'Anything to bribe a convert,' said Hypatia contemptuously.

'I assure you, no. He informed me, and her also, openly and uncivilly enough, that he thought us very much to be pitied for so great a fall.... But as we neither of us seemed to have any call for the higher life of celibacy, he could not press it on us.... We should have trouble in the flesh. But if we married we had not sinned. To which I answered that my humility was quite content to sit in the very lowest ranks, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.... He replied by an encomium on virginity, in which I seemed to hear again the voice of Hypatia herself.'

'And sneered at it inwardly, as you used to sneer at me.'

'Really I was in no sneering mood at that moment; and whatsoever I may have felt inclined to reply, he was kind enough to say for me and himself the next minute.'

'What do you mean?'

'He went on, to my utter astonishment, by such a eulogium on wedlock as I never heard from Jew or heathen, and ended by advice to young married folk so thoroughly excellent and to the point, that I could not help telling him, when he stopped; what a pity I thought it that he had not himself married, and made some good woman happy by putting his own recipes into practice.... And at that, Hypatia, I saw an expression on his face which made me wish for the moment that I had bitten out this impudent tongue of mine, before I so rashly touched some deep old wound.... That man has wept bitter tears ere now, be sure of it.... But he turned the conversation instantly, like a well-bred gentleman as he is, by saying, with the sweetest smile, that though he had made it a solemn rule never to be a party to making up any marriage, yet in our case Heaven had so plainly pointed us out for each other, etc. etc., that he could not refuse himself the pleasure.... and ended by a blessing as kindly as ever came from the lips of man.'

'You seem wonderfully taken with the sophist of Hippo,' said Hypatia impatiently; 'and forget, perhaps, that his opinions, especially when, as you confess, they are utterly inconsistent with themselves, are not quite as important to me as they seem to have become to you.'

'Whether he be consistent or not about marriage,' said Raphael, somewhat proudly, 'I care little. I went to him to tell me, not about the relation of the sexes, on which point I am probably as good a judge as he—but about God and on that subject he told me enough to bring me back to Alexandria, that I might undo, if possible, somewhat of the wrong which I have done to Hypatia.'

'What wrong have you done me?.... You are silent? Be sure, at least, that whatsoever it may be, you will not wipe it out by trying to make a proselyte of me!'

'Be not too sure of that. I have found too great a treasure not to wish to share it with Theon's daughter.'

'A treasure?' said she, half scornfully.

'Yes, indeed. You recollect my last words, when we parted there below a few months ago?'

Hypatia was silent. One terrible possibility at which he had hinted flashed across her memory for the first time since;.... but she spurned proudly from her the heaven-sent warning.

'I told you that, like Diogenes, I went forth to seek a man. Did I not promise you, that when I had found one you should be the first to hear of him? And I have found a man.'

Hypatia waved her beautiful hand. 'I know whom you would say.... that crucified one. Be it so. I want not a man, but a god.'

'What sort of a god, Hypatia? A god made up of our own intellectual notions, or rather of negations of them—of infinity and eternity, and invisibility, and impassibility—and why not of immortality, too, Hypatia? For I recollect we used to agree that it was a carnal degrading of the Supreme One to predicate of Him so merely human a thing as virtue.'

Hypatia was silent.

'Now I have always had a sort of fancy that what we wanted, as the first predicate of our Absolute One, was that He was to be not merely an infinite God—whatever that meant, which I suspect we did not always see quite clearly—or an eternal one—or an omnipotent one—or even merely a one God at all; none of which predicates, I fear, did we understand more clearly than the first: but that he must be a righteous God:—or rather, as we used sometimes to say that He was to have no predicate—Righteousness itself. And all along, I could not help remembering that my old sacred Hebrew books told me of such a one; and feeling that they might have something to tell me which—'

'Which I did not tell you! And this, then, caused your air of reserve, and of sly superiority over the woman whom you mocked by calling her your pupil! I little suspected you of so truly Jewish a jealousy! Why, oh why, did you not tell me this?'

'Because I was a beast, Hypatia; and had all but forgotten what this righteousness was like; and was afraid to find out lest it should condemn me. Because I was a devil, Hypatia; and hated righteousness, and neither wished to see you righteous, nor God righteous either, because then you would both have been unlike myself. God be merciful to me a sinner!'

She looked up in his face. The man was changed as if by miracle—and yet not changed. There was the same gallant consciousness of power, the same subtle and humorous twinkle in those strong ripe Jewish features and those glittering eyes; and yet every line in his face was softened, sweetened; the mask of sneering faineance was gone—imploring tenderness and earnestness beamed from his whole countenance. The chrysalis case had fallen off, and disclosed the butterfly within. She sat looking at him, and passed her hand across her eyes, as if to try whether the apparition would not vanish. He, the subtle!—he, the mocker!—he, the Lucian of Alexandria!—he whose depth and power had awed her, even in his most polluted days.... And this was the end of him....

'It is a freak of cowardly superstition.... Those Christians have been frightening him about his sins and their Tartarus.'

She looked again into his bright, clear, fearless face, and was ashamed of her own calumny. And this was the end of him—of Synesius—of Augustine—of learned and unlearned, Goth and Roman .... The great flood would have its way, then.... Could she alone fight against it?

She could! Would she submit?—She? Her will should stand firm, her reason free, to the last—to the death if need be.... And yet last night!—last night!

At last she spoke, without looking up.

'And what if you have found a man in that crucified one? Have you found in him a God also?'

'Does Hypatia recollect Glaucon's definition of the perfectly righteous man?.... How, without being guilty of one unrighteous act, he must labour his life long under the imputation of being utterly unrighteous, in order that his disinterestedness may be thoroughly tested, and by proceeding in such a course, arrive inevitably, as Glaucon says, not only in Athens of old, or in Judaea of old, but, as you yourself will agree, in Christian Alexandria at this moment, at—do you remember, Hypatia?—bonds, and the scourge, and lastly, at the cross itself.... If Plato's idea of the righteous man be a crucified one, why may not mine also? If, as we both—and old Bishop Clemens, too—as good a Platonist as we, remember—and Augustine himself, would agree, Plato in speaking those strange words, spoke not of himself, but by the Spirit of God, why should not others have spoken by the same Spirit when they spoke the same words?'

'A crucified man.... Yes. But a crucified God, Raphael! I shudder at the blasphemy.'

'So do my poor dear fellow-countrymen. Are they the more righteous in their daily doings, Hypatia, on account of their fancied reverence for the glory of One who probably knows best how to preserve and manifest His own glory? But you assent to the definition? Take care!' said he, with one of his arch smiles, 'I have been fighting with Augustine, and have become of late a terrible dialectician. Do you assent to it?'

'Of course—it is Plato's.'

'But do you assent merely because it is written in the book called Plato's, or because your reason tells you that it is true?.... You will not tell me. Tell me this, then, at least. Is not the perfectly righteous man the highest specimen of men?'

'Surely,' said she half carelessly: but not unwilling, like a philosopher and a Greek, as a matter of course, to embark in anything like a word-battle, and to shut out sadder thoughts for a moment.

'Then must not the Autanthropos, the archetypal and ideal man, who is more perfect than any individual specimen, be perfectly righteous also?'

'Yes.'

'Suppose, then, for the sake of one of those pleasant old games of ours, an argument, that he wished to manifest his righteousness to the world.... The only method for him, according to Plato, would be Glaucon's, of calumny and persecution, the scourge and the cross?'

'What words are these, Raphael? Material scourges and crosses for an eternal and spiritual idea?'

'Did you ever yet, Hypatia, consider at leisure what the archetype of man might be like?'

Hypatia started, as at a new thought, and confessed—as every Neo—Platonist would have done—that she had never done so.

'And yet our master, Plato, bade us believe that there was a substantial archetype of each thing, from a flower to a nation, eternal in the heavens. Perhaps we have not been faithful Platonists enough heretofore, my dearest tutor. Perhaps, being philosophers, and somewhat of Pharisees to boot, we began all our lucubrations as we did our prayers, by thanking God that we were not as other men were; and so misread another passage in the Republic, which we used in pleasant old days to be fond of quoting.'

'What was that?' asked Hypatia, who became more and more interested every moment.

'That philosophers were men.'

'Are you mocking me? Plato defines the philosopher as the man who seeks after the objects of knowledge, while others seek after those of opinion.'

'And most truly. But what if, in our eagerness to assert that wherein the philosopher differed from other men, we had overlooked that in which he resembled other men; and so forgot that, after all, man was a genus whereof the philosopher was only a species?'

Hypatia sighed.

'Do you not think, then, that as the greater contains the less, and the archetype of the genus that of the species, we should have been wiser if we had speculated a little more on the archetype of man as man, before we meddled with a part of that archetype,—the archetype of the philosopher?.... Certainly it would have been the easier course, for there are more men than philosophers, Hypatia; and every man is a real man, and a fair subject for examination, while every philosopher is not a real philosopher—our friends the Academics, for instance, and even a Neo-Platonist or two whom we know? You seem impatient. Shall I cease?'

'You mistook the cause of my impatience,' answered she, looking up at him with her great sad eyes. 'Go on.'

'Now—for I am going to be terribly scholastic—is it not the very definition of man, that he is, alone of all known things, a spirit temporarily united to an animal body?'

'Enchanted in it, as in a dungeon, rather,' said she sighing.

'Be it so if you will. But—must we not say that the archetype—the very man—that if he is the archetype, he too will be, or must have been, once at least, temporarily enchanted into an animal body?.... You are silent. I will not press you.... Only ask you to consider at your leisure whether Plato may not justify somewhat from the charge of absurdity the fisherman of Galilee, where he said that He in whose image man is made was made flesh, and dwelt with him bodily there by the lake-side at Tiberias, and that he beheld His Glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.'

'That last question is a very different one. God made flesh! My reason revolts at it.'

'Old Homer's reason did not.'

Hypatia started, for she recollected her yesterday's cravings after those old, palpable, and human deities. And—'Go on,' she cried eagerly.

'Tell me, then—This archetype of man, if it exists anywhere, it must exist eternally in the mind of God? At least, Plato would have so said?'

'Yes.'

'And derive its existence immediately from Him?'

'Yes.'

'But a man is one willing person, unlike to all others.'

'Yes.'

'Then this archetype must be such.'

'I suppose so.'

'But possessing the faculties and properties of all men in their highest perfection.'

'Of course.'

'How sweetly and obediently my late teacher becomes my pupil!'

Hypatia looked at him with her eyes full of tears.

'I never taught you anything, Raphael.'

'You taught me most, beloved lady, when you least thought of it. But tell me one thing more. Is it not the property of every man to be a son? For you can conceive of a man as not being a father, but not as not being a son.'

'Be it so.'

'Then this archetype must be a son also.'

'Whose son, Raphael?'

'Why not of "Zeus, father of gods and men"? For we agreed that it—we will call it he, now, having agreed that it is a person—could owe its existence to none but God Himself.'

'And what then?' said Hypatia, fixing those glorious eyes full on his face, in an agony of doubt, but yet, as Raphael declared to his dying day, of hope and joy.

'Well, Hypatia, and must not a son be of the same species as his father? "Eagles," says the poet, "do not beget doves." Is the word son anything but an empty and false metaphor, unless the son be the perfect and equal likeness of his father?'

'Heroes beget sons worse than themselves, says the poet.'

'We are not talking now of men as they are, whom Homer's Zeus calls the most wretched of all the beasts of the field; we are talking—are we not?—of a perfect and archetypal Son, and a perfect and archetypal Father, in a perfect and eternal world, wherein is neither growth, decay, nor change; and of a perfect and archetypal generation, of which the only definition can be, that like begets its perfect like?.... You are silent. Be so, Hypatia.... We have gone up too far into the abysses....

And so they both were silent for a while. And Raphael thought solemn thoughts about Victoria, and about ancient signs of Isaiah's, which were to him none the less prophecies concerning The Man whom he had found, because he prayed and trusted that the same signs might be repeated to himself, and a child given to him also, as a token that, in spite of all his baseness, 'God was with him.'

But he was a Jew, and a man: Hypatia was a Greek, and a woman—and for that matter, so were the men of her school. To her, the relations and duties of common humanity shone with none of the awful and divine meaning which they did in the eyes of the converted Jew, awakened for the first time in his life to know the meaning of his own scriptures, and become an Israelite indeed. And Raphael's dialectic, too, though it might silence her, could not convince her. Her creed, like those of her fellow-philosophers, was one of the fancy and the religious sentiment, rather than of the reason and the moral sense. All the brilliant cloud-world in which she had revelled for years,—cosmogonies, emanations, affinities, symbolisms, hierarchies, abysses, eternities, and the rest of it—though she could not rest in them, not even believe in, them—though they had vanished into thin air at her most utter need,—yet—they were too pretty to be lost sight of for ever; and, struggling against the growing conviction of her reason, she answered at last—

'And you would have me give up, as you seem to have done, the sublime, the beautiful, the heavenly, for a dry and barren chain of dialectic—in which, for aught I know,—for after all, Raphael, I cannot cope with you—I am a woman—a weak woman!'

And she covered her face with her hands.

'For aught you know, what?' asked Raphael gently.

'You may have made the worse appear the better reason.'

'So said Aristophanes of Socrates. But hear me once more, beloved Hypatia. You refuse to give up the beautiful, the sublime, the heavenly? What if Raphael Aben-Ezra, at least, had never found them till now? Recollect what I said just now—what if our old Beautiful, and Sublime, and Heavenly, had been the sheerest materialism, notions spun by our own brains out of the impressions of pleasant things, and high things, and low things, and awful things, which we had seen with our bodily eyes? What if I had discovered that the spiritual is not the intellectual, but the moral; and that the spiritual world is not, as we used to make it, a world of our own intellectual abstractions, or of our own physical emotions, religious or other, but a world of righteous or unrighteous persons? What if I had discovered that one law of the spiritual world, in which all others were contained, was righteousness; and that disharmony with that law, which we called unspirituality, was not being vulgar, or clumsy, or ill-taught, or unimaginative, or dull, but simply being unrighteous? What if I had discovered that righteousness, and it alone, was the beautiful righteousness, the sublime, the heavenly, the Godlike—ay, God Himself? And what if it had dawned on me, as by a great sunrise, what that righteousness was like? What if I had seen a human being, a woman, too, a young weak girl, showing forth the glory and the beauty of God? Showing me that the beautiful was to mingle unshrinking, for duty's sake, with all that is most foul and loathsome; that the sublime was to stoop to the most menial offices, the most outwardly-degrading self-denials; that to be heavenly was to know that the commonest relations, the most vulgar duties, of earth, were God's commands, and only to be performed aright by the help of the same spirit by which He rules the Universe; that righteousness was to love, to help, to suffer for—if need be, to die for—those who, in themselves, seem fitted to arouse no feelings except indignation and disgust? What if, for the first time, I trust not for the last time, in my life, I saw this vision; and at the sight of it my eyes were opened, and I knew it for the likeness and the glory of God? What if I, a Platonist, like John of Galilee, and Paul of Tarsus, yet, like them, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, had confessed to myself—If the creature can love thus, how much more its archetype? If weak woman can endure thus, how much more a Son of God? If for the good of others, man has strength to sacrifice himself in part, God will have strength to sacrifice Himself utterly. If He has not done it, He will do it: or He will be less beautiful, less sublime, less heavenly, less righteous than my poor conception of Him, ay, than this weak playful girl! Why should I not believe those who tell me that He has done it already? What if their evidence be, after all, only probability? I do not want mathematical demonstration to prove to me that when a child was in danger his father saved him—neither do I here. My reason, my heart, every faculty of me, except this stupid sensuous experience, which I find deceiving me every moment, which cannot even prove to me my own existence, accepts that story of Calvary as the most natural, most probable, most necessary of earthly events, assuming only that God is a righteous Person, and not some dream of an all-pervading necessary spirit-nonsense which, in its very terms, confesses its own materialism.'

Hypatia answered with a forced smile.

'Raphael Aben-Ezra has deserted the method of the severe dialectician for that of the eloquent lover.'

'Not altogether,' said he, smiling in return. 'For suppose that I had said to myself, We Platonists agree that the sight of God is the highest good.'

Hypatia once more shuddered at last night's recollections.

'And if He be righteous, and righteousness be—as I know it to be—identical with love, then He will desire that highest good for men far more than they can desire it for themselves.... Then He will desire to show Himself and His own righteousness to them.... Will you make answer, dearest Hypatia, or shall I?....or does your silence give consent? At least let me go on to say this, that if God do desire to show His righteousness to men, His only perfect method, according to Plato, will be that of calumny, persecution, the scourge, and the cross, that so He, like Glaucon's righteous man, may remain for ever free from any suspicion of selfish interest, or weakness of endurance.... Am I deserting the dialectic method now, Hypatia?.... You are still silent? You will not hear me, I see.... At some future day, the philosopher may condescend to lend a kinder ear to the words of her greatest debtor .... Or, rather, she may condescend to hear, in her own heart, the voice of that Archetypal Man, who has been loving her, guiding her, heaping her with every perfection of body and of mind, inspiring her with all pure and noble longings, and only asks of her to listen to her own reason, her own philosophy, when they proclaim Him as the giver of them, and to impart them freely and humbly, as He has imparted them to her, to the poor, and the brutish, and the sinful, whom He loves as well as He loves her.... Farewell!'

'Stay!' said she, springing up: 'whither are you going?'

'To do a little good before I die, having done much evil. To farm, plant, and build, and rescue a little corner of Ormuzd's earth, as the Persians would say, out of the dominion of Ahriman. To fight Ausurian robbers, feed Thracian mercenaries, save a few widows from starvation, and a few orphans from slavery.... Perhaps to leave behind me a son of David's line, who will be a better Jew, because a better Christian, than his father.... We shall have trouble in the flesh, Augustine tells us.... But, as I answered him, I really have had so little thereof yet, that my fair share may probably be rather a useful education than otherwise. Farewell!'

'Stay!' said she. 'Come again!—again! And her.... Bring her.... I must see her! She must be noble, indeed, to be worthy of you.'

'She is many a hundred miles away.'

'Ah! Perhaps she might have taught something to me—me, the philosopher! You need not have feared me.... I have no heart to make converts now.... Oh, Raphael Aben-Ezra, why break the bruised reed? My plans are scattered to the winds, my pupils worthless, my fair name tarnished, my conscience heavy with the thought of my own cruelty.... If you do not know all, you will know it but too soon .... My last hope, Synesius, implores for himself the hope which I need from him....And, over and above it all.... You!.... Et tu, Brute! Why not fold my mantle round me, like Julius of old, and die!'

Raphael stood looking sadly at her, as her whole face sank into utter prostration. ...............

'Yes—come.... The Galilaean.... If He conquers strong men, can the weak maid resist Him? Come soon.... This afternoon.... My heart is breaking fast.'

'At the eighth hour this afternoon?'

'Yes.... At noon I lecture.... take my farewell, rather, for ever of the schools....Gods! What have I to say?.... And tell me about Him of Nazareth. Farewell!'

'Farewell, beloved lady! At the ninth hour, you shall hear of Him of Nazareth.'

Why did his own words sound to him strangely pregnant, all but ominous? He almost fancied that not he, but some third person had spoken them. He kissed Hypatia's hand, it was as cold as ice; and his heart, too, in spite of all his bliss, felt cold and heavy, as he left the room.

As he went down the steps into the street, a young man sprang from behind one of the pillars, and seized his arm.

'Aha! my young Coryphaeus of pious plunderers! What do you want with me?'

Philammon, for it was he, looked at him an instant, and recognised him.

'Save her! for the love of God, save her!'

'Whom?'

'Hypatia!'

'How long has her salvation been important to you, my good friend?'

'For God's sake,' said Philammon, 'go back and warn her! She will hear you—you are rich—you used to be her friend—I know you—I have heard of you.... Oh, if you ever cared for her—if you ever felt for her a thousandth part of what I feel—go in and warn her not to stir from home!'

'I must hear more of this,' said Raphael, who saw that the boy was in earnest. 'Come in with me, and speak to her father.'

'No! not in that house! Never in that house again! Do not ask me why: but go yourself. She will not hear me. Did you—did you prevent her from listening?'

'What do you mean?'

'I have been here—ages! I sent a note in by her maid, and she returned no answer.'

Raphael recollected then, for the first time, a note which he had seen brought to her during the conversation.

'I saw her receive a note. She tossed it away. Tell me your story. If there is reason in it, I will bear your message myself. Of what is she to be warned?'

'Of a plot—I know that there is a plot—against her among the monks and Parabolani. As I lay in bed this morning in Arsenius's room—they thought I was asleep—'

'Arsenius? Has that venerable fanatic, then, gone the way of all monastic flesh, and turned persecutor?'

'God forbid! I heard him beseeching Peter the Reader to refrain from something, I cannot tell what; but I caught her name.... I heard Peter say, "She that hindereth will hinder till she be taken out of the way." And when he went out into the passage I heard him say to another, "That thou doest, do quickly!...."'

'These are slender grounds, my friend.'

'Ah, you do not know of what those men are capable!'

'Do I not? Where did you and I meet last?'

Philammon blushed and burst forth again. 'That was enough for me. I know the hatred which they bear her, the crimes which they attribute to her. Her house would have been attacked last night had it not been for Cyril.... And I knew Peter's tone. He spoke too gently and softly not to mean something devilish. I watched all the morning for an opportunity of escape, and here I am!—Will you take my message, or see her—'

'What?'

'God only knows, and the devil whom they worship instead of God.'

Raphael hurried back into the house—'Could he see Hypatia?' She had shut herself up in her private room, strictly commanding that no visitor should be admitted.... 'Where was Theon, then?' He had gone out by the canal gate half an hour before, with a bundle of mathematical papers under his arm, no one knew whither.... 'Imbecile old idiot!' and he hastily wrote on his tablet— 'Do not despise the young monk's warning. I believe him to speak the truth. As you love yourself and your father, Hypatia, stir not out to-day.'

He bribed a maid to take the message upstairs; and passed his time in the hall in warning the servants. But they would not believe him. It was true the shops were shut in some quarters, and the Museum gardens empty; people were a little frightened after yesterday. But Cyril, they had heard for certain, had threatened excommunication only last night to any Christian who broke the peace; and there had not been a monk to be seen in the streets the whole morning. And as for any harm happening to their mistress—impossible! 'The very wild beasts would not tear her,' said the huge negro porter, 'if she was thrown into the amphitheatre.'

—Whereat a maid boxed his ears for talking of such a thing; and then, by way of mending it, declared that she knew for certain that her mistress could turn aside the lightning, and call legions of spirits to fight for her with a nod.... What was to be done with such idolaters? And yet who could help liking them the better for it?

At last the answer came down, in the old graceful, studied, self-conscious handwriting.

'It is a strange way of persuading me to your new faith, to bid me beware, on the very first day of your preaching, of the wickedness of those who believe it. I thank you: but your affection for me makes you timorous. I dread nothing. They will not dare. Did they dare now, they would have dared long ago. As for that youth—to obey or to believe his word, even to seem aware of his existence, were shame to me henceforth. Because he is insolent enough to warn me therefore I will go. Fear not for me. You would not wish me, for the first time in my life, to fear for myself. I must follow my destiny. I must speak the words which I have to speak. Above all, I must let no Christian say, that the philosopher dared less than the fanatic. If my Gods are Gods, then will they protect me: and if not, let your God prove His rule as seems to Him good.'

Raphael tore the letter to fragments.... The guards, at least, were not gone mad like the rest of the world. It wanted half an hour of the time of her lecture. In the interval he might summon force enough to crush all Alexandria. And turning suddenly, he darted out of the room and out of the house.

'Quem Deus vult perdere-!' cried he to Philammon, with a gesture of grief. 'Stay here and stop her!—make a last appeal! Drag the horses' heads down, if you can! I will be back in ten minutes.' And he ran off for the nearest gate of the Museum gardens.

On the other side of the gardens lay the courtyard of the palace. There were gates in plenty communicating between them. If he could but see Orestes, even alarm the guard in time!....

And he hurried through the walks and alcoves, now deserted by the fearful citizens, to the nearest gate. It was fast, and barricaded firmly on the outside.

Terrified, he ran on to the next; it was barred also. He saw the reason in a moment, and maddened as he saw it. The guards, careless about the Museum, or reasonably fearing no danger from the Alexandrian populace to the glory and wonder of their city, or perhaps wishing wisely enough to concentrate their forces in the narrowest space, had contented themselves with cutting off all communication with the gardens, and so converting the lofty partition-wall into the outer enceinte of their marble citadel. At all events, the doors leading from the Museum itself might be open. He knew them every one, every hall, passage, statue, picture, almost every book in that vast treasure-house of ancient civilisation. He found an entrance; hurried through well-known corridors to a postern through which he and Orestes had lounged a hundred times, their lips full of bad words, their hearts of worse thoughts, gathered in those records of the fair wickedness of old.... It was fast. He beat upon it but no one answered. He rushed on and tried another. No one answered there. Another—still silence and despair!.... He rushed upstairs, hoping that from the windows above he might be able to call to the guard. The prudent soldiers had locked and barricaded the entrances to the upper floors of the whole right wing, lest the palace court should be commanded from thence. Whither now? Back—and whither then? Back, round endless galleries, vaulted halls, staircases, doorways, some fast, some open, up and down, trying this way and that, losing himself at whiles in that enormous silent labyrinth. And his breath failed him, his throat was parched, his face burned as with the simoom wind, his legs were trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect, failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted; there was a spell upon him. Was it a dream? Was it all one of those hideous nightmares of endless pillars beyond pillars, stairs above stairs, rooms within rooms, changing, shifting, lengthening out for ever and for ever before the dreamer, narrowing, closing in on him, choking him? Was it a dream? Was he doomed to wander for ever and for ever in some palace of the dead, to expiate the sin which he had learnt and done therein? His brain, for the first time in his life, began to reel. He could recollect nothing but that something dreadful was to happen—and that he had to prevent it, and could not.... Where was he now? In a little by-chamber.... He had talked with her there a hundred times, looking out over the Pharos and the blue Mediterranean.... What was that roar below? A sea of weltering yelling heads, thousands on thousands, down to the very beach; and from their innumerable throats one mighty war-cry—'God, and the mother of God!' Cyril's hounds were loose.... He reeled from the window, and darted frantically away again.... whither, he knew not, and never knew until his dying day.

And Philammon?.... Sufficient for the chapter, as for the day, is the evil thereof.



CHAPTER XXVIII: WOMAN'S LOVE

Pelagia had passed that night alone in sleepless sorrow, which was not diminished by her finding herself the next morning palpably a prisoner in her own house. Her girls told her that they had orders—they would not say from whom—to prevent her leaving her own apartments. And though some of them made the announcement with sighs and tears of condolence, yet more than one, she could see, was well inclined to make her feel that her power was over, and that there were others besides herself who might aspire to the honour of reigning favourite.

What matter to her? Whispers, sneers, and saucy answers fell on her ear unheeded. She had one idol, and she had lost it; one power, and it had failed her. In the heaven above, and in the earth beneath, was neither peace, nor help, nor hope; nothing but black, blank, stupid terror and despair. The little weak infant soul, which had just awakened in her, had been crushed and stunned in its very birth-hour; and instinctively she crept away to the roof of the tower where her apartments were, to sit and weep alone.

There she sat, hour after hour, beneath the shade of the large windsail, which served in all Alexandrian houses the double purpose of a shelter from the sun and a ventilator for the rooms below; and her eye roved carelessly over that endless sea of roofs and towers, and masts, and glittering canals, and gliding boats; but she saw none of them—nothing but one beloved face, lost, lost for ever.

At last a low whistle roused her from her dream. She looked up. Across the narrow lane, from one of the embrasures of the opposite house-parapet bright eyes were peering at her. She moved angrily to escape them.

The whistle was repeated, and a head rose cautiously above the parapet.... It was Miriam's. Casting a careful look around, Pelagia went forward. What could the old woman want with her?

Miriam made interrogative signs, which Pelagia understood as asking her whether she was alone; and the moment that an answer in the negative was returned, Miriam rose, tossed over to her feet a letter weighted with a pebble, and then vanished again.

'I have watched here all day! They refused me admittance below. Beware of Wulf, of every one. Do not stir from your chamber. There is a plot to carry you off to-night, and give you up to your brother the monk; you are betrayed; be brave!'

Pelagia read it with blanching cheek and staring eyes; and took, at least, the last part of Miriam's advice. For walking down the stair, she passed proudly through her own rooms, and commanding back the girls who would have stayed her, with a voice and gesture at which they quailed, went straight down, the letter in her hand, to the apartment where the Amal usually spent his mid-day hours.

As she approached the door, she heard loud voices within.... His!—yes; but Wulf's also. Her heart failed her, and she stopped a moment to listen.... She heard Hypatia's name; and mad with curiosity, crouched down at the lock, and hearkened to every word.

'She will not accept me, Wulf.'

'If she will not, she shall go farther and fare worse. Besides, I tell you, she is hard run. It is her last chance, and she will jump at it. The Christians are mad with her; if a storm blows up, her life is not worth—that!'

'It is a pity that we have not brought her hither already.'

'It is; but we could not. We must not break with Orestes till the palace is in our hands.'

'And will it ever be in our hands, friend?'

'Certain. We were round at every picquet last night, and the very notion of an Amal's heading them made them so eager, that we had to bribe them to be quiet rather than to rise.'

'Odin! I wish I were among them now!'

'Wait till the city rises. If the day pass over without a riot, I know nothing. The treasure is all on board, is it not?'

'Yes, and the galleys ready. I have been working like a horse at them all the morning, as you would let me do nothing else. And Goderic will not be back from the palace, you say, till nightfall!'

'If we are attacked first, we are to throw up a fire signal to him, and he is to come off hither with what Goths he can muster. If the palace is attacked first, he is to give us the signal, and we are to pack up and row round thither. And in the meanwhile he is to make that hound of a Greek prefect as drunk as he can.'

'The Greek will see him under the table. He has drugs, I know, as all these Roman rascals have, to sober him when he likes; and then he sets to work and drinks again. Send off old Smid, and let him beat the armourer if he can.'

'A very good thought!' said Wulf, and came out instantly for the purpose of putting it in practice.

Pelagia had just time to retreat into an adjoining doorway: but she had heard enough; and as Wulf passed, she sprang to him and caught him by the arm.

'Oh, come in hither! Speak to me one moment; for mercy's sake speak to me!' and she drew him, half against his will, into the chamber, and throwing herself at his feet, broke out into a childlike wail.

Wulf stood silent, utterly discomfited by this unexpected submission, where he had expected petulant and artful resistance. He almost felt guilty and ashamed, as he looked down into that beautiful imploring face, convulsed with simple sorrow, as of a child for a broken toy..... At last she spoke.

'Oh, what have I done-what have I done? Why must you take him from me? What have I done but love him, honour him, worship him? I know you love him; and I love you for it.—I do indeed! But you—what is your love to mine? Oh, I would die for him—be torn in pieces for him—now, this moment!....

Wulf was silent.

'What have I done but love him? What could I wish but to make him happy? I was rich enough, praised, and petted;.... and then he came,.... glorious as he is, like a god among men—among apes rather—and I worshipped him: was I wrong in that? I gave up all for him: was I wrong in that? I gave him myself: what could I do more? He condescended to like me—he the hero! Could I help submitting? I loved him: could I help loving him? Did I wrong him in that? Cruel, cruel Wulf!....'

Wulf was forced to be stern, or he would have melted at once.

'And what was your love worth to him? What has it done for him? It has made him a sot, an idler, a laughing-stock to these Greek dogs, when he might have been their conqueror, their king. Foolish woman, who cannot see that your love has been his bane, his ruin! He, who ought by now to have been sitting upon the throne of the Ptolemies, the lord of all south of the Mediterranean—as he shall be still!'

Pelagia looked tip at him wide-eyed, as if her mind was taking in slowly some vast new thought, under the weight of which it reeled already. Then she rose slowly.

'And he might be Emperor of Africa.'

'And he shall be; but not—'

'Not with me!' she almost shrieked. 'No! not with wretched, ignorant, polluted me! I see—oh God, I see it all! And this is why you want him to marry her—her—'

She could not utter the dreaded name.

Wulf could not trust himself to speak; but he bowed his head in acquiescence. ...............

'Yes—I will go—up into the desert—with Philammon—and you shall never hear of me again. And I will be a nun, and pray for him, that he may be a great king, and conquer all the world. You will tell him why I went away, will you not? Yes, I will go,—now, at once—'

She turned away hurriedly, as if to act upon her promise, and then she sprang again to Wulf with a sudden shudder.

'I cannot, Wulf!—I cannot leave him! I shall go mad if I do! Do not be angry;—I will promise anything—take any oath you like, if you will only let me stay here. Only as a slave—as anything—if I may but look at him sometimes. No—not even that—but to be tinder the same roof with him, only—Oh, let me be but a slave in the kitchen! I will make over all I have to him—to you—to any one! And you shall tell him that I am gone—dead, if you will.—Only let me stay! And I will wear rags, and grind in the mill.... Even that will be delicious, to know that he is eating the bread which I have made! And if I ever dare speak to him—even to come near hint—let the steward hang me up by the wrists, and whip me, like the slave which I deserve to be!... And then shall I soon grow old and ugly with grief, and—there will be no more danger then, dear Wulf, will there, from this accursed face of mine? Only promise me that, and—There he is calling you! Don't let him come in and see me!—I cannot bear it! Go to him, quick, and tell him all.—No, don't tell him yet....'

And she sank down again on the floor, as Wulf went out murmuring to himself—

'Poor child! poor child! well for thee this clay if thou wert dead, and at the bottom of Hela!'

And Pelagia heard what he said.

Gradually, amid sobs and tears, and stormy confusion of impossible hopes and projects, those words took root in her mind, and spread, till they filled her whole heart and brain.

'Well for me if I were dead?'

And she rose slowly.

'Well for me if I were dead? And why not? Then it would indeed be all settled. There would be no more danger from poor little Pelagia then....'

She went slowly, firmly, proudly, into the well-known chamber.... She threw herself upon the bed, and covered the pillow with kisses. Her eye fell on the Amal's sword, which hung across the bed's-head, after the custom of Gothic warriors. She seized it, and took it down, shuddering.

'Yes!.... Let it be with this, if it must be. And it must be. I cannot bear it! Anything but shame! To have fancied all my life—vain fool that I was!—that every one loved and admired me, and to find that they were despising me, hating me, all along! Those students at the lecture-room door told me I was despised. The old monk told me so—Fool that I was! I forgot it next day!—For he—he loved me still!—All—how could I believe them, till his own lips had said it?.... Intolerable!.... And yet women as bad as I am have been honoured—when they were dead. What was that song which I used to sing about Epicharis, who hung herself in the litter, and Leaina, who bit out her tongue, lest the torture should drive them to betray their lovers? There used to be a statue of Leaina, they say, at Athens,—a lioness without a tongue.... And whenever I sang the song, the theatre used to rise, and shout, and call them noble and blessed.... I never could tell why then; but I know now!—I know now! Perhaps they may call me noble, after all. At least, they may say "She was a—a—but she dare die for the man she loved!".... Ay, but God despises me too, and elates me. He will send me to eternal fire. Philammon said so—though he was my brother. The old monk said so—though he wept as he said it.... The flames of hell for ever! Oh, not for ever! Great, dreadful God! Not for ever! Indeed, I did not know! No one taught me about right and wrong, and I never knew that I had been baptized—Indeed, I never knew! And it was so pleasant—so pleasant to be happy, and praised, and loved, and to see happy faces round me. How could I help it? The birds there who are singing in the darling, beloved court—they do what they like, and Thou art not angry with them for being happy! And Thou wilt not be more cruel to me than to them, great God—for what did I know more than they? Thou hast made the beautiful sunshine, and the pleasant, pleasant world, and the flowers, and the birds—Thou wilt not send me to burn for ever and ever? Will not a hundred years be punishment enough-or a thousand? Oh God! is not this punishment enough already,—to have to leave him, just as just as I am beginning to long to be good, and to be worthy of him?.... Oh, have mercy—mercy—mercy—and let me go after I have been punished enough! Why may I not turn into a bird, or even a worm, and come back again out of that horrible place, to see the sun shine, and the flowers grow once more? Oh, am I not punishing myself already? Will not this help to atone?.... Yes—I will die!—and perhaps so God may pity me!'

And with trembling hands she drew the sword from its sheath and covered the blade with kisses.

'Yes—on this sword—with which he won his battles. That is right—his to the last! How keen and cold it looks! Will it be very painful?.... No—I will not try the point, or my heart might fail me. I will fall on it at once: let it hurt me as it may, it will be too late to draw back then. And after all it is his sword—It will not have the heart to torture me much. And yet he struck me himself this morning!'

And at that thought, a long wild cry of misery broke from her lips, and rang through the house. Hurriedly she fastened the sword upright to the foot of the bed, and tore open her tunic.... 'Here—under this widowed bosom, where his head will never lie again! There are footsteps in the passage! Quick, Pelagia! Now—'

And she threw up her arms wildly, in act to fall....

'It is his step! And he will find me, and never know that it is for him I die!'

The Amal tried the door. It was fast. With a single blow he burst it open, and demanded—

'What was that shriek? What is the meaning of this? Pelagia!'

Pelagia, like a child caught playing with a forbidden toy, hid her face in her hands and cowered down.

'What is it?' cried he, lifting her.

But she burst from his arms.

'No, no!—never more! I am not worthy of you! Let me die, wretch that I am! I can only drag you down. You must be a king. You must marry her—the wise woman!'

'Hypatia! She is dead!'

'Dead?' shrieked Pelagia.

'Murdered, an hour ago, by those Christian devils.'

Pelagia put her hands over her eyes, and burst into tears. Were they of pity or of joy?... She did not ask herself; and we will not ask her.

'Where is my sword? Soul of Odin! Why is it fastened here?'

'I was going to—Do not be angry!.... They told me that I had better die, and—

The Amal stood thunderstruck for a moment.

'Oh, do not strike me again! Send me to the mill. Kill me now with your own hand! Anything but another blow!'

'A blow?—Noble woman!'cried the Amal, clasping her in his arms.

The storm was past; and Pelagia had been nestling to that beloved heart, cooing like a happy dove, for many a minute before the Amal aroused himself and her....

'Now!—quick! We have not a moment to lose. Up to the tower, where you will be safe; and then to show these curs what comes of snarling round the wild wolves' den!'



CHAPTER XXIX: NEMESIS

And was the Amal's news true, then?

Philammon saw Raphael rush across the street into the Museum gardens. His last words had been a command to stay where he was; and the boy obeyed him. The black porter who let Raphael out told him somewhat insolently, that his mistress would see no one, and receive no messages: but he had made up his mind: complained of the sun, quietly ensconced himself behind a buttress, and sat coiled up on the pavement, ready for a desperate spring. The slave stared at him: but he was accustomed to the vagaries of philosophers; and thanking the gods that he was not born in that station of life, retired to his porter's cell, and forgot the whole matter.

There Philammon awaited a full half-hour. It seemed to him hours, days, years. And yet Raphael did not return: and yet no guards appeared. Was the strange Jew a traitor? Impossible!—his face had shown a desperate earnestness of terror as intense as Philammon's own.... Yet why did he not return?

Perhaps he had found out that the streets were clear; their mutual fears groundless.... What meant that black knot of men some two hundred yards off, hanging about the mouth of the side street, just opposite the door which led to her lecture-room? He moved to watch them: they had vanished. He lay down again and waited.... There they were again. It was a suspicious post. That street ran along the back of the Caesareum, a favourite haunt of monks, communicating by innumerable entries and back buildings with the great Church itself.... And yet, why should there not be a knot of monks there? What more common in every street of Alexandria? He tried to laugh away his own fears. And yet they ripened, by the very intensity of thinking on them, into certainty. He knew that something terrible was at hand. More than once he looked out from his hiding-place—the knot of men were still there;.... it seemed to have increased, to draw nearer. If they found him, what would they not suspect? What did he care? He would die for her, if it came to that—not that it could come to that: but still he must speak to her—he must warn her. Passenger after passenger, carriage after carriage passed along the street: student after student entered the lecture-room; but he never saw them, not though they passed him close. The sun rose higher and higher, and turned his whole blaze upon the corner where Philammon crouched, till the pavement scorched like hot iron, and his eyes were dazzled by the blinding glare: but he never heeded it. His whole heart, and sense, and sight, were riveted upon that well-known door, expecting it to open....

At last a curricle, glittering with silver, rattled round the corner and stopped opposite him. She must becoming now. The crowd had vanished. Perhaps it was, after all, a fancy of his own. No; there they were, peeping round the corner, close to the lecture-room—the hell-hounds! A slave brought out an embroidered cushion—and then Hypatia herself came forth, looking more glorious than ever; her lips set in a sad firm smile; her eyes uplifted, inquiring, eager, and yet gentle, dimmed by some great inward awe, as if her soul was far away aloft, and face to face with God.

In a moment he sprang up to her, caught her robe convulsively, threw himself on his knees before her—

'Stop! Stay! You are going to destruction!'

Calmly she looked down upon him.

'Accomplice of witches! Would you make of Theon's daughter a traitor like yourself?'

He sprang up, stepped back, and stood stupefied with shame and despair....

She believed him guilty, then!.... It was the will of God!

The plumes of the horses were waving far down the street before he recovered himself, and rushed after her, shouting he knew not what.

It was too late! A dark wave of men rushed from the ambuscade, surged up round the car.... swept forward.... she had disappeared! and as Philammon followed breathless, the horses galloped past him madly homeward with the empty carriage.

Whither were they dragging her? To the Caesareum, the Church of God Himself? Impossible! Why thither of all places of the earth? Why did the mob, increasing momentarily by hundreds, pour down upon the beach, and return brandishing flints, shells, fragments of pottery?

She was upon the church steps before he caught them up, invisible among the crowd; but he could track her by the fragments of her dress.

Where were her gay pupils now? Alas! they had barricaded themselves shamefully in the Museum, at the first rush which swept her from the door of the lecture-room. Cowards! he would save her!

And he struggled in vain to pierce the dense mass of Parabolani and monks, who, mingled with the fishwives and dock-workers, leaped and yelled around their victim. But what he could not do another and a weaker did—even the little porter. Furiously—no one knew how or whence—he burst up as if from the ground in the thickest of the crowd, with knife, teeth, and nails, like a venomous wild-cat, tearing his way towards his idol. Alas! he was torn down himself, rolled over the steps, and lay there half dead in an agony of weeping, as Philammon sprang up past him into the church.

Yes. On into the church itself! Into the cool dim shadow, with its fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and incense, and blazing altar, and great pictures looking from the walls athwart the gorgeous gloom. And right in front, above the altar, the colossal Christ watching unmoved from off the wall, His right hand raised to give a blessing—or a curse?

On, up the nave, fresh shreds of her dress strewing the holy pavement—up the chancel steps themselves—up to the altar—right underneath the great still Christ: and there even those hell-hounds paused.

She shook herself free from her tormentors, and springing back, rose for one moment to her full height, naked, snow-white against the dusky mass around—shame and indignation in those wide clear eyes, but not a stain of fear. With one hand she clasped her golden locks around her; the other long white arm was stretched upward toward the great still Christ appealing—and who dare say in vain?—from man to God. Her lips were opened to speak: but the words that should have come from them reached God's ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again.... and then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted roofs, and thrilled like the trumpet of avenging angels through Philammon's ears.

Crushed against a pillar, unable to move in the dense mass, he pressed his hands over his ears. He could not shut out those shrieks! When would they end? What in the name of the God of mercy were they doing? Tearing her piecemeal? Yes, and worse than that. And still the shrieks rang on, and still the great Christ looked down on Philammon with that calm, intolerable eye, and would not turn away. And over His head was written in the rainbow, 'I am the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever!' The same as He was in Judea of old, Philammon? Then what are these, and in whose temple? And he covered his face with his hands, and longed to die.

It was over. The shrieks had died away into moans; the moans to silence. How long had he been there? An hour, or an eternity? Thank God it was over! For her sake—but for theirs? But they thought not of that as a new cry rose through the dome.

'To the Cinaron! Burn the bones to ashes! Scatter them into the sea!' And the mob poured past him again....

He turned to flee: but, once outside the church, he sank exhausted, and lay upon the steps, watching with stupid horror the glaring of the fire, and the mob who leaped and yelled like demons round their Moloch sacrifice.

A hand grasped his arm; he looked up; it was the porter.

'And this, young butcher, is the Catholic and apostolic Church?'

'No! Eudaimon, it is the church of the devils of hell!' And gathering himself up, he sat upon the steps and buried his head within his hands. He would have given life itself for the power of weeping: but his eyes and brain were hot and dry as the desert.

Eudaimon looked at him a while. The shock had sobered the poor fop for once.

'I did what I could to die with her!' said he.

'I did what I could to save her!' answered Philammon.

'I know it. Forgive the words which I just spoke. Did we not both love her?'

And the little wretch sat down by Philammon's side, and as the blood dripped from his wounds upon the pavement, broke out into a bitter agony of human tears.

There are times when the very intensity of our misery is a boon, and kindly stuns us till we are unable to torture ourselves by thought. And so it was with Philammon then. He sat there, he knew not how long.

'She is with the gods,' said Eudaimon at last.

'She is with the God of gods,' answered Philammon: and they both were silent again.

Suddenly a commanding voice aroused them.

They looked up, and saw before them Raphael Aben-Ezra.

He was pale as death, but calm as death. One look into his face told them that he knew all.

'Young monk,' he said, between his closed teeth, 'you seem to have loved her?'

Philammon looked up, but could not speak.

'Then arise, and flee for your life into the farthest corner of the desert, ere the doom of Sodom and Gomorrha fall upon this accursed city. Have you father, mother, brother, sister,—ay, cat, dog, or bird for which you care, within its walls?'

Philammon started; for he recollected Pelagia.... That evening, so Cyril had promised, twenty trusty monks were to have gone with him to seize her.

'You have? Then take them with you, and escape, and remember Lot's wife. Eudaimon, come with me. You must lead me to your house, to the lodging of Miriam the Jewess. Do not deny! I know that she is there. For the sake of her who is gone I will hold you harmless, ay, reward you richly, if you prove faithful. Rise!'

Eudaimon, who knew Raphael's face well, rose and led the way trembling; and Philammon was left alone.

They never met again. But Philammon knew that he had been in the presence of a stronger man than himself, and of one who hated even more bitterly than he himself that deed at which the very sun, it seemed, ought to have veiled his face. And his words, 'Arise, and flee for thy life,' uttered as they were with the stern self-command and writhing lip of compressed agony, rang through his ears like the trump of doom. Yes, he would flee. He had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it. Arsenius was in the right after all. Home to the desert! But first he would go himself, alone, to Pelagia, and implore her once more to flee with him. Beast, fool, that he had been to try to win her by force—by the help of such as these! God's kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics yelling for a doctrine, but of willing, loving, obedient hearts. If he could not win her heart, her will, he would go alone, and die praying for her.

He sprang from the steps of the Caesareum, and turned up the street of the Museum. Alas! it was one roaring sea of heads! They were sacking Theon's house—the house of so many memories! Perhaps the poor old man too had perished! Still—his sister! He must save her and flee. And he turned up a side street and tried to make his way onward.

Alas again! the whole of the dock-quarter was up and out. Every street poured its tide of furious fanatics into the main river; and ere he could reach Pelagia's house the sun was set, and close behind him, echoed by ten thousand voices, was the cry of 'Down with all heathens! Root out all Arian Goths! Down with idolatrous wantons! Down with Pelagia Aphrodite!'

He hurried down the alley, to the tower door, where Wulf had promised to meet him. It was half open, and in the dusk he could see a figure standing in the doorway. He sprang up the steps, and found, not Wulf, but Miriam.

'Let me pass!'

'Wherefore?'

He made no answer, and tried to push past her.

'Fool, fool, fool!' whispered the hag, holding the door against him with all her strength. 'Where are your fellow-kidnappers? Where are your band of monks?'

Philammon started back. How had she discovered his plan?

'Ay—where are they? Besotted boy! Have you not seen enough of monkery this afternoon, that you must try still to make that poor girl even such a one as yourselves? Ay, you may root out your own human natures if you will, and make yourselves devils in trying to become angels: but woman she is, and woman she shall live or die!'

'Let me pass!' cried Philammon furiously.

'Raise your voice—and I raise mine: and then your life is not worth a moment's purchase. Fool, do you think I speak as a Jewess? I speak as a woman—as a nun! I was a nun once, madman—the iron entered into my soul!—God do so to me, and more also, if it ever enter into another soul while I can prevent it! You shall not have her! I will strangle her with my own hand first!' And turning from him, she darted up the winding stair.

He followed: but the intense passion of the old hag hurled her onward with the strength and speed of a young Maenad. Once Philammon was near passing her. But he recollected that he did not know his way, and contented himself with keeping close behind, and making the fugitive his guide.

Stair after stair, he fled upward, till she turned suddenly into a chamber door. Philammon paused. A few feet above him the open sky showed at the stair-head. They were close then to the roof! One moment more, and the hag darted out of the room again, and turned to flee upward still. Philammon caught her by the arm, hurled her back into the empty chamber, shut the door upon her; and with a few bounds gained the roof, and met Pelagia face to face.

'Come!' gasped he breathlessly. 'Now is the moment! Come, while they are all below!' and he seized her hand.

But Pelagia only recoiled.

'No, no,' whispered she in answer, 'I cannot, cannot—he has forgiven me all, all! and I am his for ever! And now, just as he is in danger, when he may be wounded—ah, heaven! would you have me do anything so base as to desert him?'

'Pelagia, Pelagia, darling sister!' cried Philammon, in an agonised voice, 'think of the doom of sin! Think of the pains of hell!'

'I have thought of them this day: and I do not believe you! No—I do not! God is not so cruel as you say! And if He were:—to lose my love, that is hell! Let me burn hereafter, if I do but keep him now!'

Philammon stood stupefied and shuddering. All his own early doubts flashed across him like a thunderbolt, when in the temple-cave he had seen those painted ladies at their revels, and shuddered, and asked himself, were they burning for ever and ever?

'Come!' gasped he once again; and throwing himself on his knees before her, covered her hands with kisses, wildly entreating: but in vain.

'What is this?' thundered a voice; not Miriam's, but the Amal's. He was unarmed but he rushed straight upon Philammon.

'Do not harm him!' shrieked Pelagia; 'he is my brother—my brother of whom I told you!'

'What does he here?' cried the Amal, who instantly divined the truth.

Pelagia was silent.

'I wish to deliver my sister, a Christian, from the sinful embraces of an Arian heretic; and deliver her I will, or die!'

'An Arian?' laughed the Amal. 'Say a heathen at once, and tell the truth, young fool! Will you go with him, Pelagia, and turn nun in the sand-heaps?'

Pelagia sprang towards her lover: Philammon caught her by the arm for one last despairing appeal: and in a moment, neither knew how, the Goth and the Greek were locked in deadly struggle, while Pelagia stood in silent horror, knowing that a call for help would bring instant death to her brother.

It was over in a few seconds. The Goth lifted Philammon like a baby in his arms, and bearing him to the parapet, attempted to hurl him into the canal below. But the active Greek had wound himself like a snake around him, and held him by the throat with the strength of despair. Twice they rolled and tottered on the parapet; and twice recoiled. A third fearful lunge—the earthen wall gave way; and down to the dark depths, locked in each other's arms, fell Goth and Greek.

Pelagia rushed to the brink, and gazed downward into the gloom, dumb and dry-eyed with horror. Twice they turned over together in mid-air.... The foot of the tower, as was usual in Egypt, sloped outwards towards the water. They must strike upon that—and then! ....It seemed an eternity ere they touched the masonry.... The Amal was undermost.... She saw his fair floating locks dash against the cruel stone. His grasp suddenly loosened, his limbs collapsed; two distinct plunges broke the dark sullen water; and then all was still but the awakened ripple, lapping angrily against the wall.

Pelagia gazed down one moment more, and then, with a shriek which rang along roof and river, she turned, and fled down the stairs and out into the night.

Five minutes afterwards, Philammon, dripping, bruised, and bleeding, was crawling up the water-steps at the lower end of the lane. A woman rushed from the postern door, and stood on the quay edge, gazing with clasped hands into the canal. The moon fell full on her face. It was Pelagia. She saw him, knew him, and recoiled.

'Sister!—my sister! Forgive me!'

'Murderer!' she shrieked, and dashing aside his outspread hands, fled wildly up the passage.

The way was blocked with bales of merchandise: but the dancer bounded over them like a deer; while Philammon, half stunned by his fall, and blinded by his dripping locks, stumbled, fell, and lay, unable to rise. She held on for a few yards towards the torch-lit mob, which was surging and roaring in the main street above, then turned suddenly into a side alley, and vanished; while Philammon lay groaning upon the pavement, without a purpose or a hope upon earth.

Five minutes more, and Wulf was gazing over the broken parapet, at the head of twenty terrified spectators, male and female, whom Pelagia's shriek had summoned.

He alone suspected that Philammon had been there; and shuddering at the thought of what might have happened, he kept his secret.

But all knew that Pelagia had been on the tower; all had seen the Amal go up thither. Where were they now? And why was the little postern gate found open, and shut only just in time to prevent the entrance of the mob?

Wulf stood, revolving in a brain but too well practised in such cases, all possible contingencies of death and horror. At last—

'A rope and a light, Smid!' he almost whispered.

They were brought, and Wulf, resisting all the entreaties of the younger men to allow them to go on the perilous search, lowered himself through the breach.

He was about two-thirds down, when he shook the rope, and called in a stifled voice, to those above—

'Haul up. I have seen enough.'

Breathless with curiosity and fear, they hauled him up. He stood among them for a few moments, silent, as if stunned by the weight of some enormous woe.

'Is he dead?'

'Odin has taken his son home, wolves of the Goths!' And he held out his right hand to the awe-struck ring, and burst into an agony of weeping.... A clotted tress of long fair hair lay in his palm.

It was snatched; handed from man to man.... One after another recognised the beloved golden locks. And then, to the utter astonishment of the girls who stood round, the great simple hearts, too brave to be ashamed of tears, broke out and wailed like children .... Their Amal! Their heavenly man! Odin's own son, their joy and pride, and glory! Their 'Kingdom of heaven,' as his name declared him, who was all that each wished to be, and more, and yet belonged to them, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh! Ah, it is bitter to all true human hearts to be robbed of their ideal, even though that ideal be that of a mere wild bull, and soulless gladiator....

At last Smid spoke—

'Heroes, this is Odin's doom; and the All-father is just. Had we listened to Prince Wulf four months ago, this had never been. We have been cowards and sluggards, and Odin is angry with his children. Let us swear to be Prince Wulf's men and follow him to-morrow where he will!'

Wulf grasped his outstretched hand lovingly— 'No, Smid, son of Troll! These words are not yours to speak. Agilmund son of Cniva, Goderic son of Ermenric, you are Balts, and to you the succession appertains. Draw lots here, which of you shall be our chieftain.'

'No! no! Wulf!' cried both the youths at once. 'You are the hero! you are the Sagaman! We are not worthy; we have been cowards and sluggards, like the rest. Wolves of the Goths, follow the Wolf, even though he lead you to the land of the giants!'

A roar of applause followed.

'Lift him on the shield,' cried Goderic, tearing off his buckler. 'Lift him on the shield! Hail, Wulf king! Wulf, king of Egypt!'

And the rest of the Goths, attracted by the noise, rushed up the tower-stairs in time to join in the mighty shout of 'Wulf, king of Egypt!'—as careless of the vast multitude which yelled and surged without, as boys are of the snow against the window-pane.

'No!' said Wulf solemnly, as he stood on the uplifted shield. 'If I be indeed your king, and ye my men, wolves of the Goths, to-morrow we will go forth of this place, hated of Odin, rank with the innocent blood of the Alruna maid. Back to Adolf; back to our own people! Will you go?'

'Back to Adolf!' shouted the men.

'You will not leave us to be murdered?' cried one of the girls. 'The mob are breaking the gates already!'

'Silence, silly one! Men—we have one thing to do. The Amal must not go to the Valhalla without fair attendance.'

'Not the poor girls?' said Agilmund, who took for granted that Wulf would wish to celebrate the Amal's funeral in true Gothic fashion by a slaughter of slaves.

'No.... One of them I saw behave this very afternoon worthy of a Vala. And they, too—they may make heroes' wives after all, yet .... Women are better than I fancied, even the worst of them. No. Go down, heroes, and throw the gates open; and call in the Greek hounds to the funeral supper of a son of Odin.'

'Throw the gates open?'

'Yes. Goderic, take a dozen men, and be ready in the east hall. Agilmund, go with a dozen to the west side of the court—there in the kitchen; and wait till you hear my war-cry. Smid and the rest of you, come with me through the stables close to the gate—as silent as Hela.'

And they went down—to meet, full on the stairs below, old Miriam.

Breathless and exhausted by her exertion, she had fallen heavily before Philammon's strong arm; and lying half stunned for a while, recovered just in time to meet her doom.

She knew that it was come, and faced it like herself.

'Take the witch!' said Wulf slowly—'Take the corrupter of heroes—the cause of all our sorrows!'

Miriam looked at him with a quiet smile.

'The witch is accustomed long ago to hear fools lay on her the consequences of their own lust and laziness.'

'Hew her down, Smid, son of Troll, that she may pass the Amal's soul and gladden it on her way to Niflheim.'

Smid did it: but so terrible were the eyes which glared upon him from those sunken sockets, that his sight was dazzled. The axe turned aside, and struck her shoulder. She reeled, but did not fall.

'It is enough,' she said quietly.

'The accursed Grendel's daughter numbed my arm!' said Smid. 'Let her go! No man shall say that I struck a woman twice.'

'Nidhogg waits for her, soon or late,' answered Wulf.

And Miriam, coolly folding her shawl around her, turned and walked steadily down the stair; while all men breathed more freely, as if delivered from some accursed and supernatural spell.

'And now,' said Wulf, 'to your posts, and vengeance!'

The mob had weltered and howled ineffectually around the house for some half-hour. But the lofty walls, opening on the street only by a few narrow windows in the higher stories, rendered it an impregnable fortress. Suddenly, the iron gates were drawn back, disclosing to the front rank the court, glaring empty and silent and ghastly in the moonlight. For an instant they recoiled, with a vague horror, and dread of treachery: but the mass behind pressed them onward, and in swept the murderers of Hypatia, till the court was full of choking wretches, surging against the walls and pillars in aimless fury. And then, from under the archway on each side, rushed a body of tall armed men, driving back all incomers more; the gates slid together again upon their grooves and the wild beasts of Alexandria were trapped at last.

And then began a murder grim and great. From three different doors issued a line of Goths, whose helmets and mail-shirts made them invulnerable to the clumsy weapons of the mob, and began hewing their way right through the living mass, helpless from their close-packed array. True, they were but as one to ten; but what are ten curs before one lion?.... And the moon rose higher and higher, staring down ghastly and unmoved upon that doomed court of the furies, and still the bills and swords hewed on and on, and the Goths drew the corpses, as they found room, towards a dark pile in the midst, where old Wulf sat upon a heap of slain, singing the praises of the Amal and the glories of Valhalla, while the shrieks of his lute rose shrill above the shrieks of the flying and the wounded, and its wild waltz-time danced and rollicked on swifter and swifter as the old singer maddened, in awful mockery of the terror and agony around.

And so, by men and purposes which recked not of her, as is the wont of Providence, was the blood of Hypatia avenged in part that night. In part only. For Peter the Reader, and his especial associates, were safe in sanctuary at the Caesareum, clinging to the altar. Terrified at the storm which they had raised, and fearing the consequences of an attack upon the palace, they had left the mob to run riot at its will; and escaped the swords of the Goths to be reserved for the more awful punishment of impunity.



CHAPTER XXX: EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE

It was near midnight. Raphael had been sitting some three hours in Miriam's inner chamber, waiting in vain for her return. To recover, if possible, his ancestral wealth; to convey it, without a day's delay, to Cyrene; and, if possible, to persuade the poor old Jewess to accompany him, and there to soothe, to guide, perhaps to convert her, was his next purpose:—at all events, with or without his wealth, to flee from that accursed city. And he counted impatiently the slow hours and minutes which detained him in an atmosphere which seemed reeking with innocent blood, black with the lowering curse of an avenging God. More than once, unable to bear the thought, he rose to depart, and leave his wealth behind: but he was checked again by the thought of his own past life. How had he added his own sin to the great heap of Alexandrian wickedness! How had he tempted others, pampered others in evil! Good God! how had he not only done evil with all his might, but had pleasure in those who did the same! And now, now he was reaping the fruit of his own devices. For years past, merely to please his lust of power, his misanthropic scorn, he had been malting that wicked Orestes wickeder than he was even by his own base will and nature; and his puppet had avenged itself upon him! He, he had prompted him to ask Hypatia's hand.... He had laid, half in sport, half in envy of her excellence, that foul plot against the only human being whom he loved.... and he had destroyed her! He, and not Peter, was the murderer of Hypatia! True, he had never meant her death.... No; but had he not meant for her worse than death? He had never foreseen.... No; but only because he did not choose to foresee. He had chosen to be a god; to kill and to make alive by his own will and law; and behold, he had become a devil by that very act. Who can—and who dare, even if he could—withdraw the sacred veil from those bitter agonies of inward shame and self-reproach, made all the more intense by his clear and undoubting knowledge that he was forgiven? What dread of punishment, what blank despair, could have pierced that great heart so deeply as did the thought that the God whom he had hated and defied had returned him good for evil, and rewarded him not according to his iniquities? That discovery, as Ezekiel of old had warned his forefathers, filled up the cup of his self-loathing.... To have found at last the hated and dreaded name of God: and found that it was Love!.... To possess Victoria, a living, human likeness, however imperfect, of that God; and to possess in her a home, a duty, a purpose, a fresh clear life of righteous labour, perhaps of final victory.... That was his punishment; that was the brand of Cain upon his forehead; and he felt it greater than he could bear.

But at least there was one thing to be done. Where he had sinned, there he must make amends; not as a propitiation, not even as a restitution; but simply as a confession of the truth which he had found. And as his purpose shaped itself, he longed and prayed that Miriam might return, and make it possible.

And Miriam did return. He heard her pass slowly through the outer room, learn from the girls who was within, order them out of the apartments, close the outer door upon them; at last she entered, and said quietly—

'Welcome! I have expected you. You could not surprise old Miriam. The teraph told me last night that you would be here....'

Did she see the smile of incredulity upon Raphael's face, or was it some sudden pang of conscience which made her cry out—

'.... No! I did not! I never expected you! I am a liar, a miserable old liar, who cannot speak the truth, even if I try! Only look kind! Smile at me, Raphael!—Raphael come back at last to his poor, miserable, villainous old mother! Smile on me but once, my beautiful, my son! my son!'

And springing to him, she clasped him in her arms.

'Your son?'

'Yes, my son! Safe at last! Mine at last! I can prove it now! The son of my womb, though not the son of my vows!' And she laughed hysterically. 'My child, my heir, for whom I have toiled and hoarded for three-and-thirty years! Quick! here are my keys. In that cabinet are all my papers—all I have is yours. Your jewels are safe—buried with mine. The negro-woman, Eudaimon's wife, knows where. I made her swear secrecy upon her little wooden idol, and, Christian as she is, she has been honest. Make her rich for life. She hid your poor old mother, and kept her safe to see her boy come home. But give nothing to her little husband: he is a bad fellow, and beats her.—Go, quick! take your riches, and away!.... No; stay one moment just one little moment—that the poor old wretch may feast her eyes with the sight of her darling once more before she dies!'

'Before you die? Your son? God of my fathers, what is the meaning of all this, Miriam? This morning I was the son of Ezra the merchant of Antioch!'

'His son and heir, his son and heir! He knew all at last. We told him on his death-bed! I swear that we told him, and he adopted you!'

'We! Who?'

'His wife and I. He craved for a child, the old miser, and we gave him one—a better one than ever came of his family. But he loved you, accepted you, though he did know all. He was afraid of being laughed at after he was dead—afraid of having it known that he was childless, the old dotard! No—he was right—true Jew in that, after all!'

'Who was my father, then?' interrupted Raphael, in utter bewilderment.

The old woman laughed a laugh so long and wild, that Raphael shuddered.

'Sit down at your mother's feet. Sit down.... just to please the poor old thing! Even if you do not believe her, just play at being her child, her darling, for a minute before she dies; and she will tell you all.... perhaps there is time yet!'

And he sat down.... 'What if this incarnation of all wickedness were really my mother?.... And yet—why should I shrink thus proudly from the notion? Am I so pure myself as to deserve a purer source?'.... And the old woman laid her hand fondly on his head, and her skinny fingers played with his soft locks, as she spoke hurriedly and thick.

'Of the house of Jesse, of the seed of Solomon; not a rabbi from Babylon to Rome dare deny that! A king's daughter I am, and a king's heart I had, and have, like Solomon's own, my son!.... A kingly heart.... It made me dread and scorn to be a slave, a plaything, a soul-less doll, such as Jewish women are condemned to be by their tyrants, the men. I craved for wisdom, renown, power—power—power! and my nation refused them to me; because, forsooth, I was a woman! So I left them. I went to the Christian priests.... They gave me what I asked.... They gave me more.... They pampered my woman's vanity, my pride, my self-will, my scorn of wedded bondage, and bade me be a saint, the judge of angels and archangels, the bride of God! Liars! liars! And so—if you laugh, you kill me, Raphael—and so Miriam, the daughter of Jonathan—Miriam, of the house of David—Miriam, the descendant of Ruth and Rachab, of Rachel and Sara, became a Christian nun, and shut herself up to see visions, and dream dreams, and fattened her own mad self-conceit upon the impious fancy that she was the spouse of the Nazarene, Joshua Bar-Joseph, whom she called Jehovah Ishi—Silence! If you stop me a moment, it may be too late. I hear them calling me already; and I made them promise not to take me before I had told all to my son—the son of my shame!'

'Who calls you?' asked Raphael; but after one strong shudder she ran on, unheeding—

'But they lied, lied, lied! I found them out that day.... Do not look up at me, and I will tell you all. There was a riot—a fight between the Christian devils and the Heathen devils—and the convent was sacked, Raphael, my son!—Sacked!.... Then I found out their blasphemy.... Oh God! I shrieked to Him, Raphael! I called on Him to rend His heavens and come down—to pour out His thunderbolts upon them—to cleave the earth and devour them—to save the wretched helpless girl who adored Him, who had given up father, mother, kinsfolk, wealth, the light of heaven, womanhood itself, for Him—who worshipped, meditated over Him, dreamed of Him night and day .... And, Raphael, He did not hear me.... He did not hear me! .... did not hear the!.... And then I knew it all for a lie! a lie!'

'And you knew it for what it is!' cried Raphael through his sobs, as he thought of Victoria, and felt every vein burning with righteous wrath.

—'There was no mistaking that test, was there?.... For nine months I was mad. And then your voice, my baby, my joy, my pride that brought me to myself once more! And I shook off the dust of my feet against those Galilean priests, and went back to my own nation, where God had set me from the beginning. I made them—the Rabbis, my father, my kin—I made them all receive me. They could not stand before my eye. I can stake people do what I will, Raphael! I could—I could make you emperor now, if I had but time left! I went back. I palmed you off on Ezra as his son, I and his wife, and made him believe that you had been born to him while he was in Byzantium .... And then—to live for you! And I did live for you. For you I travelled from India to Britain, seeking wealth. For you I toiled, hoarded, lied, intrigued, won money by every means, no matter how base—for was it not for you? And I have conquered! You are the richest Jew south of the Mediterranean, you, my son! And you deserve your wealth. You have your mother's soul in you, my boy! I watched you, gloried in you—in your cunning, your daring, your learning, your contempt for these Gentile hounds. You felt the royal blood of Solomon within you! You felt that you were a young lion of Judah, and they the jackals who followed to feed upon your leavings! And now, now! Your only danger is past! The cunning woman is gone—the sorceress who tried to take my young lion in her pitfall, and has fallen into the midst of it herself; and he is safe, and returned to take the nations for a prey, and grind their bones to powder, as it is written, "He couched like a lion, he lay down like a lioness's whelp, and who dare rouse him up?"'

'Stop!' said Raphael, 'I must speak! Mother! I must! As you love me, as you expect me to love you, answer! Had you a hand in her death? Speak!'

'Did I not tell you that I was no more a Christian? Had I remained one—who can tell what I might not have done? All I, the Jewess, dare do was—Fool that I am! I have forgotten all this time the proof—the proof—'

'I need no proof, mother. Your words are enough,' said Raphael, as he clasped her hand between his own, and pressed it to his burning forehead. But the old woman hurried on 'See! See the black agate which you gave her in your madness!'

'How did you obtain that?'

'I stole it—stole it, my son; as thieves steal, and are crucified for stealing. What was the chance of the cross to a mother yearning for her child?—to a mother who put round her baby's neck, three-and-thirty black years ago, that broken agate, and kept the other half next her own heart by day and night? See! See how they fit! Look, and believe your poor old sinful mother! Look, I say!' and she thrust the talisman into his hands.

'Now, let me die! I vowed never to tell this secret but to you: never to tell it to you, until the night I died. Farewell, my son! Kiss me but once—once, my child, my joy! Oh, this makes up for all! Makes up even for that day, the last on which I ever dreamed myself the bride of the Nazarene!'

Raphael felt that he must speak, now or never. Though it cost him the loss of all his wealth, and a mother's curse, he must speak. And not daring to look up, he said gently—

'Men have lied to you about Him, mother: but has He ever lied to you about Himself? He did not lie to me when He sent me out into the world to find a man, and sent me back again to you with the good news that The Man is born into the world.'

But to his astonishment, instead of the burst of bigoted indignation which he had expected, Miriam answered in a low, confused, abstracted voice—

'And did He send you hither? Well—that was more like what I used to fancy Him....A grand thought it is after all—a Jew the king of heaven and earth!.... Well—I shall know soon.... I loved Him once,.... and perhaps....perhaps....'

Why did her head drop heavily upon his shoulder? He turned—a dark stream of blood was flowing from her lips! He sprang to his feet. The girls rushed in. They tore open her shawl, and saw the ghastly wound, which she had hidden with such iron resolution to the last. But it was too late. Miriam the daughter of Solomon was gone to her own place. ...............

Early the next morning, Raphael was standing in Cyril's anteroom, awaiting an audience. There were loud voices within; and after a while a tribune—whom he knew well hurried out, muttering curses—

'What brings you here, friend?'said Raphael.

'The scoundrel will not give them up,' answered he, in an undertone.

'Give up whom?'

'The murderers. They are in sanctuary now at the Caesareum. Orestes sent me to demand them: and this fellow defies him openly!' And the tribune hurried out.

Raphael, sickened with disgust, half-turned to follow him: but his better angel conquered, and he obeyed the summons of the deacon who ushered him in.

Cyril was walking up and down, according to his custom, with great strides. When he saw who was his visitor, he stopped short with a look of fierce inquiry. Raphael entered on business at once, with a cold calm voice.

'You know me, doubtless; and you know what I was. I am now a Christian catechumen. I come to make such restitution as I can for certain past ill-deeds done in this city. You will find among these papers the trust-deeds for such a yearly sum of money as will enable you to hire a house of refuge for a hundred fallen women, and give such dowries to thirty of them yearly as will enable them to find suitable husbands. I have set down every detail of my plan. On its exact fulfilment depends the continuance of my gift.'

Cyril took the document eagerly, and was breaking out with some commonplace about pious benevolence, when the Jew stopped him.

'Your Holiness's compliments are unnecessary. It is to your office, not to yourself, that this business relates.'

Cyril, whose conscience was ill enough at ease that morning, felt abashed before Raphael's dry and quiet manner, which bespoke, as he well knew, reproof more severe than all open upbraidings. So looking down, not without something like a blush, he ran his eye hastily over the paper; and then said, in his blandest tone— 'My brother will forgive me for remarking, that while I acknowledge his perfect right to dispose of his charities as he will, it is somewhat startling to me, as Metropolitan of Egypt to find not only the Abbot Isidore of Pelusium, but the secular Defender of the Plebs, a civil officer, implicated, too, in the late conspiracy, associated with me as co-trustees.'

'I have taken the advice of more than one Christian bishop on the matter. I acknowledge your authority by my presence here. If the Scriptures say rightly, the civil magistrates are as much God's ministers as you; and I am therefore bound to acknowledge their authority also. I should have preferred associating the Prefect with you in the trust: but as your dissensions with the present occupant of that post might have crippled my scheme, I have named the Defender of the Plebs, and have already put into his hands a copy of this document. Another copy has been sent to Isidore, who is empowered to receive all moneys from my Jewish bankers in Pelusium.'

'You doubt, then, either my ability or my honesty?' said Cyril, who was becoming somewhat nettled.

'If your Holiness dislikes my offer, it is easy to omit your name in the deed. One word more. If you deliver up to justice the murderers of my friend Hypatia, I double my bequest on the spot.'

Cyril burst out instantly—

'Thy money perish with thee! Do you presume to bribe me into delivering up my children to the tyrant?'

'I offer to give you the means of showing more mercy, provided that you will first do simple justice.'

'Justice?' cried Cyril. 'Justice? If it be just that Peter should die, sir, see first whether it was not just that Hypatia should die. Not that I compassed it. As I live, I would have given my own right hand that this had not happened! But now that it is done—let those who talk of justice look first in which scale of the balance it lies! Do you fancy, sir, that the people do not know their enemies from their friends? Do you fancy that they are to sit with folded hands, while a pedant makes common cause with a profligate, to drag them back again into the very black gulf of outer darkness, ignorance, brutal lust, grinding slavery, from which the Son of God died to free them, from which they are painfully and slowly struggling upward to the light of day? You, sir, if you be a Christian catechumen, should know for yourself what would have been the fate of Alexandria had the devil's plot of two days since succeeded. What if the people struck too fiercely? They struck in the right place. What if they have given the reins to passions fit only for heathens? Recollect the centuries of heathendom which bred those passions in them, and blame not my teaching, but the teaching of their forefathers. That very Peter.... What if he have for once given place to the devil, and avenged where he should have forgiven? Has he no memories which may excuse him for fancying, in a just paroxysm of dread, that idolatry and falsehood must be crushed at any risk?—He who counts back for now three hundred years, in persecution after persecution, martyrs, sir! martyrs—if you know what that word implies—of his own blood and kin; who, when he was but a seven years' boy, saw his own father made a sightless cripple to this day, and his elder sister, a consecrated nun, devoured alive by swine in the open streets, at the hands of those who supported the very philosophy, the very gods, which Hypatia attempted yesterday to restore. God shall judge such a man; not I, nor you!'