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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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Books: Hypatia

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hypatia






CHAPTER XVII: A STRAY GLEAM


THE last blue headland of Sardinia was fading fast on the north-west
horizon, and a steady breeze bore before it innumerable ships, the
wrecks of Heraclian's armament, plunging and tossing impatiently in
their desperate homeward race toward the coast of Africa. Far and
wide, under a sky of cloudless blue, the white sails glittered on
the glittering sea, as gaily now, above their loads of shame and
disappointment terror and pain, as when, but one short month before,
they bore with them only wild hopes and gallant daring. Who can
calculate the sum of misery in that hapless flight? .... And yet it
was but one, and that one of the least known and most trivial, of
the tragedies of that age of woe; one petty death-spasm among the
unnumbered throes which were shaking to dissolution the Babylon of
the West. Her time had come. Even as Saint John beheld her in his
vision, by agony after agony, she was rotting to her well-earned
doom. Tyrannising it luxuriously over all nations, she had sat upon
the mystic beast--building her power on the brute animal appetites
of her dupes and slaves: but she had duped herself even more than
them. She was finding out by bitter lessons that it was 'to the
beast', and not to her, that her vassal kings of the earth had been
giving their power and strength; and the ferocity and lust which she
had pampered so cunningly in them, had become her curse and her
destruction .... Drunk with the blood of the saints; blinded by her
own conceit and jealousy to the fact that she had been crushing and
extirpating out of her empire for centuries past all which was
noble, purifying, regenerative, divine, she sat impotent and doting,
the prey of every fresh adventurer, the slave of her own slaves ....
'And the kings of the earth, who had sinned with her, hated the
harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and devoured her flesh, and
burned her with fire. For God had put into their hearts to fulfil
His will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom to the beast,
until the words of God should be fulfilled.' .... Everywhere
sensuality, division, hatred, treachery, cruelty, uncertainty,
terror; the vials of God's wrath poured out. Where was to be the
end of it all? asked every man of his neighbour, generation after
generation; and received for answer only, 'It is better to die than
to live.'

And yet in one ship out of that sad fleet, there was peace; peace
amid shame and terror; amid the groans of the wounded, and the sighs
of the starving; amid all but blank despair. The great triremes and
quinqueremes rushed onward past the lagging transports, careless, in
the mad race for safety, that they were leaving the greater number
of their comrades defenceless in the rear of the flight; but from
one little fishing-craft alone no base entreaties, no bitter
execrations greeted the passing flash and roll of their mighty oars.
One after another, day by day, they came rushing up out of the
northern offing, each like a huge hundred-footed dragon, panting and
quivering, as if with terror, at every loud pulse of its oars,
hurling the wild water right and left with the mighty share of its
beak, while from the bows some gorgon or chimaera, elephant or boar,
stared out with brazen eyes toward the coast of Africa, as if it,
too, like the human beings which it carried, was dead to every care
but that of dastard flight. Past they rushed, one after another;
and off the poop some shouting voice chilled all hearts for a
moment, with the fearful news that the Emperor's Neapolitan fleet
was in full chase .... And the soldiers on board that little vessel
looked silently and steadfastly into the silent steadfast face of
the old Prefect, and Victoria saw him shudder, and turn his eyes
away--and stood up among the rough fighting men, like a goddess, and
cried aloud that 'the Lord would protect His own'; and they believed
her, and were still; till many days and many ships were passed, and
the little fishing-craft, outstripped even by the transports and
merchantmen, as it strained and crawled along before its single
square-sail, was left alone upon the sea.

And where was Raphael Aben-Ezra?

He was sitting, with Bran's head between his knees, at the door of a
temporary awning in the vessel's stern, which shielded the wounded
men from sun and spray; and as he sat he could hear from within the
tent the gentle voices of Victoria and her brother, as they tended
the sick like ministering angels, or read to them words of divine
hope and comfort-in which his homeless heart felt that he had no
share....

'As I live, I would change places now with any one of those poor
mangled ruffians to have that voice speaking such words to me....and
to believe them.' .... And he went on perusing the manuscript which
he held in his hand.
...............

'Well!' he sighed to himself after a while 'at least it is the most
complimentary, not to say hopeful, view of our destinies with which
I have met since I threw away my curse's belief that the seed of
David was fated to conquer the whole earth, and set up a second
Roman Empire at Jerusalem, only worse than the present one, in that
the devils of superstition and bigotry would be added to those of
tyranny and rapine.'

A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice asked' 'And what may
this so hopeful view be?'

'Ah! my dear General!' said Raphael, looking up. 'I have a poor bill
of fare whereon to exercise my culinary powers this morning. Had it
not been for that shark who was so luckily deluded last night, I
should have been reduced to the necessity of stewing my friend the
fat decurion's big boots.'

'They would have been savoury enough, I will warrant, after they had
passed under your magical hand.'

'It is a comfort, certainly, to find that after all one did learn
something useful in Alexandria! So I will even go forward at once,
and employ my artistic skill.'

'Tell me first what it was about which I heard you just now
soliloquising, as so hopeful a view of some matter or other?'

'Honestly--if you will neither betray me to your son and daughter,
nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself--it was Paul
of Tarsus's notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked
nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!' And
he held up a manuscript of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

'It is execrable Greek. But it is sound philosophy, I cannot deny.
He knows Plato better than all the ladies and gentlemen in
Alexandria put together, if my opinion on the point be worth
having.'

'I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that point, sir. He may or
may not know Plato; but I am right sure that he knows God.'

'Not too fast,' said Raphael with a smile. 'You do not know,
perhaps, that I have spent the last ten years of my life among men
who professed the same knowledge?'

'Augustine, too, spent the best ten years of his life among such;
and yet he is now combating the very errors which he once taught.'

'Having found, he fancies, something better!'

'Having found it, most truly. But you must talk to him yourself,
and argue the matter over, with one who can argue. To me such
questions are an unknown land.'

'Well .... Perhaps I may be tempted to do even that. At least a
thoroughly converted philosopher--for poor dear Synesius is half
heathen still, I often fancy, and hankers after the wisdom of the
Egyptian--will be a curious sight; and to talk with so famous and so
learned a man would always be a pleasure; but to argue with him, or
any other human being, none whatsoever.'

'Why, then?'

'My dear sir, I am sick of syllogisms, and probabilities, and pros
and contras. What do I care if, on weighing both sides, the
nineteen pounds weight of questionable arguments against, are
overbalanced by the twenty pounds weight of equally questionable
arguments for? Do you not see that my belief of the victorious
proposition will be proportioned to the one over-balancing pound
only, while the whole other nineteen will go for nothing?'

'I really do not.'

'Happy are you, then. I do, from many a sad experience. No, my
worthy sir. I want a faith past arguments; one which, whether I can
prove it or not to the satisfaction of the lawyers, I believe to my
own satisfaction, and act on it as undoubtingly and unreasoningly as
I do upon my own newly-rediscovered personal identity. I don't want
to possess a faith. I want a faith which will possess me. And if I
ever arrived at such a one, believe me, it would be by some such
practical demonstration as this very tent has given me.'

'This tent?'

'Yes, sir, this tent; within which I have seen you and your children
lead a life of deeds as new to me the Jew, as they would be to
Hypatia the Gentile. I have watched you for many a day, and not in
vain. When I saw you, an experienced officer, encumber your flight
with wounded men, I was only surprised. But since I have seen you
and your daughter, and, strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades
of a son, starving yourselves to feed those poor ruffians--
performing for them, day and night, the offices of menial slaves--
comforting them, as no man ever comforted me--blaming no one but
yourselves, caring for every one but yourselves, sacrificing nothing
but yourselves; and all this without hope of fame or reward, or
dream of appeasing the wrath of any god or goddess, but simply
because you thought it right .... When I saw that, sir, and more
which I have seen; and when, reading in this book here, I found most
unexpectedly those very grand moral rules which you were practising,
seeming to spring unconsciously, as natural results, from the great
thoughts, true or false, which had preceded them; then, sir, I began
to suspect that the creed which could produce such deeds as I have
watched within the last few days, might have on its side not merely
a slight preponderance of probabilities, but what the Jews used once
to call, when we believed in it--or in anything--the mighty power of
God.'

And as he spoke, he looked into the Prefect's face with the look of
a man wrestling in some deadly struggle; so intense and terrible was
the earnestness of his eye, that even the old soldier shrank before
it.

'And therefore,' he went on, 'therefore, sir, beware of your own
actions, and of your children's. If, by any folly or baseness, such
as I have seen in every human being whom I ever met as yet upon this
accursed stage of fools, you shall crush my new-budding hope that
there is something somewhere which will make me what I know that I
ought to be, and can be--If you shall crush that, I say, by any
misdoing of yours, you had better have been the murderer of my
firstborn; with such a hate--a hate which Jews alone can feel--will
I hate you and yours.'

'God help us and strengthen us!'said the old warrior in a tone of
noble humility.

'And now,' said Raphael, glad to change the subject, after this
unwonted outburst, 'we must once more seriously consider whether it
is wise to hold on our present course. If you return to Carthage,
or to Hippo--'

'I shall be beheaded.'

'Most assuredly. And how much soever you may consider such an event
a gain to yourself, yet for the sake of your son and your daughter--
'

'My dear sir,' interrupted the Prefect, 'you mean kindly. But do
not, do not tempt me. By the Count's side I have fought for thirty
years, and by his side I will die, as I deserve.'

'Victorius! Victoria!' cried Raphael; 'help me! Your father,' he
went on, as they came out from the tent, 'is still decided on losing
his own head, and throwing away ours, by going to Carthage.'

'For my sake--for our sakes--father!' cried Victoria, clinging to
him.

'And for my sake, also, most excellent sir,' said Raphael, smiling
quietly. 'I have no wish to be so uncourteous as to urge any help
which I may have seemed to afford you. But I hope that you will
recollect that I have a life to lose, and that it is hardly fair of
you to imperil it as you intend to do. If you could help or save
Heraclian, I should be dumb at once. But now, for a mere point of
honour to destroy fifty good soldiers, who know not their right
hands from their left--Shall I ask their opinion?'

'Will you raise a mutiny against me, sir?' asked the old man
sternly.

'Why not mutiny against Philip drunk, in behalf of Philip sober?
But really, I will obey you .... only you must obey us .... What is
Hesiod's definition of the man who will neither counsel himself nor
be counselled by his friends? .... Have you no trusty acquaintances
in Cyrenaica, for instance?'

The Prefect was silent.

'Oh, hear us, my father! Why not go to Euodius? He is your old
comrade--a well-wisher, too, to this .... this expedition .... And
recollect, Augustine must be there now. He was about to sail for
Berenice, in order to consult Synesius and the Pentapolitan bishops,
when we left Carthage.'

And at the name of Augustine the old man paused.

'Augustine will be there; true. And this our friend must meet him.
And thus at least I should have his advice. If he thinks it my duty
to return to Carthage, I can but do so, after all. But the
soldiers!'

'Excellent sir,' said Raphael, 'Synesius and the Pentapolitan
landlords--who can hardly call their lives their own, thanks to the
Moors--will be glad enough to feed and pay them, or any other brave
fellows with arms in their hands, at this moment. And my friend
Victorius, here, will enjoy, I do not doubt, a little wild
campaigning against marauding blackamoors.'

The old man bowed silently. The battle was won.

The young tribune, who had been watching his father's face with the
most intense anxiety caught at the gesture, and hurrying forward,
announced the change of plan to the soldiery. It was greeted with a
shout of joy, and in another five minutes the sails were about, the
rudder shifted, and the ship on her way towards the western point of
Sicily, before a steady north-west breeze.

'Ah!' cried Victoria, delighted. 'And now you will see Augustine!
You must promise me to talk to him!'

'This, at least, I will promise, that whatsoever the great sophist
shall be pleased to say, shall meet with a patient hearing from a
brother sophist. Do not be angry at the term. Recollect that I am
somewhat tired, like my ancestor Solomon, of wisdom and wise men,
having found it only too like madness and folly. And you cannot
surely expect me to believe in man, while I do not yet believe in
God?'

Victoria sighed. 'I will not believe you. Why always pretend to be
worse than you are?'

'That kind souls like you may be spared the pain of finding me worse
than I seem .... There, let us say no more; except that I heartily
wish that you would hate me!'

'Shall I try?'

'That must be my work, I fear, not yours. However, I shall give you
good cause enough before long' doubt it not.'

Victoria sighed again, and retired into the tent to nurse the sick.

'And now, sir,' said the Prefect, turning to Raphael and his son;
'do not mistake me. I may have been weak, as worn-out and hopeless
men are wont to be; but do not think of me as one who has yielded to
adversity in fear for his own safety. As God hears me, I desire
nothing better than to die; and I only turn out of my course on the
understanding that if Augustine so advise, my children hold me free
to return to Carthage and meet my fate. All I pray for is, that my
life may be spared until I can place my dear child in the safe
shelter of a nunnery.'

'A nunnery?'

'Yes, indeed; I have intended ever since her birth to dedicate her
to the service of God. And in such times as these, what better lot
for a defenceless girl?'

'Pardon me!' said Raphael; 'but I am too dull to comprehend what
benefit or pleasure your Deity will derive from the celibacy of your
daughter .... Except, indeed, on one supposition, which, as I have
some faint remnants of reverence and decency reawakening in me just
now, I must leave to be uttered only by the pure lips of sexless
priests.'

'You forget, sir, that you are speaking to a Christian.'

'I assure you, no! I had certainly been forgetting it till the last
two minutes, in your very pleasant and rational society. There is
no
danger henceforth of my making so silly a mistake.'

'Sir!' said the Prefect, reddening at the undisguised contempt of
Raphael's manner .... , 'When you know a little more of St. Paul's
Epistles, you will cease to insult the opinions and feelings of
those who obey them, by sacrificing their most precious treasures to
God.'

'Oh, it is Paul of Tarsus, then, who gives you the advice! I thank
you for informing me of the fact; for it will save me the trouble of
any future study of his works. Allow me, therefore, to return by
your hands this manuscript of his with many thanks from me to that
daughter of yours, by whose perpetual imprisonment you intend to
give pleasure to your Deity. Henceforth the less communication
which passes between me and any member of your family, the better.'
And he turned away.

'But, my dear sir!' said the honest soldier, really chagrined, 'you
must not!--we owe you too much, and love you too well, to part thus
for the caprice of a moment. If any word of mine has offended you--
forget it, and forgive me, I beseech you!' and he caught both
Raphael's hands in his own.

'My very dear sir,' answered the Jew quietly; 'let me ask the same
forgiveness of you; and believe me, for the sake of past pleasant
passages, I shall not forget my promise about the mortgage ....
But-here we must part. To tell you the truth, I half an hour ago
was fearfully near becoming neither more nor less than a Christian.
I had actually deluded myself into the fancy that the Deity of the
Galileans might be, after all, the God of our old Hebrew
forefathers--of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and David, and of the rest
who believed that children and the fruit of the womb were an
heritage and gift which cometh of the Lord--and that Paul was right
--actually right--in his theory that the church was the development
and fulfilment of our old national polity .... I must thank you for
opening my eyes to a mistake which, had I not been besotted for the
moment, every monk and nun would have contradicted by the mere fact
of their existence, and reserve my nascent faith for some Deity who
takes no delight in seeing his creature: stultify the primary laws
of their being. Farewell!'

And while the Prefect stood petrified with astonishment, he retired
to the further extremity of the deck, muttering to himself--

'Did I not know all along that this gleam was too sudden and too
bright to last? Did I not know that he, too, would prove himself
like all the rest--an ass? .... Fool! to have looked for common
sense on such an earth as this! .... Back to chaos again, Raphael
Aben-Ezra, and spin ropes of sand to the end of the farce!'

And mixing with the soldiers, he exchanged no word with the Prefect
and his children, till they reached the port of Berenice; and then
putting the necklace into Victoria's hands, vanished among the
crowds upon the quay, no one knew whither.



CHAPTER XVIII: THE PREFECT TESTED


WHEN we lost sight of Philammon, his destiny had hurled him once
more among his old friends the Goths, in search of two important
elements of human comfort, freedom and a sister. The former be
found at once, in a large hall where sundry Goths were lounging and
toping, into the nearest corner of which he shrank, and stood, his
late terror and rage forgotten altogether in the one new and
absorbing thought--His sister might be in that house! .... and
yielding to so sweet a dream, he began fancying to himself which of
all those gay maidens she might be who had become in one moment more
dear, more great to him, than all things else in heaven or earth.
That fair-haired, rounded Italian? That fierce, luscious, aquiline-
faced Jewess? That delicate, swart, sidelong-eyed Copt? No. She
was Athenian, like himself. That tall, lazy Greek girl, then, from
beneath whose sleepy lids flashed, once an hour, sudden lightnings,
revealing depths of thought and feeling uncultivated, perhaps even
unsuspected, by their possessor. Her? Or that, her seeming
sister? Or the next? .... Or--Was it Pelagia herself, most
beautiful and most sinful of them all? Fearful thought! He blushed
scarlet at the bare imagination: yet why, in his secret heart, was
that the most pleasant hypothesis of them all? And suddenly flashed
across him that observation of one of the girls on board the boat,
on his likeness to Pelagia. Strange, that he had never recollected
it before! It must be so! and yet on what a slender thread, woven
of scattered hints and surmises, did that 'must' depend! He would
be sane! he would wait; he would have patience. Patience, with a
sister yet unfound, perhaps perishing? Impossible!

Suddenly the train of his thoughts was changed perforce:--

'Come! come and see! There's a fight in the streets,' called one of
the damsels down the stairs, at the highest pitch of her voice.

'I shan't go,' yawned a huge fellow, who was lying on his back on a
sofa.

'Oh come up, my hero,' said one of the girls. 'Such a charming riot,
and the Prefect himself in the middle of it! We have not had such a
one in the street this month.'

'The princes won't let me knock any of these donkey-riders on the
head, and seeing other people do it only makes me envious. Give me
the wine-jug--curse the girl! she has run upstairs!'

The shouting and trampling came nearer; and in another minute Wulf
came rapidly downstairs, through the hall into the harem-court, and
into the presence of the Amal.

'Prince--here is a chance for us. These rascally Greeks are
murdering their Prefect under our very windows.'

'The lying cur! Serve him right for cheating us. He has plenty of
guards. Why can't the fool take care of himself?'

'They have all run away, and I saw some of them hiding among the
mob. As I live, the man will be killed in five minutes more.'

'Why not?'

'Why should he, when we can save him and win his favour for ever?
The men's fingers are itching far a fight; it's a bad plan not to
give hounds blood now and then, or they lose the knack of hunting.'

'Well, it wouldn't take five minutes.'

'And heroes should show that they can forgive when an enemy is in
distress.'

'Very true! Like an Amal too!' And the Amal sprang up and shouted
to his men to follow him.

'Good-bye, my pretty one. Why, Wulf,' cried he, as he burst out
into the court, 'here's our monk again! By Odin, you're welcome, my
handsome boy! come along and fight too, young fellow; what were
those arms given you for?'

'He is my man,' said Wulf, laying his hand on Philammon's shoulder,
'and blood he shall taste.' And out the three hurried, Philammon,
in his present reckless mood, ready for anything.

'Bring your whips. Never mind swords. Those rascals are not worth
it,' shouted the Amal, as he hurried down the passage brandishing
his heavy thong, some ten feet in length, threw the gate open, and
the next moment recoiled from a dense crush of people who surged
in--and surged out again as rapidly as the Goth, with the combined
force of his weight and arm, hewed his way straight through them,
felling a wretch at every blow, and followed up by his terrible
companions.

They were but just in time. The four white blood-horses were
plunging and rolling over each other, and Orestes reeling in his
chariot, with a stream of blood running down his face, and the hands
of twenty wild monks clutching at him. 'Monks again!' thought
Philammon and as he saw among them more than one hateful face, which
he recollected in Cyril's courtyard on that fatal night, a flush of
fierce revenge ran through him.

'Mercy!' shrieked the miserable Prefect--'I am a Christian! I swear
that I am a Christian! the Bishop Atticus baptized me at
Constantinople!'

'Down with the butcher! down with the heathen tyrant, who refuses
the adjuration on the Gospels rather than be reconciled to the
patriarch! Tear him out of the chariot!' yelled the monks.

The craven hound!' said the Amal, stopping short, 'I won't help
him!' But in an instant Wulf rushed forward, and struck right and
left; the monks recoiled, and Philammon, burning to prevent so
shameful a scandal to the faith to which he still clung
convulsively, sprang into the chariot and caught Orestes in his
arms.

'You are safe, my lord; don't struggle,' whispered he, while the
monks flew on him. A stone or two struck him, but they only
quickened his determination, and in another moment the whistling of
the whips round his head, and the yell and backward rush of the
monks, told him that he was safe. He carried his burden safely
within the doorway of Pelagia's house, into the crowd of peeping and
shrieking damsels, where twenty pairs of the prettiest hands in
Alexandria seized on Orestes, and drew him into the court.

'Like a second Hylas, carried off by the nymphs!' simpered he, as he
vanished into the harem, to reappear in five minutes, his head bound
rip with silk handkerchiefs, and with as much of his usual impudence
as he could muster.