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PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Hypatia

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hypatia




And then his fellow-labourers--he could not deny it to himself--
began to grow less venerable in his eyes. Let him try as he might
to forget the old priest's grumblings and detractions, the fact was
before him. The men were coarse, fierce, noisy .... so different
from her! Their talk seemed mere gossip--scandalous too, and hard-
judging, most of it; about that man's private ambition, and that
woman's proud looks; and who had stayed for the Eucharist the Sun-
day before, and who had gone out after the sermon; and how the
majority who did not stay could possibly dare to go, and how the
minority who did not go could possibly dare to stay .... Endless
suspicions, sneers, complaints .... what did they care for the
eternal glories and the beatific vision? Their one test for all men
and things, from the patriarch to the prefect, seemed to be--did he
or it advance the cause of the Church?--which Philammon soon
discovered to mean their own cause, their influence, their self-
glorification. And the poor boy, as his faculty for fault-finding
quickened under the influence of theirs, seemed to see under the
humble stock-phrases in which they talked of their labours of love,
and the future reward of their present humiliations, a deep and
hardly-bidden pride, a faith in their own infallibility, a
contemptuous impatience of every man, however venerable, who
differed from their party on any, the slightest, matter. They spoke
with sneers of Augustine's Latinising tendencies, and with open
execrations of Chrysostom, as the vilest and most impious of
schismatics; and, for aught Philammon knew, they were right enough.
But when they talked of wars and desolation past and impending,
without a word of pity for the slain and ruined, as a just judgment
of Heaven upon heretics and heathens; when they argued over the
awful struggle for power which, as he gathered from their words, was
even then pending between the Emperor and the Count of Africa, as if
it contained but one question of interest to them--would Cyril, and
they as his bodyguard, gain or lose power in Alexandria? and lastly,
when at some mention of Orestes, and of Hypatia as his counsellor,
they broke out into open imprecations of God's curse, and comforted
themselves with the prospect of everlasting torment for both; he
shuddered and asked himself involuntarily--were these the ministers
of a Gospel?--were these the fruits of Christ's Spirit? .... And a
whisper thrilled through the inmost depth of his soul--'Is there a
Gospel? Is there a Spirit of Christ? Would not their fruits be
different from these?'

Faint, and low, and distant, was that whisper, like the mutter of an
earthquake miles below the soil. And yet, like the earthquake-roll,
it had in that one moment jarred every belief, and hope, and memory
of his being each a hair's-breadth from its place .... Only one
hair's-breadth. But that was enough; his whole inward and outward
world changed shape, and cracked at every joint. What if it were to
fall in pieces? His brain reeled with the thought. He doubted his
own identity. The very light of heaven had altered its hue. Was
the firm ground on which he stood after all no solid reality, but a
fragile shell which covered--what?

The nightmare vanished, and he breathed once more. What a strange
dream! The sun and the exertion must have made him giddy. He would
forget all about it.

Weary with labour, and still wearier with thought, he returned that
evening, longing and yet dreading to be permitted to speak with
Hypatia. He half hoped at moments that Cyril might think him too
weak for it; and the next, all his pride and daring, not to say his
faith and hope, spurred him on. Might he but face the terrible
enchantress, and rebuke her to her face! And yet so lovely, so noble
as she looked! Could he speak to her, except in tones of gentle
warning, pity, counsel, entreaty? Might he not convert her--save
her? Glorious thought! to win such a soul to the true cause! To be
able to show, as the firstfruits of his mission, the very champion
of heathendom! It was worth while to have lived only to do that;
and having done it, to die.

The archbishop's lodgings, when he entered them, were in a state of
ferment even greater than usual. Groups of monks, priests,
parabolani, and citizens rich and poor, were banging about the
courtyard, talking earnestly and angrily. A large party of monks
fresh from Nitria, with ragged hair and beards, and the peculiar
expression of countenance which fanatics of all creeds acquire,
fierce and yet abject, self-conscious and yet ungoverned, silly and
yet sly, with features coarsened and degraded by continual fasting
and self-torture, prudishly shrouded from head to heel in their long
ragged gowns, were gesticulating wildly and loudly, and calling on
their more peaceable companions, in no measured terms, to revenge
some insult offered to the Church.

'What is the matter?' asked Philammon of a quiet portly citizen, who
stood looking up, with a most perplexed visage, at the windows of
the patriarch's apartments.

'Don't ask me; I have nothing to do with it. Why does not his
holiness come out and speak to them? Blessed virgin, mother of God!
that we were well through it all!--'

'Coward!' bawled a monk in his ear. 'These shopkeepers care for
nothing but seeing their stalls safe. Rather than lose a day's
custom, they would give the very churches to be plundered by the
heathen!'

'We do not want them!' cried another. 'We managed Dioscuros and his
brother, and we can manage Orestes. What matter what answer he
sends? The devil shall have his own!'

'They ought to have been back two hours ago: they are murdered by
this time.'

'He would not dare to touch the archdeacon!'

'He will dare anything. Cyril should never have sent them forth as
lambs among wolves. What necessity was there for letting the
prefect know that the Jews were gone? He would have found it out
for himself fast enough, the next time he wanted to borrow money.'

'What is all this about, reverend sir?' asked Philammon of Peter the
Reader, who made his appearance at that moment in the quadrangle,
walking with great strides, like the soul of Agamemnon across the
meads of Asphodel, and apparently beside himself with rage.

'Ah! you here? You may go to-morrow, young fool! The patriarch
can't talk to you. Why should he? Some people have a great deal
too much notice taken of them, in my opinion. Yes; you may go. If
your head is not turned already, you may go and get it turned to-
morrow. We shall see whether he who exalts himself is not abased,
before all is over!' And he was striding away, when Philammon, at
the risk of an explosion, stopped him.

'His holiness commanded me to see him, sir, before--'

Peter turned on him in a fury. 'Fool! will you dare to intrude your
fantastical dreams on him at such a moment as this?'

'He commanded me to see him,' said Philammon, with the true
soldierlike discipline of a monk; 'and see him I will in spite of
any man. I believe in my heart you wish to keep me from his
counsels and his blessing.'

Peter looked at him for a moment with a right wicked expression, and
then, to the youth's astonishment, struck him full in the face, and
yelled for help.

If the blow had been given by Pambo in the Laura a week before,
Philammon would have borne it. But from that man, and coming
unexpectedly as the finishing stroke to all his disappointment and
disgust, it was intolerable; and in an instant Peter's long legs
were sprawling on the pavement, while he bellowed like a bull for
all the monks in Nitria.

A dozen lean brown hands were at Philammon's throat as Peter rose.
'Seize him! hold him!' half blubbered he. 'The traitor! the heretic!
He holds communion with heathens!'

'Down with him!' 'Cast him out! Carry him to the archbishop!' while
Philammon shook himself free, and Peter returned to the charge.

'I call all good Catholics to witness! He has beaten an
ecclesiastic in the courts of the Lord's house, even in the midst of
thee, O Jerusalem! And he was in Hypatia's lecture-room this
morning!'

A groan of pious horror rose. Philammon set his back against the
wall.

'His holiness the patriarch sent me.'

'He confesses, he confesses! He deluded the piety of the patriarch
into letting him go, under colour of converting her; and even now he
wants to intrude on the sacred presence of Cyril, burning only with
the carnal desire that he may meet the sorceress in her house to-
morrow!'

'Scandal!' 'Abomination in the holy place!' and a rush at the poor
youth took place.

His blood was thoroughly up. The respectable part of the crowd, as
usual in such cases, prudently retreated, and left him to the mercy
of the monks, with an eye to their own reputation for orthodoxy, not
to mention their personal safety; and he had to help himself as he
could. He looked round for a weapon. There was none. The ring of
monks were baying at him like hounds round a bear: and though he
might have been a match for any one of them singly, yet their sinewy
limbs and determined faces warned him that against such odds the
struggle would be desperate.

'Let me leave this court in safety! God knows whether I am a
heretic; and to Him I commit my cause! The holy patriarch shall
know of your iniquity. I will not trouble you; I give you leave to
call me heretic, or heathen, if you will, if I cross this threshold
till Cyril himself sends for me back to shame you.'

And he turned, and forced his way to the gate, amid a yell of
derision which brought every drop of, blood in his body into his
cheeks. Twice, as he went down the vaulted passage, a rush was made
on him from behind, but the soberer of his persecutors checked it.
Yet he could not leave them, young and hot-headed as he was, without
one last word, and on the threshold he turned.

'You! who call yourselves the disciples of the Lord, and are more
like the demoniacs who abode day and night in the tombs, crying and
cutting themselves with stones--'

In an instant they rushed upon him; and, luckily for him, rushed
also into the arms of a party of ecclesiastics, who were hurrying
inwards from the street, with faces of blank terror.

'He has refused!' shouted the foremost. He declares war against the
Church of God!'

'Oh, my friends,' panted the archdeacon, 'we are escaped like the
bird out of the snare of the fowler. The tyrant kept us waiting two
hours at his palace-gates, and then sent lictors out upon us, with
rods and axes, telling us that they were the only message which he
had for robbers and rioters.'

'Back to the patriarch!' and the whole mob streamed in again,
leaving Philammon alone in the street--and in the world.

Whither now?

He strode on in his wrath some hundred yards or more before he asked
himself that question. And when he asked it, he found himself in no
humour to answer it. He was adrift, and blown out of harbour upon a
shoreless sea, in utter darkness; all heaven and earth were nothing
to him. He was alone in the blindness of anger.

Gradually one fixed idea, as a light-tower, began to glimmer through
the storm .... To see Hypatia, and convert her. He had the
patriarch's leave for that. That must be right. That would justify
him--bring him back, perhaps, in a triumph more glorious than any
Caesar's, leading captive, in the fetters of the Gospel, the Queen
of Heathendom. Yes, there was that left, for which to live.

His passion cooled down gradually as he wandered on in the fading
evening light, up one street and down another, till he had utterly
lost his way. What matter? He should find that lecture-room to-
morrow at least. At last he found himself in a broad avenue, which
he seemed to know. Was that the Sun-gate in the distance? He
sauntered carelessly down it, and found himself at last on the great
Esplanade, whither the little porter had taken him three days
before. He was close then to the Museum, and to her house. Destiny
had led him, unconsciously, towards the scene of his enterprise. It
was a good omen; he would go thither at once. He might sleep upon
her doorstep as well as upon any other. Perhaps he might catch a
glimpse of her going out or coming in, even at that late hour. It
might be well to accustom himself to the sight of her. There would
be the less chance of his being abashed to-morrow before those
sorceress eyes. And moreover, to tell the truth, his self-
dependence, and his self-will too, crushed, or rather laid to sleep,
by the discipline of the Laura, had started into wild life, and gave
him a mysterious pleasure, which he had not felt since he was a
disobedient little boy, of doing what he chose, right or wrong,
simply because he chose it. Such moments come to every free-willed
creature. Happy are those who have not, like poor Philammon, been
kept by a hotbed cultivation from knowing how to face them? But he
had yet to learn, or rather his tutors had to learn, that the sure
path toward willing obedience and manful self-restraint, lies not
through slavery, but through liberty.

He was not certain which was Hypatia's house; but the door of the
Museum he could not forget. So there he sat himself down under the
garden wall, soothed by the cool night, and the holy silence, and
the rich perfume of the thousand foreign flowers which filled the
air with enervating balm. There he sat and watched, and watched,
and watched in vain for some glimpse of his one object. Which of
the houses was hers? Which was the window of her chamber! Did it
look into the street? What business had his fancy with woman's
chambers? .... But that one open window, with the lamp burning
bright inside--he could not help looking up to it--he could not help
fancying--hoping. He even moved a few yards to see better the
bright interior of the room. High up as it was, he could still
discern shelves of books--pictures on the walls. Was that a voice?
Yes! a woman's voice--reading aloud in metre--was plainly
distinguishable in the dead stillness of the night, which did not
even awaken a whisper in the trees above his head. He stood,
spellbound by curiosity.

Suddenly the voice ceased, and a woman's figure came forward to the
window, and stood motionless, gazing upward at the spangled star-
world overhead, and seeming to drink in the glory, and the silence,
and the rich perfume .... Could it be she? Every pulse in his body
throbbed madly .... Could it be? What was she doing? He could not
distinguish the features; but the full blaze of the eastern moon
showed him an upturned brow, between a golden stream of glittering
tresses which hid her whole figure, except the white hands clasped
upon her bosom .... Was she praying? were these her midnight
sorceries? ....

And still his heart throbbed and throbbed, till he almost fancied
she must hear its noisy beat--and still she stood motionless, gazing
upon the sky, like some exquisite chryselephantine statue, all ivory
and gold. And behind her, round the bright room within, painting,
books, a whole world of unknown science and beauty .... and she the
priestess of it all....inviting him to learn of her and be wise! It
was a temptation! He would flee from it!--Fool that he was!--and it
might not be she after all!

He made some sudden movement. She looked down, saw him, and
shutting the blind, vanished for the night. In vain, now that the
temptation had departed, he sat and waited for its reappearance,
half cursing himself for having broken the spell. But the chamber
was dark and silent henceforth; and Philammon, wearied out, found
himself soon wandering back to the Laura in quiet dreams, beneath
the balmy, semi-tropic night.



CHAPTER X: THE INTERVIEW


Philammon was aroused from his slumbers at sunrise the next morning
by the attendants who came in to sweep out the lecture-rooms, and
wandered, disconsolately enough, up and down the street; longing
for, and yet dreading, the three weary hours to be over which must
pass before he would be admitted to Hypatia. But he had tasted no
food since noon the day before: he had but three hours' sleep the
previous night, and had been working, running, and fighting for two
whole days without a moment's peace of body or mind. Sick with
hunger and fatigue, and aching from head to foot with his hard
night's rest on the granite-flags, he felt as unable as man could
well do to collect his thoughts or brace his nerves for the coming
interview. How to get food he could not guess; but having two
hands, he might at least earn a coin by carrying a load; so he went
down to the Esplanade in search of work. Of that, alas! there was
none. So he sat down upon the parapet of the quay, and watched the
shoals of sardines which played in and out over the marble steps
below, and wondered at the strange crabs and sea-locusts which
crawled up and down the face of the masonry, a few feet below the
surface, scrambling for bits of offal, and making occasional
fruitless dashes at the nimble little silver arrows which played
round them. And at last his whole soul, too tired to think of
anything else, became absorbed in a mighty struggle between two
great crabs, who held on stoutly, each by a claw, to his respective
bunch of seaweed, while with the others they tugged, one at the head
and the other at the tail of a dead fish. Which would conquer? ....
Ay, which? And for five minutes Philammon was alone in the world
with the two struggling heroes .... Might not they be emblematic?
Might not the upper one typify Cyril?--the lower one Hypatia?--and
the dead fish between, himself? .... But at last the deadlock was
suddenly ended--the fish parted in the middle; and the typical
Hypatia and Cyril, losing hold of their respective seaweeds by the
jerk, tumbled down, each with its half-fish, and vanished head over
heels into the blue depths in so undignified a manner, that
Philammon burst into a shout of laughter.

'What's the joke?' asked a well-known voice behind him; and a hand
patted him familiarly on the back. He looked round, and saw the
little porter, his head crowned with a full basket of figs, grapes,
and water-melons, on which the poor youth cast a longing eye.
'Well, my young friend, and why are you not at church? Look at all
the saints pouring into the Caesareum there, behind you.'

Philammon answered sulkily enough something inarticulate.

'Ho, ho! Quarrelled with the successor of the Apostles already?
Has my prophecy come true, and the strong meat of pious riot and
plunder proved too highly spiced for your young palate? Eh?'

Poor Philammon! Angry with himself for feeling that the porter was
right; shrinking from the notion of exposing the failings of his
fellow-Christians; shrinking still more from making such a
jackanapes his confidant: and yet yearning in his loneliness to open
his heart to some one, he dropped out, hint by hint, word by word,
the events of the past evening, and finished by a request to be put
in the way of earning his breakfast.

'Earning your breakfast! Shall the favourite of the gods--shall the
guest of Hypatia--earn his breakfast, while I have an obol to share
with him? Base thought! Youth! I have wronged you.
Unphilosophically I allowed, yesterday morning, envy to ruffle the
ocean of my intellect. We are now friends and brothers, in hatred
to the monastic tribe.'

'I do not hate them, I tell you,' said Philammon. 'But these
Nitrian savages--'

'Are the perfect examples of monkery, and you hate them; and
therefore, all greaters containing the less, you hate all less
monastic monks--I have not heard logic lectures in vain. Now, up!
The sea woos our dusty limbs: Nereids and Tritons, charging no cruel
coin, call us to Nature's baths. At home a mighty sheat-fish smokes
upon the festive board; beer crowns the horn, and onions deck the
dish; come then, my guest and brother!'

Philammon swallowed certain scruples about becoming the guest of a
heathen, seeing that otherwise there seemed no chance of having
anything else to swallow; and after a refreshing plunge in the sea,
followed the hospitable little fellow to Hypatia's door, where he
dropped his daily load of fruit, and then into a narrow by-street,
to the ground-floor of a huge block of lodgings with a common
staircase, swarming with children, cats, and chickens; and was
ushered by his host into a little room, where the savoury smell of
broiling fish revived Philammon's heart.

'Judith! Judith! where lingerest thou? Marble of Pentelicus! foam-
flake of the wine dark main! lily of the Mareotic lake! You
accursed black Andromeda, if you don't bring the breakfast this
moment, I'll cut you in two!'

The inner door opened, and in bustled, trembling, her hands full of
dishes, a tall lithe negress, dressed in true negro fashion, in a
snow-white cotton shift, a scarlet cotton petticoat, and a bright
yellow turban of the same, making a light in that dark place which
would have served as a landmark a mile off. She put the dishes
down, and the porter majestically waved Philammon to a stool; while
she retreated, and stood humbly waiting on her lord and master, who
did not deign to introduce to his guest the black beauty which
composed his whole seraglio .... But, indeed, such an act of
courtesy would have been needless; for the first morsel of fish was
hardly safe in poor Philammon's mouth, when the regress rushed upon
him, caught him by the head, and covered him with rapturous kisses.

Up jumped the little man with a yell, brandishing a knife in one
hand and a leek in the other; while Philammon, scarcely less
scandalised, jumped up too, and shook himself free of the lady, who,
finding it impossible to vent her feelings further on his head,
instantly changed her tactics, and, wallowing on the floor, began
frantically kissing his feet.

'What is this? before my face! Up, shameless baggage, or thou diest
the death!' and the porter pulled her up upon her knees.

'It is the monk! the young man I told you of, who saved me from the
Jews the other night! What good angel sent him here that I might
thank him?' cried the poor creature, while the tears ran down her
black shining face.

'I am that good angel,' said the porter, with a look of intense self
-satisfaction. 'Rise, daughter of Erebus; thou art pardoned, being
but a female. What says the poet?--

'"Woman is passion's slave, while rightful lord
O'er her and passion, rules the nobler male."

Youth! to my arms! Truly say the philosophers, that the universe is
magical in itself, and by mysterious sympathies links like to like.
The prophetic instinct of thy future benefits towards me drew me to
thee as by an invisible warp, hawser, or chain-cable, from the
moment I beheld thee. Thou went a kindred spirit, my brother,
though thou knewest it not. Therefore I do not praise thee--no, nor
thank thee in the least, though thou hast preserved for me the one
palm which shadows my weary steps--the single lotus-flower (in this
case black, not white) which blooms for me above the mud-stained
ocean wastes of the Hylic Borboros. That which thou hast done, thou
hast done by instinct--by divine compulsion--thou couldst no more
help it than thou canst help eating that fish, and art no more to be
praised for it.'

'Thank you,' said Philammon.

'Comprehend me. Our theory in the schools for such cases is this--
has been so at least for the last six months; similar particles,
from one original source, exist in you and me. Similar causes
produce similar effects; our attractions, antipathies, impulses, are
therefore, in similar circumstances, absolutely the same; and
therefore you did the other night exactly what I should have done in
your case.'

Philammon thought the latter part of the theory open to question,
but he had by no means stopped eating when he rose, and his mouth
was much too full of fish to argue.

'And therefore,' continued the little man,'we are to consider
ourselves henceforth as one soul in two bodies. You may have the
best of the corporeal part of the division .... yet it is the soul
which makes the person. You may trust me, I shall not disdain my
brotherhood. If any one insults you henceforth, you have but to
call me; and if I be within hearing, why, by this right arm---'

And he attempted a pat on Philammon's head, which, as there was a
head and shoulder's difference between them, might on the whole have
been considered, from a theatric point of view, as a failure.
Whereon the little man seized the calabash of beer, and filling
therewith a cow's horn, his thumb on the small end, raised it high
in the air.

'To the Tenth Muse, and to your interview with her!'

And removing his thumb, he sent a steady jet into his open mouth,
and having drained the horn without drawing breath, licked his lips,
handed it to Philammon, and flew ravenously upon the fish and
onions.

Philammon, to whom the whole was supremely absurd, had no invocation
to make, but one which he felt too sacred for his present temper of
mind: so he attempted to imitate the little man's feat, and, of
course, poured the beer into his eyes, and up his nose, and in his
bosom, and finally choked himself black in the face, while his host
observed smilingly--