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The Death of the Gods

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky · English · Gutenberg #46492 · 637,747 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Death of the Gods

Author: Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

Translator: Herbert Trench


        
Release date: August 3, 2014 [eBook #46492]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEATH OF THE GODS ***

Transcriber's Note:

All obvious errors have been corrected.
Archaic and alternate spellings have been retained.




By DMITRI MÉREJKOWSKI


    =THE DEATH OF THE GODS.= Authorized English Version by HERBERT
    TRENCH. 12^o

    =THE ROMANCE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI: THE FORERUNNER.= (The
    Resurrection of the Gods.) Authorized English Version from the
    Russian. 12^o. With 8 Illustrations

    ----Artist's Edition, with 64 illustrations. 2 vols., 8^o

    =PETER AND ALEXIS.= Authorized English Version from the Russian.
    12^o


    =G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS=
    =New York=      =London=





    +Christ and Antichrist+




    The Death of the
    Gods


    By

    Dmitri Mérejkowski


    Translated by

    Herbert Trench

    Sometime Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford


    _Authorised English Version_

    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
    NEW YORK AND LONDON
    The Knickerbocker Press





    Copyright 1901
    by
    G. P. Putnam's Sons


    Made in the United States of America


    The Knickerbocker Press, New York






MÉREJKOWSKI


Dmitri Mérejkowski is perhaps the most interesting and powerful of the
younger Russian novelists, the only writer that promises to carry on
the work of Tolstoi, Turgeniev, and Dostoievski. His books, which are
already numerous, are animated by a single master-idea, the
Pagano-Christian dualism of our human nature. What specially interests
him in the vast spectacle of human affairs is the everlasting contest
between the idea of a God-Man and the idea of a Man-God; that is to
say, between the conception of a God incarnate for awhile (as in
Christ) and the conception of Man as himself God--gradually evolving
higher types of splendid and ruling character which draw after them
the generations.

The novelist's own doctrine seems to be that both the Pagan and the
Christian elements in our nature, although distinct elements, are
equally legitimate and sacred. His teaching is that the soul and the
senses have an equal right to be respected; that hedonism and altruism
are equals, and that the really full man, the perfect man, is he who
can ally in harmonious equilibrium the cult of Dionysus and the cult
of Christ.

Mérejkowski conceives that European civilisation has been born of the
tremendous conflict between these two main ideas. And he has embodied
this conflict in a trilogy of novels,--three great historical
romances. The first is entitled _The Death of the Gods_, and deals
with the extraordinary career of the Roman Emperor. Julian the
Apostate, who in the fourth century A.D. sought to revive the worship
of the Olympians after Christianity had been adopted by Constantine
the Great as the official religion of the Roman Empire.

The historical novel, pure and simple, exists no longer. Writers of
genius who seem to write historical novels in reality are only
transferring to the stage of the world a drama which is being played
in their own souls. They transfer thither that drama in order to show
that the struggle which is now going on in us is eternal. Mérejkowski
sees the question, which is of supreme interest to us, being asked by
the great spirits of a wealthy and imperial civilisation closely
resembling our own, in the fourth century. And, what is of more
interest still, he not only sees the momentous problem and places it
before us with remarkable lucidity, but he also seems, in his own
fashion, to arrive at a solution. Moreover, this novelist, this
psychologist, is also an artist and a poet, possessed by what he
somewhere calls the "Nostalgia of the Distant." With an ardour as of
Flaubert in _Salammbo_, and with perhaps more skill than Sienkiewicz
in _Quo Vadis_, the author of _The Death of the Gods_ has succeeded in
re-creating the wonderful rich scenes and characters of that remote
epoch. We see the racing stables of the Hippodrome of Constantinople,
battles with wild German warriors round Strasburg, the interior of the
baths at Antioch, dinners of epicures and men of letters at Athens,
pictures of a Roman Emperor at his toilet-table, or of a lovelorn
child in the Temple of Aphrodite. Before writing this first of his
great romances Mérejkowski himself travelled through Asia Minor and
Greece, visited Constantinople and Syria, and gathered everywhere
living impressions to serve his art and his thought. He was besides
admirably prepared to handle a subject which had attracted him from
youth. A delicate Hellenist, his first appearance in literary life was
as a harmonious translator of Æschylus and Sophocles. Later, the
Gnostics, the Fathers of the Eastern Church, the Greek Sophists (who
represented the last throes of expiring Paganism and already dreamed
of reviving it), were the young poet's objects of study. Thus was born
the romance of _The Death of the Gods_, which he has continued later
in _The Resurrection of the Gods_ (of which Leonardo da Vinci is the
hero), and completed by _The Anti-Christ_, portraying the savage
figure of Peter the Great, the creator (despite all natural obstacles)
of St. Petersburg and of modern Russia.

In the first romance of the three the new Christian spirit is seen
invading the soul of Julian himself, the last champion of expiring
Paganism. It can even be seen in the little treatises, _The Sun King_
and the _Mother of the Gods_, which Julian wrote in his feverish
nights to defend his lost cause. Soon there remained to this singular
man of all that first ardour but a feeling of impotent rage and
unbridled pride--the Napoleonic lust of conquering the world. And so
we see him in this book, in the midst of the mad expedition against
Persia, where he was to meet his death, oversetting the altar of the
gods who had betrayed him, and exclaiming: "_The gods are no more; or
rather, the gods do not yet exist. They are not. But they will be. We
shall all be gods. We have but to dare!_" A few days later he falls,
vanquished by the Galilean, whose image haunts his deathbed. But at
that last hour it is not the fierce God of the Arians (who educated
Julian the Emperor) that he sees. He whom delirium calls up is
Christus Pastophorus,--the Good Shepherd,--the Spirit of gentleness
and love. It is that Spirit who has dethroned the Olympians.

But the gods do not perish utterly. Centuries pass, and from the bosom
of the waters, like Aphrodite, from the bosom of the earth, like
Cybele, they come forth again, serene and impassive. Popes, kings,
great nobles, simple Florentine merchants welcome them, brought by
galleys from the coasts of Hellas, or discovered by patient excavators
of the antique soil. Their marble glory shines anew. The rays of
Helios penetrate the soul of artists. The fires of Dionysus kindle the
blood of the young men and the young women. It is the dawn of the
_Renaissance_. Has then the God-Man conquered the Man-God? No;
because, see, Savonarola is defying the gods of Olympus and the gods
of the earth. The latter destroy him, but the Christ has reappeared,
and the problem of the two forms of wisdom continues to be set in a
form more august and more painful than ever before.

This is the subject of the _Renaissance of the Gods_, a romance of
which the distinguished critic in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, M.
Theodore de Wyzewa, says that it "far surpasses the mass of the
romances published in Russia during the last twenty-five years."

And since then, as before then, as at all times, at every fresh
crisis, at every renewal of the creative process taking place within
human consciousness, the two principles reappear. They struggle too in
the soul of the strongest. Look at Peter the Great, whom old believers
used to call "The Anti-Christ." He will be the hero of the third
romance of the trilogy. We shall see therein the tragedy of the gentle
Tsarevitch Alexis, servant of the Galilean and immolated victim of the
new god; victim, that is, of human will incarnate in the genius of
Peter, lifting itself above good and evil.

The above notes are largely taken, and partly translated, from an
interesting paper on Mérejkowski by M. Prozor in the _Mercure de
France_.

    HERBERT TRENCH.

    ST. PETERSBOURG, _24 JUIN_, 1901.

J'autorise par la présente Monsieur Herbert Trench à l'exclusion de
tout autre, à traduire du russe en anglais mon roman intitulé _La Mort
des Dieux_, qui est la première partie de ma trilogie _Le Christ et
l'Anti-Christ_.

    DMITRI DE MÉREJKOWSKI.

[I hereby grant to Mr. Herbert Trench the exclusive authorisation for
the English version of my romance entitled _The Death of the Gods_,
this romance constituting the first division of the trilogy issued
under the general title of _Christ and the Anti-Christ_.]

A similar authorisation has been granted to Mr. Trench for the two
succeeding volumes of the trilogy, entitled, respectively, _The
Resurrection of the Gods_ and _The Anti-Christ_.




PART I




I


About two and a half miles from Cæsarea in Cappadocia, upon the woody
spurs of Mount Argæus, and close to the great Roman road, bubbled a
certain warm spring, famous for its healing virtues. A granite slab,
adorned with rough sculpture and bearing a Greek inscription, proved
that this spring had of old time been consecrated to the twin sons of
Zeus, Castor and Pollux; but this by no means prevented the unbroken
images of these Pagan demigods from being locally worshipped as St.
Cosmas and St. Damian respectively.

On the other side of the road, opposite the sacred fountain, rose a
little thatched tavern, flanked by a dirty stable, and by a shed where
fowls and geese were dabbling in the mud. In this tavern, owned by one
Syrax, a wily Armenian, could be bought goats'-milk cheese, black
bread, honey, olive oil, and a thin sour wine, grown in neighbouring
vineyards.

A screen divided the tavern into two compartments; one for the use of
common folk, the other for guests of more importance. From the smoked
ceiling hung hams curing, and odorous bunches of mountain herbs,
proving that Fortunata, the wife of Syrax, was a careful housewife; a
fact that did not save the dubious reputation of the establishment.

At night honest travellers dared not halt here, remembering sundry
rumours about dark plots hatched in the cottage; but Syrax, ever
scheming, and knowing whose hand to cross with silver, had never
troubled his head about rumour. The partition was formed by two
slender columns, between which was stretched, in the manner of a
door-curtain, an old chlamys (or outer garment) of faded wool,
belonging to the mistress of the house. The little columns, wrought in
a barefaced attempt at the Doric style, were the pride of the heart of
Syrax and the single ornament of the tavern. Once gilded, they had
long stood creviced and chipped and hopelessly cracked.

The stuff of the chlamys, when new, had been a bright violet; now it
was a dirty blue, eked out by many patches, and stained with
innumerable stains, due to the breakfasts, dinners, and suppers of ten
years of the conjugal life of the hard-working Fortunata.

In the clean half of the tavern, on a single narrow couch, which was
torn in many places, Marcus Scuda, Roman tribune of the ninth cohort
of the sixteenth legion, was lolling before a tankard-strewn table. A
dandy provincial, he had one of those faces at the sight of which
prosperous slaves and second-rate courtesans would inevitably exclaim
with heartfelt admiration: "_What_ a handsome man!"

At his feet, in an uncomfortable but respectful attitude, a red-faced
man sat, panting. His bald head was fringed with grey hair, brushed
towards the temples. He was the centurion of the eighth _centuria_,
Publius Aquila.

Farther off, twelve soldiers, stretched on the floor, were playing at
knuckle-bones.

"By Hercules!" cried Scuda, "I'd rather be the meanest beggar in
Constantinople than the first man in a mouse-trap like this. Can you
call this an existence, Publius? Answer me honestly. Is this living?
To think that outside barracks and camps the future has nothing in
store for one; that one must rot in this sickening marsh without ever
catching a glimpse of the world again!"

"Yes," assented Publius; "it's a fact that life here isn't precisely
gay; but on the other hand, it's peaceful!"

The knuckle-bones pre-occupied the attention of the old captain.
Pretending to listen to the gossipings of his superior officer, and
fully to agree with the drift of his remarks, he followed with an
interested eye the game of the legionaries. He said to himself, "If
the red aims well, he'll certainly win."

However, by way of politeness, Publius asked Scuda, with a show of
attention--

"Why, by the way, have you brought down on yourself the indignation of
the Prefect Helvidius?"

"A woman, a friend of mine, was at the bottom of it, a girl...."

And Marcus Scuda, in a fit of garrulous intimacy, confided to the ear
of the old centurion that the Prefect, "that old goat of a Helvidius,"
had grown jealous on account of the special favours conferred on him,
Marcus, by a certain frail lady, a Lydian.

Now Scuda wanted, by rendering some important service, to win back the
good-will of the Prefect; and he had resolved upon a plan.

Not far from Cæsarea, in the fortress of Macellum, dwelt Julian and
Gallus, the cousins of the reigning Emperor Constantius, and the
nephews of Constantine the Great. These two were the last
representatives of the luckless house of the Flavii. On his accession
to the throne, fearing rivals, Constantius had assassinated his uncle,
the father of Julian and Gallus, Julian Constantius, the brother of
Constantine. But Julian and Gallus themselves had been spared, and
imprisoned in the solitary castle of Macellum, where they lived
oppressed by perpetual fear of death. In great perplexity, knowing
that the new Emperor loathed the two orphans who reminded him of his
crime, Helvidius, Prefect of Cæsarea, desired, but dreaded, to divine
the will of his master.

Scuda, the adroit tribune, possessed by visions of a career at Court,
grasped, from chance words of his superior officer, that the latter
dared not take upon himself the heavy responsibility, and trembled
lest the current rumour about an escape of the heirs of Constantine
should be realised in fact. At this point Scuda made up his mind to go
to Macellum, seize the prisoners, and bring them to Cæsarea under the
safeguard of his legionaries, well assured that he had nothing to fear
from these orphaned minors, abandoned by the world and hated by the
Emperor. By this valiant proceeding, Scuda counted on regaining the
favours of the Prefect Helvidius, so unhappily lost on account of the
auburn-haired lady of Lydia. Nevertheless, being of a suspicious
nature, he only communicated to Publius part of his plan.

"And what do you propose now, Scuda? Have you received instructions
from Constantinople?"

"I have received nothing; nobody knows anything; but there is an
everlasting hawking about of rumours, don't you see? There are endless
veiled hopes and hints, unfinished phrases, threats and warnings,
allusions.... Any idiot can do what he has been told to do. But this
is a matter of guessing the mute will of our master. That's a job that
brings reward. Come, let us make the venture, take the risk. The great
thing is to be speedy and stout-hearted, and to trust in the Holy
Cross!... I confide myself to you, Publius. Perhaps we shall be
drinking at Court, you and I, before many days are over; and, by God,
a better wine than this!"

Through the little barred window filtered the troubled light of a
melancholy dusk. It was raining monotonously. A single clay wall, full
of crevices, separated the room from the stable. The acrid odour of
dung came though, and the clucking of hens, the shrill chirping of
chickens, and the grunting of pigs was audible. There came also the
steady noise of a liquid falling into a sonorous can, as if the good
wife were milking her cow. The soldiers, discussing their winnings,
were quarrelling among themselves in undertones. Close against the
floor, through the frail lath and plaster, a hog had thrust his fat,
pink snout. Caught in too narrow a slit, he could not draw out his
muzzle and was groaning piteously. Publius mused--

"By Jupiter! we're nearer the courtyard of the cattle than the court
of the Emperor!"

His interest in the game had melted away. The tribune after his excess
of confidence himself felt sad. Through the window he looked at the
grey sky, dissolving itself into water, at the muzzle of the pig, the
thick lees of wine in the tankards, the dirty soldiers. Anger mounted
to his brain.

He struck the table, which swayed on its uneven legs, with his fist.

"Hi, rascality! betrayer of Christ, Syrax, come here! What wine do you
call that, you scoundrel?"

The innkeeper ran up. He wore hair and beard frizzled into fine
ringlets, black as ebony, with bluish shadows. Fortunata used to say,
in her hours of conjugal tenderness, that the beard of Syrax was like
a bunch of the grapes of Samos. His eyes were also black and
extraordinarily brilliant, and a honeyed smile never left his purple
lips. He resembled a caricature of Bacchus, and was black and sugary
from every point of view. To appease the wrath of Scuda, the innkeeper
took to witness Moses and Deidamia, Christ and Hercules, that his wine
was superexcellent. But the tribune was obstinate, declaring that he
knew in whose house Glabrio, a rich merchant of Lyrnas, had recently
been assassinated; and that he, Scuda, would denounce Syrax in the
proper quarters. Terrified, the Armenian rushed to the cellars, and
brought back thence in triumph a strange bulky bottle, flat at its
base, narrow-necked, covered with mildew, and grey with age. Through
the mouldiness in places the glass was visible, no longer transparent,
but irised, and upon the label of cypress-wood attached to the neck of
the bottle could be deciphered the initial letters of "_Anthosmium_"
and below "_Annorum Centum_."

But Syrax assured the couple that even in the reign of the Emperor
Diocletian the wine had been more than a hundred years old.

"Black wine?" asked Publius, with respect.

"Black as tar, and sweet smelling as nectar. Ho! Fortunata! for this
wine bring summer glasses, cups of crystal, and bring too the whitest
snow from the ice-tub."

Fortunata brought in two glasses. Her healthy face was of a dull
pallor like thick cream, and with her came in the smell of country
freshness, milk, and manure.

The landlord gazed at the bottle amorously, and kissed its neck; then
with caution he raised the waxen seal. The wine flowed black and
odorous in a thick jet, dissolving the snow, while the crystal of the
cups became dull and cloudy under the action of cold.

Thereupon Scuda, who had pretensions to learning (he was capable of
confusing Hecuba with Hecate), declaimed proudly the only line of
Martial he could remember--

    _Candida nigrescant vetulo crystalla Falerno!_

"Wait a moment. Here is something still better," and Syrax plunged his
hand into his pocket, drew thence a minute flask carved out of onyx,
and with a sensual smile poured into the wine a drop of precious
Arabian cinnamon. The drop fell, and, like a creaming pearl, melted
into the black liquor. A strangely heavy perfume filled the room.

While the tribune was slowly drinking, Syrax made a clacking noise
with his tongue, murmuring, "The wines of Biblos, of Lesbos, of Lathea
in Chios, of Icaria ... are less than nothing to this wine!"

Night was falling. Scuda gave the order to get ready to march. The
legionaries began putting on their armour, fastened the greave
protecting the right leg, and took up bucklers and lances. When they
entered the outer hall, the Icarian shepherds, who were brigands
rather than shepherds, seated near the fire, rose respectfully before
the Roman tribune. Scuda, full of a sense of his own rank and valour,
felt the blood burning in his veins and his head buzzing with the
effect of the marvellous liquor.

On the threshold a man approached him. He wore a strange oriental
costume--a white tunic, striped with broad red bands, and on his head
a high headdress of woven camel's hair, and a towering Persian tiara.
Scuda halted. The visage of the Mede was finely cut, lengthy and
meagre, and yellow of hue rather than olive. The narrow and piercing
eyes sparkled maliciously, but all his movements were calm and
majestic. He was one of those wandering magicians who haughtily
declared themselves Chaldeans, seers, and mathematicians. He announced
to the tribune that his name was Nogodarès. Sojourning by chance with
Syrax, he was travelling from the distant Hyrcania towards the coasts
of the Ionian sea, to meet the celebrated warlock philosopher, Maximus
of Ephesus. The magician begged for authority to prove his art and to
divine the happy fortune of the tribune.

The shutters were closed. The Mede was preparing something on the
ground; suddenly a slight crackling was heard; everybody was silent
and a flame rose in a long red tongue amidst wafted flakes of white
smoke, which filled the room. Nogodarès put his pale lips to a double
flute, and played a languid, plaintive air, like the funeral songs of
the Lydians. The flame grew yellow--grew fainter, then sparkled anew
in pale flashes. The sorcerer threw into the fire a handful of dried
herbs. They evaporated in a penetrating aroma which brought on the
senses an indefinable melancholy, like the perfume of half-withered
grasses, on some misty evening, in the arid plains of Arachosia and
Drangiana. Obeying the plaintive call of the flute, a huge serpent
slid out of a black box placed at the feet of the magician, and
slowly, with a sound as of parchments rubbed together, unwound its
glittering and metallic coils. The wizard chanted in a broken voice,
which seemed to come from afar, and several times repeated the same
syllables, "_Mara, mara, mara!_" The serpent coiled itself round his
thin body and caressingly, with a tender hissing, brought its flat
green head and brilliant carbuncled eyes close to the ear of the
enchanter. A whistling, and the forked sting flashed, as if the
reptile had murmured its secret to its master, who now threw the flute
upon the ground. The flame filled anew the room with thick smoke, this
time diffusing an odour choking as if exhaled from the tomb. The flame
went out. Darkness and fear possessed all present; everybody felt it
difficult to breathe. But when the open shutters allowed the leaden
light of the dusk to enter, there remained no trace of the snake or of
the black box. Notwithstanding this, everybody's face was livid.

Nogodarès approached the tribune--

"Rejoice! Favour--great and speedy favour--awaits thee from thy great
master Augustus Constantius!"

During several moments he scrutinised the hand of Scuda narrowly.
Then, stooping to the level of his ear, muttered, so as to be heard by
none but the tribune--

"This hand is dyed with blood--the blood of a great prince!"

Scuda grew afraid.

"What dost thou dare to say, cursed hound of a Chaldean? I am a loyal
servant."

But the other probed him with his searching eyes and half ironically
responded--

"What dost thou fear? Given a few years.... And is glory won without
the spilling of blood?"

Pride and joy filled the heart of Scuda when at the head of his
soldiery he quitted the tavern. He drew near the sacred fountain,
crossed himself, and quaffed that virtuous water, invoking in a
fervent prayer St. Cosmas and St. Damian, that the prediction of
Nogodarès should not fall fruitless. Then he vaulted upon his haughty
Cappadocian charger and gave the legionaries the order "March." The
standard-bearer raised the ensign above his bared head. It was the
image of a large dragon, fixed upon a lance, with gaping jaws of
silver and the rest of its body formed of coloured silk. Unable to
withstand the wish to parade before the crowd assembled at the door of
the inn, and although conscious of peril, intoxicated with wine and
pride, the tribune stretched his sword up the misty road, and in a
loud voice commanded--

"To Macellum!"

A hum of astonishment ran through the crowd. The names of Julian and
of Gallus were uttered. The legionary who led the column raised his
skyward-twisted horn, sounded it, and the echoing note of the Roman
trumpet vibrated away amongst the mountains.




II


A profound obscurity reigned in the great sleeping-chamber of
Macellum, an ancient palace of Cappadocian princes.

The bed of the young Julian was very hard,--a wooden pallet, laid with
a panther-skin. So the young Julian himself willed it, being bred in
the austere principles of the Stoics by Mardonius, his tutor, a
passionate disciple of ancient philosophy.

Julian was not asleep. The wind, blowing in fierce gusts, howled like
an imprisoned beast between the chinks of the walls. Then all fell
back again into silence, and in the intent pause large drops of rain
could be heard splashing from the height of the roof upon the ringing
flagstones. The keen ear of Julian detected at moments the rustling of
the rapid flight of a bat. He distinguished, too, the regular
breathing of his brother, a delicate and girlish lad, who slept upon a
soft bed under mouldy hangings, the last trace of luxury in this
deserted castle. In the next room could be heard the heavy snore of
Mardonius.

Suddenly, the door of the secret staircase in the wall turned softly
upon its hinges. A bright light dazzled Julian.

Labda, an old slave, entered, carrying in her hand a metallic lamp.

"Nurse, I'm afraid! Don't take the lamp away...."

The old woman placed the lamp in a stone niche above the head of
Julian.

"Can you not sleep? You are not in pain? Are you hungry? That old
sinner Mardonius always keeps you fasting. I've brought you cakes of
honey. They're good.... Taste!"

Making Julian eat was the favourite occupation of Labda; but she dared
not indulge in it by day--dreading the severe Mardonius--and so
brought her delicacies mysteriously under cover of night. Labda, who
was purblind and could scarcely drag her limbs along, always wore the
black religious habit. Although a devout Christian, she was regarded
as being in reality a Thessalian sorceress. The grimmest
superstitions, old and new, fused in her brain into a strange religion
not far removed from madness. She mingled prayers with spells,
Olympian gods with demons, Christian rites with the black arts. Her
body was behung with crosses, and amulets carved out of the bones of
the dead; and scapularies, containing the ashes of martyrs, swung from
her shoulders. The old woman felt for Julian a pious affection,
regarding him as the sole and legitimate successor of Constantine the
Great, and holding Constantius, the reigning Emperor, a murderer and a
usurper.

Labda knew better than anybody the family tree and traditions of the
race of the Flavii. She remembered the grandfather of Julian,
Constantius Chlorus. The murderous mysteries of the Court lingered on,
ineffaceable, in her memory; and many a time at night would she tell
them to Julian, keeping nothing back, so that he, at the narrative of
events which his childish brain could not yet comprehend, felt his
heart gripped by fear and indignation. With dull eyes, in a low
monotonous listless sing-song, Labda, looking like one of the Fates,
would recite these gruesome epic tales of a few years ago, as if they
had been so many legends of remotest antiquity.

Placing the lamp in a stone niche, Labda blessed Julian, with a sign
of the cross; ascertained that the amulet of amber was safe on his
breast, and, pronouncing some charms to exorcise ill spirits,
vanished.

A heavy half-slumber fell upon Julian. It was warm; great drops of
rain, descending in silence as into the bottom of a sonorous vessel,
lulled him into languor. He knew not whether he was awake or asleep;
whether it was the breathing of the wind or Labda which was murmuring
at his ear the terrible secrets of his family. All that he had learnt
from her, and all that he had seen in infancy, fused into a single
fearful dream.

...He sees the dead body of the great Emperor upon a splendid bier.
The corpse is painted; and the head adorned by the deftest of barbers
with an ingenious dress of false hair. Julian, brought thither to kiss
the hand of his uncle for the last time, is afraid. The purple, the
diadem, with its stones glittering under the flame of torches, dazzle
him. Through the heavy Arabian perfumes, for the first time in his
life he comes into contact with the odour of a corpse. But bishops,
eunuchs, generals, acclaim the Emperor as if he were alive; and the
ambassadors bow down before him and return thanks, observing all the
punctilious ceremony of diplomatic etiquette. Scribes read out the
edicts, the laws, the decrees of the senate, and implore the approval
of the dead man; a flattering murmur surges to and fro among the
multitudes; they declare that he, the Emperor, is so great that by a
special mercy of Providence he reigns after death.

The child knows that he whom all glorify has killed his own son, a
brave young man, whose only fault lay in the people's too great love
of him. This son had been slandered by his stepmother, who loved him
with an unholy love, and had taken her revenge upon him thus as Phædra
upon Hippolytus. Afterwards the wife of Constantine had been surprised
in adulterous intimacy with a slave of the Imperial stables and had
been stifled in a bath heated to a white heat. And so on, corpse, upon
corpse, victim after victim. Finally, tormented by conscience,
Constantine the Great had implored priests to shrive his soul from
guilt. He was refused. Thereupon the Bishop Ozius succeeded in
convincing him that one religion only possessed the power of purifying
from sins like his. And therefore it had come to pass that now the
sumptuous _Labarum_, the standard bearing wrought in precious stones
the monogram of Christ, glittered above the catafalque of the
parricide.

Julian strove to awake, to open his eyes, and could not.

Ringing drops fell continually, like heavy tears, and the wind blew
on: but it seemed to him that it was Labda, the old Fate, babbling
near him with her toothless gums the terrible tales of the Flavii.

Julian dreamed again. He was in the subterranean vaults of Constantius
Chlorus, surrounded by porphyry sarcophagi containing the ashes of
kings. Labda is hiding him in one of the darkest corners and has
wrapped in her cloak the sickly Gallus, who is shivering with fever.
Suddenly, above their heads in the palace, groanings resound from room
to room.

Julian recognises the voice of his father; struggles to answer him--to
run to his aid--but Labda holds back the child, murmuring, "Quiet!
quiet! or they will be upon us!" and hides him under her chlamys.
Hasty steps clatter upon the staircase--come nearer and nearer still;
the door bursts into shivers and the soldiers of Cæsar, disguised as
monks, invade the vault. The Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia directs the
search; and coats of mail glitter under the black robes of the
searchers.

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,
answer--who is there?"

Labda is crouching in a corner, still locking the children to her
breast. Again comes the solemn cry--

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost--who
is there?"

The legionaries, sword in hand, explore every hole and corner; Labda
throws herself at their feet; shows them the sickly Gallus and Julian,
defenceless--

"Fear God! what harm can a six-year-old innocent like this do to the
Emperor?"

And the legionaries force all the kneeling three to kiss the cross
which Eusebius holds out to them, and to take the oath of faithfulness
to the new Emperor. Julian remembers the great cross of cypress-wood.
There was an enamelled picture of Christ on it. On the dark base of
the wood stains of fresh blood were still visible, imprinted by the
fingers of the cross-bearing assassin.

Was it the blood of the father of Julian, or of one of his six
cousins, Dalmatius, Hannibal, Nepotian, Constantine the Younger, or of
the others? The murderer, in order to ascend the throne, had taken six
corpses in his stride, doing each deed in the name of the Crucified.
And still round the tyrant, day after day, rose the cloud of victims,
a multitude which no man could number.

Julian awoke full of fears. The rain had ceased and the wind fallen.
The lamp burned steadily in its niche. Julian sat up on his bed,
listening in the silence to the beatings of his own heart. The hush
seemed curiously insupportable. Suddenly, voices and steps resounded
from room to room, reverberated along the high arcades of Macellum as
formerly along the vaults of the Flavii. Julian shivered. It seemed to
him that he was dreaming still.

The steps approached; the voices became distinct.

The lad cried out, "Gallus, awake! Mardonius, don't you hear
something?"

Gallus awoke. Barefooted, his grey hair dishevelled, and clothed in a
short sleeping-tunic, Mardonius, his face bloated, yellow and wrinkled
like an old woman's, rushed towards the secret door.

"The soldiers of the Prefect!... Dress!... We must fly."

He was too late. The grinding of iron bolts told that the door was
being shut from the outside. The stone columns of the public staircase
flushed with the light of torches, illumining the purple dragon of a
standard-bearer and the cross upon the breastplates of legionaries.

"In the name of the most orthodox and blessed Augustus, Constantius
Imperator! I, Marcus Scuda, Tribune of the Fretensian Legion, take
under my safeguard Julian and Gallus, sons of the Patrician, Julius
Flavius!"

Mardonius, with drawn sword, stood in a warlike attitude in front of
the closed door of the chamber, barring the way of the soldiers. This
glaive was rusty and useless, and served the old tutor only to show,
during his lessons in the Iliad, how Hector used to fight Achilles. At
this moment Mardonius, although he would have been incapable of
killing a hen, was brandishing the sword in the face of Publius,
according to the most correct traditions of Homeric warfare. Publius,
who was drunk, flew into a passion:

"Get out of my way, windbag! Clear out, I tell you, if you don't want
me to slit you!"

He seized Mardonius by the throat and hurled him against the wall.

Scuda ran to the door of the chamber and opened it. For the first time
in his life he beheld the two last descendants of Constantius Chlorus.
Gallus seemed tall and strong, but his skin was fine and white as a
young girl's; his eyes, of a wan blue, were indolent and listless; his
flaxen hair, the distinguishing trait of the house of Constantine,
spread in curls over his powerful neck. But in spite of his masculine
appearance, downy beard, and eighteen years, Gallus at that moment
looked a child. His lips trembled, he blinked sleep-swollen eyelids,
and, crossing himself, continually whispered: "Lord, have mercy upon
me!"

Julian was a thin child, sickly and pale, with irregular features,
thick glossy black hair, too long a nose, and a too prominent lower
lip. But his eyes were astonishing. Large, strange, and variable, they
shone with a brightness rare in a child's eyes, and an almost morbid
or insane concentration.

Publius, who in his youth had often seen Constantine the Great,
mused--

"That little rascal will be like his uncle!"

In the presence of the soldiers fear abandoned Julian. He was only
conscious of anger. With closed teeth, the panther-skin of his bed
flung over his shoulder, he gazed at Scuda fixedly, his lower lip
trembling with bridled rage. In his right hand, hidden by the fur, he
gripped the handle of a slim Persian dagger given him by Labda; it was
tipped with the keenest of poisons.

"A true wolf's cub!" said one of the legionaries, pointing out Julian
to his companion.

Scuda was about to cross the threshold of the chamber, when a wild
chance of safety flashed upon Mardonius. Throwing aside his tragic
sword, he seized the mantle of the tribune, and began to scream in a
shrill feminine voice:

"Do you know what you're doing, rascals? How dare you insult an envoy
of Constantius? It is I who am charged to conduct these two young
princes to Court. The august Emperor has restored them to his favour.
Here is the order from Contantinople!"

"What is he saying?... what order is it?"

Scuda stared at Mardonius. His faded and wrinkled visage was
unmistakably that of a eunuch; and the tribune knew well what special
favour eunuchs enjoyed at Court.

Mardonius hunted in a drawer, lit on a roll of parchment, held it out
to the tribune, who unrolled it and immediately grew pale. He only
read the first lines, but saw the name of the Emperor, who referred to
himself in the edict as Our Eternity,--_Nostra æternitas_,--but
remarked neither the date nor the year.

When he perceived, swinging from the parchment, the great Imperial
seal of dark green wax, attached by golden threads, his eyes clouded;
he felt his knees give way--

"Pardon, there is some mistake ..."

"Away with you! away with you at once! the Emperor shall know
everything!" retorted Mardonius, hastily snatching the decree from the
trembling hands of Scuda.

"Don't ruin us! We are all brothers, we're all sinners! I entreat you
in the name of Christ!"

"I know what acts you commit, in the name of Christ! Go! Go at once."

The tribune gave the order to retire. A single drunken legionary
tried, by fair means or foul, to hustle Mardonius; but they overbore
the rioter by main force.

When the sound of steps died away, and Mardonius was assured that all
peril was over, he was seized by a wild fit of laughter which shook
the whole of his soft fleshy person. Forgetting all tutorial dignity,
the old man in his short night tunic began to dance, crying out
gleefully--

"Children, children! Glory to Hermes! We've hoodwinked them cleverly!
That edict was annulled three years ago! Ah, the idiots, the idiots!"

At the breaking of dawn, Julian fell into a deep sleep. He awoke late,
refreshed and light-hearted, when the sun was shining brightly into
the room through the great iron-clamped window.




III


Their lesson in doctrinal theology was taught to the lads in the
morning by an Arian priest. Long and dry as a lath, he had green eyes,
damp and bony hands. This monk, who was named Eutropius, had the
disagreeable habit of gently licking the hollow of his palm, smoothing
his grey hair, and immediately afterwards making his finger-joints
crack. Julian knew that one movement would inevitably follow the
other, and used to get madly irritated.

Eutropius wore an old black cassock, full of stains and patches. He
used to say that he wore it out of humility, but, as a matter of fact,
he did it from miserliness.

Such was the instructor chosen by Eusebius of Nicomedia, the religious
guardian of Julian.

This monk suspected in his pupil a certain yeast of moral perversity,
which, unless cured, would draw upon Julian eternal damnation.

And Eutropius used to talk continually of the grateful feelings the
boy should show towards his benefactor the Emperor Constantius.
Whether he was explaining the text of the Bible, expounding Arian
dogmas, or interpreting an apostolic parable, all lessons were
conducted to the same conclusion, the "root of holy obedience and
filial docility." And when the Arian monk spoke of the benefits
granted to Julian by the Emperor, the child would fix upon him his
deep glance; but although each knew the intimate thoughts of the
other, never did pupil and professor exchange a word upon the subject.
Only if Julian stopped, forgetting some text, or became confused in
the chronological list of Old Testament patriarchs, or repeated badly
the prayer he had learned by heart, Eutropius would silently gaze at
him, take his ear caressingly between two fingers, and two long and
sharp finger nails would slowly pierce the flesh.

Eutropius, despite his morose look, was endowed with a certain
ironical gaiety. He gave his pupils the most affectionate of
nicknames, while ridiculing their imperial origin. When, after
pinching Julian's ear, he saw him grow pale, not with pain but with
rage, he would whisper in humility--

"Your Majesty does not deign to feel anger against Eutropius, his
humble and unlearned slave?" and, licking the palm of his hand, he
would smooth the grey locks of his temples, crack his long fingers,
and add that it was wholesome sometimes to give naughty, idle little
boys a whipping; that form of instruction being often mentioned in
Holy Writ as the most effective means of enlightening the souls of the
dark and disobedient. He used only to say it to tame the diabolic
pride of Julian, who, moreover, was well aware that Eutropius would
never dare to put his threat into execution. The monk himself was
convinced that the child would rather die than undergo such a
humiliation. But the tutor, nevertheless, loved to discourse upon the
topic often and long.

At the end of the lesson, during the explanation of a text, Julian
once mentioned the earth's antipodes, about which he had heard
Mardonius speaking. He had done this with the secret intention of
annoying the monk, but Eutropius became jocular.

"Who's been talking to you about 'antipodes,' my angel? Little sinner,
how you do make me laugh! That old fool of a Plato did, I know, write
something about it. But are you actually wise enough to believe that
men walk about on their heads?"

Eutropius would launch forth into accusations of heresy against the
philosophers. Was it not a scandal to imagine that mankind--created
after the image of God--could walk about upside down, and so bring
Heaven into contempt? And when Julian, insulted by insults to his
favourite philosophers, argued that the earth was shaped like a globe,
Eutropius became serious and lost his temper, purple with fury and
stamping his feet--

"It's that heathen, Mardonius, who teaches you these godless lies!"

When he got angry he would splutter and shower the hearer with his
spittle, which Julian believed must be venomous. Exasperated, the monk
would savagely attack all the Greek sages. Wounded to the quick by the
suggestions of Julian, forgetting that his pupil was a mere child, he
burst into serious harangues, accusing Pythagoras of being mad,
impudent, audacious, affirming that the atrocious "Utopias" of Plato
were not fit to read, and that the instruction of Socrates was clean
against reason.

"Read what Diogenes Lærtius says of Socrates! You will see that not
only was he a money-lender, but that he practised vices which no
decent man can name."

Epicurus, above all, excited the whole of his rancour; the beastliness
with which he plunged into pleasures of all kinds, the brutality with
which he used to satisfy his sensual desires, were proof enough that
he was less than human.

Resuming something of his habitual calm, Eutropius on this particular
day betook himself to explaining some hair-splitting scholastic
distinction of the Arian dogma, and waxed wroth with the same heat
against the orthodox oecumenical Church, which he considered
heretical.

From the splendid and desolate garden a warm breeze came in through
the open window. Julian feigned to listen to Eutropius. Really he was
dreaming of a very different person, his well-loved teacher Mardonius.
He recollected his wise lectures; his readings of Homer and
Hesiod--how different from these monkish lessons!

Mardonius did not _read_ Homer; following the custom of the ancient
rhapsodists, he used to chant the poems, to the great amusement of
Labda, who was wont to say that he bayed like a dog at the moon. And
in fact he did appear absurd to folk who heard him for the first time.
The eunuch would punctiliously scan each foot of the hexameter,
beating time with his hand. And while his yellow and wrinkled visage
remained intensely rapt, his shrill feminine voice streamed on from
strophe to strophe. Julian never remarked the ugliness of the old man,
seeing only the throbbing passion of a soul thrilled by grandeur and
beauty.

His listener trembled, while the divine hexameters rose and shouted
like waves. He saw the farewells of Andromache and Hector; the
wanderings of Ulysses, weeping for Ithaca on the melancholy and
sterile beach of Calypso's island. Delicious sorrow seized the heart
of Julian; pains of yearning for Hellas, the country of the gods,
eternally beautiful, land of all beauty-worshippers. Tears shook in
the voice of the teacher, and rolled down his withered cheeks.

Sometimes Mardonius would talk with the boy of goodness, of the
austerity of virtue, of the death of heroes for freedom's sake. Little
indeed, oh! how little, did these lessons resemble those given by
Eutropius.

Mardonius used also to narrate the life of Socrates; and when he came
to the "Apology," delivered by the philosopher before his death to the
people of Athens, the old master would rise, and triumphantly declaim
the speech from memory, a calm irony lighting his face. These were
less the phrases of a man accused, than the ringing tones of a judge
addressing the people.

"Socrates does not ask for pardon. All the power, all the laws of a
government are absolutely nothing beside the liberty of the soul of
man. Yes! the Athenians can kill a man without taking from him the
freedom and the happiness of his immortal soul." And when this
barbarian, this ex-slave from the banks of the Borysthenes, pronounced
the word "liberty" it seemed to Julian that the word contained such
superhuman power that beside it even the Homeric pictures lost lustre.
Fixing on his master his great wide, haunting eyes, the lad shook with
enthusiasm.

The cold touch of a hand at his ear drew Julian from his dreams. The
lesson of the catechist was finished. On his knees he recited the
prayer of thanksgiving; then escaping from Eutropius he ran to his
room, took down a book, and hastened to a solitary nook in the garden
to read at ease the _Symposium_ of Plato, the pagan, a book forbidden
above all others. On the stairs Julian met the monk, who was
departing--

"Wait, my dear boy! What book is your Majesty carrying?"

Julian stared at him and tranquilly tendered the volume. On the
parchment binding Eutropius read the title, written in great capitals,
"The Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle," and gave back the book
unopened.

"That's all right! Remember that I have to answer for your soul to God
and to the sublime Emperor. Don't read heretical books, especially
none of those frivolous philosophers whom I have to-day condemned."

It was the habitual trick of the boy to wrap dangerous books in
innocent bindings. Julian from his infancy had learnt dissimulation,
and even took pleasure in deceiving others, especially Eutropius. He
dissembled and lied needlessly and habitually, prompted by deep-seated
anger and revenge. To Mardonius alone his behaviour was always open
and gracious.

Intrigues, scandals, gossipings, suspicions continually arose at
Macellum among the numberless idle servants. The whole pack of
varletry, in the hope of Court favour, subjected the two disgraced
young princes to espionage by night and day. Long as Julian could
remember, death was an hourly expectation. Little by little he had
accustomed himself to perpetual fear, being quite aware that neither
in the house nor garden could he take a step or make a gesture
unperceived by a thousand intent but invisible eyes. Hearing and
understanding much of the toils about him, the boy was forced to feign
ignorance. At one time it was the conversation between Eutropius and a
spy sent by the Emperor Constantius, in which the monk named Julian
and Gallus "the imperial scourges"; at another time, in the gallery
under the kitchen windows, it was the meditation of a cook, furious at
some insolence on the part of Gallus. She was saying to the washer-up
of the dishes, "God save my soul, Priscilla, but what I can't make
out is, why they haven't strangled them before!"

To-day, when Julian, after his lesson in theology, went out of the
house and perceived the greenness of the trees, he breathed more
freely. The two peaks of Mount Argæus, covered with snow, sparkled
against blue sky. The neighbourhood of glaciers made the air
refreshingly cool; garden alleys stretched hither and thither into the
distance; glistening dark-green foliage of oaks formed thick
vaultings; here and there a ray filtered through the branches of
plane-trees. Only one side of the garden was not walled in, for in
that direction lay a chasm. At the foot of the plateau on which the
castle stood, a dead plain stretched as far as Anti-Taurus, and from
this plain fierce heat rose in mist, while in the garden fresh streams
were running and little waterfalls tinkling through thickets of
oleanders.

A century before the date of which we are speaking Macellum had been
the favourite domain and pleasure-house of the luxurious and half-mad
Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia.

Julian took his way towards an isolated grotto, hard by the precipice,
in which a statue of the god Pan, playing the flute, stood over a
little sacrificial altar. Outside the grotto, a lion's mouth jetted
water into a stone basin, and a curtain of roses masked the entrance
while letting through its branches a view of the undulating hills and
the plain, far down and drowned in misty blue. The perfume of roses
filled the little cave, and the air there would have been oppressive
had it not been cooled by a stream channelled in the rocky floor.

The wind scattered the turf with yellow petals of roses, and flung
them floating on the water of the basin. From the dark and warm place
of shelter could be heard the humming of bees. There Julian,
stretched on the moss, used to read the _Banquet_ of Plato,
understanding nothing of many of the passages; but their beauty had
for him a double relish because it was a fruit forbidden.

When his reading was done, Julian wrapped the book anew in the binding
of the "Epistles of the Apostle Paul," went up to the altar of Pan,
gazed at the joyous god as at an old accomplice, and, thrusting his
hand into a heap of dried leaves, drew from the interior of the altar,
which was cracked and covered with a piece of board, a small object
carefully enveloped in cloth. It was his own handiwork--a delightful
little Liburnian trireme, or galley with three banks of oars. He set
it swimming in the basin; the galley rocked on the miniature waves.
The model was complete,--three masts, rigging, oars, gilded prow, and
sails made of a fragment of purple silk, the gift of Labda. Nothing
was wanting but to fix the rudder, and the boy began the task.

From time to time, while planing a piece of board, he would look into
the distance, at the hills outlined in mist through the hedge of
roses. Beside his plaything Julian soon forgot all vexations, all
hates, and the eternal fear of death. In this little cave he imagined
himself a shipwrecked sailor. He was the wily Ulysses in some solitary
cavern facing the ocean, building a ship in which he might win back
again to Ithaca. But down yonder, there among the hills, where the
houses of Cæsarea shone white as the sea-foam, a little cross,
glittering high above the roof of the basilica, irritated him still.
That everlasting cross! Could he never be free of it, even here in his
own cave? He would resolve not to see it, and stooping, redoubled his
attention to the galley.

"Julian!" a voice cried; "Julian, Julian! Where in the world is he?
Eutropius is looking for you to go to church with him."

The boy shivered, and nimbly hid his handiwork inside the altar of
Pan. He smoothed his hair, shook his clothes, and when he came out of
the grotto had resumed an expression of impenetrable Christian
hypocrisy.

Eutropius, holding Julian's hand in his bony one, conducted him to
church.




IV


The Arian basilica of St. Maurice was built almost entirely of blocks
taken from the ruined temple of Apollo. The sacred court, the
_atrium_, was surrounded by colonnades. In the middle of this court
murmured a fountain, placed there for the ablutions of the faithful.
Under one of the side porticoes lay an ancient oaken tomb darkened
with age; and in this tomb were the wonder-working bones of St. Mamas,
for which Eutropius had obliged Julian and Gallus themselves to build
a stone-work shrine. The task of Gallus, who took to it as to a game,
went rapidly forward, while the wall of Julian frequently crumbled and
proved oddly unsatisfactory; a phenomenon which Eutropius explained by
remarking that St. Mamas refused the offering of children possessed by
the demon of pride.

The halt, the maimed, the sick, and the blind, expectant of miracle,
thronged near the tomb. Julian understood why they stationed
themselves here. One of the monks used to hold a pair of balances; the
pilgrims--some of them come from hamlets many leagues away--weighed
with scrupulous care pieces of linen, woollen stuff, or silk; and
having laid them on the tomb of St. Mamas, would fall to praying all
night. At daylight the stuff was weighed over again, and the weight
compared with the weight on the previous day. If the texture proved
heavier, it was declared that the prayer had been answered, that the
divine mercy, like dew, had soaked into the stuff and rendered it
capable of producing all manner of marvellous cures.

But frequently the prayer was in vain. The stuff weighed just what it
did before; and pilgrims would pass whole days, weeks, even months,
waiting at the sepulchre. Among the latter there was an old woman
named Theodula. Some called her demented; others counted her a saint.
For years she had not quitted the tomb of St. Mamas. The daughter for
whose restoration she had come to pray had now been a long while dead.
But Theodula continued kneeling ceaselessly before her faded and
ravelled fragment of cloth.

From the outer court three doors led into the basilica--one for women,
one for men, and the third, in the centre, for monks and the lower
clergy. With Eutropius and Gallus, Julian went in through this last
door, being _anagnost_ or reader of the lessons for the day. Clothed
in a long black robe with white sleeves, his hair anointed, and bound
back by a fillet that it might not fall into his eyes while reading
aloud, Julian passed through the midst of the faithful, his eyes fixed
humbly on the ground. His pale face assumed almost involuntarily the
inevitable and hypocritical expression of submissiveness. He ascended
the high rood-loft. The frescoes of the wall to the right depicted the
martyrdom of St. Euthymus, in which one executioner seized the
sufferer's head, while another, wrenching open his mouth with pincers,
brought the cup of molten lead to his lips. In another scene the
executioner with an instrument of torture was flaying the childish and
bleeding limbs of St. Euthymus, hanging from a tree by his hands.
Beneath these frescoes ran the inscription, "With the blood of the
martyrs, O Lord, Thy church is arrayed as in purple and fine linen."

On the opposite wall sinners were burning in the fire of the pit, and
above them rose Paradise and the saints. One of the saints was
plucking the fruits of the tree of Eden; another playing the psaltery;
and a third, couched on a cloud, contemplated with a beatific smile
the tortures of the damned. Beneath were written the words, "Behold!
there shall be tears and gnashing of teeth!" The adorers of St. Mamas
entered the church like a procession of all human maladies. The
bandy-legged, the blind, the armless, the anæmic, children tottering
along like old men, epileptics, idiots with pale faces and inflamed
eyelids--all bore the mark of a dull and desperate submission. When
the choir ceased, there could be heard the contrite sighings of the
"widows of the church," black-robed nuns of the order of St. Basil,
and the jingling of the chains of old Pamphilus, who for many a long
year had addressed no word to the living, muttering only, "Lord, Lord,
give me tears!--grant me mercy!--give me an end to remembrance!"

The atmosphere was that of a warm sepulchral chamber, thick, loaded
with incense and the smell of melting wax, hot oil, and the breath of
all these sick persons. Now it was Julian's lot on that day to read
aloud part of the Apocalypse.

The terrifying pictures of the Revelation were unfolded, the white
horse of Death soared through space above the peoples of the earth, as
they knelt weeping at the nearness of the world's end.

"_The sun becomes dark as pitch, and the moon red as blood. Men say to
the mountains, Fall on us and hide us from the throne of God and from
the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His anger is come, and who
can resist it?_"

Over and over again came the prophecy: "_Men shall seek death and
shall not find it; they shall desire death and it shall flee from
them._"

Lamentation arose: "_Thrice happy are the dead!_" and "_Then came the
bloody destruction of all peoples, and the angel cast his sickle into
the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth and cast it into the
great wine-press of the wrath of God, and the wine-press was trodden
without the city; and there came out blood from the wine-press even
unto the bridles of the horses, as far as a thousand and six hundred
furlongs_," and men cursed the God of heaven for their plagues, and
they did not repent them of their sins; and the angel sang: "_He Who
worships the Beast and his image shall drink of the wine of the wrath
of God, prepared in the cup of His anger, and shall be tormented in
fire and sulphur before the holy angels and the Lamb, and the smoke of
his torture shall rise in the night of ages. For he who shall adore
the Beast and his image shall rest no more._"

Julian ended. A profound hush succeeded in the church. Painful sighs
rose from the terrified crowd; and the noise of foreheads struck
against the earth and the clank of the fetters of Pamphilus,
accompanying his perpetual murmur: "Lord, Lord, give me tears!--grant
me mercy!--give me an end of remembrance!"

The child raised his eyes towards the spandril of mosaic between the
columns of the arcade, representing the Arian image of Christ; a
sombre, terrible figure, its wasted face aureoled in gold, and
diademed in the fashion of the Byzantine emperors. It was the face of
an old man, with a long thin nose and lips severely shut. With his
right hand he was blessing the world; in the left he held a book in
which was written, "Peace be with you; I am the Light of the World."
He was seated on a splendid throne, and a Roman emperor (Julian
imagined that it must be Constantius) was in the act of kissing his
feet.

In the penumbral shadow below this image, lighted by a single lamp,
could be discerned a bas-relief on a sarcophagus, dating from the
earliest Christian times. It displayed sea-nymphs, leopards, gay
tritons blowing their horns, and among them Moses, Jonah and his
whale, Orpheus charming the beasts with his lyre, an olive-branch, and
a dove; the whole sculpture a symbol of pure and childlike faith. In
the midst stood the Good Shepherd bearing on his shoulder the sheep
that had gone astray, the soul of the sinner. This barefooted youthful
figure, with beardless face, had the joyous and simple bearing of a
poor peasant, and his smile something of a heavenly sweetness.

Julian imagined that nobody nowadays knew or saw that Good Shepherd;
and this little picture of old times was somehow connected in his mind
with a dream of his childhood which he tried in vain to recover.

And, gazing at this youth, who seemed as if mysteriously reproaching
him, he murmured the name picked up from Mardonius, "Galilean!" At
that moment slanting rays of the sun through the windows trembled,
above, in a cloud of incense, which, aflame with reflections from the
gilded aureole, seemed to upheave the sombre and terrible image of the
Arian Christ. The choir chanted, "_Let all human flesh be dumb and bow
down, fearful and trembling, thinking no more of the things of the
earth; for the Emperor of emperors, the Lord of lords, has given
Himself afresh as a pledge and a food to His faithful; even He who is
surrounded by the hosts of angels, by all powers and dominions, by
cherubim with innumerable eyes, and by the six-winged seraphim,
veiling their faces and singing, 'Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!'_"

Like a tempest the psalm swept over the bowed heads of the pilgrims.
The figure of the Good Shepherd faded into the distance; but its
youthful gaze remained steadily fixed upon Julian, a gaze full of
reproach. The heart of the child was moved, not by a sense of worship,
but by an intolerable fear; a fear before that mystery which was for
him to remain for ever insoluble.




V


From the Arian basilica Julian returned to Macellum, and got out his
little galley which he had prepared for this special occasion; and
learning that Eutropius, after the Mass, had gone a journey of several
days, the boy slipped through the barred gates of the fortress, and
ran to the temple of Aphrodite, close to the church of St. Maurice.
The sacred wood of the goddess bordered the Christian cemetery.
Endless hostilities, debates, wranglings, and even lawsuits, were kept
up between these two temples. The Christians begged for the
destruction of the Pagan shrine; Olympiodorus, the sacrificing priest,
on the other hand, complained that the custodians of the basilica by
night would secretly cut down ancient cypresses in the sacred wood,
and dig graves for Christians in the soil belonging to Aphrodite.

Into the wood Julian wound his way; a warm breeze blew softly on his
cheek. In the afternoon heat the grey and fibrous bark of the
cypresses trickled with thick resinous tears. To Julian the dusk
seemed perfumed by the very breath of the goddess.

The white bodies of statues stood up in sharp relief against the rich
shadow of trees. An Eros there had been maimed by some custodian of
the basilica, who had rudely smashed off its marble bow. The weapon of
the little winged Love-god, together with his hands, lay in deep grass
at the foot of the pedestal. But although one-armed, the mischievous
boy continued to take aim, and a mad smile of malice still fluttered
on his lips.

Julian entered the house of the priest, Olympiodorus. Its rooms were
small but comfortable, and rather bare than luxurious. There was
neither carpet nor silver dish to be seen; the floors and furniture
were of wood, and the vessels of clay. But everything bore the stamp
of taste. The handle of the kitchen lamp was a marvellous little work
of art representing Neptune with his trident; the bold outlines of
earthen jars, full of olive oil, won the admiration of Julian; and
along the walls ran light frescoes, water nymphs mounted on
sea-unicorns; and dancing women, clothed in the long robe of votaries
of Pallas Athene, hovered along in graceful scroll-work.

The little house stood all smiling in its bath of sunshine. Nereids,
dancers, sea-unicorns, the Neptune on the lamp, and the inmates of the
house, all seemed folk cheerful by nature, guiltless of ugliness, of
malice or spleen. A couple of dozen olives, some white bread, a bunch
of grapes, some wine and water, these were enough to turn the little
meal into a feast, and Diophane, the wife of Olympiodorus, had in fact
tied a wreath of laurel to the door to mark that very day a feast-day.

Julian went into the little garden of the atrium. Under the blue sky a
jet of water pulsed into the air, and in the midst of narcissus,
acanthus-blossom, tulips, and myrrh, rose a bronze Hermes, winged and
smiling like the rest of the cottage, and poised in the act of taking
flight. Above the flowers, butterflies and bees playing in the
sunshine chased each other, and in the shade of the porch Olympiodorus
and his daughter Amaryllis, a pretty girl of some seventeen springs,
were playing the Greek game of _kottabos_. On a slender column fixed
in the earth, and oscillating like the scale of a balance, lay a
little beam, which bore, slung from each end, a cup; under each cup
stood an amphora full of water, crowned by a statuette in metal. The
game consisted in throwing from a certain distance a few drops of
wine, in as high a curve as possible, into one of the little cups,
which, thus suddenly weighted, would descend and strike the statuette.

"Play, play; it is your turn!" cried Amaryllis.

"One, two, three!" Olympiodorus threw the contents of his goblet, and
missed.

He burst out into a boyish laugh. It was strange to see the tall
grey-headed man so wholly absorbed in his game.

The young girl, with a charming movement of her bare arm, threw back
her mauve tunic and in her turn flung the liquid. The little cup of
the _kottabos_ rang upon the statuette. Amaryllis began laughing and
clapping her hands. Suddenly, on the threshold they saw Julian, and
both rushed to welcome him. Amaryllis cried--

"Diophane! where art thou? Come and see what guest we've got to-day.
Quick, quick!"

Diophane ran from the kitchen.

"Julian, my darling child!... Don't you think he is grown thinner? How
long it is since we have seen you!..."

And she added, radiant with good humour--

"You may well be merry, children, for this evening we shall have a
real feast. I'm going to prepare crowns of fresh roses; I shall fry
three perch, and make you cakes of gingerbread!"

At this moment a young slave accosted Olympiodorus and whispered in
his ear that a rich patrician lady of Cæsarea wished to see him,
having something to discuss with the priest of Aphrodite.

Olympiodorus followed the slave. Julian and Amaryllis went on with the
game of _kottabos_. Presently a little twelve-year-old girl came shyly
up to them. It was Psyche, the pale fair-haired and youngest child of
Olympiodorus. She had great sad blue eyes, and, alone in the house,
seemed a stranger to the cult of Aphrodite, and apart from the general
gaiety. Keeping aloof from the rest, she would remain musing while
others were laughing, and nobody knew what made her sad, or what gave
her pleasure. Her father pitied her as one incurably sick, ruined by
the evil eye or by the witchcrafts of his eternal enemies the
Galileans, who had carried off the soul of his child in revenge.

The dark Amaryllis was the favourite daughter of Olympiodorus: but the
mother secretly spoiled Psyche, and loved with jealous passion the
delicate child whose inner life was hidden from her. Psyche, unknown
to her father, and in despite of the caresses, prayers, and even the
threats of her mother, used to attend the basilican church of St.
Maurice. Anguished on discovering this, the priest of Venus had
renounced Psyche; and when her name was mentioned, his brow would
cloud over with a bitter expression. He was sure that it was by reason
of the impiety of his child that the vine, once blessed by Aphrodite,
produced fewer fruits than of yore; he believed that the little golden
crucifix worn on the child's neck had profaned the temple of the
indignant goddess.

"Why do you go to that church?" Julian asked her one day.

"I don't know; it is comfortable there. Have you seen the Good
Shepherd?"

"Yes, the Galilean! How did you know about Him?"

"Old Theodula told me. Ever since then I have gone to church; and,
tell me, Julian, why do they all hate the Good Shepherd?"

At this moment Olympiodorus returned in triumph and narrated his
interview with the patrician lady, a young girl whom her betrothed had
abandoned. She believed him bewitched by the amulets of a rival. Many
a time had she gone to the Christian church and besought St. Mamas
with an aching heart, but neither fasts nor prostrations had snapped
the evil charm.

"As if the Christians could console her!" Olympiodorus contemptuously
concluded, throwing a keen glance at the attentive Psyche. "This
Christian girl has now sought my help, and Aphrodite will heal her!"

He produced the two white pigeons, bound together, which the Christian
had begged him to offer as a sacrifice to the goddess of love.
Amaryllis took the little creatures in her hand, and kissed their rosy
beaks, declaring that it would be a thousand pities to kill them.

"Father, we will offer them to the goddess without spilling a drop of
blood!"

"How? There can be no sacrifice without bloodshed."

"We will give them liberty. They shall fly away clean into heaven,
straight to the footstool of Aphrodite. Is she not in the sky? She
will accept them. Let me do this, darling father, I beg of you!"

Olympiodorus had not the heart to deny this entreaty; and the young
girl, unbinding the pigeons tossed them back to liberty. They fled
away into the sky with a delirious beating of white wings, making for
the footstool of Aphrodite. Shading his eyes with his hands the priest
watched the offering of the convert disappear into the clouds, while
Amaryllis danced with joy, crying--

"Aphrodite, Aphrodite, receive the gift!"

Olympiodorus went out. Julian, solemn-faced and timorous, approached
Amaryllis; his cheeks grew red, and his voice trembled as he
pronounced the name of the young girl.

"Amaryllis, I have brought you----"

"Ah! I have long been going to ask you what it could be."

"It is a galley with three banks of oars!"

"A galley! What do you mean?"

"A real Liburnian galley."

He immediately began to unroll his present, but suddenly aware that
Amaryllis was watching him, he felt ineffable shame, became confused,
and with an imploring look at the damsel, slid the ship into the basin
of the fountain.

"You see, Amaryllis ... it is a trireme ... a real trireme,
with--with--sails ... and ... its rudder.... Look how well it gets
under way!"

But Amaryllis laughed heartily.

"What an odd boy you are! What in the world should I do with your
trireme? I fear it wouldn't take me very far. It's a ship for mice and
flies. Make a present of it to Psyche; she will be delighted with it."

Julian, though deeply hurt, assumed indifference, while tears choked
his speech. Controlling himself, he said disdainfully, but with
trembling lips--

"I see that you don't understand anything ... about art."

Amaryllis laughed yet more heartily. To add insult to injury, a
summons came for her to receive her betrothed, a rich merchant from
Samos, who dressed badly, perfumed his person, and spoke vile grammar.
Julian hated him, and when he learnt of the arrival of the Samian, the
charm of the house vanished so far as he was concerned.

From the neighbouring room he could hear the distracting chatter of
Amaryllis and the voice of her lover.

Without uttering a word, and filled with cold hatred, Julian seized
his cherished trireme--the real Liburnian trireme which had cost him
such endless pains--and before the startled eyes of Psyche, snapped
the mast, tore down the sails, tangled the rigging, and stamped the
toy into atoms with his feet.

Amaryllis returned. Her face bore traces of a strange happiness, of
that superfluity of life and love-joy which awakens in young girls an
imperious need to embrace and to kiss those near them.

"Julian ... forgive me ... I have pained you. Forgive me, dear! you
know well that I love you."

And before he had time to make up his mind, Amaryllis, throwing back
her tunic, imprisoned his head in her fresh bare arms. A delightful
dread stopped the beating of Julian's heart; he saw her great dark
dewy eyes so close to him, the sweet odour of her body so overwhelmed
him, and she locked him so close against her breast, that the boy grew
giddy. He closed his eyes and felt a kiss long, too long, pressed upon
his lips.

The voice of the Samian broke the enchantment--

"Amaryllis, Amaryllis! where art thou?"

Julian putting forth all his strength pushed the girl away, his heart
overflowed with pain and hatred, and crying, "Let me go, let me go!"
snatched himself free and fled.

Deaf and heedless he escaped from the house through the vineyards and
the cypress wood; nor halted till he reached the temple of Aphrodite.
Now and again he heard his name called, and the gay voice of Diophane,
announcing that the cakes of gingerbread were ready; but he made no
reply. Search was made for him. He lay in hiding in the thicket of
laurels at the feet of Eros. Accustomed to his fits of moroseness,
they gave up the search, satisfied that he had returned to Macellum.

When all around was restored again to silence, Julian came out from
his hiding-place and gazed at the temple of the goddess of love,
lodged upon a gentle hill, and bare to view on all sides. The Ionic
marble columns, flooded with sunshine, were softly steeped in the
warmth of azure, receiving its ardent embraces with the cold purity of
snow.

Each corner of the façade was surmounted by pedestalled griffins, with
lifted talons, beaks gaping, and woman-shaped breasts, standing out,
proud and austere, against the deep blue of the sky.

Julian went up the steps into the portico, pushed open the bronze
doors and penetrated the interior of the temple up to the very shrine,
the _naos_.

Silence and coolness surrounded him. The setting sun overhead still
fell on the capitals of the columns, and their fine illumined
scroll-work, contrasted with the penumbral shadow on the floor of the
temple, seemed soft and bright as tresses of gold. A tripod, still
burning, diffused the odour of myrrh.

Julian, leaning against the wall, lifted his eyes in fear, restraining
his breath till it almost died upon his lips.

She, the goddess herself, was before him. Under the open sky, in the
midst of the temple, stood, cold and white, new-born of the sea-foam,
Aphrodite Anadyomene. With a smile she contemplated the heavens and
the sea, wondering at their charm; as if unwitting still that their
beauty was her own beauty, glassed in the eternal mirrors of the azure
and the waters. No raiment profaned her divine body. Naked and chaste
she rose, as the clear sky soaring above her.

Julian gazed on with an insatiate gaze, and felt quick thrills of
adoration sweep over his frame. The child, in his black monkish habit,
knelt before Aphrodite, his face upturned, his hands pressed to his
palpitating little heart.

Then still aloof, still timorous, he sat at the foot of the column. He
leant his cheek against the marble. Peace sank slowly into his soul.
He fell asleep.

But, even through that slumber, he was conscious of her presence.

She came down towards him, nearer, nearer.... Her delicate white hands
stole round his neck. The boy with a smile submitted to these
passionless endearments; the cold of the marble chilled his very
heart. That divine embrace bore no likeness to the wild clasp of
Amaryllis. The soul of Julian, freeing itself from earthly love,
entered depths of repose, as into some ambrosial night of Homer, or
the sweet rest of the dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Julian awoke it was night. Over the roofless quadrilateral stars
were shining, and the crescent moon shedding her silver upon the head
of the statue. Julian arose. Olympiodorus must have meanwhile been
tending the temple, although he had either not observed or had
refrained from waking the child; for now, on the bronze tripod, fresh
charcoal was glowing, and a fillet of odorous smoke arising towards
the goddess.

Julian smiling approached, and from the chrysolite cup, between the
feet of the tripod, took a few grains of incense and flung them on the
coals. Smoke rose more thickly, and the ruddy glow of the fire, like a
pale flush of life, came over the face of the statue, contending with
the soft new-born shine of the moon.

Julian bowed down and kissed the marble feet, and watered them with
his tears, exclaiming--

"Aphrodite! Aphrodite! thou shalt be my everlasting love!"




VI


In one of the foul and dirty quarters of the Syrian Seleucia, the port
for Antioch on the shores of the Inner Sea, narrow and tortuous alleys
debouched into a market-place lying along the quays. The sea-horizon
was invisible, so thick was the throng of masts and the tangle of
rigging. The houses were a mass of miserable little shells,
whitewashed within and encumbered with furniture. Their fronts were
garnished with tattered carpets, dirty fragments of cloth, and
ravelled matting. In every nook and hovel and crowded court, along
kennels and gutters of dirty fever-stricken water from laundries and
baths of the poor, there lay seething in its penury and hunger a
populace strangely cosmopolitan.

The sun, after thoroughly baking the earth, had just descended below
the horizon; wide-winged twilight was settling slowly down; a stifling
heat of dust and fog still weighed on the spirits of the city. From
the market square breathed a suffocating atmosphere of flesh and
vegetables, becoming rotten through lying all day in the blaze of the
sun. Half-naked slaves were carrying bales of merchandise from the
ships. Their heads were close-shaven; through their rags could be seen
horrible blotches on the skin; and the greater number bore on their
faces, in brandings by red-hot iron, the Latin letters C. F., that is
to say _Cave Furem_ ('ware thief!).

Braziers were being slowly lighted. But notwithstanding the approach
of night, traffic and discussion gave no sign of ceasing in the
network of alleys. From a neighbouring forge piercing blows of the
hammer resounded on bars of iron, and flames shot up the sooty
draught-hole. Hard by, slaves of a bakery, naked, covered from head to
foot in flour-dust, and with eyelids inflamed by heat, were putting
loaves into an oven. A shoemaker sat in his open-air stall, amid an
insupportable smell of cobbler's glue and leather, stitching shoes by
the light of a smoky lamp. He was squatting on his heels, and chanting
desert songs at the top of his voice. Two old hags like witches, with
hair streaming in the wind, were slowly passing across the little
square in front of a row of hovels. They were yelling at each other,
wrangling and threatening each other with fists and stones. The
subject of dispute was the ownership of a cord on which to dry linen.
A huckster, from a distant village, was hurrying along to be in time
for the morning market. He was mounted on an old mare, flanked with
wicker paniers, each heaped with rotting fish; the fetid smell of his
load made passers-by edge off to a distance. A loutish urchin, with
red hair and skin, was solacing his soul by beating on a great pan,
while other children, a sickly multitude coming into the world and
leaving it by hundreds daily, marched amidst this scene of poverty,
grunting like pigs, round the pools of the quay. The water was full of
orange-peel and egg-shells. In yet more villainous passages, inhabited
by thieves, the smell of sour wine came from wine-shops, and sailors
from every beach of the world marched along arm in arm, shouting
drunken songs.

Surrounding all that noise, that filth and spilth of human misery,
there murmured, sighed, and grumbled, the infinite, distant, and
invisible sea.

Directly over against the subterranean kitchen windows of a Phoenician
dealer, ragged gamblers were playing at knuckle-bones, and gossiping.
From the kitchen warm gusts of boiling gravy, game, and spices
ascended, greedily snuffed-up, with closed eyes, by the hungry
gamesters.

A certain Christian, a dyer of purple, dismissed for theft from a rich
factory at Tyre, was murmuring, as he hungrily sucked a mallow-leaf
thrown away by the cook,--

"And at Antioch, my friends, what's going on there makes one shiver at
nights, just to think of it. Why, a few days ago the hungry folk tore
in pieces the Prefect Theophilus--and for what reason? Nobody knows!
When the thing was done they remembered too late that the poor wretch
was a good sort of fellow and a respectable man. I suggested that
perhaps the Emperor had pointed him out for punishment."

A consumptive old man, a very skilful cardsharper, replied--

"I have seen the Cæsar, and I like him. Quite young, fair as flax,
with a good-natured, fat face. But, as you say, what crimes are
committed nowadays! what crimes indeed! Why one can't put one's nose
outside the door without danger."

"Ah, that's nothing to do with Cæsar! it's his wife, Constantia, the
old witch, that does it!"

But strange personages came near the knot of talkers and thrust
themselves forward, as if desiring to take part in the conversation.

If the kitchen firelight had been brighter, it would have been noticed
that their faces were begrimed and their clothes fouled and torn like
those of stage-beggars; and notwithstanding their raggedness the
hands of these persons were fine and white, and their nails pared and
crimsoned. One of them whispered in his comrade's ear--

"Listen, Agamemnon; here also they're talking about Cæsar."

He whom they called Agamemnon appeared to be drunk. He wore a beard,
which was too thick and long to be natural, and gave him the aspect of
a fantastic brigand. His eyes were debonair, almost boyish, and of a
bright blue. His friends frequently pulled him back, muttering--

"Now then be careful!"

The consumptive old man went on in a whining tone--

"Now tell me plainly, my friends, is it just? The price of bread is
going up every day. People dying like flies. And, suddenly, guess what
happens? Lately a great ship came from Egypt; everybody's happy,
thinking that it brings bread. The word goes round that Cæsar has made
the ship come to feed the people. And what do you think it was, my
friends? Powder, Alexandrian powder, if you please! a special pink
Libyan powder to rub down the wrestlers!--powder for the Emperor's
gladiators--powder instead of bread!... Eh?... Now is that justice?"

Agamemnon nudged his companion's elbow.

"Ask his name, quick--ask!"

"Gently, wait a bit...."

A leather dresser remarked--

"Here in Seleucia the town is quiet, but up at Antioch there are
nothing but traitors, spies, and informers."

The dyer, licking the mallow-leaf for the last time, growled and
mumbled--

"Yes, unless God comes down to help us, soon flesh and blood will be
going a deal cheaper than bread and wine!"

The currier, a philosophic tippler, sighed--

"Ah! ah! ah! we're all poor creatures! The gods of Olympus play at
ball with us! Men weep and the gods laugh!"

The companion of Agamemnon meanwhile had succeeded in joining the
conversation, and with nonchalant adroitness acertained the names of
the talkers. He had intercepted the news, conveyed by the cobbler to
the leather-dresser, about a plot hatched against Cæsar's life by the
soldiers of the Pretorian guard. Then, strolling on a few paces, he
had written down the names of the talkers with a jewelled stilus on
tablets of soft wax, where many other names were inscribed already. At
this moment hoarse sounds like the roarings of some subterranean
monster came from the market square. They were the notes, now
plaintive, now lively, of a hydraulic organ.

At the entrance to a showman's travelling booth, a blind slave, for
four obols a day, was pumping up the water which produced this
extraordinary harmony.

Agamemnon dragged his companion towards the booth, a great tent with
blue awnings sprinkled with silver tinsel. A lantern lighted the
black-board on which the order of the programme was chalked up, in
Syriac and Greek. An oppressive atmosphere of garlic and lamp-oil
prevailed inside, where, beside the organ, there struck up the wailing
of two harsh flutes, while a negro, rolling the whites of his eyes,
thrummed on an Arab drum. A dancer was skipping to and fro on a
tight-rope, keeping time to the music with his hands, and singing the
latest street song:

    Huc, huc, convenite nunc...
    Spatolocinædi!
    Pedem tendite
    Cursum addite...

This starveling mountebank was old, impudent, and repulsively cheery.
Drops of sweat, mixed with paint, were trickling from his shaven face.
His wrinkles, plastered with white lead, looked like the cracks in a
wall when rain has washed off the lime. When he withdrew, the flutes
and the organ ceased, and on the platform a fifteen-year-old girl
appeared. She was to perform the _Cordax_, a celebrated licentious
dance adored by the mob. Fathers of the Church might anathematise, and
Roman laws interdict this dance, but both did so in vain. Everywhere
the Cordax was danced as before by rich and poor, by street-dancers as
well as by wives of senators.

Agamemnon murmured with enthusiasm:

"What a divinely pretty girl!"

Thanks to jostling by his companions he had reached a place in the
front rank of spectators. The slender bronze body of the Nubian was
only veiled round the hips by a light and transparent rose-coloured
scarf. Her hair was wound on the top of her head in close fine curls,
like those of Ethiopian women. Her face was of the severest Egyptian
type, recalling that of the Sphinx.

She began to dance in careless fashion, as if already out-wearied.
Above her head she swung heavy steel bells, castanets or
"crotals,"--swung them lazily and loosely. But the movements became
more emphatic, and suddenly under long lashes yellow eyes shone out,
clear and bright as the eyes of a leopardess. She straightened her
body. The steel crotals shook with such a challenge in their piercing
sound that the crowd shivered and became still. The damsel whirled
rapidly, vivid, slender, supple as a serpent; her nostrils dilated, a
strange cry came crooning from her throat, and at each sharp movement
her brown bosom shook and trembled within its almost invisible meshes
of fine green silk.

The crowd howled with enthusiasm. Agamemnon struggled with rage
because his companions held him back. Suddenly the girl stopped. A
slight shudder ran through her body. Deep silence prevailed. The head
of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon, but above it the
crotals still shivered with an extraordinary languor, a dying
vibration, quick and tender as the wing-flutterings of a captive
butterfly. The flashing of the yellow eyes died away, although the
eyeball kept its sparkling lights, and the face remained severe; but
upon the dark and sensuous lips of that sphinx-like mouth a smile
trembled, faint as the dying sound of the crotals.

The public shouted and applauded so loudly that the blue tent with its
stars and spangles swayed like a sail in a hurricane. The showman
became apprehensive lest his booth should collapse. The companions of
Agamemnon at last failed to hold him back; raising the curtain, he
rushed through the scenes into the part reserved for the dancers and
actors. In vain his friends counselled--

"Wait; to-morrow you shall have everything as you wish! now something
might...."

Agamemnon interrupted them--

"Not to-morrow; now, at once!"

He approached the owner of the show, the cunning and grey-bearded
Greek, Mirmes, and without explanation flung into the skirt of his
robe a handful of gold pieces.

"Is that dancing-girl your slave?"

"Yes. What does your excellency desire?"

Mirmes, evidently astonished, was staring now at Agamemnon and now at
the gold.

"What's your name, girl?"

"Phyllis."

He bestowed money on her also, without stopping to reckon it.

The Greek murmured some words in the ear of the smiling Phyllis, who
tossed up the pieces and threw sparkling glances at Agamemnon. He
said--

"Come with me!"

Phyllis threw over her shoulders a dark cloak and glided with him into
the street, asking submissively--

"Whither?"

"I don't know."

"To your house?"

"Impossible. I live at Antioch."

"And as for me, I only arrived in this city this morning. What, then,
are we to do?"

"Wait a moment; I saw just now in a lane near this the temple of
Priapus open. Let us go there!"

Phyllis led him on hastily, laughing. The companions of Agamemnon
desired to follow him, but he said to them--

"It is unnecessary--remain here."

"Be careful! At any rate take a weapon, the quarter is dangerous..."
and drawing from under his dress a dagger with a jewelled hilt, one of
the friends of Agamemnon respectfully tendered it to him.

Groping at every step into thick darkness, Agamemnon and Phyllis made
their way up a narrow passage out of the market-place.

"Here! here it is! Fear nothing--go in!"

They found themselves in the vestibule of a little vacant temple, its
ancient and massive columns ill-lighted by the flicker of a lamp.

"Push-to the door!" and Phyllis, softly laughing, threw her warm cloak
upon the ground. When Agamemnon took her into his arms, it seemed to
him that round his body had coiled some warm lithe snake, with wide
and terrifying eyes. At that moment from the interior of the temple
came harsh cacklings, and such a gust of beating wings went past that
the lamp nearly went out. Agamemnon disengaged his arms from Phyllis'
waist and stammered--

"What in the world was that?"

In the dense darkness white forms were slipping by them like so many
ghosts. Thoroughly frightened, Agamemnon crossed himself.

"What is it? May the Holy Cross protect us!"

Something stoutly nipped his leg. He yelled with pain and fear, but
seizing one of his unknown enemies by the throat, he poignarded
another. Deafening cries arose, followed by squeals and repeated
battlings of wings. The lamp flickered for the last time, and Phyllis
cried, laughing--

"They are the ganders! the holy ganders of Priapus! What a crime you
have committed!"

Pale and trembling, the conqueror stood holding in one hand the bloody
dagger and in the other two slain ganders. A crowd carrying torches
burst with shouts into the temple, led by Scabra, the old priestess of
Priapus. This dame had been peacefully supping in a neighbouring
tavern when the trumpeting of the ganders had raised the alarm.
Gathering a train of nocturnal prowlers she had rushed to the rescue.
Hook-nosed, with unkempt grey hair, and eyes blazing like two steel
points, the old priestess looked nothing less than a fury. She
shouted--

"Help! help! The temples are desecrated, and the holy ganders of
Priapus slain! And see here, here are the foul Christians!"

Phyllis fled, enveloping her face in the cloak, while the crowd
dragged off Agamemnon, so cleanly taken aback that he never thought of
relaxing his grip upon the ganders.

Scabra sent for the clerks of the market, the agoranomes. But with
every moment the crowd grew larger, and Agamemnon's companions ran to
support him. It was too late. From dens, wine-shops, alley stalls, a
world of loiterers rushed up, attracted by the noise. All faces wore
the expression of gleeful curiosity peculiar to idlers. The blacksmith
appeared with hammer over his shoulder; the two old women had
forgotten their quarrel; the floury baker jostled the lame cobbler,
and behind them came the genial red-headed boy, shouting, and beating
on his pan, as if calling to arms.

Meantime Scabra continued screaming, her nails fixed in the clothes of
Agamemnon--

"Ah, just wait! wait a minute! let me get at that cursed beard of
yours! I wont leave a hair in it! Out, carrion! food for crows! And
you aren't worth the rope you will cost, thief!"

Finally the sleepy guardians of the market appeared; persons of
curious demeanour, themselves liker common rogues than keepers of the
peace.

Such a deafening din of laughs, oaths, and screams now ensued that
nobody was audible. One shouted, "He's an assassin!" another, "A
thief!" a third, "Let's burn him!"

Suddenly above the hubbub rang out the masterful voice of a tawny
half-naked giant, the attendant in a public bath, an individual with a
demagogue's gift for oratory:

"Citizens, listen to me, and mark what I say! I've long been watching
this rascal and his companions! They are writing down our names! They
are Cæsar's spies!"

Scabra, at last putting her threat into execution, seized Agamemnon's
beard in one hand and his tresses in the other. He strove to repulse
her, but she pulled with might and main, and to the general surprise
black hair and beard both remained in the hands of the old woman, who
stumbled and fell. Instead of Agamemnon, an athletic young man with
fair curling hair and short beard stood before the people.

In its astonishment, the crowd was momentarily silenced; but the voice
of the bath-slave was soon heard clamouring anew:

"See, citizens, they are disguised informers!"

Somebody cried out--

"Strike him! Knock him down!"

The crowd became tumultuous. Stones were thrown; the sham beggars of
Agamemnon's company encircled him with drawn swords. At the first
stroke the luckless leather-dresser was killed, and fell in a pool of
blood. The red-headed boy was trampled under foot, and all faces were
becoming ferocious, when at this juncture ten enormous Paphlagonian
slaves bearing on their shoulders a purple litter impatiently thrust
their way through the crowd.

"Saved!" cried the fair-haired young man, and vaulted into the litter
with one of his fellows.

The Paphlagonians hoisted the pair on their shoulders and set off at
sharp run. The infuriated crowd were making as if to dash in pursuit,
with intent to stone them, when somebody called out--

"Citizens, don't you see that it is Cæsar himself--Gallus Cæsar!"

The mob halted, paralysed by fear, and the purple litter, swaying on
the shoulders of the slaves like a skiff in a heavy sea, vanished into
the darkness up the street.

       *       *       *       *       *

Six years had elapsed since the incarceration of Julian and of Gallus
in the Cappadocian fortress of Macellum. Constantius had restored them
to favour. Julian, then twenty years old, was sent to Constantinople,
and given leave to travel in Asia Minor. Gallus, the Emperor had named
to be his co-regent, with the title of Cæsar. Nevertheless this
unlooked-for favour was no valid earnest of good-will. Constantius
loved to destroy his enemies after having lulled away mistrust by a
display of exuberant affection.

"Well, Glycon, Constantia may beg me as much as she likes, in future,
to go out in false hair! But it's all over for me! I've done with it!"

"We warned your Majesty that it was dangerous."

But Cæsar, stretched on the soft cushions of the litter, had already
forgotten his alarm, and cried, laughing--

"Glycon! Glycon! _did_ you see the old woman rolling on the ground
with my beard?"

When they arrived at the palace Cæsar ordered--

"Quick! Let me have a perfumed bath and supper. The walk has famished
me."

A courier came near holding a letter.

"What is it, Norban? No, no, we will have business to-morrow morning."

"Let the magnanimity of Cæsar pardon me! It is an important message
sent direct from the camp of the Emperor Constantius."

"From Constantius? Give it me."

Gallus broke the seal of the missive, read, and grew pale. His knees
gave way--he would have almost fallen without the support of his
courtiers.

Constantius, in exquisite and flattering terms, invited his
tenderly-loved cousin to come to Milan. At the same time the Emperor
summoned the two legions lodged at Antioch, the only bodyguard left to
Gallus. Constantius designed thus to leave him defenceless and draw
his rival into the snare. When Gallus had recovered presence of mind
he murmured weakly--

"Call my wife!"

"Your Majesty's Imperial consort has just set out for Antioch."

"What! She knows nothing of this?"

"No."

"My God, my God! What is to be done? What can be done without her?
Tell the envoy of the Emperor--No, say nothing to him--I scarcely
know--How is it possible to arrive at a decision alone? Send a swift
post to Constantia.... Say that Cæsar begs her to return! My God, what
is to be done?"

He paced up and down distractedly, now hiding his face in his hands,
now nervously twisting his fair beard and repeating, "No, no, nothing
in the world will induce me to go. I would rather die! Ah! I know
Constantius!"

Another messenger came up, a scroll in his hand.

"From the spouse of Cæsar! Her Highness in leaving begged you to sign
this as soon as possible."

"What! Another sentence of death?... Clement of Alexandria ... this is
really too much. Three a day...."

"Cæsar, it was your consort's desire."

"Well, well, what matters it? Nothing! Where's the pen? Nothing
matters now! But why has she gone away? How can I get out of this
pretty pass single-handed?"

And having signed the death-warrant he fixed those charming and
listless blue eyes upon the servants.

"The bath is ready, sire, and the supper will be served after it."

"The supper? I'm hungry no longer. But what dish is there?"

"Truffles from Africa."

"Fresh gathered?"

"They arrived this morning."

"Would n't it be better to raise an army, eh? What do you say, my
friends? I feel so overwhelmed.... Truffles, you say? I was thinking
about truffles only this afternoon."

The agitation of his countenance gave way to the airiest of smiles.
Before plunging into the water, which was made milky and iridescent by
the infusion of perfumes, Gallus waved his hand lightly:

"Pooh! the great thing is not to think! God have mercy on us all!...
Perhaps after all Constantia will smooth over the matter...."

And his chubby face suddenly lighted while he plunged with glee into
the scented water. He called out gaily--

"Tell the head cook to add a dressing of red pepper to the truffles!"





VII


At Nicomedia, at Pergamos, and at Smyrna Julian, now nineteen years
old and an enthusiast for Hellenic wisdom, had heard much of the
famous mage and sophist, Iamblicus of Chaldea, a pupil of the
Neo-Platonist, Porphyrius. Men used commonly to call him "the Divine"
Iamblicus. In order to see this master, Julian made a journey to
Ephesus.

Iamblicus was a little thin and wrinkled old man. He liked complaining
of his ailments--gout, rheumatism, nervous headache; he abused
physicians, but was zealous in carrying out their advice, and used to
speak with deep interest of drugs and infusions of herbs. He always
wore, even in summer, a double tunic; never seemed warm enough, and
would sit basking in the sun like a lizard.

From his youth up Iamblicus had broken himself of the habit of
meat-eating, and spoke of it with disgust as a practice beyond his
comprehension. His servant used to prepare for him a special broth,
made of barley-water, warm wine, and honey, he being toothless and
unable to masticate bread.

He was always surrounded by numberless admiring students who had
travelled from Rome, Antioch, Carthagena; from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and
Persia, to become his pupils.

All stoutly believed Iamblicus could work miracles. Iamblicus treated
them like a father irritated at seeing round him so many weaklings.
When they began to discuss and to wrangle, the master would make a
sweeping gesture, followed by a grimace expressive of physical pain.
He spoke gently, and in a low-toned, agreeable voice; the louder other
folk shouted the more subdued his own tone became. He hated all noise,
and quarrelsome voices as much as creaking sandals.

Julian gazed in disappointed perplexity at this chilly, sickly, and
whimsical old man. What power drew towards him the world of
philosophy? He remembered the story of pupils--that one night the
divine master during prayer was upraised by some invisible force to a
height of twelve cubits from earth, wrapped in a golden glory. Another
tale was about a miracle, by which the master had smitten from a rock
two warm springs, Eros and Anteros, the two Dæmons of love--the one
dull-souled, the other joyous. Iamblicus, it was said, had caressed
both, like children, and at a word caused them to disappear.

But in listening to the master Julian never succeeded in discovering
the potency of his words. The meta-physic of the school of Porphyrius
seemed to him dull, dead, and painfully complicated. Iamblicus would,
it is true, emerge a playful victor from the most difficult
dialectical discussions. His teaching about God, about the World,
about the Ideas, was full of profound learning; but in it lay no vital
stimulus. Julian had hoped otherwise, and nevertheless he hung about,
and did not set off again homewards. The eyes of Iamblicus were
strange, green, and deeply-sunk in his bronzed face. Julian was
persuaded that these weird and by no means holy eyes betokened some
hidden wisdom, the occult wisdom of the serpent, concerning which
Iamblicus never spoke to his pupils. But when "the Divine," in his
cracked voice, used to ask why his barley broth was not ready, or
complained of gout, the spell was broken.

On one occasion Iamblicus was sauntering with Julian on the seashore,
outside the town. It was a soft and melancholy evening. Behind the
castle of Panormos in the distance glittered, with their array of
statues, the terraces of the celebrated temple of the Ephesian
Artemis.

The dark reeds along the sandy shore made no rustle. It was the spot
where Latona gave birth to Artemis and Apollo. Smoke of numberless
altars in the sacred Orthegian wood was rising in columns into the
sky. To the south the Samian mountains shone blue on the horizon.
Wavelets fell calmly as the breathings of a child, and pellucid waves
swelled over the rocks. The setting sun, hidden behind vapour, gilded
the edge of enormous cloud-masses.

Iamblicus seated himself upon a boulder, and Julian threw himself on
the ground at his feet. The master caressed the thick black locks of
the pupil.

"Are you sad?"

"Yes."

"I know you are sad. You seek and you do not find. You have not the
strength to say '_He is_,' and you are afraid to say '_He is not_.'"

"How have you guessed this, Master?"

"My poor boy! for fifty years have I not suffered from the same pain?
And I shall suffer from it till I die. Do you imagine that I know Him
better than you--that I have discovered what you have missed? _That_
is the birth-pain that never ceases. Beside it other tortures are as
nothing. People think that they suffer from hunger, from poverty, from
thirst; in reality they suffer only from the thought that perhaps He
has no existence. Who shall dare to say '_He exists not_?' and yet
what superhuman strength one must have to say, '_He is_'!"

"Do you mean to say that you, even you, have never come near Him?"

"Thrice in my life have I borne the ecstacy of feeling myself wholly
at one with Him. Plotinus felt it four times, Porphyrius five times.
But as for me, the moments in my existence in which life was worth
living were precisely three."

"I have questioned your pupils on this subject; they knew nothing."

"Have they the courage to know? The shell of wisdom is enough for
them; the kernel, for almost everybody, is deadly."

"Well, let me die, Master! Give the core to me!"

"Have you courage?"

"Yes; but speak--speak!"

"And what can I tell you? I do not know, ... and need I tell you?
Listen to the calmness of the evening, and the secret will be yours
without words of mine...."

He kept stroking Julian's head; the boy was dreaming, "This, this is
what I waited for," and clasping the knees of Iamblicus he falteringly
entreated--

"Master, have pity!... Reveal it all!... Do not desert me!"

With green and strangely motionless eyes kept steadily on the clouds,
Iamblicus murmured, as if speaking to himself:

"Yes, we have all forgotten the voice of God. Like children estranged
from the cradle from the face of their father, we hear Him, and we do
not recognise Him. To hear His voice, every earthly cry in our souls
must cease. Just so long as reason shines and illumines our souls, we
remain imprisoned in ourselves and see not God. But when reason is put
by, ecstacy falls upon us like the dew of night--that ecstacy which
the evil cannot know. The wise, the good alone can become, of their
own will, lyres vibrating under the hand of God. Whence comes that
beam which falls into the soul? I do not know. It comes unawares, and
when one least expects it. To search for it is useless. God is not
remote from us. One must make ready, with a soul becalmed; and simply
wait, as the eyes await (according to the saying of the poet) _the
rush of the sun from dark ocean_. God does not come, God does not go
away; He is revealed. He is, what the universe is not, the negation of
everything that exists. He is nothing, and He is All."

Iamblicus rose and slowly extended his wasted arms:

"Be still, be still, I tell you! Let all things listen for Him! He is
here! Let the earth and the sea, let even the sky be dumb! Listen!...
It is He who fills the universe, the very atoms sing with His breath;
He who illumines matter and chaos--_at which the gods tremble_--just
as the setting sun illumines that dark cloud."

Julian listened. It seemed to him that the master's calm weak voice
was filling the world, was reaching the heights of the heaven, and the
last confines of the sea. But the boy's sadness was so deep that it
escaped from his bosom in an involuntary sigh.

"Father, forgive me if the question is a folly; but if it is thus with
the world why go on living? Why this eternal interchange of life and
death? Why pain? Why evil? Why the burden of the body? Why doubt? Why
this dark thirst for the impossible?"

Iamblicus looked at him with gentleness, and anew passed his hand over
Julian's head. He answered:

"Ah, my son, that is the very seat of the mystery! there is no evil,
there is no body, there is no universe, if He exists! Think! it is He,
_or_ the universe! The body, evil, the universe, all are a mirage, a
deception of the living senses. All we have once rested together upon
the breast of God in the bosom of invisible light. But there came a
time when we beheld from on high matter in its darkness and deadness,
and each of us saw in matter its own image, as in a mirror. And the
soul mused to itself, 'I can, and I will to, be free! I am like Him!
Why not dare to quit Him and contain all in myself?' So the soul, like
Narcissus gazing into the brook, fell under the spell of its own
image, reflected in its body; and then she fell farther, and desired
to fall for ever, to rend herself from God for ever. She cannot do so.
The feet of mortal man touch earth, but his stature lifts him through
the heavens.

"Upon the Eternal Ladder of births and of death, all souls, all things
existing, are ascending and descending, sometimes towards Him,
sometimes away from Him, seeking to leave the Father, and never
fulfilling their endeavour. Each soul desires to be God. It weeps for
the breast of God, has no rest upon earth, and aspires only to return
to the Absolute. We must return to Him, and then all things will
become God, and God will be in All. Do you imagine that you are alone
in regretting Him! Are you not aware that the whole sum of things is
yearning for Him? Listen!"

The sun had set. The edges of the flaming clouds had sunk into ashes.
The sea had become pale, light, flocculent as the sky; the sky deep
and diaphanous as the sea. Upon the road a cart was passing by; a
young man and woman were in it--two lovers, perhaps. The woman was
singing a melancholy love song. When they had passed all things were
plunged into silence again, and became sadder still. With hastened
strides, the oriental night swept over the earth. Julian murmured:

"How many times have I asked myself why Nature was so sad, and why,
when she is proudest then saddest of all...."

Iamblicus answered by a smile--

"Yes... Yes... Look, she longs to say why; and cannot speak. She is
dumb. She sleeps, and seeks to remember in her dreams, but Matter
weighs down her eyelids. Only vaguely can she see Him. Everything in
the universe, stars and sea, and earth, animals, plants, and people
are dreams of Nature, thinking of God. What she so contemplates, is
born and dies. She creates by contemplation, as a dream creates, with
effortless ease, and no obstacle to her thought. That is why her works
are so beautiful, so free, so purposeless, and so divine. The play of
the dreams of Nature is like the play of clouds, without end or
beginning. Outside that contemplation of hers nothing in the world
exists; and the deeper that contemplation is, the more silent. Believe
me, Will, Action, Effort, are only enfeebled and deflected
contemplations of God. Nature, in her grandiose indolence, creates
forms like the geometrician, for whom nothing exists except what he
sees on the paper before him. She brings forms, one after another, out
of the womb of her dream. But her mute meditation is only the
appearance of reality. Nature, that sleeping Cybele, never lifts her
eyelids, and never finds words. Man, he only, has found utterance. The
human soul is Nature having lifted the lashes of her eyes, awakened
and ready to see God, no longer in half-slumber, but really and face
to face...."

The first stars were shining in the firmament; now they vanished, and
now sparkled again into sight, like diamonds set in the dark azure.
More stars, and yet more, kindled their new lights, till the array
became incalculable. Iamblicus lifted his finger towards them--

"Julian, to what should one compare the universe of all those stars?
One might liken it to a fisherman's net thrown into the sea. God fills
the universe as the water fills the net, which moves, but which cannot
retain the waters; and the universe desires, but cannot keep God in
her meshes. The net is drawn, but God remains. If the universe made no
stir God would create nothing--would not issue from the calm that
surrounds Him. For whither should He sweep, and to what end? Yonder,
in the realm of the eternal Mothers, in the soul of Calm, dwell the
seeds, the Forms, the Ideas, of all that is, has been, and shall be.
The germ of hearth-cricket and of atom, together with the germ of the
Olympian god."

Then Julian cried aloud, and his voice rang in the silence of Nature
like a cry of mortal pain--

"But who then is He; why does He not answer when we call Him? What is
His name? I wish to know, I desire to know Him, to hear Him--to see
Him--why does He escape my thought? Where is He? Where does He dwell?"

"My poor boy! What matters thought to Him? What means it? He has no
name. He is such, that we can say that He must exist, but it is
impossible for us to say what He is. But do you think that you can
suffer love, or curse Him, without singing His praises? The
All-Creator is Himself, having no likeness to His creations. When you
say, '_He is not_,' you are exalting Him as much as if you said '_He
is_.' One can affirm nothing about Him, because He is above existence,
reality, and life. That is why I have said to you that He is the
negation of the universe and of your thought. Deny, renounce all that
exists for us here, and yonder, in the soundless profundity of
darkness, as in the light, you shall find Him still. Give Him friends,
family, country, heaven, earth, yourself, your reason, then you will
no longer see light, you shall yourself be it. You will not say, 'He
and I,' because you will feel that He and you are '_one_'; and your
soul will smile at your body as at a phantasm of the desert. You shall
become silence, you shall no more find utterance. And if at that
moment the world should crumble away, you would be happy: for what
would the world signify to you, since you shall be with Him? Your soul
shall not desire, because He has no desires; it shall no longer live,
because He is above living; it shall no longer think, because He is
above thought. Thought is the search for light. He seeks not, because
He is Himself the light. He penetrates the whole soul--He laps it in
Himself. And then, impartial and solitary, it rests above reason
higher than goodness, higher than beauty, reposes in the infinite, on
the breast of God the Father of Light. The Soul becomes God, or, to
put it better, it remembers that in the night of ages it has been, is,
and shall be, God.... Such, my son, is the life of the Olympians; such
is the life of the wise and heroic among men; renunciation of the
universe, contempt of earthly passions, the flight of the Soul towards
God, whom at last it sees face to face."

Iamblicus ceased speaking. Julian fell at his feet without daring to
touch them, and kissed the earth where they rested. Then he raised his
head and gazed into those strange green eyes, in which dwelt the
wisdom of the serpent. They appeared calmer and deeper than the sky,
and as if exhaling a miraculous power.

Julian murmured--

"Master! thou canst do all things. I believe! Command the mountains,
and they shall approach each other! Be like God. Work a miracle,
create the impossible. Grant my prayer! I believe!"

"My poor boy, what are you asking for? Is not the miracle which may be
accomplished in your soul more beautiful than any wonders which _I_
can work? Son, is it not a terrible and a happy miracle, this power in
the name of which you can dare to say: 'He is,' and if 'He is not' it
matters nothing, '_He will be_,' and you say 'Let God exist! Amen, so
be it!'"




VIII


When Iamblicus and Julian, returning from their walk, were crossing
Panormos, the crowded harbour-quarter of Ephesus, they noticed an
unusual tumult; folk running hither and thither, waving torches and
shouting--

"The Christians are destroying the temples! Woe be on us!" and others:
"Death to the Olympian gods! Astarte is vanquished by Christ!"

Iamblicus attempted a detour through less frequented streets, but the
howling mob caught and swept them in its course towards the temple of
the Ephesian Artemis. The superb temple, built by Dynocrates, stood
out sharply, dark and austere, against the starry sky. The gleam of
the torches flickered up gigantic colonnades, pedestalled on beautiful
little groups of caryatids. Up to this period, not only the Romans,
but all tribes in the country had adored this goddess. Someone in the
crowd cried out in a quavering voice--

"Hail to the divine Diana of the Ephesians!"

Hundreds of voices responded--

"Death to the Olympians and to your Diana!"

Above the Arsenal and its towering monument rose a blood-red light.
Julian glanced at his divine master, and scarcely recognised him.
Iamblicus was transformed back into a sickly and timid old man. He
complained of headache, expressed his fear of an attack of rheumatism,
and doubted whether his servant had not forgotten to prepare his
fomentations. Julian lent him his own cloak; but he remained chilly,
and stopped his ears, with a dolorous grimace, against the shouts and
laughter of the crowd, which he dreaded. Iamblicus used to say there
was nothing more stupid and disgusting than the spirit of the people.
He pointed out to his pupil the faces hurrying past--

"Look at the monstrous vice in that expression! What hopeless
triviality! what self-confident assertion!... Does it not make one
ashamed of being human, to share human form with mud like that!"

An old Christian woman hobbled along, telling a story--

"And my grandson, he says to me, 'Grandmother, make me some
meat-broth.' Well, I tell him, 'Yes, darling, I'll go to the market
soon,' and to myself I'm thinking meat is nowadays cheaper than bread.
So I buy some meat for five obols and have it cooked. And in comes a
neighbour and screams at me, 'What are you cooking there? Don't you
know that the meat of the market is not fit to touch to-day?'

"'Why so?'

"'The priests of the goddess have sprinkled the whole market with
water from the sacrifices! There's not a Christian in the town eating
the meat so spoiled. And they're going to kill the sacrificers, and
pull down the devilish temple!'

"I threw the broth to the dogs; just think! five obols, all
wasted!--more than a day's wage thrown away--but all the same I
wouldn't make my own grandson unclean!"

Others were telling how, in the previous year, some miserly Christian
had eaten of the impure meat, which had so rotted his intestines that
his very relatives had had to abandon him, on account of the
contagion.

In the public square rose a beautiful little temple to
Diana-Selene-Phoebe-Astarte--the triple goddess Hecate, mother of the
gods. Like enormous wasps greedily intent upon a honeycomb, monks had
surrounded the temple on all sides, crawling along the lovely white
cornice, clambering up ladders, and to the chant of psalms, smashing
the statues and bas-reliefs.

The columns were trembling on their bases, fragments of marble flying
in all directions. The delicate edifice seemed to wince like a living
creature. Finally an attempt was made to set the temple on fire; but
as it was wholly built of marble, all efforts in this direction were
fruitless.

Suddenly a strange noise rang out from the interior, a deafening and
resonant series of shocks, while triumphant howls of the crowd rose to
the sky.

"Bring ropes, ropes! Hide her immodest limbs!"

In a hubbub of hymns and wild laughter the mob, by means of ropes,
dragged out of the temple the superb silver body of the goddess, which
had been moulded by Scopas. Step by step, it came thundering down.

"Cast her in the fire! in the fire!"

The figure was dragged into the muddy market-place. There a monk was
declaiming a passage from the celebrated edict of Constantine II, the
brother of Constantius--

"'Let there be an end of superstition, and let sacrifices be
abolished' (_Cesset superstitio sacrificiorum, aboleatur insania!_).

"Fear nothing; break, sack, plunder everything in that temple of
demons!" Another was reading by torchlight from a parchment scroll the
following words from the book _De errore profanarum religionum_, by
Firmicus Maternus--

"Divine Emperors! Come! succour the unfortunate heathen. Let us snatch
them by force from hell rather than leave them to perish. Seize the
temple-ornaments and let their riches feed your treasury. Let him who
sacrifices to idols be torn from the earth, root and branch
(_Sacrificans diis eradicabitur_). Thou shalt deliver him to death;
thou shalt stone him with stones, were that offender thy son, thy
brother, or the wife that sleeps upon thy heart!"

And over the crowd swept the exultant shout--

"Death! Death to the gods of Olympus!"

An Arian monk of gigantic stature, his lank black hair plastered to
his sweaty face, heaved an axe above the goddess, seeking where to
strike.

A voice advised--

"In the belly! In her abominable belly!"

The great silver body rolled over mutilated; the blows rang pitiless,
leaving gaps bitten in the metal.

An old pagan stood by and veiled his face from the sacrilege. He was
secretly weeping at the thought that now the end of the world, the end
of everything, was come, for the earth would no longer bring forth a
blade of corn.

A hermit from the deserts of Mesopotamia, clothed in sheepskin,
wearing coarse sandals and an empty gourd slung from his shoulder,
stood over the statue, sheep-crook in hand--

"This forty years I have never washed, that I might not see my
nakedness, nor fall into temptation. And yet coming into cities,
straight one perceives these accursed gods without a rag upon them.
How long must we endure these devilish temptations! At the hearth, in
the street, on the roof, in the baths, these idols everywhere above
one's head?... Faugh! Faugh! Faugh! How can I spit enough disgust on
things like these?"

The old man spurned the prostrate woman's form with his sandal in
energetic horror; stamped on the bare breast as if it were alive, and
kept scoring it with the sharp nails of his sandals, stuttering with
rage--

"Take that, and that--and that, O foul immodesty!"

The lips of the goddess lay with their calm smile under the soles of
his feet.

The crowd began to haul the statue upright in order to tilt it into
the bonfire. Drunken garlic-smelling apprentices spat in the metal
face. An enormous blaze, built of the massed wreckage of
market-booths, quickly arose. The statue was dropped into the flames
to be melted into silver bullion.

"There are five talents' worth! think--thirty thousand pieces of
silver! We'll send half to the Emperor to pay the army, and take the
other half for famished folk here. Cybele will bring solace to mankind
at last, anyhow! Thirty thousand pieces of silver for the soldiers and
the poor!"

"Bring fuel, more wood!" The flame mounted still more fiercely; the
mob burst into laughter.

"We'll see whether the devil flies out of her! There's a demon in
every idol, you know, and two or three inside goddesses!"

"When she begins to melt it'll get too hot for the devil, and he'll
come wriggling out of her mouth like a red serpent!"

"No! you must make the sign of the cross beforehand. If you don't, he
can glide into the earth. Last year, when we pulled down the temple of
Aphrodite, someone sprinkled her with holy water and--can you believe
it?--a whole flight of devilets scampered away from underneath the
statue--I saw them myself--green and black and hairy all over! And
when the head was broken open the big devil came out of her neck, with
great horns and a tail as bald as a mangy dog!"

At this moment Iamblicus, half dead with terror, seized Julian by the
hand and dragged him away--

"Look! Do you see those two men? They are spies sent by Constantius.
Your brother Gallus has been taken under escort to Constantinople. Be
careful; this very day there will be a report sent in as to how you
bear yourself."

"But what is there to be done, Master? I am well accustomed to it; for
years they have kept spies about me."

"For years! Why have you said nothing of it to me?"

The hand of Iamblicus shook within that of Julian.

"Why are those two whispering together? Look at them--they must be
pagans.... Now then old man, hurry up, bring wood!" cried out a ragged
rascal in a triumphant tone.

Iamblicus whispered into Julian's ear--

"Let us despise it all, and in contempt resign ourselves. Human
stupidity can never hurt the gods!"

So saying the "Divine" Iamblicus took an enormous faggot from the
hands of the Christian and cast it into the fire. At first Julian
could scarcely believe his eyes. The now-smiling spies stared at him,
with a curious fixity.

Then weakness, and his own habitual hypocrisy for his own sake and for
the sake of others, won the day. He went to the heap of wood, chose
the largest log, and, after Iamblicus, threw it into the blaze in
which the mutilated body of the goddess was already melting. He
clearly saw drops of silver rolling on her face as in a death-sweat,
and the lips still keeping their invincible smile.




IX


"Look at those fellows dressed in black, Julian! They are shadows of
night-fall, shadows of death. Soon there will not be a single ancient
white robe left, nor a single sun-steeped piece of marble.... All is
over!"

So spoke the young sophist, Antoninus, son of the prophetess Sospitra
and of Ædesius, the Neo-Platonist. He was standing with Julian on the
terrace of the temple of Pergamos, in bright sunshine, under a sky of
cloudless blue. Along the foot of the balustrade was carven the revolt
of the Titans. The gods were triumphing; and the hoofs of the winged
horses crushing the serpent bodies of the antique giants. Antoninus
pointed to the carving--

"Ah! Julian, the Olympians conquered the Titans, but now the Olympians
in their turn will be beaten by barbaric gods. These temples will
become tombs...."

Antoninus was a handsome youth, straight-limbed as one of the old
statues, but his health had been broken for years by an incurable
malady, and his face had become yellow, lean, and melancholy.

"I pray the gods," went on Antoninus, "I entreat the gods not to
suffer me to see that night--that I may die before it comes.
Rhetoricians, sophists, poets, sages, artists, none of us are wanted
any more. We are born in too late a day.... All is over for us!"

"And suppose you are mistaken?" hazarded Julian.

"No, all's over! We are not as our forefathers! We are sick, strength
fails us."

Julian's face seemed as worn and haggard as that of Antoninus. The
projecting lower lip gave him an expression of taciturn arrogance. The
thick eyebrows were knitted in bitter obstinacy; precocious wrinkles
already furrowed his cheeks. The long nose had grown longer than ever;
and his always strange eyes were now burning with a dry, feverish,
disagreeable fire. He still wore the monkish habit. During the day he
still attended church, as hitherto; worshipped relics; read the
gospels in public, and was preparing to take orders. Sometimes all
this hypocrisy seemed to him worse than useless. He foresaw that
Gallus would not escape a premature death, and knew that he himself
might expect it at any moment.

But his nights Julian was wont to pass in the great library of
Pergamos, where he was studying the works of the great foe of
Christianity, Libanius. He attended the lectures of the Greek
sophists, Ædesius of Pergamos, Chrisantius of Sardinia, Priscius of
Thesephros, Eusebius of Minos, Proeres, and Nymphidian. These taught
him much about what he had already heard from Iamblicus, of the
_triad_ of the Neo-Platonists, and of the "divine ecstasy." He said to
himself--

"All that is not what I am seeking; they are hiding something from
me!"

Priscius, imitating Pythagoras, had passed five years in silence,
keeping to a vegetarian diet, and using neither raiment of wool nor
sandal of leather. He wore a cloak of pure white linen and sandals of
palm leaves stitched together.

"In our age," he used to say, "the thing of moment is to be able to
hold one's tongue, and to meditate on dying worthily."

Thus Priscius, despising all things, awaited what he called the
catastrophe, that is to say, the complete victory of Christianity over
the Hellenists.

The wily and prudent Chrisantius, when the subject of the gods was
touched on, would cast his eyes to heaven, avowing that he dared not
talk about them, knowing nothing, and having forgotten what he had
learnt on the subject. And he advised others to follow his own
example. As for magic, miracles, and phantasms, he would hear nothing
about them, declaring that they were criminal deceptions, forbidden by
the Imperial laws.

Julian had no appetite, slept ill; his blood was boiling with passion
and impatience. Every morning on awaking he would wonder--

"Is it to be to-day?"

He would worry the poor sages with ceaseless questions concerning
mysteries and miracles. Some of them he shocked, especially
Chrisantius, who was in the habit of acquiescence in all the opinions
which seemed to him most foolish.

On one occasion Ædesius, a timid and learned old man, pitying Julian,
said to him--

"My boy, I want to die quietly; you are young yet. Leave me alone.
Address yourself to my disciples; they will reveal to you everything I
have taught. Yes, there are many things about which we are afraid to
speak, and when you shall have been initiated into the greater
mysteries, you will perhaps be ashamed at having been born a mere
mortal, and of having remained one up till now."

Euthemus of Minda, a disciple of Ædesius, and a jealous and malicious
fellow, declared to Julian: "There are no more such things as
miracles. Don't expect any. Men have badgered the gods too long. Magic
is a lie, and those who believe in it are idiots. But if you are
still hungry for wisdom, and absolutely must have illusions, go to
Maximus. He despises our dialectical philosophy, and yet himself....
But I don't like speaking ill of my friends. Just hear, however, what
happened lately in a temple of Hecate whither Maximus had conducted us
to prove his art. When we had gone in and adored the goddess, he said
to us: 'Sit down, and you shall see a miracle.' We sat down. He threw
on the altar a phimian-seed, muttering something,--a hymn I
suppose,--and then we saw the statue of Hecate smile at us! Maximus
said to us: 'Fear nothing when you shall see the two torches held by
the goddess kindle of themselves. Behold!' Before he had finished the
sentence the lamps were alight, self-kindled!"

"The miracle, in fact, was accomplished!" cried Julian.

"Yes; our emotion was so great that we prostrated ourselves. But when
I came out of the temple I asked myself, 'Is what Maximus does worthy
of true philosophy?' Read Pythagoras, Plato--there shall you find
wisdom. By divine dialectic to lift the heart of man--is not that
finer than any miracle?"

But Julian was listening no more; his eyes sparkled as he gazed at the
surly face of Euthemus, and he murmured as he went forth from the
school--

"Keep your books and your dialectics! I seek life and faith! Can they
exist without miracles? I thank thee, Euthemus, thou hast pointed me
to the man I have sought for long."

With a bitter smile the sophist answered--

"Nephew of Constantine, you have not improved upon your ancestors.
Miracles were not necessary to the faith of Socrates!"




X


At the stroke of midnight, in the vestibule leading to the great hall
of the mysteries, Julian flung off his novice's robe. The sacrificial
mystagogues, initiators into the pagan ceremonial, then clothed him
anew in their own priestly tunic, woven of threads of papyrus. A
palm-branch was put into his hand, and his feet were left bare. He was
then led up a long low hall, the vaults of which were supported by a
double row of bronze Corinthian columns. Each column, formed of two
serpents entwined, bore two incense-burners on lofty and slender
branching stands, whence rose thin tongues of flame. Dense vapour
filled the hall. At its end glittered two winged golden bulls,
propping a splendid throne, on which was seated, arrayed in a long
black tunic powdered thick with emeralds and carbuncles, and in
demeanour like a god, the greatest hierophant of all, Maximus of
Ephesus.

The slow reverberant voice of a temple slave announced the opening of
the mysteries--

"If any impious, or Christian, or Epicurean be present in this
assembly, let him go forth!"

Instructed in advance as to the necessary responses, Julian pronounced
the words--

"Let the Christians go forth!"

The choir of temple slaves, hidden in obscurity, took up the burden--

"To the doors! To the doors! Let the Christians go forth! Let the
impious go forth!"

Then twenty-four lads, entirely naked, each holding a silver sistrum,
like a crescent-moon, came forth from the shadow. In perfect unison
they raised the vibrating instruments above their heads, and with one
graceful gesture struck the resonant strings, which gave forth a long
and plaintive note. Maximus made a sign.

Someone tightly bandaged Julian's eyes from behind and said to him
earnestly--

"Go forward! Fear neither Water, Fire, Spirits; nor Bodies, nor Life,
nor Death."

He felt himself dragged forward; an iron door opened on creaking
hinges. He was pushed through it; a stifling atmosphere beat on his
face while his feet groped down slippery and twisted steps. Feeling
his way down this endless stair, amidst sepulchral silence, it seemed
at last that he must be a great distance underground. He proceeded
along a narrow passage--so narrow that his hands, held stiffly to his
sides, rubbed along the walls. Suddenly his bare feet struck moisture;
he heard water flowing; a stream covered his ankles. He kept on, but
at every step the water rose, reaching first his calves, then his
knees, and finally his loins. His teeth began to chatter with cold.
The flood rose breast high. He wondered--

"Perhaps this is a trap; it is some device of Maximus for killing me,
to do the Emperor pleasure."

But he held stoutly on, forging slowly through the water. Finally it
seemed to lessen, till at last it completely ebbed away. A suffocating
heat, as from the mouth of a furnace, gradually enveloped him, so that
the ground scorched his feet. Julian thought he must be walking
straight into an oven; blood throbbed in his temples; sometimes the
heat was so intense that it licked his cheek like a flame. But the
lad never wavered.

In its turn the heat diminished. But sickening odours next choked his
breath. Time after time he stumbled against round objects, and
recognised bones and dead men's skulls.

Suddenly he felt someone walking by his side, gliding along
noiselessly like a shadow; an ice-cold hand seized his own. He uttered
an involuntary cry. Two hands were gently pulling at his clothes, the
fleshless bones piercing their withered skin. The grip of these hands
became playful movements, repulsive caresses like those of debauched
women. Julian felt a breath on his cheek tainted with fusty rottenness
and moisture, and then became aware of a rapid murmur at his ear, like
the rustle of leaves on a night in autumn--

"It is I! It is I!--I!--do you not know me again? It is I!--I!"

"And who, who art thou?" stammered Julian. But immediately he
recollected his promise of absolute silence.

"It is I! Shall I strip the bandage from your eyes so that you may
know me again, may meet me again?" And the bony fingers, with the same
hideous eagerness, fluttered over his face as if seeking to drag off
the bandage.

A deadly chill penetrated Julian to the heart, and, through habit, he
thrice crossed himself involuntarily, as in childhood at some bad
dream.

A clap of thunder! The ground heaved under his feet! He felt himself
falling into the unknown; and lost consciousness.

When he regained his senses he was no longer blindfold but lay on
cushions in a huge twilit grotto. A cloth, soaked in penetrating
perfumes, was being held to his nostrils. Opposite Julian stood a lean
man with a coppery skin; it was the gymnosophist--the naked
sage--assistant of Maximus.

He was holding high above his head a motionless metallic disc. A voice
said to Julian. "Look!" Julian gazed at the dazzling circle. Its
brilliancy was almost painful to the eyes. Looking at it fixedly and
long, gradually all things melted and lost their sharper outline. A
pleasant weakness breathed through his being. The luminous disc no
longer shone in the void, but in his own mind; his eyelids descended;
a sleepy smile of weariness played upon his submissive lips. He felt a
hand stroking his head, and a voice asked--

"Are you asleep?"

"Yes...."

"Look me in the eyes!"

Julian obeyed with effort and perceived Maximus stooping over him.

He was a man of about seventy years old, bearded to the girdle. Thick
hair, with a yellow glitter in it, fell thick over his shoulders. Deep
wrinkles, furrowed by thought and will, and not by suffering, marked
cheek and brow. His smile was like the smile of women who are at once
witty, mendacious, and enchanting. But it was the eyes of Maximus that
gave Julian most pleasure. Under thick eyebrows they shone mocking,
and tender, yet piercing to the quick.

Maximus asked--"Do you wish to see the most famous of the Titans?"

"Yes."

"Watch then."

The magician pointed to the depth of the cave where stood a tripod of
Corinthian bronze, vomiting smoke. A tempestuous noise filled the
cavern--

"Hercules! Hercules! Deliver me!"

The smoke vanished; blue sky appeared. Julian lay stretched motionless
and pale, watching through half-shut eyelids the rapid visions
unfolded before him. It was as if someone commanded him to see them.
He beheld clouds and snow-clad mountains, and heard the breaking of
distant waves. Slowly he perceived an enormous body, chained hand and
foot to crags. A kite was devouring the liver of the Titan, drops of
black blood trickled down his side; the great chains rattled, and the
whole body shuddered with pain.

"Deliver me, Hercules!"

And the Titan raised his shaggy head; his eyes met those of the youth
entranced--

"Who art thou? Whom dost thou summon?" asked Julian, speaking heavily
in his dream.

"I call on thee!"

"I am but a mortal, and helpless."

"Thou art my brother; set me free!"

"Who has chained thee up anew?"

"The humble, the gentle,--who through cowardice forgive their enemies.
Slaves! slaves!... O deliver me!"

"How can I deliver thee?"

"Be even as I am."

The smoke of the tripod obscured the apparition. Julian woke for a
moment and the great hierophant, the teacher of rites, asked--

"Do you wish to see the ruined Archangel?"

"Yes."

"Behold him!"

In the white smoke appeared faintly a head between two gigantic
wings. The feathers of the wings swept out, drooping like branches of
yew, and a bluish tint as of some lost sky trembled upon the
melancholy plumes.

Someone cried to Julian from afar off--

"Julian! Julian! Deny the Galilean in my name!"

Julian held his peace.

Maximus muttered at his ear--

"If you wish to see the great Angel you must make this renunciation."

And Julian pronounced the words--

"I deny Him!"

Above the head of the apparition suddenly glittered the morning
star--the star of dawn--and the Angel repeated--

"Julian, deny the Galilean in my name!"

A third time the Angel repeated,--and his voice sounded exultant and
close by: "Renounce Him!"

And Julian answered--

"I renounce Him!"

The Angel said--

"Thou mayest approach."

"Who art thou?"

"I am Lucifer, I am Light, I am the East, I am the Morning Star!"

"How beautiful thou art!"

"Be thou as I am."

"What melancholy dwells in thine eyes!"

"I suffer for all living. Birth must cease, death must cease. Come to
me; I am the Shadow, I am Repose, I am Liberty."

"How art thou named among men?"

"Evil."

"Thou?"

"Yes. I turned in revolt."

"Against whom?"

"Against Him whose peer I am. He willed to be alone, but we are two,
and equals."

"Make me in thine image!"

"Revolt also! I will give thee the thews for rebellion."

"Teach me!"

"Violate the law, love thyself, curse Him, and be as I am!"

The Angel disappeared; the wind in circling gusts rekindled the flame
on the tripod. The flame blew over the brim of the vessel and ran
along the ground. The tripod itself was overset, and the flame went
out. In the darkness came a rushing noise of numberless steps, with
cries and groanings, as if an invisible army, fleeing before an enemy,
were in passage through the cave. Julian, in terror, fell face
downward to the earth, while the long black robe of the hierophant,
stretched over him, struggled with the wind.

"Flee, flee!" groaned indistinct voices. "The gates of Hell are
opening; it is He, He, the Conqueror!"

The wind hissed in Julian's ears; legions upon legions seemed passing
over him; suddenly there fell a dead calm; a heavenly breath filled
the vast cavern and a voice murmured--

"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

It seemed to Julian that he had heard that voice before, in some far
time of childhood. Gently it came again--

"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

And the sound faded away into the distance, so that there came at last
but an imperceptible whisper: "Why, why, persecutest thou me?"

When Julian awoke and raised his prostrate face he saw one of the
initiating priests lighting a lamp. He felt giddy, but remembered
exactly everything that had taken place. His eyes were blindfolded
and, strengthened with spiced wine, he was enabled to climb the
staircase, his hand gripped this time by the strong hand of Maximus.
He felt as if an invisible force was lifting him on wings. The teacher
of rites said to the lad--

"Now ask what you will!"

"Did you summon Him?" inquired Julian.

"No. But when one chord of the lyre vibrates, another chord responds.
Opposite answers opposite."

"Why is there such potency in His words if His words are only lies?"

"His words are truth."

"What do you mean? Then it is the Titan and the Angel who lied?"

"They also are the truth."

"Do you mean that there are two truths?"

"Two truths."

"Ah! You are tempting me!..."

"Not I, but the wholeness of the truth. If you are afraid, be silent."

"I am afraid of nothing. Say on; tell all! Are the Galileans right?"

"Yes."

"Why then should I have renounced them?"

"There is, beside theirs, another truth."

"One higher?"

"No, equal."

"But in what is one to believe? Where is the God whom I seek?"

"Both here and yonder. Serve Ahriman,--serve Ormuzd, whichever
pleases you! But forget not that both are equal,--the kingdom of
Lucifer and the kingdom of God."

"Which way should I choose?"

"Choose one of the two roads, and halt no more!"

"But which?"

"If you believe in Him, take up the cross. Follow Him according to His
command; be humble, chaste. Be the lamb that was dumb between the
hands of the shearers. Flee into the desert for salvation; give Him
body, soul, and reason! Believe!... that is one way. And the Galilean
martyrs attain the same liberty that Prometheus and Lucifer have
attained."

"That way I cannot choose."

"Choose then the other path. Be puissant as your ancestors of old, the
heroes--proud, pitiless, and haughty. No compassion! No love! No
pardon! Arise and conquer all things! Let your body become hard as
marble out of which the demigods are hewn! Take and give not! Taste of
the forbidden fruit and repent not! Believe not, doubt not, and the
world shall be thine! Thou shalt be the Titan--an angel revolted
against God."

"But I can never forget that the words of the Galilean contain truth
also. I cannot admit two beliefs."

"Then thou shalt be like all common mortals and hadst better never
been born; but thou canst choose. Make the venture!... Thou shalt be
emperor!"

"I? Emperor?"

"Thou shalt have between thy hands what Alexander never had."

Julian felt that they were issuing from the bowels of the earth, felt
the morning sea-breeze bathing him. The hierophant unknotted the
bandage over his eyes, and lo! they were standing on a high marble
tower, the astronomical observatory of the great seer, built after the
model of the ancient Chaldean towers, but upon a crag above the sea.
Below stretched luxurious gardens, palaces, and cloisters, recalling
the colonnades of Persepolis. In the distance the Artemision and
Ephesus stood in clear relief against the mountains over which the sun
was about to rise.

Julian's head almost gave way at the extent of the view; he had to
lean upon the arm of Maximus; but then with a smile the youth closed
his eyes, and the beams of the rising sun flushed his white vestments
with rose-colour. The seer stretched out his arm.

"Behold! all this is thine!"

"Can I sustain it, Master? Assassination may strike me at any moment.
I am weak and ill."

"The sun, the god Mithra, is crowning you with his purples--the purple
of the Roman Empire. All this is thine. Dare!"

"And what is it all to me, since truth unified does not exist, and
since I cannot find the God for whom I seek?"

"Ah! if thou canst make one the truth of the Titan and the truth of
the Galilean, thou wilt be greater than any that have been born of
women!..."

       *       *       *       *       *

Maximus of Ephesus was the owner of marvellous libraries, quiet marble
chambers, and spacious anatomical laboratories crowded with scientific
apparatus. In one of the latter the young physicist, Oribazius, a
doctor of the school of Alexandria, was vivisecting, scalpel in hand,
a rare animal sent to Maximus from the Indies. The hall was circular
and the walls loaded with rows of tin vessels, chafing dishes,
retorts, apparatus like that of Archimedes, and fire machines like
those of Ktesius and Geron. In the silence of the adjoining library
drop after drop fell plashing from the water-clock, an invention of
Apollonius. Globes were there also, geographical charts in metal, and
models of the celestial spheres wrought by Hipparchus and
Eratosthenes.

In the clear and serene light falling through the glass ceiling,
Maximus, clothed as a simple philosopher, was scrutinising the
still-warm organs of the animal laid on the marble. Oribazius stooping
over the liver of the animal was saying--

"How can Maximus, the great philosopher, believe in these ridiculous
miracles?"

"I believe in them and I believe in them not," answered the magian.
"This Nature which you and I are studying, is not she most miraculous?
Are not these blood-vessels, this nervous system, the admirable
combination of organs which we are examining like augurs--are not
these the most splendid of mysteries?"

"You know my meaning," interrupted the young doctor. "Why have you
deceived this young man?"

"Julian?"

"Yes."

"He himself desired to be deceived."

The brows of Oribazius knitted into a frown.

"Master, if you love me, tell me who you are. How can you endure lies
like these? Do I not understand what magic means? You attach luminous
fish-scales to the ceiling of a darkened chamber, and the pupil to be
initiated believes that the skies are descending on him at the word of
the hierophant. You manufacture with skin and wax a death's head, into
which you fit a stork's neck; and through it you pronounce your
predictions from beneath the floor. The pupil imagines that the skull
uncurtains to him the secrets of the tomb; and when it is necessary
that the head should vanish, you bring a chafing dish near it, the wax
melts and the skull collapses. By skilful rays of coloured light
playing on odorous smoke, you make the innocent believe that they have
verily seen the gods! You display under water in a basin, of which the
walls are stone and the bottom glass, a living Apollo (acted by an
obliging slave), while some vulgar prostitute is played off as
Aphrodite. This--this, you call the holy mysteries!"

His habitual equivocal smile wandered over the compressed lips of the
teacher, who answered--

"Ah! our mysteries are deeper and finer than you suppose. Men have
absolute need of enthusiasm. For him who has faith the harlot is
Aphrodite really, and the luminous scales are the stars of heaven. You
say that people weep and pray before semblances produced by a lamp and
coloured glasses? Oribazius, Oribazius!... but this Nature which makes
your science marvel, is she not herself a mirage, produced by senses
as deceptive as the wizard's lantern? Wherein does truth consist?
Where does falsehood begin? You believe and you know, and I neither
wish to believe nor am skilled to know. Truth dwells for me in the
same shrine as falsehood."

"Would Julian thank you, if he knew that you were deceiving him?"

"He saw what he desired to see. I have given him enthusiasm, strength,
and audacity. You say that I have deceived him. If that had been
necessary I would have done so--I would have tempted him. I love the
falsehood that contains a truth. I love temptation. Till I die I will
never abandon Julian and shall allow him to taste all forbidden
fruits. He is young; I shall live on a second life in him. I will
unveil for him the mystery and charm even of crime; and perhaps
through me he shall become great!"

"Master, I do not understand you."

"And that is precisely why I speak thus to you," responded Maximus,
fixing on Oribazius his penetrating and impassive eyes.




XI


Julian had an interview with his brother Gallus while the latter was
on his way to Constantinople. He had found him surrounded by a troop
of traitors in the pay of Constantius: the quæstor Leontinus, a wily
courtier, famous for skill in eavesdropping and cross-examining
servants; the tribune Baïnobadois, a taciturn barbarian, who gave the
impression of an over-tragic actor playing the part of a headsman; the
Emperor's haughty Master of Ceremonies, _comes domesticorum_,
Lucilian; and finally Marcus Scuda, the former tribune of Cæsarea in
Cappadocia, who, thanks to the protection of certain old ladies, had
attained the post he longed for.

Gallus, now, as always, gay and giddy, had offered Julian an excellent
supper, of which the chief feature was a plump pheasant stuffed with
fresh Theban dates. He laughed like a child, and was calling up all
sorts of reminiscences of old days together at Macellum, when suddenly
Julian spoke to him about his wife Constantia.

The face of Gallus fell; his eyes filled with tears, and he laid down
on his plate the succulent piece of pheasant which he had been on the
point of putting into his mouth.

"Don't you know, Julian, that Constantia is dead? She died
unexpectedly after an attack of tertian ague, on the very journey to
the Emperor which she had undertaken to absolve me from blame in his
eyes. I wept for two whole nights when I heard that news."

He cast a timid glance at the door, put his hand on Julian's shoulder,
and whispered confidentially--

"Since then, I have let things go to the devil! She alone might have
saved me. Ah! she was an astonishing woman. Without her I am ruined. I
can do, and I can learn, nothing.... 'They' do with me just as they
please."

He tossed off a cup of wine at a gulp.

Julian remembered Constantia, the sister of Constantius, a widow of
ripe age, the evil genius of her brother, her who had incited him to
commit numberless crimes, crimes which were frequently mere fatuous
stupidities. Amazed, he asked, anxious to know by what quality this
woman had tamed his brother--

"She was beautiful?"

"It is clear you never saw her."

"No. Was she ugly?"

"Yes, very ugly. She was short, brown, thin, and had bad teeth, which
I can't bear in women. Nevertheless, being aware of this defect, she
never laughed. People used to say she deceived me, that in disguise
she used to go to the circus, as Messalina did, on visits to a young
and handsome groom. Well, what of it? Did not I on my side deceive
her? She never bothered me, and I used to take care in return never to
worry her about these trifles. Folk used to say she was cruel! By God,
Julian, she knew how to govern! Of course she didn't like the authors
of epigrams on her bad manners, comparing her to some kitchen-slave
dressed as Cæsar's wife! She loved revenge, admiration! And what a
mind, what a mind, Julian! Why, I was as much at ease sheltered behind
her, as behind a granite wall. Ah, the mad things we used to do
together! We certainly never lacked amusement."

He smiled at some agreeable recollection and passed the tip of his
tongue along his rosy upper lip between the sips of Chian wine.

"There's no denying we made the most of time," he repeated, not
without modest pride.

When Julian was on his way to this interview with his brother, he had
thought of waking in him some feeling of seriousness and remorse, had
even prepared a little speech, in the style of Libanius, against the
doings of irresponsible tyrants. He had expected to see a man bowed
under the yoke of Nemesis, and not the tranquil fat and rosy visage of
this comely athlete. Words died on Julian's lips. He looked without
blame or distaste upon this "docile animal"--for so he inwardly named
his brother. Of what avail were sermons to a young stallion? Julian
contented himself therefore with saying to Gallus in a grave tone--

"Why are you going to Milan? Do you suspect nothing?"

"Yes--hush--but it is too late!"

And, sweeping his hand significantly round his neck, he added--

"The slipnoose of death is already here! 'He' is tightening it little
by little. Why, he would unearth me from a rabbit-burrow, Julian! No,
no, best speak no more of it! All's over! We've made the most of time,
that's all."

"But you have two legions left you at Antioch?"

"Not one. 'He' has filched all my best soldiers, little by little,
under colour of this pretext and that; and always, by Jove! for my own
good! Why, everything he does is for my own good.... He thinks of
nothing else! Now he's in a hurry to see me simply to profit by my
advice. Julian, that man is terrible! You don't know yet, and God
grant that you may never know, what that man is. He sees everything,
knows my inmost thoughts, those that I wouldn't mutter to my pillow;
and he's watching your mind also. Frankly, I am afraid of him!"

"But can't you escape?"

"Hush, speak lower!"

The features of Gallus took on an expression of boyish terror.

"No, no; I tell you all is over! I am as neatly finished as a fish
already hooked. 'He' is drawing in the line gently, so that it doesn't
break. A Cæsar, let him be who he will, is always a big fish to land.
I know that it's impossible to escape. He'll take me one day or
another.... And now I see the snare, and I am walking into it all the
same out of fear. For six years, from the very first, I quaked before
that man. Like a small boy, now however I've walked far enough.
Brother, he'll cut my throat as a cook cuts the throat of a fowl. But
he will torture me first by a thousand stratagems and caresses. I
should prefer to finish quicker."

The eyes of Gallus became suddenly brilliant, and he exclaimed--

"Ah, if _she_ had been here, at my side, she would certainly have
saved me! She was such an astonishing woman!"

The tribune Scuda, entering the _triclinium_ where supper was laid,
announced, with a profound salutation, that on the morrow, in honour
of the arrival of Cæsar, there would be races in the hippodrome of
Constantinople, and that the celebrated rider Korax would take part
in them. Gallus was delighted at the news, and ordered a crown of
bay-leaf to be prepared, that, in case of the victory of Korax, he
might himself crown his favourite before the people. He launched into
racing stories, boasting the skill of his charioteers.

Gallus drank deeply, laughed like a man whose rakish conscience is at
ease, with not a trace of his recent fears upon those handsome
features. Only at the last moment of farewell he kissed Julian
heartily, suddenly melting into tears.

"May God help you! May God help you!" he blubbered. "You alone have
stood my friend--you and Constantia!"

Then he whispered into Julian's ear--

"I hope that you'll save your skin, brother. You can wear a mask and
keep your own counsel; I have always envied you that. May God succour
you!"

Julian sincerely pitied his brother; he knew that he would not escape
Constantius.

On the following morning Gallus left Constantinople with his former
escort. At Adrianople he was only permitted to retain ten small
chariots, and had to relinquish all his personal suite and baggage.
The autumn was far advanced, the roads in fearful condition, rain
falling continuously all day for a week. Peremptory messages reached
Gallus to hurry on. He was given no time to rest or sleep, and had
taken no bath for a fortnight.

One of his keenest discomforts was horror at close contact with dirt.
All his life he had taken peculiar care to keep his body healthy and
exquisitely groomed. It was with profound melancholy that he gazed at
his uncut nails, and the purple of his travelling chlamys, befouled by
dust and muddy roads. Scuda never quitted his side for an instant,
and Gallus, not without reason, dreaded his assiduous companion. The
tribune, years ago, had come as bearer of a despatch from the Emperor,
and was but newly arrived in Antioch, when by an impudent remark he
had offended Constantia, the wife of Gallus, who straightway in a fit
of fury had ordered the Roman tribune to be flogged and afterwards
thrown, like a slave, into a dungeon.

Foreseeing the probable consequence, Constantia had quickly ordered
the tribune to be set at liberty. He then presented himself at the
palace of Gallus, as if nothing had occurred, and, pocketing the
affront, had never even reported it to his master; perhaps through
fear that so degrading a punishment might besmirch the prospects of
his career as a courtier.

During the whole journey from Antioch to Milan Scuda retained his seat
in Cæsar's chariot, never quitting him, inviting his confidences, and
treating him like some wayward child, who, being out of sorts, was not
to be left to himself for a moment by a servant so devoted and
affectionate.

Where, as in Illyria, there were dangerous river crossings to be made
on frail wooden bridges, Scuda would put his arm around Gallus with
the tenderest solicitude, and if the latter strove to free himself,
swear that he preferred death to the risk of drowning his precious
charge.

The tribune wore an oddly thoughtful expression, especially when
contemplating the neck of Gallus, smooth and white as a young girl's.
The Cæsar, feeling this attentive look, would fidget uneasily in his
seat, and with difficulty restrain himself from striking the amiable
tribune in the face. But the poor prisoner's spirits quickly rose
again. He contented himself with imploring (for despite everything
his appetite remained healthy), that they might halt for a meal, were
it never so scanty. At Petovio, in Norica, they were met by two fresh
envoys from the Emperor, accompanied by a cohort of Court legionaries.

The mask was then dropped. Round the palace where Gallus slept armed
sentinels were placed as round a prison. In the evening the prefect
Barbatio, making his way in, without any pretence at ceremony, ordered
him to take off the chlamys of a Cæsar and don the simple tunic and
paludamentum, or ordinary cloak, of a common soldier.

On the following morning the prisoner was ordered to get into a
karpenta, a little two-wheeled cart without a hood employed by minor
officials on official journeys. A cold wind was blowing
intermittently. Scuda according to his custom put one arm round
Gallus, and with the disengaged hand gently fingered the new garment.

"Sound cloak, this--soft and warm! Better than the purple, which is a
chilly affair! Why, they've lined this tunic with double wool!" And
pushing his investigations further, Scuda slid a hand under the
paludamentum, then under the tunic, and suddenly, with a laugh, drew
forth the blade of a poniard, which Gallus had succeeded in
concealing.

"Now that's a mistake!" said Scuda. "Why, you might through
carelessness stab yourself! What a boy you are!"

And he threw the dagger out on the road. An infinite weariness seized
Gallus. He closed his eyes and felt the endearing grip of Scuda inside
his arm. Was it all a nightmare?

They halted at the fortress of Pola in Istria, on the shores of the
Adriatic. Some years formerly this town had been the scene of the
murder of Priscus, the heroic young son of Constantine the Great.

The gloomy town was thronged with soldiers. Interminable barracks in
the style of Diocletian had replaced the houses of civilians. Snow lay
thickly on the roofs, the wind was moaning in deserted streets, and
the sea lay rumbling below.

Gallus was led into one of these barracks and given a seat fronting
the window, so that the full daylight fell upon his face. One of the
Emperor's most skilful police officers--Eustaphius,--a little wrinkled
and amiable old man with the wheedling and penetrating voice of a
confessor, rubbed his blue and chilly hands and began the
cross-examination. Gallus, who was mortally fatigued, said everything
that Eustaphius suggested he should say, but at the words "treason to
the empire," paled, and started to his feet.

"It was no doing of mine--nothing to do with me!" he stammered in
dismay. "Constantia planned it all! It was she who exacted the death
of Theophilus, of Clement, Domitian, and the rest! Before God, it was
not I. She said nothing to me about it. I was utterly ignorant!"

Eustaphius looked at him smilingly.

"Very well," he said, "I will duly inform the Emperor that his own
sister Constantia, spouse of the late Cæsar of the East, alone is
culpable."

And turning towards the legionaries he ordered--

"The interrogatory is finished. Take him away."

Shortly afterwards arrived the sentence of death decreed by the
Emperor Constantius, who had looked on the accusation brought against
his lamented sister in the light of a personal insult.

On hearing the sentence read out, Gallus lost consciousness and fell
into the arms of the soldiers. Up to the last moment the poor fellow
had hoped against hope. And, even now, he expected that they would at
least grant him the reprieve of a few days, or hours, in which to
prepare for death. But a rumour had gone round that the soldiers of
the "Steadfast Sixteenth Flavian" legion were insubordinate, and
planning to free Gallus; so he was dragged off incontinently to
execution.

It was the early dawn. The snow, fallen during the night, had covered
the foul mud, and lay glittering in chilly sunshine, its dazzling
reflection lighting up the ceiling of the small room whither Gallus
had been conducted.

The authorities distrusted the soldiery, who almost all liked and
pitied the disgraced Cæsar; so for executioner they had chosen a
butcher, who sometimes officiated in disposing of the thieves and
brigands of the neighbourhood. This barbarian, unused to a Roman
sword, had brought to the block a great double-edged axe which served
him in the slaughter-yard. The butcher was a stupid, handsome, and
sleepy slave. The name of the condemned man had been concealed from
him and he believed he was only to behead a common thief. Before the
last scene, Gallus became calm and humble, allowing his gaolers to do
what they listed. Like a child, he wept and struggled when about to be
placed by force in a bath, but once in he found the water pleasant.

But at sight of the butcher sharpening his axe he shivered in all his
limbs. A barber then carefully shaved off the fine golden hair, always
the beauty and pride of the young Cæsar. In returning from the
barber's room Gallus, finding himself alone for a moment with the
tribune Scuda, unexpectedly dropped on his knees before the cruellest
of his foes.

"Save me, Scuda! I know you can do it! Tonight I have received a
message from the Flavian legion. Let me get a word with them. They
will deliver me! I have thirty talents hidden in the temple at Mycenæ.
Nobody knows it. I'll give them to you,--and more, much more! The
soldiers love me. I'll make you my friend, my brother, my co-regent
... fellow-Cæsar!"

Mad with hope, he embraced the tribune's knees, and Scuda, shuddering,
felt the lips of the Cæsar on his hands. He made no answer, and,
smiling, slowly freed himself from the embrace. Gallus was ordered to
undress. He objected to take off his sandals, his feet being unclean.
When he was almost naked the butcher began to bind his hands behind
his back, thief-fashion, and Scuda hastened to help him. When Gallus
felt the touch of the tribune's fingers, in a fit of fury he escaped
from the grasp of the headsman, seized Scuda by the throat, and
endeavoured to strangle him. In his naked activity he seemed suddenly
transformed into some sinewy and terrible young tiger.

The choking tribune was snatched from the grapple, and the prisoner's
feet and hands were securely bound. At this moment in the barrack
court resounded the shouts of the Flavian soldiers--"Long live Cæsar
Gallus!" and the murderers hurried on with their job. A great section
of a tree-trunk was rolled in for a block, and Gallus thrust down on
his knees in front of it. Barbatio, Baïnobadois, and Apodemus gripped
him by the shoulders, hands, and feet; and Scuda bowed the head
against the block, weighing down that vainly resisting skull with all
his might. Chilled by emotion, his fingers felt the newly-shorn pate
still moist with soap. The butcher proved an unskilful headsman. His
axe slashed the neck, but the blow fell awry. He raised the hatchet a
second time, crying to Scuda--

"More to the right! Hold the head more to the right!"

Gallus struggled and roared like a half-stunned bull. Nearer and
nearer the cries of the soldiery resounded:

"Long live Gallus Cæsar!"

The butcher heaved his handle high and smote. A stream of blood gushed
over the hands of Scuda; the head fell with a thud, and rolled away
over the stone flags.

At that moment the legionaries burst into the hall. Barbatio,
Apodemus, and Scuda hurried to the opposite door, the headsman
remaining at a loss; but Scuda muttered in his ear--

"Take Cæsar's head, so that the legionaries may not recognise the
body. It's a question of life or death for us all!"

"He was _not_ a thief then?" faltered the executioner, in amazement.

He found it difficult to carry this shaven head; at first he slid it
under an arm, but it became uncomfortable; then, slipping his hooked
thumb into the mouth, he managed to bear off the skull of him before
whom so many heads had once bowed down.

       *       *       *       *       *

Julian, on learning the death of his brother, said quietly to
himself--

"Now comes my turn!"




XII


It was at Athens that Julian was about to take his vows and finally
become a monk. One fresh spring morning, before the sun was up,
Julian, issuing from the church where he had officiated at matins,
followed for a few miles the banks of the Ilissus, in the shadow of
plane-trees and wild vine. Not far from Athens he had lighted upon a
solitary place, on the edge of a torrent which poured, like a scarf of
silver, upon a sandy bottom. Thence he used often to gaze with wonder
through the mists at the ruddy cliff of the Acropolis and the haughty
lines of the Parthenon, half-illumined by the dawn.

On this particular morning Julian took off his shoes and walked along
the reaches of the Ilissus barefoot. The air was full of the smell of
flowers and of the rich-scented muscat grape--that aroma in which
there is a foretaste of wine, faint as the promise of first love,
stealing into the soul of youth.

Julian, with feet in the water, sat down upon a platan-root, opened
the _Phædrus_ and began to read at the passage in the dialogue in
which Socrates says to Phædrus: "Let us go this way, and follow the
course of the Ilissus; we will choose a solitary place and there sit
down.

"_Phædrus_: Luckily, I'm unshod this morning, and as for you,
Socrates, you always go barefoot. We'll walk in the bed of the river.
Look, how smiling and pellucid the water is!

"_Socrates_: By Pallas! here's a wonderful nook; it must be sacred to
the nymphs and to the god Acheloüs--to judge by these little statues.
Doesn't it seem to you as if here the breeze were softer and of
sweeter odour? Here, even in the hum of the crickets there's something
of the sweetness of summer. But what I love best of all is this deep
grass!"

Julian turned from the book with a smile. All was as it had been eight
centuries before. Even the crickets set up their song.

"Socrates actually touched this ground with his feet!" he thought, and
burying his head among the reeds he kissed the spot with adoration.

"Good-day, Julian! you've chosen a lovely corner there to read in. May
I sit down near you?"

"Sit, sit; I shall be delighted. Poets never violate a solitude."

Julian looked up at a meagre personage, draped in an enormously long
cloak (it was the poet Publius Porphyrius), thinking to himself--

"He's so small and frail that I believe he'll soon turn into a
grasshopper, as Plato fancied the poets do."

Publius, like the grasshoppers, could almost live upon air, but the
gods had not granted him complete immunity from appetite; and his
shaven cadaverous face and discoloured lips were stamped with
insatiable hunger.

"Why are you wearing such a long cloak, Publius?" Julian asked.

"It isn't mine," answered the other philosophically. "I share a room
with a young man, Hephæstion, who has come to Athens to learn
eloquence. He will be a famous lawyer one day. Meanwhile he's as poor
as I am, poor as a lyric poet--I need say no more! Why, we've pledged
our clothes, our furniture, even the inkstand; but we still have a
cloak between us. In the morning I go out, and Hephæstion studies
Demosthenes; in the evening he puts on the chlamys, and I write
verses. Unfortunately we're not the same height--but what does that
matter? I take my walks along the streets 'long-robed,' like the
ancient Trojan ladies."

Publius laughed heartily; the cadaverous face took on the expression
of a mourner who has incautiously cheered up.

"You see, Julian," continued the poet, "I'm counting on the death of
the widow of a very rich Roman landowner. The happy heirs will order
an epitaph from me, and are going to pay for it generously.
Unfortunately the widow, in spite of everything that doctors and heirs
can do, persists in not giving up the ghost. But for that, my boy, I
should have bought myself a cloak long ago. Listen, Julian, get up and
come with me at once!"

"Whither?"

"Trust me--you'll thank me for it."

"What's the mystery?"

"Ask no questions; get up and come! The poet brings no harm to the
poet's friend. You'll see a goddess."

"What goddess?"

"Artemis, the huntress."

"A picture? Statue?"

"Much better than that. If you love beauty, take your cloak and follow
me."

Publius assumed so seductive and mysterious an air that Julian was
bitten by curiosity.

"There's but one condition. Say nothing, and marvel at nothing we do.
Otherwise the spell will break. In the name of Calliope and Erato,
just trust me! We're only two yards from the place, and to shorten the
road for you I'll read you the beginning of my epitaph on the widow."

They issued on the dusty high-road. Under the first rays of the sun
the steel shield of Pallas Athene darted lightnings from the rose-hued
Acropolis. Along the stone walls, hiding brooks humming along under
the fig-trees, the grasshoppers were singing shrilly, vieing with the
hoarse voice of the poet as he recited the epitaph.

Publius Porphyrius was a man not destitute of talent. His career had
been a curious one. Several years previously he had possessed a pretty
little house, a veritable temple of Hermes, at Constantinople, not far
from the Chalcedonian suburb. His father, an oil merchant, had
bequeathed him a little fortune which should have permitted him to
live without cares. But Publius was a worshipper of antique Hellenism,
and rebelled against what he called the triumph of Christian
servitude. He wrote a liberal poem which displeased the Emperor
Constantius, who was therein alluded to unfavourably. This allusion
cost the author dear. Chastisement fell upon him; his house and goods
were confiscated, and he himself banished to an islet in the
archipelago, inhabited only by rocks, goats, and fevers. This trial
was more than Publius could stand. He cursed liberal opinions, and
determined to blot out his misdeeds at any price. Shaking with fever,
he composed during his sleepless nights, by means of sentences culled
from Virgil, a poem glorifying the Emperor; the verses of the ancient
poet being grouped in such a fashion that they formed a new work.
This ingenious puzzle tickled the palate of the Court. Publius had
divined the taste of the century.

Straightway he ventured on feats more astonishing still. He wrote a
dithyrambic, or Bacchic ode in free stanzas, and addressed it to
Constantius. It consisted of verses of different lengths, designed so
that they formed complete figures, such as a Pan's flute, a
water-organ, or a sacrificial altar on which the smoke was represented
by uneven phrases. But by a marvel of skilfulness the poem was so
contrived as to make a decorative oblong twenty hexameters wide and
forty hexameters long. Certain lines were traced in red ink and, read
together, became transformed into a monogram of Christ, or into a
flower of arabesques, but always, in whatever shape, made new lines
composed of new compliments. Finally the four last hexameters of the
book could be read in eighteen different orders: from the end
backwards, from the beginning, from the side, from the middle, from
above, from below, etc., and, read in what manner you please, formed a
eulogy to the Emperor.

In executing this work the poor poet nearly lost his wits. But his
victory was complete, and Constantius more than charmed. He believed
that Publius had surpassed all the poets of antiquity; he wrote the
author a letter with his own hand, assuring him of protection and
ending thus: "In our age My bounty, like the calm breath of the
zephyrs, is breathed upon all who write verses."

Nevertheless his confiscated property was not restored to the poet; he
was simply given money and authorised to quit his desert island for
Athens.

There he led a melancholy existence. The ostler in the stables of the
circus, in comparison with Publius, lived in luxury.

In the company of gravediggers, shady speculators, furnishers of
nuptial feasts, he passed whole days in the antechambers of the
illiterate great, in order to obtain orders for a marriage ode, an
epitaph, or a love-letter. At this trade he gained little, but never
lost heart, hoping to offer to the Emperor one day a poem which would
win him complete pardon.

Julian felt that in spite of this outward abasement Porphyrius bore at
heart a deep love for Hellas. He was a fine critic of Greek poetry and
Julian enjoyed his conversation.

They left the high-road and approached the high wall of an enclosure
like some _palæstra_ or exercise-ground. Round about all was solitary;
two black lambs were cropping the grass; near the closed door, in the
chinks of which poppies and white daisies were growing, there stood a
chariot and two white horses. Their manes were close-cut like those of
the horses in the bas-reliefs. By them stood an old slave, a
deaf-mute, but evidently of an affable disposition, for he immediately
recognised Publius and nodded to him in friendly fashion, pointing to
the closed gate of the wrestling ground.

"Lend me your purse a moment," said Publius to Julian. "I'll take out
one or two pence for this poor old fool."

He threw the coins, and the mute, with servile grimaces and pleased
grunts, opened the door.

They entered under a long and dark covered gallery. Between rows of
columns ran other galleries laid out for the exercise of athletes. The
spaces in their midst were now widths of grass instead of sand. The
two friends penetrated a large inner portico. Julian's curiosity
became keener at every step, the mysterious Publius leading him on by
the hand without a word. Doors of _exedræ_, or academic halls where
orators used to meet, opened into the second portico, and the
grasshoppers were humming now where eloquent discourses of Athenian
sages had in old time resounded. Above the deep grass bees were
whirling: silence and melancholy pervaded all. Suddenly, a woman's
voice was heard, and the noise of a disk striking the marble, followed
by a merry burst of laughter.

Stealing in like robbers, the pair hid themselves in the outer shadow
of the columns of the _elaiothesion_, or place where the ancient
wrestlers used to rub themselves over with oil.

From behind these columns could be seen the _ephebeion_, a
quadrangular space open to the sky, originally laid out for
disk-throwing, and now newly strown with fresh sand.

Julian looked in, and started back.

At twenty paces from him stood a young girl entirely naked. His eyes
swept over her wonderful body. She was holding a discus in her hand.

Julian longed instinctively to beat a retreat; but turning, he saw in
the eyes of Publius and upon the whole of that lean tawny face such a
look of admiration, that he understood that the adorer of Hellas, in
bringing him to the place, had been moved by no shameful thought; that
enthusiasm was wholly sacred.

Publius, seizing the hand of Julian, murmured:

"Look! We are now nine centuries back, in ancient Laconia. Do you
remember the verses of Propertius--

    "Multa tuæ, Sparte, miramur jura palæstræ, Sed mage virginei, tot
    bona gymnasii, Quod non infames exercet corpore ludos Inter
    luctantes nuda puella viros?"

"Who is she?" asked Julian.

"I don't know. I never wanted to know."

"That is well! Hush!"

Now he gazed eagerly and without shame at the girl hurling the disk.
Blushes were unworthy of a philosopher.

She retreated some steps, inclined her body forward, and advancing the
left leg made a swift bounding movement, and shot the metal circle so
high that it shone in the rising sun, and in falling struck the
farthest pillar. It was like watching the motions of a statue by
Phidias.

"That shot was the best," said a little twelve-year-old damsel, clad
in a rich tunic and standing near the column.

"Myrrha, give me the disk," replied the player. "I can throw it higher
than that, as you shall see. Meroë, get farther out of the way. I
might hurt you, as Apollo hurt Hyacinthus."

Meroë, an old Egyptian, to judge by her multi-coloured vestments and
tanned visage, was preparing in alabaster jars perfumes for a bath.
Julian understood that the mute slave of the gate and the white-horsed
chariot outside must belong to these two votaries of the Laconian
games.

After the disk-throwing the young girl took from Myrrha a bow and a
quiver, and drew thence a long arrow. She aimed at a black circle at
the opposite end of the _ephebeion_; the string hummed, the arrow flew
whistling and stuck in the target: then a second, then a third.

"O huntress Artemis!" sighed Publius.

Suddenly a sunbeam slipping between two columns shot into the face and
youthful breast of the young girl. Throwing bow and arrows aside in
sudden bedazzlement, she hid her face in her hands.

Swallows, uttering their faint fine chirpings, undulated about the
exercise-ground, and pursuing each other vanished into the blue of the
sky.

She uncovered her face and raised her arms above her head.

Its fair hair, golden at its ends as honey in the sun, at its roots
was auburn; her lips half opened in a happy smile, she suffered the
sun to bathe her body, gliding lower and lower yet, till she stood
clothed, as in the loveliest raiment, in pure light and beauty.

"Myrrha," the girl murmured slowly and dreamily, "look at the sky! How
beautiful it would be to bathe in it, like those birds! Do you
remember our saying that men could not be happy because they had no
wings? When I look at the birds I am consumed with envy. One should be
light and bare as I am at this moment, and winging high up in the sky,
and knowing that one could fly forever--that there should be nothing
else but sky and sun about one's light and free and naked body!"

Drawing herself up to her full height with outstretched arms she
sighed deeply, as at some remembered joy fled away for ever.

The burning caress of the sun now reached her waist. Suddenly she
shivered and grew ashamed, as if some living and passionate being had
approached her. With one hand she shielded her breast, with the other
the abdomen, the immortal gesture of Aphrodite of Cnidos.

"Meroë, give me my clothes! quick, Meroë!" she exclaimed, with eyes
wide open and startled.

Julian never remembered how he came forth from the wrestling-ground;
his heart was on fire. The poet's face was solemn as that of a man
quitting a temple.

"You are not annoyed?" he asked Julian.

"No; why should I be?"

"Perhaps a Christian might find it a temptation?"

"There was nothing of temptation there for me. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly; that is what I thought."

And again they found themselves on the dusty high road, where the sun
was already hot, and bent their steps towards Athens.

Publius continued in an undertone, as it were talking to himself--

"Oh, how shameful, how deformed we are nowadays! Ashamed of our own
morose and pitiful nakedness, we hide it because we feel ugly and
impure. Whereas of old time.... Ah! there was a time when all was very
different. Julian, the young girls of Sparta used to go out upon the
wrestling-ground naked and haughty before all the people. Nobody
feared temptation in those days. Folk were simple as children--as
gods! And to think that nevermore shall that happen again; that the
freedom, the cleanness, of that happy state shall be seen on earth no
more!"

The poet's chin fell on his breast, and he sighed drearily.

They came at last to the Street of Tripods, and hard by the Acropolis
the friends separated and went their ways in silence.

Julian went into the shadow of the propylæa, through vast porches
leading into temple-enclosures; but avoided the Decorated Porch, on
which Parrhasius had chiselled the battles of Marathon and Salamis,
and passing the little temple of the Wingless Victory ascended to the
Parthenon.

He had but to shut his eyes to remember the superb body of Artemis the
huntress. When he opened them the sun-bathed Parthenon marbles seemed
golden and living as that divine body; and, despising Imperial spies
and chances of death, he desired openly to worship and kiss the warm
stones of that holy place.

Two black-robed young men of pale and severe countenance were standing
near. They were Gregory of Nazianzen and Basil of Cæsarea. The
Hellenists feared these two men as their most formidable foes. It was
the hope of the Christians that the two friends would one day become
fathers of the Church. They were now watching Julian.

"What's the matter with him to-day?" said Gregory. "Is that the
attitude of a monk? Are those the gestures of a monk? Do you see those
closed eyes--that smile? Do you believe that his piety is genuine,
Basil?"

"I have often watched him weeping and praying in church."

"Mere hypocrisy!"

"If so, why does he come to us, seek our friendship, and argue over
the Scriptures?"

"He's deceiving himself; or perhaps he wishes to seduce the faithful.
Never trust him! He is the tempter! Remember what I say, brother, the
Roman Empire in fostering this young man is nursing an adder!"

The two friends went off, their eyes on the ground. The severe
caryatids of the Erechtheum, the laughing blue of the sky, the white
temple of the Wingless One, the Porches and the Parthenon, that wonder
of the world, on them cast no spell. One thing alone did they desire:
to lay all these haunts of demons in the dust. The long shadows of the
monks fell on the Parthenon steps as they walked away.

"I must see her again," Julian was thinking; "I must find out who she
is."




XIII


"The gods created mortals for one purpose only--polite conversation!"

"Charmingly said, Mamertinus! Say it again, I beg, before you've
forgotten it! I'll write that down with the other maxims," declared
Lampridius, the professor of eloquence, taking tablets from his
pocket. His admired friend Mamertinus was a fashionable Athenian
advocate.

"My dear fellow, I say," repeated Mamertinus with the most delicate of
smiles, "I merely say that men have been sent by the gods----"

"No, no, it didn't run so, Mamertinus; you put it better. The gods
created mortals----"

"Ah, yes; the gods created mortals for one purpose only--polite
conversation!"

And the enthusiastic Lampridius scribbled down the words as if they
had been the utterance of an oracle.

The scene was a friendly supper of men of letters given by the
venerable Roman senator Hortensius, in the villa of his rich young
ward Arsinoë, not far from the Piræus.

Mamertinus on that day had achieved a remarkable speech in defence of
the banker Barnava. Nobody had the smallest doubt that Barnava was a
complete scoundrel; but, besides measureless eloquence, the advocate
possessed so telling a voice that one of the innumerable ladies who
adored him avowed: "I never listen to what Mamertinus says; I have no
wish to know what he's talking about. I become intoxicated with the
tones of his voice, and especially with the dying cadence at the end
of his periods. It is incredible! It is no longer a human voice, but
nectar and ambrosia, the heavenly sighing of an Æolian harp!"

And so, while the populace labelled the money-lender Barnava "the
blood-sucker," the devourer of widows and orphans, the Athenian judges
enthusiastically acquitted the client of Mamertinus.

From this client the advocate had received 50,000 sesterces, and
therefore felt in no dissatisfied mood at the supper given by
Hortensius in his honour. But it was his habit to affect the invalid,
in order that he might be spoiled and petted the more.

"I am utterly done up to-day, my friends," he murmured plaintively;
"aching in every limb. Where is Arsinoë?"

"She will soon be here. Arsinoë has just received from the museum of
Alexandria some new apparatus for experiments in physics; and she is
entirely absorbed in them. But I will give an order to summon her,"
suggested Hortensius.

"No, don't do that," responded the lawyer carelessly. "But what a
ridiculous thing--a young girl at physics! What in the world has the
one thing to do with the other? Your blue-stockings have been finely
belaboured by Aristophanes and Euripides. Arsinoë is a whimsical
creature, Hortensius! Really, if she wasn't so attractive, what with
her sculpture and her mathematics she would almost become----"

He did not finish the sentence, and gazed languidly out of the window.

"What am I to do?" replied Hortensius. "A spoiled child ... an
orphan; no father, no mother! As her mere tutor, I can't well deny her
anything."

"I see, I see."

The lawyer was no longer listening; he was thinking about himself.

"My dear fellows, I feel----"

"What--what's the matter?" asked several voices anxiously.

"I'm feeling--I fancy--a draught...."

"We'll shut the shutters," proposed the host.

"No, we should be stifled! But I've so worn out my voice to-day....
And I have to make another defence to-morrow. Give me a carpet under
my feet, and my wrapper; I'm afraid of catching cold in the night
chill."

And Hephæstion, the friend of Publius and pupil of Lampridius, rushed
away to get Mamertinus' wrapper.

It was a piece of soft woollen stuff, daintily embroidered. The lawyer
carried it everywhere to safeguard his precious throat from the
faintest risk of cold.

Mamertinus nursed his own health like a lover, with so simple a grace,
such a passion of self-solicitude, that his friends were instinctively
constrained to think of nothing but nursing him too.

"This wrapper was embroidered for me by the venerable Fabiola," he
informed them with a smile.

"Wife of the senator?" asked Hortensius.

"Yes! I'll tell you a little story about her. One day I wrote a
note--a graceful trifle, but really a mere trifle--just five lines in
Greek to another lady (also one of my admirers), who had sent me a
basket of the most charming cherries. I thanked her in a frolicsome
imitation of Pliny. But just imagine, my friends, Fabiola was seized
with so violent a desire to read that letter and to copy it for her
collection, that she sent two of her slaves to lie in wait for my
messenger. So, brought to a halt in the middle of the night, not a
soul in sight, he thought, of course, that brigands were about to
strip him of lock, stock, and barrel. But they did him no harm, gave
him money, and only took from him my letter, so that Fabiola might
have the first reading of it. She actually learnt it by heart!"

"You don't mean it? Ah, I know her! She is a most remarkable woman,"
continued Lampridius. "I have seen myself that she keeps all your
letters enclosed in a lemon-wood casket like so many jewels. She
learns them by heart and declares that they are superior to any
poetry. Fabiola argues, and argues rightly: 'Since Alexander the Great
used to keep the poems of Homer in a cedar-wood coffer, why shouldn't
I keep the letters of Mamertinus in a jewel-casket?'"

"This _foie gras_ with saffron sauce is the height of perfection! I
advise you to taste it."

"Who made it, Hortensius?"

"My head-cook, Dædalus."

"All honour to him!... he's a poet."

"Don't let a goose's liver run away with you, my dear Garguillus! A
cook, a poet? You will offend the divine muses, our protectresses!"

"I affirm! and I shall always maintain! that cooking is an art as
lofty as any other. It's time to fling prejudices to the winds,
Lampridius!"

Garguillus, the head of the Imperial chancery, was a man of enormous
body, extremely fat, his triple chin scrupulously shaved and perfumed,
and his grey hair closely cropped. His face was intelligent and noble;
for many years he had been considered the indispensable guest at every
supper of Athenian men of letters. Garguillus loved only two things
in the world, a good table and a good style. Gastronomy and literature
blended for him into a double bliss.

"Suppose now I take an oyster," he was declaring while his delicate
fingers, loaded with amethysts and rubies, brought the mollusc towards
his mouth; "I take an oyster, and I swallow it"--and in fact he
swallowed it, shutting his eyes, with a sucking and clucking noise of
his upper lip, which was curiously greedy, and even rapacious, in its
appearance. It was prominent, trussed into a point, oddly twisted, and
vaguely resembled a small elephant's trunk. When repeating a sonorous
verse of Anacreon or Moschus he would move about this upper lip with
as much sensuousness as when tasting at supper some sauce of
nightingales' tongues.

"I swallow it, and I am immediately aware," went on Garguillus
solemnly--"I am immediately aware that the oyster comes from the coast
of Britain and not from the south or from Tarentum. Would you like me
to prove it? Shall I close my eyes and say from what sea the fish
comes?"

"But what in the world has that to do with poetry?" asked Mamertinus
impatiently. He could not bear that any but himself should receive
general attention.

"Imagine for yourselves, my dear friends," continued the gastronomist
imperturbably, "that for years I have not been to the shores of the
ocean, which I love and am always regretting. I assure you that a good
oyster has such a fresh and salty relish of the sea, that to swallow
it is immediately to be a thousand miles hence on the immense
seashore. I close my eyes, I see the waves, I see the rocks, I feel
the breeze of 'foggy ocean,' as Homer calls it!... No! tell me
frankly what verse of the Odyssey can wake in me as clearly the sense
of sea poetry as the smell of a fresh oyster? Or when I divide a peach
and inhale the odour of its juice, why, tell me, are the perfume of
the violet and the rose more essentially poetical? Poets describe
form, colour, sound. Why can taste be not perfect as these? All is
stupid prejudice, my dear fellows! Taste is an immense and hitherto
unexplored boon from the gods. The assemblage of tastes forms a
harmony as fine as any orchestration of sounds. I affirm, therefore,
that there is a tenth muse, the muse of Gastronomy!"

"Let oysters and peaches be admitted. But what harmony, what beauty
can you discover in a goose liver dressed with saffron sauce?"

"You are ready to allow, Lampridius, that there is beauty not only in
the idylls of Theocritus, but even in the coarsest comedies of
Plautus?"

"I admit that."

"Well, my friend, for me there is a gastronomic poesy in _foie gras_;
in fact I am prepared to crown Dædalus with laurels for this dish,
just as I would crown an Olympic ode of Pindar!"

Two new guests appeared on the threshold; they were Julian and the
poet Publius. Hortensius yielded the place of honour to Julian, while
Publius devoured the innumerable dishes with his eyes. To judge by his
new chlamys the rich widow must have departed this life, and the happy
heirs paid for the epitaph in no niggardly fashion.

The general conversation went on. Lampridius told a story of how one
day, moved by curiosity, he had been to hear a Christian preacher
thundering against pagan grammarians. "The grammarians," assevered
the preacher, "do not rank men for their worth, but for their literary
style, thinking it less criminal to kill a man than to pronounce the
word _homo_ with a wrong aspiration!" Lampridius suspected that if
these Christian preachers hated the style of the rhetoricians to such
a degree, it was because, conscious that they themselves could write
and speak only like barbarians, they made ignorance the badge of moral
worth, so that for them a good speaker became a suspicious character.

"The day on which eloquence perishes will see the end of Hellas, the
end of Rome! People will turn into dumb animals, and it is to make
them so that Christian preachers use their barbarous jargon."

"Who knows," murmured Mamertinus pensively, "perhaps style _is_ more
important than virtue, since slaves, barbarians, and nincompoops can
all be virtuous!"

Hephæstion meanwhile was explaining to his neighbour the exact meaning
of Cicero's advice--"_Causam mendaciunculis adspergere_."

"_Mendaciunculis_, that's to say, little lies. Cicero, in fact,
advises you to sow little inventions all over your speech; he admits
falsehood if decorative."

Then followed a general discussion on the methods of beginning a
speech: should the beginning be anapæstic or dactylic?

Julian became bored.

He confessed heartily that he had never considered the matter, and
that in his opinion the speaker ought rather to preoccupy himself with
the fundamental idea of his speech than with the making style out of a
mosaic of peccadilloes.

Mamertinus--then Lampridius and Hephæstion--waxed wroth. According to
them the subject of a speech was a matter of no moment. To an orator
it should be absolutely indifferent whether he undertook to attack or
to defend a case. Even meaning had no interest for him. The principal
thing was the orchestration of verbal sounds--the melody, the musical
assonance of letters--permitting even a barbarian, witless of Greek,
to feel the sheer beauty of language.

"I'll just give you an example, two Latin verses of Propertius," said
Garguillus. "Notice the power of the sounds and the emptiness of the
meaning. Listen--

    "'_Et Veneris dominæ volucres, mea turba columbæ, Tingunt Gorgonio
    punica rostra lacu._'"

What pure delight! Every letter sings! What does the meaning matter?
All the beauty consists in the sound, in the assemblage of vowels and
consonants. For that utterance I would give all the civic virtue of
Juvenal and the philosophy of Lucretius! No! Just hear again! What
sweetness there is in that murmur--

    "'_Et Veneris dominæ volucres, mea turba columbæ!_'"

and he wagged that upper lip with a smack of delight.

Everybody repeated the lines of Propertius, unwearying of their charm,
and embarking on a veritable orgy of quotation.

"Just listen," murmured Mamertinus in his Æolian voice--

    "'_Tingunt Gorgonio..._'"

"_Tingunt Gorgonio_," repeated the master of chancery. "By
Pallas!--why, it delights one's very palate. It's like swallowing a
warm mouthful of wine mingled with Attic honey--

    "'_Tingunt Gorgonio..._'"

Note how the 'g's' follow each other, and then farther on--

    "'_ ...punica rostra lacu._'"

"Astounding! inimitable!" murmured Lampridius, shutting his eyes.

Julian was ashamed and amused at this verbal intoxication.

"Words should be, to a certain extent, devoid of meaning," continued
Lampridius gravely; "they should flow, roar, chant, without ever
bringing up short either the ear or the emotion. Then only real
enjoyment of their beauty is possible."

On the threshold of the door, from which the gaze of Julian had seldom
departed, there now appeared, quietly as a shadow, a white and haughty
figure.

The open shutters allowed the moonlight to fall in, mingling with the
ruddy shine of torches on the mosaic of the mirror-smooth floor, and
on the wall frescoes, portraying Endymion asleep under the caresses of
Selene. The apparition kept still as a statue. The antique Greek
peplum of soft white wool fell in long folds, cinctured high under the
breast. Moonlight illumined the robe, but the face remained in shadow.
The new-comer looked at Julian and Julian looked at her. They smiled
at each other, knowing that nobody observed them, and finger on lip
she listened to the anecdotes of the guests.

Suddenly Mamertinus, who was discussing with Lampridius grammatical
peculiarities of the first and second aorist, exclaimed--

"Arsinoë! At last! So you've made up your mind to abandon physics and
modelling for our company?"

She came in and deigned a smile to everyone.

She was the same disk-thrower whom a month before Julian had seen in
the abandoned wrestling-ground. The poet Publius, knowing everybody
and everything in Athens, had sought the acquaintance of Hortensius
and Arsinoë, and had introduced Julian to the house.

Arsinoë's father, an old Roman senator, Helvidius Priscus, had died
during the last years of Constantine the Great, bequeathing Arsinoë
and Myrrha, his two daughters by a Goth woman-prisoner, to Hortensius,
whom he respected on account of his love for antique Rome and hatred
for Christianity. A distant relative of Arsinoë, owner of factories of
purple at Sidon, had left his incalculable wealth to the young girl.

To Arsinoë, Christian virtues and the patriarchal customs of Rome
seemed equally contemptible. The figures of independent women,
Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Sappho, alone captivated her girlish
imagination. Had she not declared naïvely one day, to the horror of
Hortensius, that she would rather become a beautiful and free
courtesan, than be transformed into the mother of a family, slave of a
husband, "like everybody else"? Those three words, "like everybody
else," filled her with melancholy disgust. At one time Arsinoë was
attracted by natural science, and had worked with illustrious men of
science at the museum in Alexandria. Then the atomic theories of
Epicurus, Democrates, and Lucretius had enthralled her. She loved a
study which should deliver her soul from the "terror of the gods."

With the same almost morbid intensity, she had afterwards applied
herself to sculpture, and had come to Athens in order to study the
best works, the masterpieces of Phidias, Scopas, and Praxiteles.

"You are still discussing grammar?" asked the daughter of Helvidius
Priscus of the guests, as she came into the dining-hall. She continued
ironically: "Don't trouble yourselves; go on. I won't argue or
complain, because I'm too hungry after my day's work. Slave, some
wine!..."

"My friends," continued Arsinoë when seated, "you'll ruin your minds
with quotations from Demosthenes and your rules from Quintilian!...
Take care! Rhetoric will ruin you.... I want to see a man who doesn't
care a fig for Homer or for Cicero, who speaks without thinking of the
aspirates, of syntax, or of the conjunction of letters. Julian, let us
go down to the beach after supper; I am disinclined for discussions on
dactyls and anapæsts."

"Precisely my own mood, Arsinoë," stammered Garguillus, who had eaten
too much _foie gras_ and who almost always, at the end of dinner, felt
an aversion for literature proportionate to the weight upon his
stomach.

"_Litterarum intemperantia laboramus_," as Seneca used to say. "We are
suffering from literary indigestion. We are simply poisoning
ourselves!" and he thoughtfully took a tooth-pick from a pocket. His
large face expressed weariness and disgust.




XIV


Together the pair went down the alley of cypresses leading to the sea.
The moon-path of sensitive silver on the waters ran up to the horizon,
and waves were breaking against a chalk cliff. At the end of the alley
there was a semicircular seat. Above it the huntress Artemis, in short
tunic, with crescented hair, quiver on shoulder, and two deer-hounds
at her feet, looked down on the two young people.

They sat down together. Arsinoë pointed out the hill of the Acropolis,
so distant that the columns of the Parthenon could hardly be
distinguished; and took up the thread of conversations started at
their former meetings--

"See how beautiful it is!... And you would destroy that, Julian?"

Making no reply, he stared on the ground.

"I have thought much over what you said to me the last time we met,
concerning this humility of yours," continued Arsinoë gently. "Was
Alexander son of Philip of Macedon humble? And nevertheless is he not
great and splendid?"

Julian said nothing.

"And Brutus, Brutus the stabber of Cæsar! Had Brutus turned the left
cheek when struck on the right, do you think he would have been more
sublime? Or, indeed, perhaps you consider him a criminal, you
Galileans? Why can I not help thinking sometimes, Julian, that you

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