The Death of the Gods E-Book

Dimitri Merejkowski

• Herausgeber: Jovian Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 523

Beschreibung

This classic historical novel, first published in 1904, creates an outstanding picture of the 4th century, Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate and the profound spiritual implications of his life and deeds.

Leseprobe

THE DEATH OF THE GODS

..................

Dimitri Merejkowski

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Dimitri Merejkowski

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

THE DEATH OF THE GODS

Dimitri Merejkowski

PART I

PART II

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 eighthcenturia, 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 head-dress 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 œcumenical 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 thesix-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.