminondas—thank Heaven, the race of them has died out long ago!—might call this no very creditable piece of provincial legislation; but after all, it is about as good as any now going, or likely to be going till the world's end; and one can't be expected to strike out a new path. I shall stick to the wisdom of my predecessors, and—oh, that Cyril may make a fool of himself to-night!'

And Cyril did make a fool of himself that night, for the first and last time in his life; and suffers for it, as wise men are wont to do when they err, to this very day and hour: but how much Orestes gained by his foe's false move cannot be decided till the end of this story; perhaps not even then.



CHAPTER XXIV: LOST LAMBS

And Philammon?

For a long while he stood in the street outside the theatre, too much maddened to determine on any course of action; and, ere he had recovered his self-possession, the crowd began to pour from every outlet, and filling the street, swept him away in its stream.

Then, as he heard his sister's name, in every tone of pity, contempt, and horror, mingle with their angry exclamations, he awoke from his dream, and, bursting through the mob, made straight for Pelagia's house.

It was fast closed; and his repeated knocks at the gate brought only, after long waiting, a surly negro face to a little wicket.

He asked eagerly and instinctively for Pelagia; of course she had not yet returned. For Wulf he was not within. And then he took his station close to the gateway, while his heart beat loud with hope and dread.

At last the Goths appeared, forcing their way through the mob in a close column. There were no litters with them. Where, then, were Pelagia and her girls? Where, too, was the hated figure of the Amal? and Wulf, and Smid? The men came on, led by Goderic and Agilmund, with folded arms, knitted brows, downcast eyes: a stern disgust, not unmingled with shame, on every countenance, told Philammon afresh of his sister's infamy.

Goderic passed him close, and Philammon summoned up courage to ask for Wulf.... Pelagia he had not courage to name.

'Out, Greek hound! we have seen enough of your accursed race to-day! What? are you trying to follow us in?' And the young man's sword flashed from its sheath so swiftly, that Philammon had but just time enough to spring back into the street, and wait there, in an agony of disappointment and anxiety, as the gates slid together again, and the house was as silent as before.

For a miserable hour he waited, while the mob thickened instead of flowing away, and the scattered groups of chatterers began to form themselves into masses, and parade the streets with shouts of 'Down with the heathen!' 'Down with the idolaters!' 'Vengeance on all blaspheming harlots!'

At last the steady tramp of legionaries, and in the midst of the glittering lines of armed men—oh, joy!—a string of litters!

He sprang forward, and called Pelagia's name again and again. Once he fancied he heard an answer: but the soldiers thrust him back.

'She is safe here, young fool, and has seen and been seen quite enough to-day already. Back!'

'Let me speak to her!'

'That is her business. Ours is now to see her home safe.'

'Let me go in with you, I beseech!'

'If you want to go in, knock for yourself when we are gone. If you have any business in the house, they will open to you, I suppose. Out, you interfering puppy!'

And a blow of the spear-butt in his chest sent him rolling back into the middle of the street, while the soldiers, having delivered up their charge, returned with the same stolid indifference. In vain Philammon, returning, knocked at the gate. Curses and threats from the negro were all the answer which he received; and at last, wearied into desperation, he wandered away, up one street and down another, struggling in vain to form some plan of action for himself, until the sun was set.

Wearily he went homewards at last. Once the thought of Miriam crossed his mind. It was a disgusting alternative to ask help of her, the very author of his sister's shame: but yet she at least could obtain for him a sight of Pelagia; she had promised as much. But then—the condition which she had appended to her help! To see his sister, and yet to leave her as she was!—Horrible contradiction! But could he not employ Miriam for his own ends?—outwit her?—deceive her?—for it came to that. The temptation was intense: but it lasted only a moment. Could he defile so pure a cause by falsehood? And hurrying past the Jewess's door, hardly daring to look at it, lest the temptation should return, he darted upstairs to his own little chamber, hastily flung open the door, and stopped short in astonishment.

A woman, covered from head to foot in a large dark veil, stood in the centre of the chamber.

'Who are you? This is no place for you!' cried he, after a minute's pause. She replied only by a shudder and a sob.... He caught sight, beneath the folds of the veil, of a too well-known saffron shawl, and springing upon her like the lion on the lamb, clasped to his bosom his sister.

The veil fell from her beautiful forehead. She gazed into his eyes one moment with a look of terrified inquiry, and saw nothing there but love.... And clinging heart to heart, brother and sister mingled holy kisses, and strained nearer and nearer still, as if to satisfy their last lingering doubts of each other's kin.

Many a minute passed in silent joy.... Philammon dare not speak; he dare not ask her what brought her thither—dare not wake her to recollect the frightful present by questions of the past, of his long forgotten parents, their home, her history.... And, after all, was it not enough for him that he held her at last?—her, there by her own will—the lost lamb returned to him?—and their tears mingled as their cheeks were pressed together.

At last she spoke.

'I ought to have known you,—I believe I did know you from the first day! When they mentioned your likeness to me, my heart leapt up within me; and a voice whispered.... but I would not hear it! I was ashamed—ashamed to acknowledge my brother, for whom I had sought and longed for years.... ashamed to think that I had a brother.... Ah, God! and ought I not to be ashamed?'

And she broke from him again, and threw herself on the floor.

'Trample upon me; curse me!—anything but part me from him!'

Philammon had not the heart to answer her; but he made an involuntary gesture of sorrowful dissent.

'No! Call me what I am!—what he called me just now!—but do not take me away! Strike me, as he struck me!—anything but parting!'

'Struck you? The curse of God be on him!'

'Ah, do not curse him!—not him! It was not a blow, indeed!—only a push—a touch—and it was my fault—all mine. I angered him—I upbraided him;—I was mad.... Oh, why did he deceive me? Why did he let me dance?—command me to dance?'

'Command you?'

'He said that we must not break our words. He would not hear me, when I told him that we could deny having promised. I said that promises made over the wine need never be kept. Who ever heard of keeping them? And Orestes was drunk, too. But he said that I might teach a Goth to be what I liked, except a liar.... Was not that a strange speech?.... And Wulf bade him be strong, and blest him for it.'

'He was right,' sobbed Philammon.

'Then I thought he would love me for obeying him, though I loathed it!—Oh, God, how I loathed it!.... But how could I fancy that he did not like my doing it? Who ever heard of any one doing of their own will what they did not like?'

Philammon sobbed again, as the poor civilised savage artlessly opened to him all her moral darkness. What could he say?.... he knew what to say. The disease was so utterly patent, that any of Cyril's school-children could have supplied the remedy. But how to speak it?—how to tell her, before all things, as he longed to do, that there was no hope of her marrying the Amal, and, therefore, no peace for her till she left him.

'Then you did hate the—the—' said he, at last, catching at some gleam of light.

'Hate it? Do I not belong, body and soul, to him?—him only?.... And yet.... Oh, I must tell you all! When I and the girls began to practise, all the old feelings came back—the love of being admired, and applauded, and cheered; and dancing is so delicious!—so delicious to feel that you are doing anything beautiful perfectly, and better than every one else!.... And he saw that I liked it, and despised me for it.... And, deceitful!—he little guessed how much of the pains which I took were taken to please him, to do my best before him, to win admiration, only that I might take it home and throw it all at his beloved feet, and make the world say once more, "She has all Alexandria to worship her, and yet she cares for that one Goth more than for—" But he deceived me, true man that he is! He wished to enjoy my smiles to the last moment, and then to cast me off, when I had once given him an excuse.... Too cowardly to upbraid me, he let me ruin myself, to save him the trouble of ruining me. Oh, men, men! all alike! They love us for their own sakes, and we love them for love's sake. We live by love, we die for love, and yet we never find it, but only selfishness dressed up in love's mask.... And then we take up with that, poor, fond, self-blinded creatures that we are!—and in spite of the poisoned hearts around us, persuade ourselves that our latest asp's egg, at least, will hatch into a dove, and that though all men are faithless, our own tyrant can never change, for he is more than man!'

'But he has deceived you! You have found out your mistake. Leave him, then, as he deserves!'

Pelagia looked up, with something of a tender smile. 'Poor darling! Little do you know of love!'

Philammon, utterly bewildered by this newest and strangest phase of human passion, could only gasp out—

'But do you not love me, too, my sister?'

'Do I not love you? But not as I love him! Oh, hush, hush!—, you cannot understand yet!' And Pelagia hid her face in her hands, while convulsive shudderings ran through every limb....

'I must do it! I must! I will dare every thing, stoop to everything for love's sake! Go to her!—to the wise woman!—to Hypatia! She loves you! I know that she loves you! She will hear you, though she will not me!'

'Hypatia? Do you know that she was sitting there unmoved at—in the theatre?'

'She was forced! Orestes compelled her! Miriam told me so. And I saw it in her face. As I passed beneath her, I looked up; and she was as pale as ivory, trembling in every limb. There was a dark hollow round her eyes—she had been weeping, I saw. And I sneered in my mad self-conceit, and said, "She looks as if she was going to be crucified, not married!". But now, now!—Oh, go to her! Tell her that I will give her all I have—jewels, money, dresses, house! Tell her that I—I—entreat her pardon, that I will crawl to her feet myself and ask it, if she requires!—Only let her teach me—teach me to be wise and good, and honoured, and respected, as she is! Ask her to tell a poor broken-hearted woman her secret. She can make old Wulf, and him, and Orestes even, and the magistrates, respect her.... Ask her to teach me how to be like her, and to make him respect me again, and I will give her all—all!'

Philammon hesitated. Something within warned him, as the Daemon used to warn Socrates, that his errand would be bootless. He thought of the theatre, and of that firm, compressed lip; and forgot the hollow eye of misery which accompanied it, in his wrath against his lately-worshipped idol.

'Oh, go! go! I tell you it was against her will. She felt for me—I saw it—Oh, God! when I did not feel for myself! And I hated her, because she seemed to despise me in my fool's triumph! She cannot despise me now in my misery.... Go! Go! or you will drive me to the agony of going myself.'

There was but one thing to be done.

'You will wait, then, here? You will not leave me again?'

'Yes. But you must be quick! If he finds out that I am away, he may fancy.... Ah, heaven! let him kill me, but never let him be jealous of me! Go now! this moment! Take this as an earnest—the cestus which I wore there. Horrid thing! I hate the sight of it! But I brought it with me on purpose, or I would have thrown it into the canal. There; say it is an earnest—only an earnest—of what I will give her!'

In ten minutes more Philammon was in Hypatia's hall. The household seemed full of terror and disturbance; the hall was full of soldiers. At last Hypatia's favourite maid passed, and knew him. Her mistress could not speak with any one. Where was Theon, then? He, too, had shut himself up. Never mind. Philammon must, would speak with him. And he pleaded so passionately and so sweetly, that the soft-hearted damsel, unable to resist so handsome a suppliant, undertook his errand, and led him up to the library, where Theon, pale as death, was pacing to and fro, apparently half beside himself with terror.

Philammon's breathless message fell at first upon unheeding ears.

'A new pupil, sir! Is this a time for pupils; when my house, my daughter's life, is not safe? Wretch that I am! And have I led her into the snare? I, with my vain ambition and covetousness! Oh, my child! my child! my one treasure! Oh, the double curse which will light upon me, if—'

'She asks for but one interview.'

'With my daughter, sir? Pelagia! Will you insult me? Do you suppose, even if her own pity should so far tempt her to degrade herself, that I could allow her so to contaminate her purity?'

'Your terror, sir, excuses your rudeness.'

'Rudeness, sir? the rudeness lies in your intruding on us at such a moment!'

'Then this, perhaps, may, in your eyes at least, excuse me in my turn.' And Philammon held out the cestus. 'You are a better judge of its value than I. But I am commissioned to say, that it is only an earnest of what she will give willingly and at once, even to the half of her wealth, for the honour of becoming your daughter's pupil.' And he laid the jewelled girdle on the table.

The old man halted in his walk. The emeralds and pearls shone like the galaxy. He looked at them; and walked on again more slowly.... What might be their value? What might it not be? At least, they would pay all his debts.... And after hovering to and fro for another minute before the bait, he turned to Philammon.

'If you would promise to mention the thing to no one—'

'I will promise.'

'And in case my daughter, as I have a right to expect, shall refuse—'

'Let her keep the jewels. Their owner has learnt, thank God, to despise and hate them! Let her keep the jewels—and my curse! For God do so to me, and more also, if I ever see her face again!'

The old man had not heard the latter part of Philammon's speech. He had seized his bait as greedily as a crocodile, and hurried off with it into Hypatia's chamber, while Philammon stood expectant; possessed with a new and fearful doubt. 'Degrade herself!' 'Contaminate her purity!' If that notion were to be the fruit of all her philosophy? If selfishness, pride, Pharisaism, were all its outcome? Why—had they not been its outcome already? When had he seen her helping, even pitying, the poor, the outcast? When had he heard from her one word of real sympathy for the sorrowing; for the sinful?.... He was still lost in thought when Theon re-entered, bringing a letter.

'From Hypatia to her well-beloved pupil.

'I pity you—how should I not? And more. I thank you for this your request, for it shows me that my unwilling presence at the hideous pageant of to-day has not alienated from me a soul of which I had cherished the noblest hopes, for which I had sketched out the loftiest destiny. But how shall I say it? Ask yourself whether a change—apparently impossible—must not take place in her for whom you plead, before she and I can meet. I am not so inhuman as to blame you for having asked me; I do not even blame her for being what she is. She does but follow her nature; who can be angry with her, if destiny have informed so fair an animal with a too gross and earthly spirit? Why weep over her? Dust she is, and unto dust she will return: while you, to whom a more divine spark was allotted at your birth, must rise, and unrepining, leave below you one only connected with you by the unreal and fleeting bonds of fleshly kin.'

Philammon crushed the letter together in his hand, and strode from the house without a word. The philosopher had no gospel, then, for the harlot! No word for the sinner, the degraded! Destiny forsooth! She was to follow her destiny, and be base, miserable, self-condemned. She was to crush the voice of conscience and reason, as often as it awoke within her, and compel herself to believe that she was bound to be that which she knew herself bound not to be. She was to shut her eyes to that present palpable misery which was preaching to her, with the voice of God Himself, that the wages of sin are death. Dust she was, and unto dust she will return! Oh, glorious hope for her, for him, who felt as if an eternity of bliss would be worthless, if it parted him from his new-found treasure! Dust she was, and unto dust she must return!