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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




'It may really be so. They say that the Argonauts returned back
through this country from the Southern Ocean, which must have been
therefore far nearer us than it is now, and that they carried their
mystic vessel over these very hills to the Syrtis. However, we have
forgotten all about the sea thoroughly enough since that time. I
well remember my first astonishment at the side of a galley in
Alexandria, and the roar of laughter with which my fellow-students
greeted my not unreasonable remark, that it looked very like a
centipede.'

'And do you recollect, too, the argument which I had once with your
steward about the pickled fish which I brought you from Egypt; and
the way in which, when the jar was opened, the servants shrieked and
ran right and left, declaring that the fish-bones were the spines of
poisonous serpents?'

'The old fellow is as obstinate as ever, I assure you, in his
disbelief in salt water. He torments me continually by asking me to
tell him the story of my shipwreck, and does not believe me after
all, though he has heard it a dozen times. "Sir," he said to me
solemnly, after you were gone, "will that strange gentleman pretend
to persuade me that anything eatable can come out of his great pond
there at Alexandria, when every one can see that the best fountain
in the country never breeds anything but frogs and leeches?"'

As he spoke they left the last field behind them, and entered upon a
vast sheet of breezy down, speckled with shrubs and copse, and split
here and there by rocky glens ending in fertile valleys once thick
with farms and homesteads.

'Here,' cried Synesius, 'are our hunting-grounds. And now for one
hour's forgetfulness, and the joys of the noble art. What could old
Homer have been thinking of when he forgot to number it among the
pursuits which are glorious to heroes, and make man illustrious, and
yet could laud in those very words the forum?'

'The forum?' said Raphael. 'I never saw it yet make men anything but
rascals.'

'Brazen-faced rascals, my friend. I detest the whole breed of
lawyers, and never meet one without turning him into ridicule;
effeminate pettifoggers, who shudder at the very sight of roast
venison, when they think of the dangers by which it has been
procured. But it is a cowardly age, my friend--a cowardly age. Let
us forget it, and ourselves.'

'And even philosophy and Hypatia?' said Raphael archly.

'I have done with philosophy. To fight like a Heracleid, and to die
like a bishop, is all I have left--except Hypatia, the perfect, the
wise! I tell you, friend, it is a comfort to me, even in my deepest
misery, to recollect that the corrupt world yet holds one being so
divine--'

And he was running on in one of his high-flown laudations of his
idol, when Raphael checked him.

'I fear our common sympathy on that subject is rather weakened. I
have begun to doubt her lately nearly as much as I doubt
philosophy.'

'Not her virtue?

'No, friend; nor her beauty, nor her wisdom; simply her power of
making me a better man. A selfish criterion, you will say. Be it
so .... What a noble horse that is of yours!'

'He has been--he has been; but worn out now, like his master and his
master's fortunes....'

'Not so, certainly, the colt on which you have done me the honour to
mount me.'

'Ah, my poor boy's pet! .... You are the first person who has
crossed him since--'

'Is he of your own breeding?' asked Raphael, trying to turn the
conversation.

'A cross between that white Nisaean which you sent me, and one of my
own mares.'

'Not a bad cross; though he keeps a little of the bull head and
greyhound flank of your Africans.'

'So much the better, friend. Give me bone--bone and endurance for
this rough down country. Your delicate Nisaeans are all very well
for a few minutes over those flat sands of Egypt: but here you need
a horse who will go forty miles a day over rough and smooth, and
dine thankfully off thistles at night. Aha, poor little man!'--as a
jerboa sprang up from a tuft of bushes at his feet--'I fear you must
help to fill our soup-kettle in these hard times.'

And with a dexterous sweep of his long whip, the worthy bishop
entangled the jerboas long legs, whisked him up to his saddle-bow,
and delivered him to the groom and the game-bag.

'Kill him at once. Don't let him squeak, boy!--he cries too like a
child....'

'Poor little wretch!' said Raphael. 'What more right, now, have we
to eat him than he to eat us?'

'Eh? If he can eat us, let him try. How long have you joined the
Manichees?'

'Have no fears on that score. But, as I told you, since my
wonderful conversion by Bran, the dog, I have begun to hold dumb
animals in respect, as probably quite as good as myself.'

'Then you need a further conversion, friend Raphael, and to learn
what is the dignity of man; and when that arrives, you will learn to
believe, with me, that the life of every beast upon the face of the
earth would be a cheap price to pay in exchange for the life of the
meanest human being.'

'Yes, if they be required for food: but really, to kill them for our
amusement!'

'Friend, when I was still a heathen, I recollect well how I used to
haggle at that story of the cursing of the fig-tree; but when I
learnt to know what man was, and that I had been all my life
mistaking for a part of nature that race which was originally, and
can be again, made in the likeness of God, then I began to see that
it were well if every fig-tree upon earth were cursed, if the spirit
of one man could be taught thereby a single lesson. And so I speak
of these, my darling field-sports, on which I have not been ashamed,
as you know, to write a book.'

'And a very charming one: yet you were still a pagan, recollect,
when you wrote it.'

'I was; and then I followed the chase by mere nature and
inclination. But now I know I have a right to follow it, because it
gives me endurance, promptness, courage, self-control, as well as
health and cheerfulness: and therefore--Ah! a fresh ostrich-track!'

And stopping short, Synesius began pricking slowly up the hillside.

'Back!' whispered he, at last. 'Quietly and silently. Lie down on
your horse's neck, as I do, or the long-necked rogues may see you.
They must be close to us over the brow. I know that favourite
grassy slope of old. Round under yon hill, or they will get wind of
us, and then farewell to them!'

And Synesius and his groom cantered on, hanging each to their
horses' necks by an arm and a leg, in a way which Raphael
endeavoured in vain to imitate.

Two or three minutes more of breathless silence brought them to the
edge of the hill, where Synesius halted, peered down a moment, and
then turned to Raphael, his face and limbs quivering with delight,
as he held up two fingers, to denote the number of the birds.

'Out of arrow-range! Slip the dogs, Syphax!'

And in another minute Raphael found himself galloping headlong down
the hill, while two magnificent ostriches, their outspread plumes
waving in the bright breeze, their necks stooped almost to the
ground, and their long legs flashing out behind them, were sweeping
away before the greyhounds at a pace which no mortal horse could
have held for ten minutes.

'Baby that I am still!' cried Synesius, tears of excitement
glittering in his eyes; .... while Raphael gave himself up to the
joy, and forgot even Victoria, in the breathless rush over rock and
bush, sandhill and watercourse.

'Take care of that dry torrent-bed! Hold up, old horse! This will
not last two minutes more. They cannot hold their pace against this
breeze .... Well tried, good dog, though you did miss him! Ah, that
my boy were here! There--they double. Spread right and left, my
children, and ride at them as they pass!'

And the ostriches, unable, as Synesius said, to keep their pace
against the breeze, turned sharp on their pursuers, and beating the
air with outspread wings, came down the wind again, at a rate even
more wonderful than before.

'Ride at him, Raphael--ride at him, and turn him into those bushes!'
cried Synesius, fitting an arrow to his bow.

Raphael obeyed, and the bird swerved into the low scrub; the well-
trained horse leapt at him like a cat; and Raphael, who dare not
trust his skill in archery, struck with his whip at the long neck as
it struggled past him, and felled the noble quarry to the ground.
He was in the act of springing down to secure his prize, when a
shout from Synesius stopped him.

'Are you mad? He will kick out your heart! Let the dogs hold him!'

'Where is the other?' asked Raphael, panting.

'Where he ought to be. I have not missed a running shot for many a
month.'

'Really, you rival the Emperor Commodus himself.'

'Ah! I tried his fancy of crescent-headed arrows once, and
decapitated an ostrich or two tolerably: but they are only fit for
the amphitheatre: they will not lie safely in the quiver on
horseback, I find. But what is that?' And he pointed to a cloud of
white dust, about a mile down the valley. 'A herd of antelopes? If
so, God is indeed gracious to us! Come down--whatsoever they are,
we have no time to lose.'

And collecting his scattered forces, Synesius pushed on rapidly
towards the object which had attracted his attention.

'Antelopes!' cried one.

'Wild horses!' cried another.

'Tame ones, rather!' cried Synesius, with a gesture of wrath. 'I saw
the flash of arms!'

'The Ausurians!' And a yell of rage rang from the whole troop.

'Will you follow me, children?'

'To death!' shouted they.

'I know it. Oh that I had seven hundred of you, as Abraham had! We
would see then whether these scoundrels did not share, within a
week, the fate of Chedorlaomer's.'

'Happy man, who can actually trust your own slaves!' said Raphael,
as the party galloped on, tightening their girdles and getting ready
their weapons.

'Slaves? If the law gives me the power of selling one or two of
them who are not yet wise enough to be trusted to take care of
themselves, it is a fact which both I and they have long forgotten.
Their fathers grew gray at my father's table, and God grant that
they may grow gray at mine! We eat together, work together, hunt
together, fight together, jest together, and weep together. God
help us all! for we have but one common weal. Now--do you make out
the enemy, boys?'

'Ausurians, your Holiness. The same party who tried Myrsinitis last
week. I know them by the helmets which they took from the Markmen.'

'And with whom are they fighting?'

No one could see. Fighting they certainly were: but their victims
were beyond them, and the party galloped on.

'That was a smart business at Myrsinitis. The Ausurians appeared
while the people were at morning prayers. The soldiers, of course,
ran for their lives, and hid in the caverns, leaving the matter to
the priests.'

'If they were of your presbytery, I doubt not they proved themselves
worthy of their diocesan.'

'Ah, if all my priests were but like them! or my people either!'
said Synesius, chatting quietly in full gallop, like a true son of
the saddle. 'They offered up prayers for victory, sallied out at the
head of the peasants, and met the Moors in a narrow pass. There
their hearts failed them a little. Faustus, the deacon, makes them a
speech; charges the leader of the robbers, like young David, with a
stone, beats his brains out therewith, strips him in true Homeric
fashion, and routs the Ausurians with their leader's sword; returns
and erects a trophy in due classic form, and saves the whole
valley.'

'You should make him archdeacon.'

'I would send him and his townsfolk round the province, if I could,
crowned with laurel, and proclaim before them at every market-place,
"These are men of God." With whom can those Ausurians be dealing?
Peasants would have been all killed long ago, and soldiers would
have run away long ago. It is truly a portent in this country to
see a fight last ten minutes. Who can they be? I see them now, and
hewing away like men too. They are all on foot but two; and we have
not a cohort of infantry left for many a mile round.'

'I know who they are!' cried Raphael, suddenly striking spurs into
his horse. 'I will swear to that armour among a thousand. And there
is a litter in the midst of them. On! and fight, men, if you ever
fought in your lives!'

'Softly!' cried Synesius. 'Trust an old soldier, and perhaps--alas!
that he should have to say it--the best left in this wretched
country. Round by the hollow, and take the barbarians suddenly in
flank. They will not see us then till we are within twenty paces of
them. Aha! you have a thing or two to learn yet, Aben-Ezra.'

And chuckling at the prospect of action, the gallant bishop wheeled
his little troop and in five minutes more dashed out of the copse
with a shout and a flight of arrows, and rushed into the thickest of
the fight.

One cavalry skirmish must be very like another. A crash of horses,
a flashing of sword-blades, five minutes of blind confusion, and
then those who have not been knocked out of their saddles by their
neighbours' knees, and have not cut off their own horses' heads
instead of their enemies', find themselves, they know not how,
either running away or being run away from--not one blow in ten
having taken effect on either side. And even so Raphael, having
made vain attempts to cut down several Moors, found himself standing
on his head in an altogether undignified posture, among innumerable
horses' legs, in all possible frantic motions. To avoid one was to
get in the way of another; so he philosophically sat still,
speculating on the sensation of having his brains kicked out, till
the cloud of legs vanished, and he found himself kneeling abjectly
opposite the nose of a mule, on whose back sat, utterly unmoved, a
tall and reverend man, in episcopal costume. The stranger, instead
of bursting out laughing, as Raphael did, solemnly lifted his hand,
and gave him his blessing. The Jew sprang to his feet, heedless of
all such courtesies, and, looking round, saw the Ausurians galloping
off up the hill in scattered groups, and Synesius standing close by
him, wiping a bloody sword.

'Is the litter safe'?' were his first words.

'Safe; and so are all. I gave you up for killed when I saw you run
through with that lance.

'Run through? I am as sound in the hide as a crocodile, said
Raphael, laughing.

'Probably the fellow took the butt instead of the point, in his
hurry. So goes a cavalry scuffle. I saw you hit three or four
fellows running with the flat of your sword.'

Ah, that explains,' said Raphael, why, I thought myself once the
best swordsman on the Armenian frontier....'

'I suspect that you were thinking of some one besides the Moors,'
said Synesius, archly pointing to the litter; and Raphael, for the
first time for many a year, blushed like a boy of fifteen, and then
turned haughtily away, and remounted his horse, saying, 'Clumsy fool
that I was!'

'Thank God rather that you have been kept from the shedding of
blood,' said the stranger bishop, in a soft, deliberate voice, with
a peculiarly clear and delicate enunciation. 'If God have given us
the victory, why grudge His having spared any other of His creatures
besides ourselves?'

'Because there are so many the more of them left to ravish, burn,
and slay,' answered Synesius. 'Nevertheless, I am not going to argue
with Augustine.'

Augustine! Raphael looked intently at the man, a tall, delicate-
featured personage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, scarred like
his cheeks with the deep furrows of many a doubt and woe. Resolve,
gentle but unbending, was expressed in his thin close-set lips and
his clear quiet eye; but the calm of his mighty countenance was the
calm of a worn-out volcano, over which centuries must pass before
the earthquake-rents be filled with kindly soil, and the cinder-
slopes grow gay with grass and flowers. The Jew's thoughts,
however, were soon turned into another channel by the hearty
embraces of Majoricus and his son.

'We have caught you again, you truant!' said the young Tribune; 'you
could not escape us, you see, after all.'

'Rather,' said the father, 'we owe him a second debt of gratitude
for a second deliverance. We were right hard bested when you rode
up.'

'Oh, he brings nothing but good with him whenever he appears; and
then he pretends to be a bird of ill-omen,' said the light-hearted
Tribune, putting his armour to rights.

Raphael was in his secret heart not sorry to find that his old
friends bore him no grudge for his caprice; but all he answered was-
-

'Pray thank any one but me; I have, as usual, proved myself a fool.
But what brings you here, like Gods e Machina? It is contrary to
all probabilities. One would not admit so astounding an incident,
even in the modern drama.'

'Contrary to none whatsoever, my friend. We found Augustine at
Berenice, in act to set off to Synesius: we--one of us, that is--
were certain that you would be found with him; and we decided on
acting as Augustine's guard, for none of the dastard garrison dare
stir out.'

'One of us,' thought Raphael,--'which one?' And, conquering his
pride, he asked, as carelessly as he could, for Victoria.

'She is there in the litter, poor child!' said her father in a
serious tone.

'Surely not ill?'

'Alas! either the overwrought excitement of months of heroism broke
down when she found us safe at last' or some stroke from God-- ....
Who can tell what I may not have deserved?--But she has been utterly
prostrate in body and mind, ever since we parted from you at
Berenice.'

The blunt soldier little guessed the meaning of his own words. But
Raphael, as he heard, felt a pang shoot through his heart, too keen
for him to discern whether it sprang from joy or from despair.

'Come,' cried the cheerful voice of Synesius, 'come, Aben-Ezra; you
have knelt for Augustine's blessing already, and now you must enter
into the fruition of it. Come, you two philosophers must know each
other. Most holy, I entreat you to preach to this friend of mine,
at once the wisest and the foolishest of men.'

'Only the latter,' said Raphael; 'but open to any speech of
Augustine's, at least when we are safe home, and game enough for
Synesius's new guests killed.'

And turning away, he rode silent and sullen by the side of his
companions, who began at once to consult together as to the plans of
Majoricus and his soldiers.

In spite of himself, Raphael soon became interested in Augustine's
conversation. He entered into the subject of Cyrenian misrule and
ruin as heartily and shrewdly as any man of the world; and when all
the rest were at a loss, the prompt practical hint which cleared up
the difficulty was certain to come from him. It was by his advice
that Majoricus had brought his soldiery hither; it was his proposal
that they should be employed for a fixed period in defending these
remote southern boundaries of the province; he checked the
impetuosity of Synesius, cheered the despair of Majoricus, appealed
to the honour and the Christianity of the soldiers, and seemed to
have a word--and that the right word--for every man; and after a
while, Aben-Ezra quite forgot the stiffness and deliberation of his
manner, and the quaint use of Scripture texts in far-fetched
illustrations of every opinion which he propounded. It had seemed
at first a mere affectation; but the arguments which it was employed
to enforce were in themselves so moderate and so rational that
Raphael began to feel, little by little, that his apparent pedantry
was only the result of a wish to refer every matter, even the most
vulgar, to some deep and divine rule of right and wrong.

'But you forget all this while, my friends,' said Majoricus at last,
'the danger which you incur by sheltering proclaimed rebels.'

'The King of kings has forgiven your rebellion, in that while He has
punished you by the loss of your lands and honours, He has given you
your life for a prey in this city of refuge. It remains for you to
bring forth worthy fruits of penitence; of which I know none better
than those which John the Baptist commanded to the soldiery of old,
"Do no violence to any man, and be content with your wages."'

'As for rebels and rebellion,' said Synesius, 'they are matters
unknown among as; for where there is no king there can be no
rebellion. Whosoever will help us against Ausurians is loyal in our
eyes. And as for our political creed, it is simple enough--namely,
that the emperor never dies, and that his name is Agamemnon, who
fought at Troy; which any of my grooms will prove to you
syllogistically enough to satisfy Augustine himself. As thus--

'Agamemnon was the greatest and the best of kings.

'The emperor is the greatest and the best of kings.

'Therefore, Agamemnon is the emperor, and conversely.'

'It had been well,' said Augustine, with a grave smile, 'if some of
our friends had held the same doctrine, even at the expense of their
logic.'

'Or if,' answered Synesius, 'they believed with us, that the
emperor's chamberlain is a clever old man, with a bald head like my
own, Ulysses by name, who was rewarded with the prefecture of all
lands north of the Mediterranean, for putting out the Cyclop's eye
two years ago. However, enough of this. But you see, you are not
in any extreme danger of informers and intriguers .... The real
difficulty is, how you will be able to obey Augustine, by being
content with your wages. For,' lowering his voice, 'you will get
literally none.'

'It will be as much as we deserve,' said the young Tribune: 'but my
fellows have a trick of eating--'

'They are welcome, then, to all deer and ostriches which they can
catch. But I am not only penniless, but reduced myself to live,
like the Laestrygons, on meat and nothing else; all crops and stocks
for miles round being either burnt or carried off.'

'E nihilo nihil!' said Augustine, having nothing else to say. But
here Raphael woke up on a sudden with--

'Did the Pentapolitan wheat-ships go to Rome?'

'No; Orestes stopped them when he stopped the Alexandrian convoy.'

'Then the Jews have the wheat, trust them for it; and what they have
I have. There are certain moneys of mine lying at interest in the
seaports, which will set that matter to rights for a month or two.
Do you find an escort to-morrow, and I will find wheat.'

'But; most generous of friends, I can neither repay you interest nor
principal.'

'Be it so. I have spent so much money during the last thirty years
in doing nothing but evil, that it is hard if I may not at last
spend a little in doing good.--Unless his Holiness of Hippo thinks
it wrong for you to accept the goodwill of an infidel?'

'Which of these three,' said Augustine, 'was neighbour to him who
fell among thieves, but he who had mercy on him? Verily, my friend
Raphael Aben-Ezra, thou art not far from the kingdom of God.'

'Of which God?' asked Raphael slyly.

'Of the God of thy forefather Abraham, whom thou shalt hear us
worship this evening, if He will. Synesius, have you a church
wherein I can perform the evening service, and give a word of
exhortation to these my children?'

Synesius sighed. 'There is a ruin, which was last month a church.'

'And is one still. Man did not place there the presence of God, and
man cannot expel it.'

And so, sending out hunting-parties right and left in chase of
everything which had animal life, and picking up before nightfall a
tolerably abundant supply of game, they went homewards, where
Victoria was entrusted to the care of Synesius's old stewardess, and
the soldiery were marched straight into the church; while Synesius's
servants, to whom the Latin service would have been unintelligible,
busied themselves in cooking the still warm game.

Strangely enough it sounded to Raphael that evening to hear, among
those smoke-grimed pillars and fallen rafters, the grand old Hebrew
psalms of his nation ring aloft, to the very chants, too, which were
said by the rabbi to have been used in the Temple-worship of
Jerusalem .... They, and the invocations, thanksgivings, blessings,
the very outward ceremonial itself, were all Hebraic, redolent of
the thoughts, the words of his own ancestors. That lesson from the
book of Proverbs, which Augustine's deacon was reading in Latin--the
blood of the man who wrote these words was flowing in Aben-Ezra's
veins .... Was it a mistake, an hypocrisy? or were they indeed
worshipping, as they fancied, the Ancient One who spoke face to face
with his forefathers, the Archetype of man, the friend of Abraham
and of Israel?

And now the sermon began; and as Augustine stood for a moment in
prayer in front of the ruined altar, every furrow in his worn face
lit up by a ray of moonlight which streamed in through the broken
roof, Raphael waited impatiently for his speech. What would he, the
refined dialectician, the ancient teacher of heathen rhetoric, the
courtly and learned student, the ascetic celibate and theosopher,
have to say to those coarse war-worn soldiers, Thracians and
Markmen, Gauls and Belgians, who sat watching there, with those sad
earnest faces? What one thought or feeling in common could there be
between Augustine and his congregation?