Chapter III: Part I: I (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diophane ran from the kitchen.

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

And she added, radiant with good humour--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Aphrodite, Aphrodite, receive the gift!"

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

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

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

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

"A galley! What do you mean?"

"A real Liburnian galley."

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

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

But Amaryllis laughed heartily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The voice of the Samian broke the enchantment--

"Amaryllis, Amaryllis! where art thou?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now then be careful!"

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

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

Agamemnon nudged his companion's elbow.

"Ask his name, quick--ask!"

"Gently, wait a bit...."

A leather dresser remarked--

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

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

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

The currier, a philosophic tippler, sighed--

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agamemnon murmured with enthusiasm:

"What a divinely pretty girl!"

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

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

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

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

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

Agamemnon interrupted them--

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

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

"Is that dancing-girl your slave?"

"Yes. What does your excellency desire?"

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

"What's your name, girl?"

"Phyllis."

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

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

"Come with me!"

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

"Whither?"

"I don't know."

"To your house?"

"Impossible. I live at Antioch."

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

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

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

"It is unnecessary--remain here."

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

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

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

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

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

"What in the world was that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"See, citizens, they are disguised informers!"

Somebody cried out--

"Strike him! Knock him down!"

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

"We warned your Majesty that it was dangerous."

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

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

When they arrived at the palace Cæsar ordered--

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

A courier came near holding a letter.

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

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

"From Constantius? Give it me."

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

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

"Call my wife!"

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

"What! She knows nothing of this?"

"No."

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

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

Another messenger came up, a scroll in his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Truffles from Africa."

"Fresh gathered?"

"They arrived this morning."

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

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

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

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

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

VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you sad?"

"Yes."

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

"How have you guessed this, Master?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have you courage?"

"Yes; but speak--speak!"

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

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

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

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

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

Iamblicus rose and slowly extended his wasted arms:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iamblicus answered by a smile--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julian murmured--

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

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

VIII