Hypatia. or New Foes with an Old Face. Charles Kingsley
sat buried in deep thought.
‘Of course not,’ said he at last, half unconsciously. And then, in sudden dread of having committed himself, he looked up fiercely at the Jew.
‘And how do I know that this is not some infernal trap of yours? Tell me how you found out all this, or by Hercules (he had quite forgotten his Christianity by this time)—by Hercules and the Twelve Gods, I’ll—’
‘Don’t use expressions unworthy of a philosopher. My source of information was very simple and very good. He has been negotiating a loan from the Rabbis at Carthage. They were either frightened, or loyal, or both, and hung back. He knew—as all wise governors know when they allow themselves time—that it is no use to bully a Jew; slid applied to me. I never lend money—it is unphilosophical: but I introduced him to old Miriam, who dare do business with the devil himself; and by that move, whether he has the money or not, I cannot tell: but this I can tell, that we have his secret—and so have you now; and if you want more information, the old woman, who enjoys an intrigue as much as she does Falernian, will get it you.’
‘Well, you are a true friend, after all.’
‘Of course I am. Now, is not this method of getting at the truth much easier and pleasanter than setting a couple of dirty negroes to pinch and pull me, and so making it a point of honour with me to tell you nothing but lies? Here comes Ganymede with the wine, just in time to calm your nerves, and fill you with the spirit of divination.... To the goddess of good counsels, my lord. What wine this is!’
‘True Syrian—fire and honey; fourteen years old next vintage, my Raphael. Out, Hypocorisma! See that he is not listening. The impudent rascal! I was humbugged into giving two thousand gold pieces for him two years ago, he was so pretty—they said he was only just rising thirteen—and he has been the plague of my life ever since, and is beginning to want the barber already. Now, what is the count dreaming of?’
‘His wages for killing Stilicho.’
‘What, is it not enough to be Count of Africa?’
‘I suppose he sets off against that his services during the last three years.’
‘Well, he saved Africa.’
‘And thereby Egypt also. And you too, as well as the emperor, may be considered as owing him somewhat.’
‘My good friend, my debts are far too numerous for me to think of paying any of them. But what wages does he want?’
‘The purple.’
Orestes started, and then fell into thought. Raphael sat watching him a while.
‘Now, most noble lord, may I depart? I have said all I have to say; and unless I get home to luncheon at once, I shall hardly have time to find old Miriam for you, and get through our little affair with her before sunset.’
‘Stay. What force has he?’
‘Forty thousand already, they say. And those Donatist ruffians are with him to a man, if he can but scrape together wherewith to change their bludgeons into good steel.’
‘Well, go.... So. A hundred thousand might do it,’ said he, meditating, as Raphael bowed himself out. ‘He won’t get them. I don’t know, though; the man has the head of a Julius. Well—that fool Attalus talked of joining Egypt to the Western Empire.... Not such a bad thought either. Anything is better than being governed by an idiot child and three canting nuns. I expect to be excommunicated every day for some offence against Pulcheria’s prudery.... Heraclian emperor at Rome.... and I lord and master on this side the sea. The Donatists pitted again fairly against the orthodox, to cut each other’s throats in peace.... no more of Cyril’s spying and tale-bearing to Constantinople.... Not such a baddish of fare.... But then-it would take so much trouble!’
With which words, Orestes went into his third warm bath for that day.
CHAPTER III: THE GOTHS
For two days the young monk held on, paddling and floating rapidly down the Nile-stream, leaving city after city to right and left with longing eyes, and looking back to one villa after another, till the reaches of the banks hid them from his sight, with many a yearning to know what sort of places those gay buildings and gardens would look like on a nearer view, and what sort of life the thousands led who crowded the busy quays, and walked and drove, in an endless stream, along the great highroads which ran along either bank. He carefully avoided every boat that passed him, from the gilded barge of the wealthy landlord or merchant, to the tiny raft buoyed up with empty jars, which was floating down to be sold at some market in the Delta. Here and there he met and hailed a crew of monks, drawing their nets in a quiet bay, or passing along the great watery highway from monastery to monastery: but all the news he received from them was, that the canal of Alexandria was still several days’ journey below him. It seemed endless, that monotonous vista of the two high clay banks, with their sluices and water-wheels, their knots of palms and date-trees; endless seemed that wearisome succession of bars of sand and banks of mud, every one like the one before it, every one dotted with the same line of logs and stones strewn along the water’s edge, which turned out as he approached them to be basking crocodiles and sleeping pelicans. His eye, wearied with the continual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundless expanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills, which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out of the eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyond which dwelt a whole world of wonders, elephants and dragons, satyrs and anthropophagi,—ay, and the phoenix itself. Tired and melancholy, his mind returned inward to prey on itself, and the last words of Arsenius rose again and again to his thoughts. ‘Was his call of the spirit or of the flesh?’ How should he test that problem? He wished to seethe world that might be carnal. True; but, he wished to convert the world.... was not that spiritual? Was he not going on a noble errand?.... thirsting for toil, for saintship, for martyrdom itself, if it would but come and cut the Gordian knot of all temptations, and save him-for he dimly felt that it would save him—a whole sea of trouble in getting safe and triumphant out of that world into which he had not yet entered .... and his heart shrank back from the untried homeless wilderness before him. But no! the die was cast, and he must down and onward, whether in obedience to the spirit or the flesh. Oh, for one hour of the quiet of that dear Laura and the old familiar faces!
At last, a sudden turn of the bank brought him in sight of a gaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth and foreign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object in the water. In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature, brandishing a harpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the line of a second, the head of which was fixed in the huge purple sides of a hippopotamus, who foamed and wallowed a few yards down the stream. An old grizzled warrior at the stern, with a rudder in either hand, kept the boat’s head continually towards the monster, in spite of its sudden and frantic wheelings; and when it dashed madly across the stream, some twenty oars flashed through the water in pursuit. All was activity and excitement; and it was no wonder if Philammon’s curiosity had tempted him to drift down almost abreast of the barge ere he descried, peeping from under a decorated awning in the afterpart, some dozen pairs of languishing black eyes, turned alternately to the game and to himself. The serpents!—chattering and smiling, with pretty little shrieks and shaking of glossy curls and gold necklaces, and fluttering of muslin dresses, within a dozen yards of him! Blushing scarlet, he knew not why, he seized his paddle, and tried to back out of the snare.... but somehow, his very efforts to escape those sparkling eyes diverted his attention from everything else: the hippopotamus had caught sight of him, and furious with pain, rushed straight at the unoffending canoe; the harpoon line became entangled round his body, and in a moment he and his frail bark were overturned, and the monster, with his huge white tusks gaping wide, close on him as he struggled in the stream.
Luckily Philammon, contrary to the wont of monks, was a bather, and swam like a water-fowl: fear he had never known: death from childhood had been to him, as to the other inmates of the Laura, a contemplation too perpetual to have any paralysing terror in it, even then, when life seemed just about to open on him anew. But the monk was a man, and a young one, and had no intention of dying tamely or unavenged. In an instant he had freed himself from the line; drawn