Hypatia Part 14

CHAPTER XIV.

: THE ROCKS OF THE SIRENS.

THESE four months had been busy and eventful enough to Hypatia and to Philammon; yet the events and the business were of so gradual and uniform a tenor, that it is as well to pa.s.s quickly over them, and show what had happened princ.i.p.ally by its effects.

The robust and fiery desert-lad was now metamorphosed into the pale and thoughtful student, oppressed with the weight of careful thought and weary memory. But those remembrances were all recent ones. With his entrance into Hypatia's lecture-room, and into the fairy realms of Greek thought, a new life had begun for him; and the Laura, and Pambo, and a.r.s.enius, seemed dim phantoms from some antenatal existence, which faded day by day before the inrush of new and startling knowledge.

But though the friends and scenes of his childhood had fallen back so swiftly into the far horizon, he was not lonely. His heart found a lovelier, if not a healthier home, than it had ever known before. For during those four peaceful and busy months of study there had sprung up between Hypatia and the beautiful boy one of those pure and yet pa.s.sionate friends.h.i.+ps--call them rather, with St. Augustine, by the sacred name of love--which, fair and holy as they are when they link youth to youth, or girl to girl, reach their full perfection only between man and woman. The unselfish adoration with which a maiden may bow down before some strong and holy priest, or with which an enthusiastic boy may cling to the wise and tender matron, who, amid the turmoil of the world, and the pride of beauty, and the cares of wifehood, bends down to with counsel and encouragement--earth knows no fairer bonds than these, save wedded love itself. And that second relation, motherly rather than sisterly, had bound Philammon with a golden chain to the wondrous maid of Alexandria.

From the commencement of his attendance in her lecture-room she had suited her discourses to what she fancied were his especial spiritual needs; and many a glance of the eye towards him, on any peculiarly important sentence, set the poor boy's heart beating at that sign that the words were meant for him. But before a month was past, won by the intense attention with which he watched for every utterance of hers, she had persuaded her father to give a place in the library as one of his pupils, among the youths who were employed there daily in transcribing, as well as in studying, the authors then in fas.h.i.+on.

She saw him at first but seldom--more seldom than she would have wished; but she dreaded the tongue of scandal, heathen as well as Christian, and contented herself with inquiring daily from her father about the progress of the boy. And when at times she entered for a moment the library, where he sat writing, or pa.s.sed him on her way to the Museum, a look was interchanged, on her part of most gracious approval, and on his of adoring grat.i.tude, which was enough for both. Her spell was working surely; and she was too confident in her own cause and her own powers to wish to hurry that transformation for which she so fondly hoped.

'He must begin at the beginning,' thought she to herself. 'Mathematics and the Parmenides are enough for him as yet. Without a training in the liberal sciences be cannot gain a faith worthy of those G.o.ds to whom some day I shall present him; and I should find his Christian ignorance and fanaticism transferred, whole and rude, to the service of those G.o.ds whose shrine is unapproachable save to the spiritual man, who has pa.s.sed through the successive vestibules of science and philosophy.'

But soon, attracted herself, as much as wis.h.i.+ng to attract him, she employed him in copying ma.n.u.scripts for her own use. She sent back his themes and declamations, corrected with her own hand; and Philammon laid them by in his little garret at Eudaimon's house as precious badges of honour, after exhibiting them to the reverential and envious gaze of the little porter. So he toiled on, early and late, counting himself well paid for a week's intense exertion by a single smile or word of approbation, and went home to pour out his soul to his host on the one inexhaustible theme which they had in common--Hypatia and her perfections. He would have raved often enough on the same subject to his fellow-pupils, but he shrank not only from their artificial city manners, but also from their morality, for suspecting which he saw but too good cause. He longed to go out into the streets, to proclaim to the whole world the treasure which he had found, and call on all to come and share it with him. For there was no jealousy in that pure love of his. Could he have seen her lavis.h.i.+ng on thousands far greater favours than she had conferred on him, he would have rejoiced in the thought that there were so many more blest beings upon earth, and have loved them all and every one as brothers, for having deserved her notice. Her very beauty, when his first flush of wonder was past, he ceased to mention--ceased even to think of it. Of course she must be beautiful. It was her right; the natural complement of her other graces but it was to him only what the mother's smile is to the infant, the sunlight to the skylark, the mountain-breeze to the hunter--an inspiring element, on which he fed unconsciously. Only when he doubted for a moment some especially startling or fanciful a.s.sertion, did he become really aware of the great loveliness of her who made it; and then his heart silenced his judgment with the thought--Could any but true words come out of those perfect lips?-- any but royal thoughts take shape within that queenly head? .... Poor fool! Yet was it not natural enough?

Then, gradually, as she pa.s.sed the boy, poring over his book, in some alcove of the Museum Gardens, she would invite him by a glance to join the knot of loungers and questioners who dangled about her and her father, and fancied themselves to be reproducing the days of the Athenian sages amid the groves of another Academus. Sometimes, even, she had beckoned him to her side as she sat in some retired arbour, attended only by her father; and there some pa.s.sing observation, earnest and personal, however lofty and measured, made him aware, as it was intended to do, that she had a deeper interest in him, a livelier sympathy for him, than for the many; that he was in her eyes not merely a pupil to be instructed, but a soul whom she desired to educate. And those delicious gleams of sunlight grew more frequent and more protracted; for by each she satisfied herself more and more that she had not mistaken either his powers or his susceptibilities: and in each, whether in public or private, Philammon seemed to bear himself more worthily. For over and above the natural ease and dignity which accompanies physical beauty, and the modesty, self-restraint, and deep earnestness which be had acquired under the discipline of the Laura, his Greek character was developing itself in all its quickness, subtlety, and versatility, until he seemed to Hypatia some young t.i.tan, by the side of the flippant, hasty, and insincere talkers who made up her chosen circle.

But man can no more live upon Platonic love than on the more prolific species of that common ailment; and for the first month Philammon would have gone hungry to his couch full many a night, to lie awake from baser causes than philosophic meditation, had it not been for his magnanimous host, who never lost heart for a moment, either about himself, or any other human being. As for Philammon's going out with him to earn his bread, he would not hear of it. Did he suppose that he could meet any of those monkish rascals in the street, without being knocked down and carried off by main force? And besides there was a sort of impiety in allowing so hopeful a student to neglect the 'Divine Ineffable' in order to supply the base necessities of the teeth. So he should pay no rent for his lodgings--positively none; and as for eatables--why, he must himself work a little harder in order to cater for both. Had not all his neighbours their litters of children to provide for, while he, thanks to the immortals, had been far too wise to burden the earth with animals who would add to the ugliness of their father the Tartarean hue of their mother? And after all, Philammon could pay him back when he became a great sophist, and made money, as of course he would some day or other; and in the meantime, something might turn up--things were always turning up for those whom the G.o.ds favoured; and besides, he had fully ascertained that on the day on which he first met Philammon, the planets were favourable, the Mercury being in something or other, he forgot what, with Helios, which portended for Philammon, in his opinion, a similar career with that of the glorious and devout Emperor Julian.

Philammon winced somewhat at the hint; which seemed to have an ugly verisimilitude in it: but still, philosophy he must learn, and bread he must eat; so he submitted.

But one evening, a few days after he had been admitted as Theon's pupil, he found, much to his astonishment, lying on the table in his garret, an undeniable glittering gold piece. He took it down to the porter the next morning, and begged him to discover the owner of the lost coin, and return it duly. But what was his surprise, when the little man, amid endless capers and gesticulations, informed him with an air of mystery, that it was anything but lost; that his arrears of rent had been paid for him; and that by the bounty of the upper powers, a fresh piece of coin would be forthcoming every month! In vain Philammon demanded to know who was his benefactor. Eudaimon resolutely kept the secret and imprecated a whole Tartarus of unnecessary curses on his wife if she allowed her female garrulity--though the poor creature seemed never to open her lips from morning till night--to betray so great a mystery.

Who was the unknown friend? There was but one person who could have done it .... And yet he dared not--the thought was too delightful-- think it was she. It must have been her father. The old man had asked him more than once about the state of his purse. True, he had always returned evasive answers; but the kind old man must have divined the truth. Ought he not--must he not--go and thank him? No; perhaps it was more courteous to say nothing. If he--she--for of course she had permitted, perhaps advised, the gift--had intended him to thank them, would they have so carefully concealed their own generosity? .... Be it so, then. But how would he not repay them for it! How delightful to be in her debt for anything--for everything! Would that he could have the enjoyment of owing her existence itself!

So he took the coin, bought unto himself a cloak of the most philosophic fas.h.i.+on, and went his way, such as it was, rejoicing.

But his faith in Christianity? What had become of that?

What usually happens in such cases. It was not dead; but nevertheless it had fallen fast asleep for the time being. He did not disbelieve it; he would have been shocked to hear such a thing a.s.serted of him: but he happened to be busy believing something else--geometry, conic sections, cosmogonies, psychologies, and what not. And so it befell that he had not just then time to believe in Christianity. He recollected at times its existence; but even then he neither affirmed nor denied it. When he had solved the great questions--those which Hypatia set forth as the roots of all knowledge--how the world was made, and what was the origin of evil, and what his own personality was, and--that being settled--whether he had one, with a few other preliminary matters, then it would be time to return, with his enlarged light, to the study of Christianity; and if, of course, Christianity should be found to be at variance with that enlarged light, as Hypatia seemed to think .... Why, then--What then? .... He would not think about such disagreeable possibilities. Sufficient for the day was the evil thereof.

Possibilities? It was impossible .... Philosophy could not mislead. Had not Hypatia defined it, as man's search after the unseen? And if he found the unseen by it, did it not come to just the same thing as if the unseen had revealed itself to him? And he must find it--for logic and mathematics could not err. If every step was correct, the conclusion must be correct also; so he must end, after all, in the right path--that is, of course, supposing Christianity to be the right path--and return to fight the Church's battles, with the sword which he had wrested from Goliath the Philistine....But he had not won the sword yet.; and in the meanwhile, learning was weary work; and sufficient for the day was the good, as well as the evil, thereof.

So, enabled by his gold coin each month to devote himself entirely to study, he became very much what Peter would have coa.r.s.ely termed a heathen. At first, indeed, he slipped into the Christian churches, from a habit of conscience. But habits soon grow sleepy; the fear of discovery and recapture made his attendance more and more of a labour. And keeping himself apart as much as possible from the congregation, as a lonely and secret wors.h.i.+pper, he soon found himself as separate from them in heart as in daily life. He felt that they, and even more than they, those flowery and bombastic pulpit rhetoricians, who were paid for their sermons by the clapping and cheering of the congregation, were not thinking of, longing after, the same things as himself. Besides, he never spoke to a Christian; for the negress at his lodgings seemed to avoid him-- whether from modesty or terror, be could not tell; and cut off thus from the outward 'communion of saints,' he found himself fast parting away from the inward one. So he went no more to church, and looked the other way, he hardly knew why, whenever he pa.s.sed the Caesareum; and Cyril, and all his mighty organisation, became to him another world, with which he had even less to do than with those planets over his head, whose mysterious movements, and symbolisms, and influences Hypatia's lectures on astronomy were just opening before his bewildered imagination.

Hypatia watched all this with growing self-satisfaction, and fed herself with the dream that through Philammon she might see her wildest hopes realised. After the manner of women, she crowned him, in her own imagination, with all powers and excellences which she would have wished him to possess, as well as with those which he actually manifested, till Philammon would have been as much astonished as self-glorified could he have seen the idealised caricature of himself which the sweet enthusiast had painted for her private enjoyment. They were blissful months those to poor Hypatia. Orestes, for some reason or other, had neglected to urge his suit, and the Iphigenia-sacrifice had retired mercifully into the background. Perhaps she should be able now to accomplish all without it. And yet--it was so long to wait! Years might pa.s.s before Philammon's education was matured, and with them golden opportunities which might never recur again.

'Ah!' she sighed at times, 'that Julian had lived a generation later! That I could have brought all my hard-earned treasures to the feet of the Poet of the Sun, and cried, "Take me!--Hero, warrior, statesman, sage, priest of the G.o.d of Light! Take thy slave! Command her--send her--to martyrdom, if thou wilt!" A pretty price would that have been wherewith to buy the honour of being the meanest of thy apostles, the fellow-labourer of Iamblichus, Maximus, Libanius, and the choir of sages who upheld the throne of the last true Caesar!'

CHAPTER XV.

: NEPHELOCOCCUGIA.

Hypatia had always avoided carefully discussing with Philammon any of those points on which she differed from his former faith. She was content to let the divine light of philosophy penetrate by its own power, and educe its own conclusions. But one day, at the very time at which this history reopens, she was tempted to speak more openly to her pupil than she yet had done. Her father had introduced him, a few days before, to a new work of hers on Mathematics; and the delighted and adoring look with which the boy welcomed her, as he met her in the Museum Gardens, pardonably tempted her curiosity to inquire what miracles her own wisdom might have already worked. She stopped in her walk, and motioned her father to begin a conversation with Philammon.

'Well!' asked the old man, with an encouraging smile, 'and how does our pupil like his new--'

'You mean my conic sections, father? It is hardly fair to expect an unbia.s.sed answer in my presence.'

'Why so?' said Philammon. 'Why should I not tell you, as well as all the world, the fresh and wonderful field of thought which they have opened to me in a few short hours?'

'What then?' asked Hypatia, smiling, as if she knew what the answer would be. 'In what does my commentary differ from the original text of Apollonius, on which I have so faithfully based it?'

'Oh, as much as a living body differs from a dead one. Instead of mere dry disquisitions on the properties of lines and curves, I found a mine of poetry and theology. Every dull mathematical formula seemed transfigured, as if by a miracle, into the symbol of some deep and n.o.ble principle of the unseen world.'

'And do you think that he of Perga did not see as much? or that we can pretend to surpa.s.s, in depth of insight, the sages of the elder world? Be sure that they, like the poets, meant only spiritual things, even when they seem to talk only of physical ones, and concealed heaven under an earthly garb, only to hide it from the eyes of the profane; while we, in these degenerate days, must interpret and display each detail to the dull ears of men.'

'Do you think, my young friend,' asked Theon, 'that mathematics can be valuable to the philosopher otherwise than as vehicles of spiritual truth? Are we to study numbers merely that we may be able to keep accounts; or as Pythagoras did, in order to deduce from their laws the ideas by which the universe, man, Divinity itself, consists?'

'That seems to me certainly to be the n.o.bler purpose.'

'Or conic sections, that we may know better how to construct machinery; or rather to devise from them symbols of the relations of Deity to its various emanations?'

'You use your dialectic like Socrates himself, my father,' said Hypatia.

'If I do, it is only for a temporary purpose. I should be sorry to accustom Philammon to suppose that the essence of philosophy was to be found in those minute investigations of words and a.n.a.lyses of notions, which seem to const.i.tute Plato's chief power in the eyes of those who, like the Christian sophist Augustine, wors.h.i.+p his letter while they neglect his spirit; not seeing that those dialogues, which they fancy the shrine itself, are but vestibules--'

'Say rather, veils, father.'

'Veils, indeed, which were intended to baffle the rude gaze of the carnal-minded; but still vestibules, through which the enlightened soul might be led up to the inner sanctuary, to the Hesperid gardens and golden fruit of the Timaeus and the oracles .... And for myself, were but those two books left, I care not whether every other writing in the world perished to-morrow.'[Footnote: This astounding speech is usually attributed to Proclus, Hypatia's 'great' successor.]

'You must except Homer, father.'

'Yes, for the herd .... But of what use would he be to them without some spiritual commentary?'

'He would tell them as little, perhaps, as the circle tells to the carpenter who draws one with his compa.s.ses.'

'And what is the meaning of the circle?' asked Philammon.

'It may have infinite meanings, like every other natural phenomenon; and deeper meanings in proportion to the exaltation of the soul which beholds it. But, consider, is it not, as the one perfect figure, the very symbol of the totality of the spiritual world; which, like it, is invisible, except at its circ.u.mference, where it is limited by the dead gross phenomena of sensuous matter! and even as the circle takes its origin from one centre, itself unseen,--a point, as Euclid defines it, whereof neither parts nor magnitude can be predicated,--does not the world of spirits revolve round one abysmal being, unseen and undefinable--in itself, as I have so often preached, nothing, for it is conceivable only by the negation of all properties, even of those of reason, virtue, force; and yet, like the centre of the circle, the cause of all other existences?'

'I see,' said Philammon; for the moment, certainly, the said abysmal Deity struck him as a somewhat chill and barren notion .... but that might be caused only by the dulness of his own spiritual perceptions. At all events, if it was a logical conclusion, it must be right.

'Let that be enough for the present. Hereafter you may be--I fancy that I know you well enough to prophesy that you will be--able to recognise in the equilateral triangle inscribed within the circle, and touching it only with its angles, the three supra-sensual principles of existence, which are contained in Deity as it manifests itself in the physical universe, coinciding with its utmost limits, and yet, like it, dependent on that unseen central One which none dare name.'

'Ah!' said poor Philammon, blus.h.i.+ng scarlet at the sense of his own dulness, 'I am, indeed, not worthy to have such wisdom wasted upon my imperfect apprehension .... But, if I may dare to ask .... does not Apollonius regard the circle, like all other curves, as not depending primarily on its own centre for its existence, but as generated by the section of any cone by a plane at right angles to its axis?'

'But must we not draw, or at least conceive a circle, in order to produce that cone? And is not the axis of that cone determined by the centre of that circle?'

Philammon stood rebuked.

'Do not be ashamed; you have only, unwittingly, laid open another, and perhaps, as deep a symbol. Can you guess what it is?'

Philammon puzzled in vain.

'Does it not show you this? That, as every conceivable right section of the cone discloses the circle, so in all which is fair and symmetric you will discover Deity, if you but a.n.a.lyse it in a right and symmetric direction?'

'Beautiful!' said Philammon, while the old man added-- 'And does it not show us, too, how the one perfect and original philosophy may be discovered in all great writers, if we have but that scientific knowledge which will enable us to extract it?'

'True, my father: but just now, I wish Philammon, by such thoughts as I have suggested, to rise to that higher and more spiritual insight into nature, which reveals her to us as instinct throughout --all fair and n.o.ble forms of her at least--with Deity itself; to make him feel that it is not enough to say, with the Christians, that G.o.d has made the world, if we make that very a.s.sertion an excuse for believing that His presence has been ever since withdrawn from it.'

'Christians, I think, would hardly say that,' said Philammon.

'Not in words. But, in fact, they regard Deity as the maker of a dead machine, which, once made, will move of itself thenceforth, and repudiate as heretics every philosophic thinker, whether Gnostic or Platonist, who, unsatisfied with so dead, barren, and sordid a conception of the glorious all, wishes to honour the Deity by acknowledging His universal presence, and to believe, honestly, the a.s.sertion of their own Scriptures, that He lives and moves, and has His being in the universe.'

Philammon gently suggested that the pa.s.sage in question was worded somewhat differently in the Scripture.

'True. But if the one be true, its converse will be true also. If the universe lives and moves, and has its being in Him, must He not necessarily pervade all things?'

'Why?--Forgive my dulness, and explain.'

'Because, if He did not pervade all things, those things which He did not pervade would be as it were interstices in His being, and in so far, without Him.'

'True, but still they would be within His circ.u.mference.'

'Well argued. But yet they would not live in Him, but in themselves. To live in Him they must be pervaded by His life. Do you think it possible--do you think it even reverent to affirm that there can be anything within the infinite glory of Deity which has the power of excluding from the s.p.a.ce which it occupies that very being from which it draws its worth, and which must have originally pervaded that thing, in order to bestow on it its organisation and its life? Does He retire after creating, from the s.p.a.ces which He occupied during creation, reduced to the base necessity of making room for His own universe, and endure the suffering--for the a.n.a.logy of all material nature tells us that it is suffering--of a foreign body, like a thorn within the flesh, subsisting within His own substance? Rather believe that His wisdom and splendour, like a subtle and piercing fire, insinuates itself eternally with resistless force through every organised atom, and that were it withdrawn but for an instant from the petal of the meanest flower, gross matter, and the dead chaos from which it was formed, would be all which would remain of its loveliness....

'Yes'--she went on, after the method of her school, who preferred, like most decaying ones, harangues to dialectic, and synthesis to induction .... 'Look at yon lotus-flower, rising like Aphrodite from the wave in which it has slept throughout the night, and saluting, with bending swan-neck, that sun which it will follow lovingly around the sky. Is there no more there than brute matter, pipes and fibres, colour and shape, and the meaningless life-in-death which men call vegetation? Those old Egyptian priests knew better, who could see in the number and the form of those ivory petals and golden stamina, in that mysterious daily birth out of the wave, in that nightly baptism, from which it rises each morning re-born to a new life, the signs of some divine idea, some mysterious law, common to the flower itself, to the white-robed priestess who held it in the temple rites, and to the G.o.ddess to whom they both were consecrated .... The flower of Isis! .... Ah!--well. Nature has her sad symbols, as well as her fair ones. And in proportion as a misguided nation has forgotten the wors.h.i.+p of her to whom they owed their greatness, for novel and barbaric superst.i.tions, so has her sacred flower grown rarer and more rare, till now--fit emblem of the wors.h.i.+p over which it used to shed its perfume--it is only to be found in gardens such as these--a curiosity to the vulgar, and, to such as me, a lingering monument of wisdom and of glory past away.'

Philammon, it may be seen, was far advanced by this time; for he bore the allusions to Isis without the slightest shudder. Nay--he dared even to offer consolation to the beautiful mourner.

'The philosopher,' he said, 'will hardly lament the loss of a mere outward idolatry. For if, as you seem to think, there were a root of spiritual truth in the symbolism of nature, that cannot die. And thus the lotus-flower must still retain its meaning, as long as its species exists on earth.'

'Idolatry!' answered she, with a smile. 'My pupil must not repeat to me that worn-out Christian calumny. Into whatsoever low superst.i.tions the pious vulgar may have fallen, it is the Christians now, and not the heathens, who are idolaters. They who ascribe miraculous power to dead men's bones, who make temples of charnel- houses, and bow before the images of the meanest of mankind, have surely no right to accuse of idolatry the Greek or the Egyptian, who embodies in a form of symbolic beauty ideas beyond the reach of words!

'Idolatry? Do I wors.h.i.+p the Pharos when I gaze at it, as I do for hours, with loving awe, as the token to me of the all-conquering might of h.e.l.las? Do I wors.h.i.+p the roll on which Homer's words are written, when I welcome with delight the celestial truths which it unfolds to me, and even prize and love the material book for the sake of the message which it brings? Do you fancy that any but the vulgar wors.h.i.+p the image itself, or dream that it can help or hear them? Does the lover mistake his mistress's picture for the living, speaking reality? We wors.h.i.+p the idea of which the image is a symbol. Will you blame us because we use that symbol to represent the idea to our own affections and emotions instead of leaving it a barren notion, a vague imagination of our own intellect?'

'Then,' asked Philammon, with a faltering voice, yet unable to restrain his curiosity, 'then you do reverence the heathen G.o.ds?'

Why Hypatia should have felt this question a sore one, puzzled Philammon; but she evidently did feel it as such, for she answered haughtily enough-- 'If Cyril had asked me that question, I should have disdained to answer. To you I will tell, that before I can answer your question you must learn what those whom you call heathen G.o.ds are. The vulgar, or rather those who find it their interest to calumniate the vulgar for the sake of confounding philosophers with them, may fancy them mere human beings, subject like man to the sufferings of pain and love, to the limitations of personality. We, on the other hand, have been taught by the primeval philosophers of Greece, by the priests of ancient Egypt, and the sages of Babylon, to recognise in them the universal powers of nature, those children of the all- quickening spirit, which are but various emanations of the one primeval unity--say rather, various phases of that unity, as it has been variously conceived, according to the differences of climate and race, by the wise of different nations. And thus, in our eyes, he who reverences the many, wors.h.i.+ps by that very act, with the highest and fullest adoration, the one of whose perfection they are the partial ant.i.types; perfect each in themselves, but each the image of only one of its perfections.'

'Why, then,' said Philammon, much relieved by this explanation, 'do you so dislike Christianity? may it not be one of the many methods-- '

'Because,' she answered, interrupting him impatiently, 'because it denies itself to be one of those many methods, and stakes its existence on the denial; because it arrogates to itself the exclusive revelation of the Divine, and cannot see, in its self- conceit, that its own doctrines disprove that a.s.sumption by their similarity to those of all creeds. There is not a dogma of the Galileans which may not be found, under some form or other, in some of those very religions from which it pretends to disdain borrowing.'

'Except,' said Theon, 'its exaltation of all which is human and low- born, illiterate, and levelling.'

'Except that--. But look! here comes some one whom I cannot--do not choose to meet. Turn this way--quick!'

And Hypatia, turning pale as death, drew her father with unphilosophic haste down a side-walk.

'Yes,' she went on to herself, as soon as she had recovered her equanimity. 'Were this Galilean superst.i.tion content to take its place humbly among the other "religiones licitas" of the empire, one might tolerate it well enough, as an anthropomorphic adumbration of divine things fitted for the base and toiling herd; perhaps peculiarly fitted, because peculiarly flattering to them. But now-- '

'There is Miriam again,' said Philammon, 'right before us!'

'Miriam?' asked Hypatia severely. 'You know her then? How is that?'

'She lodges at Eudaimon's house, as I do,' answered Philammon frankly. 'Not that I ever interchanged, or wish to interchange, a word with so base a creature.'

'Do not! I charge you!' said Hypatia, almost imploringly. But there was now no way of avoiding her, and perforce Hypatia and her tormentress met face to face.

'One word! one moment, beautiful lady,' began the old woman, with a slavish obeisance. 'Nay, do not push by so cruelly. I have--see what I have for you!' and she held out with a mysterious air, 'The Rainbow of Solomon.'

'Ah! I knew you would stop a moment--not for the ring's sake, of course, nor even for the sake of one who once offered it to you.-- Ah! and where is he now? Dead of love, perhaps! at least, here is his last token to the fairest one, the cruel one .... Well, perhaps she is right .... To be an empress--an empress! .... Far finer than anything the poor Jew could have offered .... But still .... An empress need not be above hearing her subject's pet.i.tion....'

All this was uttered rapidly, and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious hold, there was no escaping.

'What do you mean? What have I to do with this ring?' asked Hypatia, half frightened.

'He who owned it once, offers it to you now. You recollect a little black agate--a paltry thing. .... If you have not thrown it away, as you most likely have, be wishes to redeem it with this opal .... a gem surely more fit for such a hand as that.'

'He gave me the agate, and I shall keep it.'

'But this opal--worth, oh, worth ten thousand gold pieces--in exchange for that paltry broken thing not worth one?'

'I am not a dealer, like you, and have not yet learnt to value things by their money price. It that agate had been worth money, I would never have accepted it.'

'Take the ring, take it, my darling,' whispered Theon impatiently; 'it will pay all our debts.'

'Ah, that it will--pay them all,' answered the old woman, who seemed to have mysteriously overheard him.

'What!--my father! Would you, too, counsel me to be so mercenary? My good woman,' she went on, turning to Miriam, 'I cannot expect you to understand the reason of my refusal. You and I have a different standard of worth. But for the sake of the talisman engraven on that agate, if for no other reason, I cannot give it up.'

'Ah! for the sake of the talisman! That is wise, now! That is n.o.ble! Like a philosopher! Oh, I will not say a word more. Let the beautiful prophetess keep the agate, and take the opal too; for see, there is a charm on it also! The name by which Solomon compelled the demons to do his bidding. Look! What might you not do now, if you knew how to use that! To have great glorious angels, with six wings each, bowing at your feet whensoever you called them, and saying, "Here am I, mistress; send me." Only look at it!'

Hypatia took the tempting bait, and examined it with more curiosity than she would have wished to confess; while the old woman went on-- 'But the wise lady knows how to use the black agate, of course? Aben-Ezra told her that, did he not?'

Hypatia blushed somewhat; she was ashamed to confess that Aben-Ezra had not revealed the secret to her, probably not believing that there was any, and that the talisman had been to her only a curious plaything, of which she liked to believe one day that it might possibly have some occult virtue, and the next day to laugh at the notion as unphilosophical and barbaric; so she answered, rather severely, that her secrets were her own property.

'Ah, then! she knows it all--the fortunate lady! And the talisman has told her whether Heraclian has lost or won Rome by this time, and whether she is to be the mother of a new dynasty of Ptolemies, or to die a virgin, which the Four Angels avert! And surely she has had the great demon come to her already, when she rubbed the flat side, has she not?'

'Go, foolish woman! I am not like you, the dupe of childish superst.i.tions.'

'Childish superst.i.tions! Ha! ha! ha!'said the old woman, as she turned to go, with obeisances more lowly than ever. 'And she has not seen the Angels yet! .... Ah well! perhaps some day, when she wants to know how to use the talisman, the beautiful lady will condescend to let the poor old Jewess show her the way.'

And Miriam disappeared down an alley, and plunged into the thickest shrubberies, while the three dreamers went on their way.