 Chapter 5 Part 2 of Hypatia This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Imagine. Hypatia by Charles Kinsley Chapter 5, A Day in Alexandria Chapter 2 Philaman at last escaped from the crowd, and put in the letter which he had carried in his bosom, into the hands of one of the priests who was mixing with the mob, was beckoned by him into a corridor, and up a flight of stairs, and into a large, low, mean room. And there, by virtue of the worldwide Freemasonry, which Christianity had, for the first time on Earth, established, found himself in five minutes, awaiting the summons of the most powerful man south of the Mediterranean, a curtain hung across the door of the inner chamber, through which Philaman could hear plainly the steps of someone walking up and down hurriedly and fiercely. They will drive me to it, at last burst out a deep sonorous voice. They will drive me to it, their blood beyond their own head. It is not enough for them to blaspheme God and his chart, to have monopoly of all the cheating, fortune telling, usury, sorcery, and cunning of the city, but they must deliver my clergy into the hands of the tyrant. It was so, even in the Apostles' time, suggested a softer, but far more unpleasant voice. Then, it shall be so no longer. God has given me the power to stop them, and God do so to me, and more also, if I do not use that power. Tomorrow, I sweep out this origin-stable of villainy, and leave not a Jew to blaspheme and cheat in Alexandria. I am afraid such a judgment, however righteous, might offend his Excellency. His Excellency? His tyranny! How does the restess chuckle to this circumcised? But because they lend money to him and to his creators, it would keep up a din of fins in Alexandria, if they would do as much for him. And then to play them off against me and mine, to bring religion into contempt by setting them up together by the ears, and to end with outrages like this, set dishes. Have they not caused enough? The sooner I remove one of their temptations, the better. Let the other tempta beware, lest his judgment be at hand. The prefecture, holiness, ask the other boys slightly. Who spoke of the prefect? Who soever is a tyrant, and a murderer, and an oppressor of the poor, and a favorer of the philosophy which despises and enslaves the poor, should not he perish, though he be seven times a prefect? At this juncture, Philaman, thinking perhaps that he had already heard too much, notified his presence by some slight noise, at which the secretary, as he seemed to be, hastly left the curtain, and somewhat sharply demanded his business. The names of Pambo and Arsenius, however, seemed to pacify him at once, and the trembling youth was ushered into the presence of him who, in reality, though not in name, sat on the throne of the pharaohs. Not indeed in their outward pomp. The furniture of the chamber was but a grade above that of the artisans. The dress of the great man was coarse and simple. If personal vanity peeped out, anyway, it was in the careful arrangement of the bushy beard. And of the few curling locks which the tuncher had spared, but the height and majesty of his figure, the stern and massive beauty of his features, the flashing eye, curling lip and projecting bra, all marked him as one born to command. As the youth entered, Ciri stopped short in his walk, and looking him through and through, with a glance which burned upon his cheeks like fire, he made him all but wish the kindly earth would open and hide him, took the letters, read them, and then began. Philharmon, a Greek, you are said to have learned to obey. If so, you have also learned to rule. Your father Abbot has transferred you to my tutelage. You are now to obey me. And I will, well said, go to that window then and leap into the court. Philharmon walked to it and opened it. The pavement was fully twenty feet below, but his business was to obey and not to take measurements. There was a flower in the vase upon the sill. He quietly removed it, and in an instant more would have leaped for life or death, when Ciri's voice thundered. Stop, the lead will pass, my Peter. I shall not be afraid now for the secrets which he may have overheard. Peter smiled ascent, looking all the while, as if he had heard a great pity that the young man had not been allowed to put tailbearing out of his own power by breaking his neck. You wish to see the world, perhaps you have seen something of it today. I saw the murder. I knew so what you came here there to see, what the world is, and what justice and mercy it can deal out. You would not dislike to see God's reprisal to man's tyranny, or to be a fellow worker with God therein, if I judge rightly by your looks? I would avenge that man. Ah, my poor, simple schoolmaster, and his fate is the portent of portents to you now. Stay awhile, till you have gone with Ezekiel into the inner chambers of the devil's temple. And you will see worse things than these, women weeping for tamus, bemoaning the decay of an idolatry which they themselves disbelieved. That too is on the list of hercules' labor, Peter mine. At this moment a deacon entered, your holiness, the rabbis of the accursed nation are below at your summon. You brought them in through the back gate, for fear of, right, right. An accident to them might have ruined us. I shall not forget you. Bring them up. Peter, take this youth, introduce him to the parable Annie, who will be the best man for him to work under. The brother Theo Pompos is especially sober and gentle. Cyril shook his head laughingly. Go into the next room, my son. No, Peter. Put him under some fiery thing, some true bone urges, who will talk him down and work him to death, and show him the best and worst of everything. Grace of one will be the man. Now then, let me see my engagements. Five minutes for this juice, a restless need not choose to frighten them, let us see whether Cyril cannot, then an hour to look over the hospital accounts, an hour for the schools, a half hour for the reserved cases of distress, and another half hour for myself, and then divine service. See that the boy is there. Do bring in everyone in their term, Peter, my. So much time goes in hunting for this man and that man, and life is too short for all that. Where are these juice? And Cyril plunged into the latter half of his day's work with that untiring energy, self-sacrifice and method which commanded for him, in spite of all the suspicions of his violence, ambition and intrigue, the loving-go and implicit obedience of several hundred thousand human beings. So Philaman went out with the parabolani, a sort of organized guild of district visitors, and in their company he saw that afternoon the dark side of that world, whereof the harbour panorama had been the bright one. In squalid misery, filth, proligacy, ignorance, ferocity, discontent, neglected in body, house and soul by the civil authorities, proving their existence only in aimless and sanguinary rites, there they starved and rotted, hip on hip, the masses of the old Greek population, close to the great food-exporting harbour of the world. Among these, fiercely perhaps, and fanatically, but still among them and for them, laboured those district visitors night and day. And so Philaman toiled away with them, carrying food and clothing, helping sick to the hospital and that to the burial, cleaning out the infected houses, for the fever was all but perennial in those carters, and comforting the dying with the good news of forgiveness from above, till the larger number had to return to evening service. He however was kept by his superior, watching at a sick bedside, and it was late at night before he got home, and was reported to Peter the reader as having acquitted himself like a man of God, as indeed, without the least thought of doing anything noble or self-sacrifying, he had truly done being a monk. And so he threw himself on a charcoal bed, in one of the many stalls, which opened off a long corridor, and fell fast asleep in a minute. He was just well-turning about in a dreary dream jumble of goths dancing with district visitors. Pelagia is an angel with peacock's wings, Hypatia with horns and cloven feet, riding three hypoporami at once round the theatre, serving, standing at an open window, cursing frightfully, and pelting him with flower pots, and a similar self-sown after-crop of his day's impression. When he was awakened by the trump of hurried feet in the street outside, and shouts, which gradually, as he became conscious, shaped themselves into cries of, Alexander's church is on fire, help, good Christians, fire, help! He set up in his charcoal bed, tried to recollect where he was, and having with some trouble succeeded, threw on his sheepskin, and jumped up to ask the news from the deacons and monks, who were hurrying along the corridor outside. Yes, Alexander's church was on fire, and down the stairs they poured across the courtyard and out into the street, Peter's tall figure serving as a standard and a rallying point. As they rushed out through the gateway, Philharmon, dazzled by the sudden transition from the darkness within, to the blaze of moon and starlight, which floated the street and walls and shining roofs, hung back a moment. That hesitation probably saved his life, for in an instant he saw a dark figure spring out of the shadow, a long knife flashed across his eyes, and a priest next to him sank up off the pavement with a groan, while the assassin dashed off down the street, hotly pursued by monks and parabolani. Philharmon, who run like a desert ostrich, had soon outstripped all but Peter, when several more dark figures sprang out of doorways and corners and joined, or seemed to join the pursuit. Suddenly, however, after running a hundred yards, the Jew up opposite the mouth of the side street. The assassin stopped also. Peter, suspecting something wrong, slackened his pace and caught Philharmon's arm. Do you see those fellows in the shadow? But, before Philharmon could answer, some thirty or forty men, their daggers gleaming in the moonlight, moved out into the middle of the street, and received the fugitives into their ranks. What was the meaning of it? Here was a pleasant taste of the ways of the most Christian and civilized city of the Empire. Well, thought Philharmon, I have come out to see the world, and I see him at this rate to be likely to see enough of it. Peter turned at once, and fled as quickly as he had pursued, while Philharmon, considering discretion the better part of Valor, followed, and rejoined their party breathless. There is an art mob at the end of the street. Assassins! Jews! A conspiracy! Up rose a babel of doubtful voices. The foe appeared in sight, advancing stealthily, and the whole party took to flight, led once more by Peter, who seemed determined to make free use in behalf of his own safety of the long legs which nature had given him. Philharmon followed, softly and unwillingly, at a food space, but he had not gone a dozen yards when a pitiful voice at his feet called to him. Help! Mercy, do not leave me here to be murdered! I am a Christian indeed, I am a Christian! Philharmon stopped, and left from the ground a commonly negro woman weeping, and shivering in a few tattered remnants of clothing. I ran out when they said the church was on fire, sobbed the poor creator, and the Jews bet me or wounded me. They tore my shovel and tunic off me before I could get anywhere from that, and then our own people ran over me and tried me down, and now my husband will beat me if I ever go home. Quick, up the side street, or we shall be murdered! The old men, whosoever they were, were closing them. There was no time to be lost, and Philharmon, assuring her that he would not desert her, hurried her up the side street which she primed on. But the pursuers had cut side of them, and while the mass held on up the main side, three or four turned the side and gave chase. The poor negros could only limp along, and Philharmon, unarmed, looked back, and saw the bright steel points gleaming in the moonlight, and made up his mind to die as a monk-shot. Nevertheless, youth is hopeful, one chance for life. He thrust the negros into a dark doorway where her color hid her well enough, and had just time to ensconce himself behind the pillar when the foremost pursuer reached him. He held his breath in fearful suspense. Should he be seen? He would not die without a struggle at least. No, the fellow ran on, panting. But in a minute more, another came up, saw him suddenly, and sprang a side startled. That start saved Philharmon. Quick as a cat, he leapt upon him, felled him to the earth with a single blow, tore the dagger from his hand, and sprang to his feet again, just in time to strike his new weapon, full into the third pursuer's face. The man put his hand to his head and recoiled against a fellow Raphian, who was close on his heels. Philharmon, flashed with victory, took advantage of the confusion, and before the worthy bear could recover, dealt them half a dozen blows which, likely for them, came from an impracticed hand, or the young monk might have had more than one life to answer for. As it was, they turned and limped off, cursing in an unknowing tongue, and Philharmon found himself triumphant and alone, with the trembling negros and the prostrate Raphian, who, stunned by the blow and fall, lay groaning on the pavement. It was all over in a minute. The negros was kneeling under the gateway, pouring out her simple thanks to heaven for this unexpected deliverance. And Philharmon was about to kneel too, when a thought struck him, and coolly aspiling the dew of his shawl and sash, he handed them over to the poor negros, considering them fairly enough as his own by right of conquest. But lo and behold, as she was overwhelming him with thanks, a fresh mob poured into the street from the upper end, and were close on them before they were aware, a flash of terror and despair, and then a burst of joy. As by mingled moonlight and torchlight, Philharmon described priestly robes, and in the forefront of the battle, there, being no apparent danger, pithered the reader, who seemed to be anxious to prevent inquiry, by beginning to talk as fast as possible. Ah, boy, safe, the saints, be praised, we gave you up for dead. Whom have you here, a prisoner? And we have another. He ran right into our arms up the street, and the Lord delivered him into our hands. He must have passed you. So he did, said Philharmon, dragging up his captive, and here is his fellow scoundrel, where he and the two wardies were speedily tied together by the elbows, and the party marched on once more in search of Alexander's church, and the supposed conflagration. Philharmon looked round for the negros, but she had vanished. He was far too much ashamed of being known to have been alone with a woman to say anything about her, yet he longed to see her again, an interest, even something like an affection had already sprung up in his heart toward the poor, simple creature whom he had delivered from death. Instead of thinking her ungrateful for not staying to tell what he had done for her, he was thankful to her for having saved his blashes by disappearing so opportunely, and he longed to tell her so, to know if she was hurt, too, oh Philharmon, only four days from the Laura and a whole regiment of woman acquaintances already. True, Providence having sent into the world about as many women as men, it may be difficult to keep out of their way altogether. Perhaps too, Providence may have intended them to be of some use to that other sex, with whom it has so mixed them up. Some argue poor Philharmon, Alexander's church is on fire, forward. And so they hurried on, a confused mess of monks and populace, with their hapless prisoner in the centre, who, holed, caffed, questions and curses by twenty self-elected inquisitor at once, thought fit, either from Jewish abstinence or sheer bewilderment, to give no account whatsoever of themselves. As they turned the corner of the street, the folding doors of a large gate were rolled open, a long line of glittering figures poured across the road, dropped their spear-bats on the pavement with a single rattle, and remained motionless. The front rank of the mob recoiled, and an awestruck whisper ran through them. The stationaries, who are they, asked Philharmon in a whisper. The soldiers, the Roman soldiers, answered the whisperer to him. Philharmon, who was among the leaders, had recalled, too, he hardly knew why, at that stern apparition. His next instinct was to press forward as close as he dared. And these were Roman soldiers, the conquerors of the world, the men whose name had thrilled him from his childhood, with vague awe and admiration, dimly heard of, up there, in the lonely Lora, Roman soldiers, and here he was face to face with them at last. His curiosity received the saddened check, however, as he found his arm seized by an officer, as he took him to be from the gold ornaments on his helmets and cuirass, who lifted his mind-stocked tree-thingly over the young monk's head and demanded, What's all this about? Why are you not quietly in your beds, you Alexandrian rascals? Alexander's church is on fire, answered Philharmon, thinking the shortest answered the wisest. So much the better. And the Jews are murdering the Christians. Fight it out then, turn in man, it's only a riot. And the steel-clad apparition suddenly flashed round and vanished, trampling and jingling into the dark jaws of the guardhouse gate, while the stream, its temporary buried removed, rushed on wilder than ever. Philharmon hurried on, too, with them, not without the strange feeling of disappointment. Peter was chuckling to his brothers, over their cleverness in having kept the prisoners in the middle, and stopped the rascals' mouth till they were past the guardhouse. A fine thing to boast of, thought Philharmon, in the face of the men who make and un-make kings and seizures of the riot. He and the corpse of district visitors, whom he fancied the most august body on earth and Alexander's church, Christians murdered by Jews, persecution of the Catholic faith and all the rest of it was simply them not worth the notice of those foury men alone and securing the sense of power and discipline among tens of thousands. He hated them, those soldiers. Was it because they were indifferent to the cause of which he has inclined to think himself a not unimportant member on the strength of his late sansonic defeat of Jewish persecutors? At least, he obeyed the little porter's advice and felt very small indeed. And he felt smaller still, being young and alive to ridicule when, at some sudden ebb or flow, wave or wavelet of the babel-tree, which weltered up and down every street, a shrill female voice informed them from an upper window that Alexander's church was not on fire at all, that she had gone to the top of the house as they might have gone if they had not been fools, etc., etc., and that it looked as safe and as ugly as ever, were with a brick bed or two having been sent up in an answer. She shed the blinds, leaving them to halt, inquire, discover gradually and peace mean after the method of mobs they had been following the nature of mobs, that no one had seen the church on fire or seen anyone else who had seen the same, or even seen any light in the sky in any quarter, or knew who raised the cry, or, or, in short, Alexander's church was too miles off if it was on fire, it was either burned down or saved by this time. If not, the night air was, to say the least, chilly, and whether it was or not, there were ambush gates of juice, sad and only knew how strong, in every street between them and it, and it not be better to secure their two prisoners and then ask for further orders from the Archbishop, wherewith, after the manners of mobs, they melted off the way they came, by twos and trees, till, those of a contrary opinion, began to find themselves left alone, and having a strong dislike to Jewish daggers were feigned to follow the stream. With a panic or two, a cry of, the Jews are on us, and a general rush in every direction, in which one or two, seeking shelter from the awful nothing in neighboring houses, were handed over to the watchers and sent to the quarries accordingly. They reached the Serapium, and there, found, of course, a counter-mob collected to inform that they had been taken in, that Alexander's church had never been on fire at all, that the Jews had murdered a thousand Christians, at least, though three dead bodies, including the poor priest who lay in the house within, were all of the thousand who had yet been seen, and that the whole Jews' carter was marching upon them, at which news, it was considered advisable to retreat into the Archbishop's house as quickly as possible, barricade the doors and prepare for a siege, a work at which Philemon performed prodigies, cheering woodwork from the rooms and stones from the parapets, before it struck some of the more sober-minded, that it was as well to wait for some more decided demonstration of attack, before incurring so heavy a carpenter's bill of repairs. At last, the heavy trump of footsteps was heard coming down the street, and every window was crowded in an instant with eager heads, while Peter rushed downstairs to hit the large coppers, having some experience in the defensive virtues of boiling water. The bright moon glittered on a long line of helmets and curuses. Thank heaven, it was the soldier! Are the Jews coming? It's the city quiet. Why did not you prevent this villainy? A thousand citizens murdered while you have been snoring, and a volley of similar ejaculations greeted the soldiers as they passed, and were answered by a call, to your purchase and sleep you noisy chickens, or will set the coupon fire about your ears? A yell of defiance answered this polite speech, and the soldier, who knew perfectly well that the unarmed ecclesiastic within were not to be trifled with, and had no ambition to die by coping stones and hot water, went quietly on their way. All danger was now passed, and the cackling rose jubilant, louder than ever, and might have continued till daylight, had not a window in the courtyard been suddenly throw open, and the awful voice of Cyril commanded silence. Every man sleep where he can! I shall want you a daybreak. The superiors of the parabolaniers to come up to me with the two prisoners, and the men who took them. In a few minutes, Filamon found himself with some twenty others in the great man's presence. He was sitting at his desk, writing quietly, small notes on slips of paper. Here is the youth who helped me to pursue the murderer, and having outrun me was attacked by the prisoners. Said Peter, my hands are clean from blood. I thank the Lord. Trisa told me with daggers, said Filamon apologetically, and I was forced to take this one's dagger away, and be toughed the two others with it. Cyril smiled and shook his head, though art a brave boy, but has, though not read, if a man's mighty on one cheek turned to him the other, I could not run away as must Peter and the rest did. So you run away, my worthy friend. It is not written, asked Peter, in his blam in the stone, if they persecute you in one city, flee on to the other. Cyril smiled again, and why could not you run away, boy? Filamon blushed scarlet, but he dared not lie. There was a poor black woman wounded and trodden down, and I dared not leave her, for she told me she was a Christian. Right, my son, right, I shall remember this. What was her name? I did not hear it. Stay. I think she said Judith? Ah, the wife of the porter who stands at the lecture room though which got confound, a devout woman, full of good works, and sorely ill treated by her heathen husband. Peter, though shall go to her tomorrow with a physician, and see if she is in need of anything. Boy, though has done well. Cyril never forgets. Now bring up those Jews. They're rabbis where we'd meet two hours ago, promising peace. And this is the way they have kept their promise. So be it. The wicked is nared in his own wickedness. The Jews were brought up, but kept a stubborn silence. Your holiness perceives, said someone, that they have each of them rings of green palm bark on the right hand, a very dangerous sign and evident conspiracy, commented Peter. Ah, what does that mean, you rascals? Answer me as you value your lives. You have no business with us. We are Jews and none of your people, said one softly. None of my people? You have murdered my people. None of my people? Every soul in Alexandria is mine. If the kingdom of God means anything, and you shall find it out. I shall not argue with you, my good friends, any more than I did with your rabbis. Take these fellows away, Peter. I lock them up in the fuel cellar and see that they are guarded. If any man lets them go, his life shall be for the life of them. And the two wordies were let out. Now, my brothers, here are your orders. You will divide these notes among yourselves and distribute them to trusty and godly Catholics in your districts. Wait one hour till the city be quiet and then start and raise the charge. I must have 30,000 men by sunrise. What for your holiness? Ask the dozen voices. Read your notes. Whosoever will fight tomorrow under the banner of the Lord shall have free plunder of the Jews' carter. Outrage and murder only, forbidden. As I have said it, God do so to me and more also. If there be a Jew left in Alexandria by tomorrow at noon, go. And the staff of orderlies filed out, thanking heaven, that they had a leader so prompt and valiant and spent the next hour over the whole fire, eating millet cakes, drinking bad beer, like an in Cyril, Tobarak, Gideon, Samson, Defta, Judas Maccabeus, and all the wordies of the Old Testament. And then started under Pacific Aaron. Philharmon was about to follow them when Cyril stopped him. Stay, my son. You are young and rush and you do not know the city. Lie down here and sleep in the enter room. Three hours hints the sun rises and we go forth against the enemies of the Lord. Philharmon threw himself on the floor in a corner and slumbered like a child till he was awakened in the gray dawn by one of the Parabolani. Up boy and see what we can do. Cyril goes down greater than Barak, the son of Abinoa. Not with ten, but with thirty thousand men at his feet. Ah, my brothers, said Cyril, as he passed proudly out in full pontificals with a gorgeous retinue of priests and deacons. The Catholic Church has her organization, her unity, her common cause, her watchwords, such as the tyrants of the earth in their weakness and their divisions may envy and tremble at, but cannot imitate. Could the restes raise in three hours thirty thousand men who would die for him? As we will for you, shouted many vices. Save for the kingdom of God. And he passed out. And so ended Philharmon's first day in Alexandra. End of chapter five. Chapter six of Hypatia. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Paul Stevens. Hypatia by Charles Kingsley. Chapter six, The New Diogenes. About five o'clock the next morning, Raphael Abba Ezra was lying in bed, alternately yawning over a manuscript of Philo Judeus, pulling the ears of his huge British mastiff, watching the sparkle of the fountain in the court outside, wondering when that lazy boy would come and tell him that the bath was warmed, and meditating, half-aloud. Alas! poor me! Here I am, back again, just at the point from which I started. How am I to get free from that heathen siren? Plagues on her. I shall end by falling in love with her. I don't know that I have not got a barb of the blind boy in me already. I felt absurdly glad the other day when that fool told me he dare not accept her modest offer. Ha! ha! a delicious joke it would have been to have seen arrestes bowing down to stocks and stones, and Hypatia installed in the ruins of the Serapium, as high priestess of the abomination of desolation. And now? Well, I call all heaven and earth to witness that I have fought valiantly. I have faced naughty little Eros like a man, rod in hand. What could a poor human being do more than try to marry her to someone else, in hopes of sickening himself on the whole matter? Well, every moth has its candle, and every man his destiny. But the daring of the little fool! What huge imaginations she has! She might be in other Zenobia now, with arrestes as Odinatus and Raphael Aben Ezra to play the part of Longinus and receive Longinus's salary of axe or poison. She don't care for me. She would sacrifice me or a thousand of me, the cold-blooded fanatical archangel that she is, to water with our blood the foundation of some new temple of cast rags and broken dolls. Oh, Raphael Aben Ezra, what a fool you are! You know you are going off as usual to her lecture this very morning. At this crisis of his confessions the page entered and announced, not the bath, but Miriam. The old woman, who, in virtue of her profession, had the private entry of all fashionable chambers in Alexandria, came in hurriedly, and instead of seating herself as usual for a gossip, remained standing, and motioned the boy out of the room. Well, my sweet mother, sit. Ah, I see. You rascal, you have brought in no wine for the lady. Don't you know her little ways yet? Eos has got it at the door, of course, answered the boy, with a saucy air of offended virtue. Out with you, imp of Satan! cried Miriam. This is no time for wine-bibbing. Raphael Aben Ezra, why are you lying here? Did you not receive a note last night? A note? So I did, but I was too sleepy to read it. There it lies. Boy, bring it here. What's this? A scrap out of Jeremiah? A rise and flee for thy life, for evil is determined against the whole house of Israel? Does this come from the chief rabbi? I always took the venerable father for a sober man, eh, Miriam? Fool, instead of laughing at the sacred words of the prophets, get up and obey them. I sent you the note. Why can't I obey them in bed? Here I am, reading hard at the cabala, or philo, who is stupid as still, and what more would you have? The old woman, unable to restrain her impatience, literally ran at him, gnashing her teeth, and before he was aware, dragged him out of bed upon the floor, where he stood meekly wondering what would come next. Many thanks, mother, for having saved me the one-daily torture of life, getting out of bed by one's own exertion. Raphael, Abon Ezra, are you so besotted with your philosophy in your heathenry, and your laziness, and your contempt for God and man, that you will see your nation given up for a prey, and your wealth plundered by heathen dogs? I tell you, Cyril has sworn that God shall do so to him, and more all to him, if there be a Jew left in Alexandra by to-morrow about this time. So much the better for the Jews, then, if they are half as tired of this noisy pandemonium as I am. But how can I help it? Am I Queen Esther, to go to Ahasuerus there in the Prefect's Palace, and get him to hold out the golden scepter to me? Fool! If you had read that note last night, you might have gone and saved us, and your name would have been handed down to me. From generation to generation, as a second Mordecai. My dear mother, Ahasuerus, would have been either fast asleep or far too drunk to listen to me. Why did you not go yourself? Do you suppose that I would not have gone if I could? Do you fancy me a sluggard like yourself? At the risk of my life, I have got hither in time, if there be time to save you. Well, shall I go, then? If there be time to save you. Well, shall I dress? What can be done now? Nothing. The streets are blockaded by Cyril's mob. There, do you hear the shouts and screams? They are attacking the farther part of the quarter already. What? Are they murdering them? Asked Raphael, throwing on his police. Because if it has really come to a practical joke of that kind, I shall have the greatest pleasure in employing a counter-irritant. Here, boy, my sword and dagger, quick. No, the hypocrites. No blood is to be shed, they say, if we make no resistance and let them pillage. Cyril and his monks are there to prevent outrage and so forth. The angel of the Lord scattered them. The conversation was interrupted by the rushing in of the whole household in an agony of terror, and Raphael, at last thoroughly roused, went to a window which looked into the street. The thoroughfare was full of scolding women and screaming children, while men, old and young, looked on at the plunder of their property with true Jewish doggedness, too prudent to resist, but too mindful to complain. While furniture came flying out of every window, and from door after door poured a stream of rascality, carrying off money, jewels, silks, and all the treasures which Jewish usury had accumulated during many a generation. But unmoved amid the roaring sea of plunderers and plundered, stood, scattered up and down, Cyril's spiritual police. Enforcing by a word an obedience which the Roman soldiers could only have compelled by hard blows of the spear-butt. There was to be no outrage and no outrage there was, and more than once some man in priestly robes hurried through the crowd, leading by the hand tenderly enough a lost child in search of its parents. Raphael stood watching silently, while Miriam, who had followed him upstairs, paced the room in an ecstasy of rage, calling vainly to him to speak or act. Let me alone, mother, he said at last. It will be full ten minutes more before they pay me a visit, and in the meantime what can one do better than watch the progress of this, the little exodus? Not like that first one. Then we went forth with cymbals and songs to the Red Sea triumph. Then we borrowed every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment. And now we pay them back again. It is but fair, after all. We ought to have listened to Jeremiah a thousand years ago, and never gone back again, like fools, into a country to which we were so deeply in debt. A cursed land, cried Miriam, in an evil hour our forefathers disobeyed the prophet, and now we reap the harvest of our sins. Our sons have forgotten the faith of their forefathers for the philosophy of the Gentiles, and filled their chambers, with a contemptuous look round, with heathen imagery, and our daughters are, look there! As she spoke, a beautiful girl rushed shrieking out of an adjoining house, followed by some half-drunk ruffian, who was clutching at the gold chains and trinkets, with which she was profusely bedecked, after the fashion of Jewish women. The rascal had just seized with one hand her streaming black tresses, and with the other a heavy collar of gold, which was wound round her throat, when a priest, stepping up, laid a quiet hand upon his shoulder. The fellow, too maddened to obey, turned and struck back the restraining arm, and in an instant was felled to the earth by a young monk. Touch us, thou the Lord's anointed, sacrilegious wretch, cried the man of the desert, as the fellow dropped on the pavement, with his booty in his hand. The monk tore the gold necklace from his grasp, looked at it for a moment with childish wonder, as a savage might at some incomprehensible product of civilized industry, and then, spitting on it in contempt, dashed it on the ground, and trampled it into the mud. Follow the golden wedge of Akhen, and the silver of Iscariot, thou root of all evil, and he rushed on, yelling down with the circumcision, down with the blasphemers, while the poor girl vanished among the crowd. Raphael watched him with a quaint, thoughtful smile, while Miriam shrieked aloud at the destruction of the precious trumpery. The monk is right, mother. If those Christians go upon that method they must beat us. It has been our ruin from the first, our fancy for loading ourselves with the thick clay. What will you do? cried Miriam, clutching him by the arm. What will you do? I am safe. I have a boat waiting for me on the canal at the garden gate, and in Alexandria I stay. No Christian hounds shall make old Miriam move a foot against her will. My jewels are all buried. My girls are sold. Save what you can, and come with me. My sweet mother, why so peculiarly solicitous about my welfare, above that of all the sons of Judah? Because, because, no, I'll tell you that another time. But I loved your mother, and she loved me. Come! Raphael relapsed into silence for a few minutes, and watched the tumult below. How those Christian priests keep their men in order! There is no use resisting destiny. They are the strong men of the time, after all, and the little exodus must needs have its course. Miriam, daughter of Jonathan, I am no man's daughter. I have neither father nor mother, husband nor… Call me mother again. Whatsoever I am to call you. There are jewels enough in that closet to buy half Alexandria. Take them. I am going. With me! Out into the wide world, my dear lady. I am bored with riches. That young savage of a monk understood them better than we Jews do. I shall just make a virtue of necessity and turn beggar. Beggar? Why not? Don't argue. These scoundrels will make me one whether I like it or not. So forth I go. There will be few leave-takings. This brute of a dog is the only friend I have on earth, and I love her, because she has the true old, dogged, spiteful, cunning, obstinate, Maccabee spirit in her, of which if we had a spark left in us just now, there would be no little exodus. Hey, Bran, my beauty! You can escape with me to the prefects and save the mass of your wealth. Exactly what I don't want to do. I hate that prefect as I hate a dead camel or the vulture who eats him. And to tell the truth I am growing a great deal too fond of that heathen woman there. What! shriek the old woman. I patya! If you choose. At all events the easiest way to cut the knot is to expatriate. I shall beg my passage on board the first ship to Cyrene, and go and study life in Italy with Heraklion's expedition. Quick, take the jewels and breed fresh troubles for yourself with them. I am going. My liberators are battering the outer door already. Miriam greedily tore out of the closet, diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds, and concealed them among her ample robes. Go! Go! Escape from her. I will hide your jewels. I hide them as Mother Earth does all things in that all-embracing bosom. You will have doubled them before we meet again, no doubt. Farewell, Mother. But not for ever, Raphael. Not for ever. Promise me in the name of the four archangels that if you are in trouble or danger, you will write to me at the house of Udaemon. The little porto-philosopher who hangs about Hypatia's lecture-room. The same, the same. He will give me your letter, and I swear to you I will cross the mountains of Caft to deliver you. I will pay you all back. By Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I swear. May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not account you for the last penny. Don't commit yourself to rash promises, my dear lady. If I am bored with poverty, I can but borrow a few gold pieces of a rabbi and turn peddler. I really do not trust you to pay me back, so I shall not be disappointed if you do not. Why should I? Because, because, oh God, no, never mind, you shall have all back. Spirit of Elias, where is the blacker gate? Why is it not among these, the broken half of the blacker gate talisman? Raphael turned pale. How did you know that I have a blacker gate? How did I? How did I not? cried she, clutching him by the arm. Where is it? All depends on that. Fool! she went on, throwing him off from her at arm's length, as a sudden suspicion stung her. You have not given it to the heathen woman. By the soul of my father's then new mysterious old witch who seemed to know everything, that is exactly what I have done. Miriam clapped her hands together wildly. Lost! lost! lost! Not I will have it if I tear it out of her heart. I will be avenged of her, the strange woman who flatters with her words, to whom the simple go in, and know not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell. God do so to me, and more also, if she and her sorceries be on earth at twelve months hence. Silence, Jezebel! Heathen or none, she is as pure as the sunlight. I only gave it to her because she fancied the talisman upon it. To enchant you with it, your ruin! Brute of a slave-dealer, you fancy every one as base as the poor wretches, whom you buy and sell to shame, that you may make them as much the children of hell, if that be possible, as yourself. Miriam looked at him, her large black eyes widening and kindling. For an instant she felt for her poneyard, and then burst into an agony of tears, hid her face in her withered hands, and rushed from the room, as a crash and shout below announced the bursting of the door. There she goes with my jewels, and here come my guests, with the young monk at their head, one rising when the other sets, a worthy pair of diascuri. Come, Bran, boys, slaves, where are you? Steal every one what he can lay his hands on, and run for your lives through the back gate. The slaves had obeyed him already. He walked smiling downstairs through utter solitude, and in the front passage met face to face the mob of monks, costamungers, and dock-workers, fishwives, and beggars, who were thronging up the narrow entry, and bursting into the doors right and left, and at their head, alas, the young monk who had just trampled the necklace into the mud. No other, in fact, than filament. Welcome, my worthy guests. Enter, I beseech you, and fulfill in your own peculiar way the precepts which bid you not be over-anxious for the good things of this life. For eating and drinking, my kitchen and cellar are at your service. For clothing, if any illustrious personage will do me the honour to change his holy rags with me, here are an Indian shawl police, and a pair of silk trousers at his service. Perhaps you will accommodate me, my handsome young captain, corrigus of this new school of the prophets. Filament, who was the person addressed, tried to push by him contemptuously. Allow me, sir, I lead the way. This dagger is poisoned, a scratch, and you are dead. This dog is of the true British breed. If she seizes you, red-hot iron will not loose her, till she hears the bone crack. If any one will change clothes with me, all I have is at your service. If not, the first that stirs is a dead man. There was no mistaking the quiet, hybrid determination of the speaker. Had he raged and blustered, Filament could have met him on his own ground. But there was an easy, self-possessed disdain about him, which utterly abashed the young monk, and abashed, too, the whole crowd of rascals at his heels. I'll change clothes with you, you Jewish dog! Roared a dirty fellow out of the mob. I am your eternal debtor. Let us step into this side room. Walk upstairs, my friends. Take care there, sir. That porcelain, whole, is worth three thousand gold pieces. Broken, it is not worth three pence. I'll leave it your good sense to treat it accordingly. Now then, my friend, and in the midst of the raging vortex of plunderers, who were snatching up everything which they could carry away, and breaking everything which they could not, he quietly divested himself of his finery, and put on the ragged cotton tunic and battered straw hat, which the fellow handed over to him. Filament, who had had from the first no mind to plunder, stood watching Raphael with dumb wonder, and a shudder of regret he knew not why passed through him, as he saw the mob tearing down pictures and dashing statues to the ground. Heathen they were doubtless, but still the nymphs and venuses looked too lovely to be so brutally destroyed. There was something almost humanly pitiful in their poor broken arms and legs, as they lay about upon the pavement. He laughed at himself for the notion, but he could not laugh it away. Raphael seemed to think that he ought not to laugh it away, for he pointed to the fragments and with a quaint look at the young monk, our nurses used to tell us, if you can't make it, you ought not to break it. I had no nurse, said Filament. Ah, that accounts for this and other things. Well, he went on, with the most provoking good nature. You are on a fair road, my handsome youth. I wish you joy of your fellow workmen, and of your apprenticeship in the noble art of monkry. Riot and pillage, shrieking women and houseless children in your twentieth summer, are the sure path to a saintship, such as Paul of Tarsus, who with all his eccentricities was a gentleman, certainly never contemplated. I have heard of Phoebus Apollo under many disguises, but this is the first time I ever saw him in the wolf's hide. Or in the lions, said Filament, trying in his shame to make a fine speech, like the ass in the fable. Farewell, stand out of the way, friends, wear teeth and poison. And he disappeared among the crowd, who made way, respectfully enough, for his dagger and his brindled companion. Hypatia by Charles Kingsley Chapter 7 Those By Whom Offences Come Part 1 Filament's heart smote him all that day, whenever he thought of his morning's work. Till then all Christians, monks above all, had been infallible in his eyes. All Jews and heathens insane and accursed. Moreover, meekness under insult, fortitude in calamity, the contempt of worldly comfort, the worship of poverty as a noble estate, were virtues which the Catholic Church boasted as her peculiar heritage, on which side had the balance of those qualities inclined that morning. The figure of Raphael, stalking out ragged and penniless into the wild world, haunted him. With its quiet, self-assured smile, and there haunted him, too, another peculiarity in the man, which he had never before remarked in any one but Arseneas. That ease and grace, that courtesy and self-restraint, which made Raphael's rebukes rankle all the more keenly, because he felt that the rebuker was in some mysterious way superior to him, and saw through him, and could have won him over, or crushed him in argument or intrigue, or in anything, perhaps except mere brute force. Strange, that Raphael of all men, should in those few moments have reminded him so much of Arseneas, and that the very same qualities which gave a peculiar charm to the latter should give a peculiar unloveless to the former, and yet be, without a doubt, the same. What was it? Was it rank which gave it? Arseneas had been a great man he knew, the companion of kings, and Raphael seemed rich. He had heard the mob crying out against the prefect for favouring him. Was it then familiarity with the great ones of the world, which produced this manner and tone? It was a real strength, whether in Arseneas or in Raphael. He felt humbled before it, envied it. If it made Arseneas a more complete and more captivating person, why should it not do the same for him? Why should not he, too, have his share of it? Bringing with it such thoughts as these, the time ran on till noon, and the midday meal, and the afternoon's work, to which Philamen looked forward joyfully as a refuge from his own thoughts. He was sitting on his sheepskin upon a step, basking like a true son of the desert in a blaze of fiery sunshine, which made the black stone work too hot to touch with a bare hand, watching the swallows as they threaded the columns of the Serapium, and thinking how often he had delighted in their air-dance, as they turned and hawked up and down the dear old Glen of Scetis. A crowd of citizens with causes, appeals, and petitions were passing in and out from the patriarch's audience room. Peter and the Archdeacon were waiting in the shade close by for the gathering of the Parabellani, and talking over the morning's work in an earnest whisper, in which the names of Hypatia un-Arrestes were now and then audible. An old priest came up and bowing reverently enough to the Archdeacon, requested the help of one of the Parabellani. He had a sailor's family, all fever-stricken, who must be removed to the hospital at once. The Archdeacon looked at him, answered an offhand very well, and went on with his talk. The priest, bowing lower than before, represented the immediate necessity of help. It is very odd, said Peter, to the swallows in the Serapium, that some people cannot obtain influence enough in their own parishes to get the simplest good works performed without tormenting his wholeness the patriarch. The old priest mumbled some sort of excuse, and the Archdeacon, without deigning a second look at him, said, Find him a man, brother Peter. Anybody will do. What is that boy, Phelaman, doing there? Let him go with master Herakas. Peter seemed not to receive the proposition favorably, and whispered something to the Archdeacon. No, I can spare none of the rest. Importune eight persons must take their chance of being well served. Come, here are our brethren. We will all go together. The father together the better for the boys' sake, grumble Peter. Loud enough for Phelaman, perhaps for the old priest, to overhear him. So Phelaman went out with them, and as he went, questioned his companions, meekly enough as to who Raphael was. A friend of a Hypatia. That name, too, haunted him, and he began, as stealthily and indirectly as he could, to obtain information about her. There was no need for his caution, for the very mention of her name roused the whole party into a fury of execration. May God confound her, siren, enchantress, dealer in spells and sorceress. She is the strange woman of whom Solomon prophesied. It is my opinion, said another, that she is the forerunner of Antichrist. Perhaps the virgin of whom it is prophesied that he will be born, suggested another. Not that I'll warrant her, said Peter, with a savage sneer. And is Raphael Avan Ezra her pupil in philosophy, as Phelaman, her pupil in what service she can find, wherewith to delude men's souls, said the old priest. The reality of philosophy has died long ago, but the great ones find it still worth their while to worship its shadow. Some of them worship more than a shadow, when they haunt her house, said Peter. Do you think arrestees goes further only for philosophy? We must not judge harsh judgments, said the old priest. Sinessius of Carennae is a holy man, and yet he loves Hypatia well. He a holy man, and keeps a wife. One who had the insolence to tell the Blessed Theophilus himself, that he would not be made bishop, unless he were allowed to remain with her. And despise the gift of the Holy Ghost, in comparison of the carnal joys of wedlock, not knowing the scriptures, which saith that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Well said Syriacus of Rome of such men, can the Holy Spirit of God dwell in other than holy bodies? No wonder that such a one as Sinessius grovels at the feet of arrestees mistress. Then she is profligate as Philamen. She must be, has a heathen faith in grace, and without faith in grace are not all our righteousness as filthy regs. What saith Saint Paul, that God has given them over to a reprobate mind, full of all injustice, uncleanness, covetousness, maliciousness, you know the catalogue, why do you ask me? Alas, and is she this? Alas, and why alas? How would the gospel be glorified if heathens were holier than Christians? It ought to be so, therefore it is so. If she seems to have virtues, they, being done without the grace of Christ, are only bedisen devices, cunning shams, the devil transformed into an angel of light, and as for chastity, the flower and crown of all virtues. Whosoever says that she, being yet a heathen, has that, blasphemes the Holy Spirit, whose peculiar and highest gift it is, and is anathema maranatha for ever, amen. And Peter, devoutly crossing himself, turned angrily and contemptuously away from his young companion. Philamen was quite shrewd enough to see that assertion was not identical with proof. But Peter's argument of, it ought to be, therefore it is, is one which saves a great deal of trouble, and no doubt he had very good sources of information. So Philamen walked on, sad, he knew not why, at the new notion which he had formed of Hypatia, as a sort of awful sorceress, Messalina, whose den was foul with magic rites and ruined souls of men. And yet if that was all she had to teach, whence had her pupil Raphael learn that fortitude appears, if philosophy had, as they said, utterly died out. Then what was Raphael? Just then Peter and the rest turned up a side street, and Philamen and Herakas were left to go on their joint errand together. They paced on for some way in silence, up one street and down another, till Philamen, for want of anything better to say, asked where they were going. Where I choose at all events, no young man, if I a priest, am to be insulted by archdeacons and readers, I won't be insulted by you. I assure you I meant no harm. Of course not, you all learn the same trick, and the young ones catch it of the old ones fast enough. Words smoother than butter, yet very swords. You do not mean to complain of the archdeacon his companion, said Philamen, who of course was boiling over with pugnacious respect for the body to which he belonged. No answer. Why, sir, are they not among the most holy and devoted of men? Ah, yes, said his companion, in a term which sounded very like, ah, no. You do not think so as Philamen bluntly? You are young, you are young. Wait a while till you have seen as much as I have. A degenerate age this, my son, not like the good old times, when men dare suffer and die for the faith. We are too prosperous nowadays, and fine ladies walk about with Magdalans embroidered on their silks, and gospels hanging around their necks. When I was young they died for that with which they now be disson themselves, but I was speaking of the Paribalani, ah, there are great many among them who have not much business where they are. Don't say I said so. But many a rich man puts his name on the list of the guild, just to get his exemption from taxes, and leaves the work to poor men like you. Rotten, rotten, my son. Then you will find it out. The preachers now, people used to say, I know Abbot Isadora did. That I has as good a gift for expounding as any man in Pelusium. But since I came here eleven years since, if you will believe it, I have never been asked to preach in my own palace church. You surely jest. True as I am a christened man, I know why, I know why. They are afraid of Isadora's men here. Perhaps they may have caught the holy man's trick of plain speaking, and ears are dainty in Alexandria, and there are some in these parts too that have never forgiven him the part he took about those three villains, Mark, Zozimus, and Martinian, and a certain letter that came of it, or another letter either, which we know of, about taking arms for the church for the gains of robbers and usurers. Cyril never forgets. So he says to every one who does him a good turn, and so he does to every one who he fancies has done him a bad one. So here am I, slaving away, a subordinate priest, while such fellows as Peter the Reader look down on me as their slave. But it's always so. There never was a bishop yet, except the blessed Augustine. Would to heaven I had taken my abutant vice, and gone to him at Hippo, who have not his flatress and his tail-bearers, and generally the Archdeacon at the head of them, ready to step into the bishop's place when he dies, over the heads of hard-working parish priests. But that is the way of the world. The sleekest and the oiliest and the noisiest, the man who can bring in most money to the charities, never mind whence or how. The man who will take most of the bishop's work off his hand, and agree with him in everything he wants, and save him, by spying an eavesdropping, the trouble of using his own eyes. That is the man who succeeds in Alexandria, or Constantinople, or Rome itself. Look now. There are but seven deacons to this great city, and all its priests, and they and the Archdeacon are the masters of it, and us. They and that Peter manage Cyril's work for him, and when Cyril makes the Archdeacon a bishop, he will make Peter Archdeacon. They have their reward. They have their reward. And so has Cyril, for that matter. How? Why, don't say I said it. But what do I care? I have nothing to lose, I'm sure. But they do say that there are two ways of promotion in Alexandria. One by deserving it, the other by paying for it. That's all. Impossible. Oh, of course, quite impossible. But all I know is just this, that when that fellow Martinian got back again into Pelusium, after being turned out by the late bishop for a rogue and hypocrite as he was, and got the ear of this present bishop, and was appointed his steward and ordained priest, I'd as soon have ordained that street dog, and plundered him and brought him to disgrace. For I don't believe this bishop is a bad man, but those who use rogues must expect to be called rogues, and ground the poor to the earth, and tyrannized over the whole city, so that no man's property or reputation scarcely of their lives were safe. And after all, had the impudence, when he was called on for his accounts, to bring the church in as owing him money? I just know this, that he added to all his other shamelessness this, that he offered the patriarch a large sum of money to buy a bishopric of him. And what did you think the patriarch answered? Excommunicated the sacrilegious wretch, of course. Sent him a letter to say that if he dared to do such a thing again, he should really be forced to expose him. So the fellow, taking courage, brought his money himself the next time. And all the world says that Cyril would have made him a bishop after all, if avid Isidora had not written to remonstrate. He could not have known the man's character, said poor Philaman, hunting for an excuse. The whole delta was ringing with it. Isidora had written to him again and again. Surely then his wish was to prevent scandal and preserve the unity of the church in the eyes of the heathen. The old man laughed bitterly. Ah, the old story, of preventing scandals by retaining them, and fancying that Cyril is a less evil than a little noise, as if the worst of all scandals was not the being discovered in hushing up a scandal. And as for unity, if you want that, you must go back to the good old days of Diocletian and Deceus. The persecutors? Aye, boy, to the times of persecution, when Christians died like brothers, because they lived like brothers. You will see very little of that now, except in some little remote county bishopric, which no one ever hears of, from year's end to year's end. But in the cities it is all one great fight for place and power. Every one is jealous of his neighbor. The priests are jealous of the deacons, and good cause they have. The county bishops are jealous of the metropolitan, and he is jealous of the North African bishops, and quite right he is. What business have they to set up for themselves, as if they were infallible? It's a schism, I say, of complete schism. They are just as bad as their own Donatists. Did not the Council of Nice settle that the Metropolitan of Alexandria should have authority over Libya and Pentapolis, according to the ancient custom. Of course he ought, said Philaman, jealous for the honour of his own Patriarchate. And the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople are jealous of our Patriarch. Of Cyril? Of course, because he won't be at the Abecan nod and let them be lords and masters of Africa. But surely these things can be settled by Councils. Councils? Wait till you have been at one. The Blessed Abbot Isidora used to say that if he ever was a bishop, which he never will be, he is far too honest for that. That he would never go near one of them. For he never had seen one which did not call out every evil passion in men's hearts, and leave the question more confounded with words they found it. Even if the whole matter was not settled beforehand by some Chamberlain or Unuch or Cook sent from court, as if he were an anointed vessel of the Spirit, to settle the dogmas of the Holy Catholic Church. Cook! Why? Valens sent his Chief Cook to start Basil of Caesarea from opposing the court doctrine. I tell you, the great battle in these cases is to get votes from courts or to get to court yourself. When I was young the Council of Antioch had to make a law to keep bishops from running off to Constantinople to intrigue under pretence of fleeting the cause of the orphan and widow. But what's the use of that when every noisy and ambitious man shifts and shifts from one sea to another till he settles himself close to Rome or Byzantium and gets the Empress ear and plays into the hands of his courtiers? Is it not written, speak not evil of dignities, said Valamon, in his most sanctimonious tone? Well, what of that? I don't speak evil of dignities when I complain of the men who fill them badly do I. I never heard that interpretation of the text before. Very likely not. There's no reason why it should not be true in orthodox. You will soon hear a good many more things which are true enough. Though whether they are orthodox or not the court cooks must settle. Of course I am a disappointed irreverent old grumbler. Of course, and of course too, young men must need by their own experience instead of taking old folks at a gift. There, use your own eyes and judge for yourself. There you may see what sort of saints are bred by this plan of managing the Catholic Church. There comes one of them. Now I say no more. As he spoke, two tall negroes came up to them and sat down before the steps of a large church which they were passing, an object new to Philamen, a sedan chair, the poles of which were inlaid with ivory and silver, and the upper part enclosed in rose-coloured silk curtains. What is inside that cage? asked he of the old priest, as the negroes stood wiping the perspiration from their foreheads, and a smart slave-girl stepped forward, with the parasol and slippers in her hand, and reverently lifted the lower edge of the curtain. A saint, I tell you, an embroidered shoe, with a large gold cross on the instep, was put forth delicately from beneath the curtain, and the kneeling maid put on the slipper over it. There, whispered the old grumbler, not enough you see, to use Christian men as beasts of burden, Abbot Isidora used to say, I, and told Iron, the pleader to his face, that he could not conceive how a man who loved Christ, and knew the grace which has made all men free, could keep a slave, nor can I, said Philamen. But we think otherwise you see in Alexandria here, we can't even walk up the steps of God's temple without an additional protection to our delicate feet. I had thought it was written, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where their standist is holy ground. I, and there are good many more things written, which we do not find it convenient to recollect. Look, there is one of the pillars of the church, the richest and most pious lady in Alexandria. End of Chapter 7 Part 1 Chapter 7 Part 2 of Hypatia. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Cole, Medway, Massachusetts. Hypatia by Charles Kingsley. Chapter 7 Those By Whom Offences Come Part 2 And a fourth step to figure, at which Philamen's eyes opened wider than they had done even at the site of Pelagia. Whatever thoughts the rich and careless grace of a retire might have raised in his mind, it had certainly not given his innate Greek good taste, the inclination to laugh and weep at once, which he felt at this specimen of the tasteless fashion of an artificial and decaying civilization. Her gown was stuffed out behind, in a fashion which provoked from the dirty boys who lay about the steps gambling for pistachios on their fingers the same comments with which St. Clement had abraded from the pulpit the Alexandrian ladies of his day. The said gown of white silk was bedisened from waist to ankle with certain mysterious red and green figures at least a foot lung, which Philamen gradually discovered to be a representation in the very lowest and ugliest style of fallen art of D. Vase and Lazarus, while down her back hung upon a bright blue shawl edged with embroidered crosses, jove sitting, pot-shared in hand surrounded by his three friends. A memorial, the old priest whispered, of a pilgrimage which she had taken a year or two before to Arabia to see and kiss the identical dung hill on which the patriarch had sat. Round her neck hung by one of half a dozen necklaces, a manuscript of the gospels, gilt edged and clasped with jewels. The lofty diadem of pearls on the head carried in front a large gold cross, while above and around it her hair, stiffened with formatum, was frizzled out half a foot her wilderness of plaques and curls, which must have cost some hapless slave girl an hour's work, and perhaps more than one scolding that very morning. Meekly, with simpering face and downcast eyes, and now and then a penitent sigh and shake of the head and pressure of her hand on her jewelled bosom, the fair penitent was proceeding up the steps when she caught sight of the priest and the monk, and turning to them with an obeisance of the deepest humility, entreated to be allowed to kiss the hem of their garments. You had far better, madam, said Philamen bluntly enough, kiss the hem of your own. You carried two lessons there which you do not seem to have learnt yet. In an instant her face flashed up into pride and fury. I asked for your blessing and not for a sermon. I can have that when I like. And such as you like, grumble the old priest, as she swept up the steps, tossing some small coin to the ragged boys, and murmuring to herself, loud enough for Philamen's hearing, that she should certainly inform the confessor, and that she would not be insulted in the streets by savage monks. Now she will confess her sins inside, all but those which she has been showing off to us here outside, and beat her breast, and weep like a very maudlin. And then the worthy man will comfort her with, what a beautiful chain, and what a shawl, allow me to touch it. How soft and delicate this Indian wool, ah! If you knew the debts which I have been compelled to occur in the service of the sanctuary, and then of course the answer will be, as indeed he expects it should, that if it can be of the least use in the services of the temple, she of course will think it only too great an honour, and he will keep the chain, and perhaps the shawl too, and she will go home, believing that she has fulfilled to the very letter the command to break off her sins by arms giving, and only sorry that the good priest happened to hit on that particular G-jaw. What, as Philamen, dare she actually not refuse such importunity? From a poor priest like me is stoutly enough, but from a popular ecclesiastic like him. As Jerome says in a letter if his I once saw, ladies think twice in such cases, before they offend the city newsmonger, have you anything more to say? Philamen had nothing to say, and wisely held his peace while the old grumbler ran on. Ah, boy, you have yet to learn city fashions. When you are a little older, instead of speaking unpleasant truths to a fine lady, with a cross on her forehead, you will be ready to run to the pillars of Hercules at her beck and nod, for the sake of her disinterested help towards the fashionable pulpit, or perhaps a bishopric. The lady settled that for us here. The women? The women-lad. Do you suppose that they heap priests and churches with wealth for nothing? They have their reward. Do you suppose that a preacher gets into the pulpit of that church there, without looking anxiously, at the end of each peculiarly flowery sentence, to see whether her sainship there is clapping or not? She who has such a delicate sense for orthodoxy, that she can sent out Novartianism or Oregonism, where no other mortal knows would suspect it. She who meets at her own house weekly, all the richest and most pious women in the city, to settle our discipline for us, as the court cooks do our doctrine. She who has even, it is whispered, the ear of the Augusta Pulcheria herself, and sends monthly letters to her at Constantinople, and might give the patriarch himself some trouble if he crossed her holy will. What will Cyril truckle to such creatures? Cyril is a wise man, his generation, too wise, some say, for a child of the light. But at least he knows there is no use fighting with those whom you cannot conquer. And while he can get money, out of these great ladies, for his arms houses, and orphan houses, and lodging houses, and hospitals, and workshops, and all the rest of it. And in that I will say for him, there is no one on earth equal to him, but ambrose of Milan, and basil of Caesarea. Why, I don't quarrel with him, for making the best of a bad matter. And a very bad matter it is, boy, and has been ever since empress and courtiers have given up burning and crucifying us, and taken to patronising and bribing us instead. Philamen walked on in silence by the old priest's side, stunned and sickened. And this is what I have come out to see, reeds shaken in the wind, and men clothed in soft raiment, fit only for king's palaces. For this he had left the dear old laura, and the simple joys and friendships of childhood, and cast himself into a roaring whirlpool of labour and temptation. This was the harmonious strength and unity of that church catholic, in which, as he had been taught from boyhood, there was but one Lord, one faith, one spirit. This was the indivisible body, without spot or wrinkle, which fitly joined together and compacted by that which every member supplied, according to the effectual and proportionate working of every part, increased the body, and enabled it to build itself up in love. He shuddered as the well-known words passed through his memory, and seemed to mock the base and chaotic reality around him. He felt angry with the old man for having broken his dream. He longed to believe that his complaints were only exaggerations of cynic peerishness, of selfish disappointment, and yet had not our seniors warned him. Had he not foretold word for word what the youth would find, what he had found, then was St. Paul's great idea an empty and an impossible dream. No, God's word could not fail, the church could not err. The fault could not be in her, but in her enemies, not as the old man said, in her too great prosperity, but in her slavery. And then the words which he had heard from Cyril at their first interview, rose before him as the true explanation. How could the church work freely and healthily, while she was crushed and fettered by the rulers of this world? And how could they be anything but the tyrants and antichrists they were, while they were menaced and deluded by heathen philosophy and vain systems of human wisdom? If Orestes was the curse of the Alexandrian church, then the Hypatia was the curse of Orestes. On her head the true blame lay. She was the root of the evil. Who could extirpate it? Why should not he? It might be dangerous, yet successful or unsuccessful, it must be glorious. The course of Christianity wanted great examples. Might he not, and his young heart beat high at the thought? Might he not, by some great act of daring, self-sacrifice, divine madness of faith, like David's of old, when he went out against the giant? Awaken selfish and luxurious souls to a noble emulation, and recall to their minds, perhaps to their lives, the patterns of those martyrs who were the pride, the glory, the heirloom of Egypt? And as figure after figure rose before his imagination, of simple men and weak women who had conquered temptation and shame, torture and death, to live for ever on the lips of men, and take their seats among the patricians of the heavenly court, with brows glittering through all eternities with a martyr's crown, his heart beat thick and fast, and he longed only for an opportunity to dare and die. And the longing begot the opportunity, for he had hardly rejoined his brother visitors when the absorbing thought took word again, and he began questioning them eagerly for more information about Hypatia. On that point indeed he obtained nothing but fresh invective, but when his companions, after talking of the triumph which the true faith had gained that morning, went on to speak of the great overthrow of paganism twenty years before, under the Patriarch Theophilus, of Olympiodorus and his mob, who held us theropium for many days, by force of arms against the Christians, making sallies into the city, and torturing and murdering the prisoners whom they took. Of the martyrs who, among those very pillars which overung their heads, had died in torments rather than sacrifice to serapice, and of the final victory, and the soldier who, in presence of the trembling mob, clove the great jaw of the colossal idol, and snapped for ever the spell of heathenism. Phil Ammon's heart burned to distinguish himself like that soldier, and to wipe out his qualms of conscience by some more unquestionable deed of Christian prowess. There were no idols now to break, but there was philosophy. Why not carry war into the heart of the enemy's camp, and be at Satan in his very den? Why does not some man of God go boldly into the lecture room of the sorceress, and testify against her to her face? Do it yourself if you dare, said Peter. We have no wish to get our brains knocked out by all the profligate young gentlemen in the city. I will do it, said Phil Ammon. That is, if his holiness allows you to make such a fool of yourself. Take care, sir, of your words. You revile the blessed martyrs from St. Stephen to St. Tilly Marcus, when you call such a deed foolishness. I shall most certainly inform his holiness of your insolence. Do so, said Phil Ammon. Who, possessed with a new idea, wished for nothing more? And there the matter dropped for the time. The presumption of the young in this generation is growing insufferable, said Peter, to his master that evening. So much the better. They put their elders on their metal in the race of good works. But who has been presuming to-day? That mad boy, whom Pambo sent up from the deserts, dared to offer himself as champion of the faith against Hypatia. He actually proposed to go into her lecture room, and argue with her to her face. What think you of that, for a specimen of youthful modesty and self distrust? Cyril was silent a while. What answer am I to have the honour of taking back? A month's relegation to nitria on bread and water. You, I am sure, will not allow such things to go unpunished. Indeed, if they do, there is an end to all authority and discipline. Cyril was still silent, whilst Peter's brow clouded fast. At last he answered. The cause once martyrs. Send the boy to me. Peter went down with a shrug, and an expression of face, which looked but too like envy, and ushered up the trembling youth, who dropped on his knees as soon as he entered. So you wish to go into the heathen woman's lecture room and defy her. Have you courage for it? God will give it to me. You will be murdered by her pupils. I can defend myself, said Philaman, with a pardonable glance downward at these sinewy limbs. And if not, what death more glorious than martyr them? Cyril smiled geneal enough. Promise me two things. Two thousand, if you will. Two are quite difficult enough to keep. Youth is rash in promises and rasher in forgetting them. Promise me that whatever happens, you will not strike the first blow. I do. Promise me again that you will not argue with her. What then? Contradict denounced defy. But give no reasons. If you do, you are lost. She is subtler than a serpent, skilled in all the tricks of logic, and you will become a laughing-stock, and run away in shame. Promise me. I do. Then go. Win. The sooner the better. At what hour does the accursed woman lecture tomorrow, Peter? We saw her going to the museum at nine this morning. Then go at nine tomorrow. There is money for you. What is this for, asked Philaman, fingering curiously the first coins which he ever had handled in his life? To pay for your entrance. To the philosopher, none enters without money. Not so to the Church of God, open all day long to the beggar and the slave. If you convert her well, and if not, and he added to himself between his teeth, and if not, well also, perhaps better. I said Peter Bitterly, as the ushered Philaman out. Go up to Ramath Gilead and prosper young fool. What evil spirit sent you here to feed the noble patriarch's only weakness? What do you mean, asked Philaman, as fiercely his idea? The fancy that preachings and protestations and martyrdoms can drive out the Canaanites, who can only be got rid of with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. His uncle Theophilus knew that well enough. If he had not, Olympiodorus might have been Master of Alexandria, an incense burning before a Serapis to this day. I go and let her convert you. Touch the accursed thing like Achan, and see if you do not end by having it in your tent. Keep company with the daughters of Midian, and see if you do not join yourself to Be'elpua, and eat the offerings of the dead, and with this encouraging sentence the two parted for the night. End of chapter 7. Chapter 8, part 1 of Hypatia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eugene Smith. Hypatia by Charles Kingsley. Chapter 8, The East Wind, Part 1. As Hypatia went forth the next morning, in all her glory, with a crowd of philosophers and phylofasters, students, and fine gentlemen, following her in reverent admiration across the street to her lecture room, a ragged beggar man, accompanied by a huge and villainous looking dog, planted himself right before her, and extending a dirty hand, whined for an alms. Hypatia, whose refined taste could never endure the sight, much less the contact, of anything squalid and degraded, recoiled a little, and bad the attendant's slave, get rid of the man with a coin. Several of the younger gentlemen, however, considered themselves adepts in that noble art of upsetting, then in vogue in the African universities, to which we all have reason enough to be thankful, seeing that it drove St. Augustine from Carthage to Rome, and they, in compliance with the usual fashion of tormenting any simple creature who came in their way, by mystification and insult, commenced a series of personal witticisms which the beggar bore stoically enough. The coin was offered him, but he blandly put aside the hand of the giver, and keeping his place on the pavement seemed inclined to dispute Hypatia's farther passage. What do you want? Send the wretch and his frightful dog away, gentlemen, said the poor philosopher in some trepidation. I know that dog, said one of them, it is Aban Ezra's. Where did you find it before it was lost, you rascal? Where your mother found you when she palmed you off upon her good man, my child, in the slave market? Fair Sibyl, have you already forgotten your humblest pupil, as these young dogs have, who are already trying to upset their master and instructor in the angelic science of bullying? And the beggar, lifting his broad straw hat, disclosed the features of Raphael Aban Ezra. Hypatia recoiled with a shriek of surprise. Ah, you are astonished. At what, I pray? To see you, sir, thus. Why, then, you have been preaching to us all a long time the glory of abstraction from the allurements of sense. It augurs ill, surely, for your estimate either of your pupils or of your own eloquence, if you are so struck with consternation, because one of them has actually at last obeyed you. What is the meaning of this masquerade, most excellent, sir? Ask Hypatia, and a dozen voices beside. Ask Cyril. I am on my way to Italy in the character of the new diogenes, to look like him for a man. When I have found one, I shall feel great pleasure in returning to acquaint you with the amazing news. Farewell. I wish to look once more at a certain countenance, though I have turned, as you see, cynic, and intend henceforth to attend no teacher but my dog, who will luckily charge no fees for instruction. If she did, I must go untaught, for my ancestral wealth made itself wings yesterday morning. You are aware, doubtless, of the plebiscitum against the Jews, which was carried into effect under the auspices of a certain holy tribune of the people? Infamous. And dangerous, my dear lady. Success is in spiriting, and Theon's house is quite as easily sacked as the Jew's quarter. Beware. Come, come, Abba Nezra, cried the young men. You are far too good company for us to lose you for that rascally patriarch's fancy. We will make a subscription for you, eh? And you shall live with each of us, month and month about. We shall quite lose the trick of joking without you. Thank you, gentlemen. But really, you have been my buts far too long for me to think of becoming yours. Madam, one word in private before I go. Apatia leaned forward, and speaking in Syriac, whispered hurriedly, Oh, stay, sir, I beseech you. You are the wisest of my pupils, perhaps my only true pupil. My father will find some concealment for you from these wretches. And if you need money, remember, he is your debtor. We have never repaid you, the gold witch. Fairest muse, that was but my entrance feeb to Parnassus. It is I who am in your debt, and I have brought my arrears in the form of this opal ring. As for Shelter near you, he went on, lowering his voice, and speaking like her in Syriac. Apatia the Gentile is far too lovely for the peace of mind of Raphael the Jew. And he drew from his finger Miriam's ring and offered it. Impossible, said Apatia, blushing scarlet. I cannot accept it. I beseech you. It is the last earthly burden I have, except this snail's prison of flesh and blood. My dagger will open a crack through that when it becomes intolerable. But as I do not intend to leave my shell, if I can help it, except just when and how I choose, and as, if I take this ring with me, some of Heraclians, Circumcellians, will assuredly knock my brains out for the sake of it, I must entreat. Never! Can you not sell the ring and escape to Sinesius? He will give you Shelter. The hospitable hurricane. Shelter, yes, but rest, none. As soon pitch my tent in the crater of Etna. Why, he will be trying day and night to convert me to that eclectic ferago of his, which he calls philosophic Christianity. Well, if you will not have the ring, it is soon disposed of. We Easterns know how to be magnificent and vanish as the lords of the world ought. And he turned to the philosophic crowd. Here, gentlemen of Alexandria, does any gay youth wish to pay his debts once and for all? Behold the rainbow of Solomon, an opal such as Alexandria never saw before, which would buy any one of you, and his Macedonian papa, and his Macedonian mama, and his Macedonian sisters and horses and parrots and peacocks, twice over, in any slave market in the world. Any gentleman who wishes to possess a jewel worth ten thousand gold pieces will only need to pick it out of the gutter into which I throw it. Scramble for it, you young Phadrius and Pamphilly. There are latest and thetists enough about who will help you to spend it. And raising the jewel on high, he was in the act of tossing it into the street when his arm was seized from behind, and the ring snatched from his hand. He turned fiercely enough and saw behind him, her eyes flashing fury and contempt, old Miriam. Bran sprang at the old woman's throat in an instant, but recoiled again before the glare of her eye. Raphael called the dog off and turning quietly to the disappointed spectators. It is all right, my luckless friends, you must raise money for yourselves, after all, which, since the departure of my nation, will be a somewhat more difficult matter than ever. The overruling destinies, whom, as you all know so well when you are getting tipsy, not even philosophers can resist, have restored the rainbow of Solomon to its original possessor. Farewell, Queen of Philosophy. When I find the man, you shall hear of it. Mother, I am coming with you for a friendly word before we part. Though, he went on laughing, as the two walked away together, it was a scurvy trick of you to balk one of the nation of the exquisite pleasure of seeing those heathen dogs scrambling in the gutter over his bounty. Hypatia went into the museum, utterly bewildered by this strange meeting, and it still strange her end. She took care, nevertheless, to betray no sign of her deep interest till she found herself alone in her little waiting-room adjoining the lecture-hall, and there, throwing herself into a chair, she sat and thought, till she found, to her surprise in anger, the tears trickling down her cheeks. Not that her bosom held one spark of affection for Raphael, if there had ever been any danger of that the wily Jew had himself taken care to ward it off by the sneering and frivolous tone with which he quashed every approach to deep feeling, either in himself or in others. As for his compliments to her beauty, she was far too much accustomed to such to be either pleased or displeased by them. But she felt, as she said, that she had lost perhaps her only true pupil, and more perhaps her only true master. For she saw clearly enough that under that Silenus mask was hidden a nature capable of, perhaps more than she dared think of. She had always felt him her superior and practical cunning, and that morning had proved to her what she had long suspected, that he was possibly also her superior in that moral earnestness and strength of will for which she looked in vain among the innervated Greeks who surrounded her. And even in those matters in which he professed himself her pupil, she had long been alternately delighted by finding that he alone of all her school seemed thoroughly and instinctively to comprehend her every word, and chilled by the disagreeable suspicion that he was only playing with her, and her mathematics and geometry, and metaphysics and dialectic, like a fencer practicing with foils, while he reserved his real strength for some object more worthy of him. More than once some paradox or question of his had shaken her neatest systems into a thousand cracks and opened up ugly depths of doubt, even on the most seemingly palpable certainties, or some half-chesting allusion to those Hebrew scriptures, the quantity and quality of his faith in which he would never confess, made her indignant at the notion that he considered himself in possession of a reserved ground of knowledge, deeper and sureer than her own, in which he did not deign to allow her to share. And yet she was irresistibly attracted to him. That deliberate and consistent luxury of his, from which he shrank, he had always boasted that he was able to put on and take off at will, like a garment. And now he seemed to have proved his words, to be a worthy rival of the great Stoics of old time. Could Zeno himself have asked more from frail humanity? Moreover, Raphael had been of infinite practical use to her. He worked out, unasked, her mathematical problems. He looked out authorities, kept her pupils in order by his bitter tongue, and drew fresh students to her lecture by the attractions of his wit, his arguments, and last, but not least, his unrivaled cook and seller. Above all, he acted the part of a fierce and valiant watchdog on her behalf, against the knots of clownish and often brutal sophists, the wrecks of the old cynic, Stoic, in academic schools, who, with venom increasing after the want of parties, with their decrepitude, assailed the beautifully bespangled card castle of neoclatonism as an empty medley of all Greek philosophies with all Eastern superstitions. All such Philistines had as yet dreaded the pen and tongue of Raphael, even more than those of the chivalrous Bishop of Cyrene, though he certainly to judge from certain of his letters hated them as much as he could hate any human being, which was, after all, not very bitterly. But the visits of Sinesias were few and far between. The distance between Carthage and Alexandria and the labor of his diocese, and worse than all, the growing difference in purpose between him and his beautiful teacher, made his protection all but valueless. And now Abba Nezra was gone too, and with him were gone a thousand plans and hopes to have converted him, at last, to a philosophic faith in the old gods, to have made him her instrument for turning back the stream of human error. I, how often had that dream crossed her. And now, who would take its place? Athanasius? Sinesius, in his good nature, might dignify him with the name of brother, but to her he was a powerless pedant, destined to die without having wrought any deliverance on the earth, as indeed the event proved. Plutarch of Athens? He was superannuated. Sirianus? A mere logician, twisting Aristotle to mean what she knew and he ought to have known Aristotle never meant. Her father? A man of triangles and conic sections. How paltre they all looked by the sight of the unfathomable Jew, spinners of charming cobwebs. But would the flies condescend to be caught in them? Builders of pretty houses, if people would but enter and live in them. Preachers of superfine morality, which their admiring pupils never dreamt of practicing. Without her, she well knew, philosophy must die in Alexandria. And was it her wisdom, or other and more earthly charms of hers, which enabled her to keep it alive? Sickening thought. Oh, that she were ugly, only to test the power of her doctrines. Oh, the odds were fearful enough already. She would be glad of any help, however earthly and carnal. But was not the work hopeless? What she wanted was men who could act while she thought. And those were just the men whom she would find nowhere, but she knew it too well, in the hated Christian priesthood. And then, that fearful, if-a-geniah sacrifice loomed in the distance as inevitable, the only hope of philosophy was in her despair. She dashed away her tears and proudly entered the lecture hall, and ascended the tribune like a goddess amid the shouts of her audience. What did she care for them? Would they do what she told them? She was half through her lecture, before she could recollect herself and banish from her mind the thought of Raphael. And at that point, we will take the lecture up. Quote. Truth. Where is truth, but in the soul itself? Facts, objects, are but phantoms matter. Woven, ghosts of this earthly night at which the soul, sleeping here in the mire and clay of matter, shudders and names its own vague tremors sense and perception. Yet, even as our nightly dreams stir in us the suspicion of mysterious and immaterial presences, unfettered by the bonds of time and space, so do these waking dreams, which we call sight and sound. They are divine messengers, whom Zeus, pitting his children, even when he pent them in this prison house of flesh, appointed to arousing them, dim recollections of that real world of souls whence they came. Awakened once to them, seeing through the veil of sense and fact, the spiritual truth of which they are but the accidental garment, concealing the very thing which they make palpable, the philosopher may neglect the fact for the doctrine, the shell for the kernel, the body for the soul, of which it is but the symbol in the vehicle. What matter then to the philosopher whether these names of men, Hector or Prim, Helen or Achilles, were ever visible as phantoms of flesh and blood before the eyes of men? What matter whether they spoke or thought as he of Siles says they did? What matter even whether he himself ever had earthly life? The book is here, the word which men call his. Let the thoughts thereof have been at first whose they may, now they are mine. I have taken them to myself, and thought them to myself, and made them parts of my own soul. Nay, they were and ever will be parts of me. For they, even as the poet was, even as I am, are but a part of the universal soul. What matter then, what myths grew up around those mighty thoughts of ancient seers? Let others try to reconcile the cyclic fragments or vindicate the catalogue of ships. What has the philosopher lost, though the former were proved to be contradictory, and the latter interpolated? The thoughts are there, and ours, let us open our hearts lovingly to receive them, from whatsoever they may have come. As in men, so in books, the soul is all with which our souls must deal, and the soul of the book is whatsoever beautiful and true and noble we can find in it. It matters not to us whether the poet was altogether conscious of the meanings which we can find in him, consciously or unconsciously to him, the meanings must be there. For were they not there to be seen, how could we see them? There are those among the uninitiate vulgar, and those two who carry under the philosophic cloak, hearts still uninitiate, who revile such interpretations as merely the sofistic and arbitrary sports of fancy. It lies with them to show what Homer meant, if our spiritual meanings be absurd, to tell the world why Homer is admirable, if that for which we hold him up to admiration does not exist in him. Will they say that the honor which he has enjoyed for ages was inspired by that which seems to be his first and literal meaning? And more, will they venture to impute that literal meaning to him? Can they suppose that the divine soul of Homer could degrade itself to right of actual and physical feastings and nuptials and dances, actual nightly thefts of horses, actual fidelity of dogs and swine herds, actual intermarriages between deities and men, or that it is this seeming vulgarity which has won for him from the wisest of every age a title of the father of poetry? Degrading thought, fit only for the chorus and sense bound tribe who can appreciate nothing but what is palpable to sense and sight. As soon believe the Christian scriptures when they tell us of a deity who has hands and feet, eyes and ears, who condescends to command the patterns of furniture and culinary utensils, and is made perfect by being born disgusting thought as the son of a village maiden and defiling himself with the wants and sorrows of the lowest slaves. End of Chapter 8, Part 1