Frank Gee Patchin - "The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks"

Charles de Bernard - "Gerfaut, v1"

Mary Wollstonecraft - "Letters on Sweden, Norway, and Denmark"

Wilkie Collins - "Antonina"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
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.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
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




'Who are they?' asked Philammon in a whisper.

'The soldiers--the Roman soldiers,' answered a whisperer to him.

Philammon, who was among the leaders, had recoiled too--he hardly
knew why--at that stern apparition. His next instinct was to press
forward as close as he dared .... And these were Roman soldiers!--
the conquerors of the world!--the men whose name had thrilled him
from his childhood with vague awe and admiration, dimly heard of up
there in the lonely Laura .... Roman soldiers! And here he was face
to face with them at last!

His curiosity received a sudden check, however, as he found his arm
seized by an officer, as he took him to be, from the gold ornaments
on his helmet and cuirass, who lifted his vine-stock threateningly
over the young monk's head, and demanded--

'What's all this about? Why are you not quietly in your beds, you
Alexandrian rascals?'

'Alexander's church is on fire,' answered Philammon, thinking the
shortest answer the wisest.

'So much the better.'

'And the Jews are murdering the Christians.'

'Fight it out, then. Turn in, men, it's only a riot.'

And the steel-clad apparition suddenly flashed round, and vanished,
trampling and jingling, into the dark jaws of the guardhouse-gate,
while the stream, its temporary barrier removed, rushed on wilder
than ever.

Philammon hurried on too with them, not without a strange feeling of
disappointment. 'Only a riot!' Peter was chuckling to his brothers
over their cleverness in 'having kept the prisoners in the middle,
and stopped the rascals' mouths till they were past the guard-
house.' 'A fine thing to boast of,' thought Philammon, 'in the face
of the men who make and unmake kings and Caesars!' 'Only a riot!'
He, and the corps of district visitors--whom he fancied the most
august body on earth--and Alexander's church, Christians murdered by
Jews, persecution of the Catholic faith, and all the rest of it, was
simply, then, not worth the notice of those forty men, alone and
secure in the sense of power and discipline, among tens of thousands
.... He hated them, those soldiers. Was it because they were
indifferent to the cause of which he was inclined to think himself a
not unimportant member, on the strength of his late Samsonic defeat
of Jewish persecutors? At least, he obeyed the little porter's
advice, and 'felt very small indeed.'

And he felt smaller still, being young and alive to ridicule, when,
at some sudden ebb or flow, wave or wavelet of the Babel sea, which
weltered up and down every street, a shrill female voice informed
them from an upper window, that Alexander's church was not on fire
at all; that she had gone to the top of the house, as they might
have gone, if they had not been fools, etc. etc.; and that it
'looked as safe and as ugly as ever'; wherewith a brickbat or two
having been sent up in answer, she shut the blinds, leaving them to
halt, inquire, discover gradually and piecemeal, after the method of
mobs, they had been following the nature of mobs; that no one had
seen the church on fire, or seen any one else who had seen the same,
or even seen any light in the sky in any quarter, or knew who raised
the cry; or--or--in short, Alexander's church was two miles off; if
it was on fire, it was either burnt down or saved by this time; if
not, the night-air was, to say the least, chilly: and, whether it
was or not, there were ambuscades of Jews--Satan only knew how
strong--in every street between them and it .... Might it not be
better to secure their two prisoners, and then ask for further
orders from the archbishop? Wherewith, after the manner of mobs,
they melted off the way they came, by twos and threes, till those of
a contrary opinion began to find themselves left alone, and having a
strong dislike to Jewish daggers, were fain to follow the stream.

With a panic or two, a cry of 'The Jews are on us!' and a general
rush in every direction (in which one or two, seeking shelter from
the awful nothing in neighbouring houses, were handed over to the
watch as burglars, and sent to the quarries accordingly), they
reached the Serapeium, and there found, of course, a counter-mob
collected to inform them that they had been taken in--that
Alexander's church had never been on fire at all--that the Jews had
murdered a thousand Christians at least, though three dead bodies,
including the poor priest who lay in the house within, were all of
the thousand who had yet been seen--and that the whole Jews' quarter
was marching upon them. At which news it was considered advisable
to retreat into the archbishop's house as quickly as possible,
barricade the doors, and prepare for a siege--a work at which
Philammon performed prodigies, tearing woodwork from the rooms, and
stones from the parapets, before it struck some of the more sober-
minded that it was as well to wait for some more decided
demonstration of attack, before incurring so heavy a carpenter's
bill of repairs.

At last the heavy tramp of footsteps was heard coming down the
street, and every window was crowded in an instant with eager heads;
while Peter rushed downstairs to heat the large coppers, having some
experience in the defensive virtues of boiling water. The bright
moon glittered on a long line of helmets and cuirasses. Thank
Heaven! it was the soldiery.

'Are the Jews coming?' 'Is the city quiet?''Why did not you prevent
this villainy?' 'A thousand citizens murdered while you have been
snoring!'--and a volley of similar ejaculations, greeted the
soldiers as they passed, and were answered by a cool--'To your
perches, and sleep, you noisy chickens, or we'll set the coop on
fire about your ears.'

A yell of defiance answered this polite speech, and the soldiery,
who knew perfectly well that the unarmed ecclesiastics within were
not to be trifled with, and had no ambition to die by coping-stones
and hot water, went quietly on their way.

All danger was now past; and the cackling rose jubilant, louder than
ever, and might have continued till daylight, had not a window in
the courtyard been suddenly thrown open, and the awful voice of
Cyril commanded silence.

'Every man sleep where he can. I shall want you at daybreak. The
superiors of the parabolani are to come up to me with the two
prisoners, and the men who took them.'

In a few minutes Philammon found himself, with some twenty others,
in the great man's presence: he was sitting at his desk, writing,
quietly, small notes on slips of paper.

'Here is the youth who helped me to pursue the murderer, and having
outrun me, was attacked by the prisoners,' said Peter. 'My hands are
clean from blood, I thank the Lord!'

'Three set on me with daggers,' said Philammon, apologetically, 'and
I was forced to take this one's dagger away, and beat off the two
others with it.'

Cyril smiled, and shook his head.

'Thou art a brave boy; but hast thou not read, "If a man smite thee
on one cheek, turn to him the other"?'

'I could not run away, as Master Peter and the rest did.'

'So you ran away, eh? my worthy friend?'

'Is it not written,' asked Peter, in his blandest tone, "If they
persecute you in one city, flee unto another"?'

Cyril smiled again. 'And why could not you run away, boy?'

Philammon blushed scarlet, but he dared not lie. 'There was a--a
poor black woman, wounded and trodden down, and I dare not leave
her, for she told me she was a Christian.'

'Right, my son, right. I shall remember this. What was her name?'

'I did not hear it.--Stay, I think she said Judith.'

'Ah! the wife of the porter who stands at the lecture-room door,
which God confound! A devout woman, full of good works, and sorely
ill-treated by her heathen husband. Peter, thou shalt go to her to-
morrow with the physician, and see if she is in need of anything.
Boy, thou hast done well. Cyril never forgets. Now bring up those
Jews. Their Rabbis were with me two hours ago promising peace: and
this is the way they have kept their promise. So be it. The wicked
is snared in his own wickedness.'

The Jews were brought in, but kept a stubborn silence.

'Your holiness perceives,' said some one, 'that they have each of
them rings of green palm-bark on their right hand.'

'A very dangerous sign! An evident conspiracy!' commented Peter.

'Ah! What does that mean, you rascals? Answer me, as you value
your lives.'

'You have no business with us: we are Jews, and none of your
people,' said one sulkily. 'None of my people? You have murdered my
people! None of my people? Every soul in Alexandria is mine, if
the kingdom of God means anything; and you shall find it out. I
shall not argue with you, my good friends, anymore than I did with
your Rabbis. Take these fellows away, Peter, and lock them up in
the fuel-cellar, and see that they are guarded. If any man lets
them go, his life shall be for the life of them.'

And the two worthies were led out.

'Now, my brothers, here are your orders. You will divide these
notes among yourselves, and distribute them to trusty and godly
Catholics in your districts. Wait one hour, till the city be quiet;
and then start, and raise the church. I must have thirty thousand
men by sunrise.'

'What for, your holiness?' asked a dozen voices.

'Read your notes. Whosoever will fight to-morrow under the banner
of the Lord, shall have free plunder of the Jews' quarter, outrage
and murder only forbidden. As I have said it, God do so to me, and
more also, if there be a Jew left in Alexandria by to-morrow at
noon. Go.'

And the staff of orderlies filed out, thanking Heaven that they had
a leader so prompt and valiant, and spent the next hour over the
hall fire, eating millet cakes, drinking bad beer, likening Cyril to
Barak, Gideon, Samson, Jephtha, Judas Maccabeus, and all the
worthies of the Old Testament, and then started on their pacific
errand.

Philammon was about to follow them, when Cyril stopped him.

'Stay, my son; you are young and rash, and do not know the city.
Lie down here and sleep in the anteroom. Three hours hence the sun
rises, and we go forth against the enemies of the Lord.'

Philammon threw himself on the floor in a corner, and slumbered like
a child, till he was awakened in the gray dawn by one of the
parabolani.

'Up, boy! and see what we can do. Cyril goes down greater than
Barak the son of Abinoam, not with ten, but with thirty thousand men
at his feet!'

'Ay, my brothers!' said Cyril, as he passed proudly out in full
pontificals, with a gorgeous retinue of priests and deacons--'the
Catholic Church has her organisation, her unity, her common cause,
her watchwords, such as the tyrants of the earth, in their weakness
and their divisions, may envy and tremble at, but cannot imitate.
Could Orestes raise, in three hours, thirty thousand men, who would
die for him?'

'As we will for you!' shouted many voices.

'Say for the kingdom of God.' And he passed out.

And so ended Philammon's first day in Alexandria.



CHAPTER VI: THE NEW DIOGENES


About five o'clock the next morning, Raphael Aben-Ezra was lying in
bed, alternately yawning over a manuscript of Philo Judaeus, pulling
the ears of his huge British mastiff, watching the sparkle of the
fountain in the court outside, wondering when that lazy boy would
come to tell him that the bath was warmed, and meditating, half
aloud....

'Alas! poor me! Here I am, back again--just at the point from which
I started! .... How am I to get free from that heathen Siren?
Plagues on her! I shall end by falling in love with her .... I
don't know that I have not got a barb of the blind boy in me
already. I felt absurdly glad the other day when that fool told me
he dare not accept her modest offer. Ha! ha! A delicious joke it
would have been to have seen Orestes bowing down to stocks and
stones, and Hypatia installed in the ruins of the Serapeium, as High
Priestess of the Abomination of Desolation!. And now .... Well I
call all heaven and earth to witness, that I have fought valiantly.
I have faced naughty little Eros like a man, rod in hand. What
could a poor human being do more than try to marry her to some one
else, in hopes of sickening himself of the whole matter? Well,
every moth has its candle, and every man his destiny. But the
daring of the little fool! What huge imaginations she has! She
might be another Zenobia, now, with Orestes as Odenatus, and Raphael
Aben-Ezra to play the part of Longinus. and receive Longinus's
salary of axe or poison. She don't care for me; she would sacrifice
me, or a thousand of me, the cold-blooded fanatical archangel that
she is, to water with our blood the foundation of some new temple of
cast rags and broken dolls .... Oh, Raphael Aben-Ezra, what a fool
you are! .... You know you are going off as usual to her lecture,
this very morning!'

At this crisis of his confessions the page entered, and announced,
not the bath, but Miriam.

The old woman, who, in virtue of her profession, had the private
entry of all fashionable chambers in Alexandria, came in hurriedly;
and instead of seating herself as usual, for a gossip, remained
standing, and motioned the boy out of the room.

'Well my sweet mother? Sit: Ah? I see! You rascal, you have
brought in no wine for the lady. Don't you know her little ways
yet?'

'Eos has got it at the door, of course,' answered the boy, with a
saucy air of offended virtue.

'Out with you, imp of Satan!' cried Miriam. 'This is no time for
winebibbing. Raphael Aben-Ezra, why are you lying here? Did you
not receive a note last night?'

'A note? So I did, but I was too sleepy to read it. There it lies.
Boy, bring it here....What's this? A scrap out of Jeremiah?
"Arise, and flee for thy life, for evil is determined against the
whole house of Israel!"--Does this come from the chief rabbi; I
always took the venerable father for a sober man .... Eh, Miriam?'

'Fool! instead of laughing at the sacred words of the prophets, get
up and obey them. I sent you the note.'

'Why can't I obey them in bed? Here I am, reading hard at the
Cabbala, or Philo--who is stupider still--and what more would you
have?'

The old woman, unable to restrain her impatience, literally ran at
him, gnashing her teeth, and, before he was aware, dragged him out
of bed upon the floor, where he stood meekly wondering what would
come next.

'Many thanks, mother, for having saved me the one daily torture of
life--getting out of bed by one's own exertion.'

'Raphael Aben-Ezra! are you so besotted with your philosophy and
your heathenry, and your laziness, and your contempt for God and
man, that you will see your nation given up for a prey, and your
wealth plundered by heathen dogs? I tell you, Cyril has sworn that
God shall do so to him, and more also, if there be a Jew left in
Alexandria by to-morrow about this time.'

'So much the better for the Jews, then, if they are half as tired of
this noisy Pandemonium as I am. But how can I help it? Am I Queen
Esther, to go to Ahasuerus there in the prefect's palace, and get
him to hold out the golden sceptre to me?'

'Fool! if you had read that note last night, you might have gone and
saved us, and your name would have been handed down for ever from
generation to generation as a second Mordecai.'

'My dear mother, Ahasuerus would have been either fast asleep, or
far too drunk to listen to me. Why did you not go yourself?'

'Do you suppose that I would not have gone if I could? Do you fancy
me a sluggard like yourself? At the risk of my life I have got
hither in time, if there be time to save you.'

'Well: shall I dress? What can be done now?'

'Nothing! The streets are blockaded by Cyril's mob--There! do you
hear the shouts and screams? They are attacking the farther part of
the quarter already.'

'What! are they murdering them?' asked Raphael, throwing on his
pelisse. 'Because, if it has really come to a practical joke of that
kind, I shall have the greatest pleasure in employing a counter-
irritant. Here, boy! My sword and dagger! Quick!'

'No, the hypocrites! No blood is to be shed, they say, if we make
no resistance, and let them pillage. Cyril and his monks are there,
to prevent outrage, and so forth.... The Angel of the Lord scatter
them!'

The conversation was interrupted by the rushing in of the whole
household, in an agony of terror; and Raphael, at last thoroughly
roused, went to a window which looked into the street. The
thoroughfare was full of scolding women and screaming children;
while men, old and young, looked on at the plunder of their property
with true Jewish doggedness, too prudent to resist, but too manful
to complain--while furniture came flying out of every window, and
from door after door poured a stream of rascality, carrying off
money, jewels, silks, and all the treasures which Jewish usury had
accumulated during many a generation. But unmoved amid the roaring
sea of plunderers and plundered, stood, scattered up and down,
Cyril's spiritual police, enforcing, by a word, an obedience which
the Roman soldiers could only have compelled by hard blows of the
spear-butt. There was to be no outrage, and no outrage there was:
and more than once some man in priestly robes hurried through the
crowd, leading by the hand, tenderly enough, a lost child in search
of its parents.

Raphael stood watching silently, while Miriam, who had followed him
upstairs, paced the room in an ecstasy of rage, calling vainly to
him to speak or act.

'Let me alone, mother,' he said, at last. 'It will be full ten
minutes more before they pay me a visit, and in the meantime what
can one do better than watch the progress of this, the little
Exodus?'

'Not like that first one! Then we went forth with cymbals and songs
to the Red Sea triumph! Then we borrowed, every woman of her
neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment.'

'And now we pay them back again;.. it is but fair, after all. We
ought to have listened to Jeremiah a thousand years ago, and never
gone back again, like fools, into a country to which we were so
deeply in debt.'

'Accursed land!' cried Miriam. 'In an evil hour our forefathers
disobeyed the prophet; and now we reap the harvest of our sins!--Our
sons have forgotten the faith of their forefathers for the
philosophy of the Gentiles, and fill their chambers' (with a
contemptuous look round) 'with heathen imagery; and our daughters
are--Look there!'

As she spoke, a beautiful girl rushed shrieking out of an adjoining
house, followed by some half-drunk ruffian, who was clutching at the
gold chains and trinkets with which she was profusely bedecked,
after the fashion of Jewish women. The rascal had just seized with
one hand her streaming black tresses, and with the other a heavy
collar of gold, which was wound round her throat, when a priest,
stepping up, laid a quiet hand upon his shoulder. The fellow, too
maddened to obey, turned, and struck back the restraining arm...and
in an instant was felled to the earth by a young monk. .

'Touchest thou the Lord's anointed, sacrilegious wretch?' cried the
man of the desert, as the fellow dropped on the pavement, with his
booty in his hand.

The monk tore the gold necklace from his grasp, looked at it for a
moment with childish wonder, as a savage might at some
incomprehensible product of civilised industry, and then, spitting
on it in contempt, dashed it on the ground, and trampled it into the
mud.

'Follow the golden wedge of Achan, and the silver of Iscariot, thou
root of all evil!' And he rushed on, yelling, 'Down with the
circumcision! Down with the blasphemers!'--while the poor girl
vanished among the crowd.

Raphael watched him with a quaint thoughtful smile, while Miriam
shrieked aloud at the destruction of the precious trumpery.

'The monk is right, mother. If those Christians go on upon that
method, they must beat us. It has been our ruin from the first, our
fancy for loading ourselves with the thick clay.'

'What will you do?' cried Miriam, clutching him by the arm.

'What will you do?'

'I am safe. I have a boat waiting for me on the canal at the garden
gate, and in Alexandria I stay; no Christian hound shall make old
Miriam move afoot against her will. My jewels are all buried--my
girls are sold; save what you can, and come with me!'

'My sweet mother, why so peculiarly solicitous about my welfare,
above that of all the sons of Judah?'

'Because--because--No, I'll tell you that another time. But I loved
your mother, and she loved me. Come!'

Raphael relapsed into silence for a few minutes, and watched the
tumult below.

'How those Christian priests keep their men in order! There is no
use resisting destiny. They are the strong men of the time, after
all, and the little Exodus must needs have its course. Miriam,
daughter of Jonathan--'

'I am no man's daughter! I have neither father nor mother, husband
nor--Call me mother again!'

'Whatsoever I am to call you, there are jewels enough in that closet
to buy half Alexandria. Take them. I am going.'

'With me!'

'Out into the wide world, my dear lady. I am bored with riches.
That young savage of a monk understood them better than we Jews do.
I shall just make a virtue of necessity, and turn beggar.'

'Beggar?'

'Why not? Don't argue. These scoundrels will make me one, whether
I like or not; so forth I go. There will be few leavetakings. This
brute of a dog is the only friend I have on earth; and I love her,
because she has the true old, dogged, spiteful, cunning, obstinate
Maccabee spirit in her--of which if we had a spark left in us just
now, there would be no little Exodus; eh, Bran, my beauty?'

'You can escape with me to the prefect's, and save the mass of your
wealth.'

'Exactly what I don't want to do. I hate that prefect as I hate a
dead camel, or the vulture who eats him. And to tell the truth, I
am growing a great deal too fond of that heathen woman there--'

'What?' shrieked the old woman--'Hypatia?'

'If you choose. At all events, the easiest way to cut the knot is
to expatriate. I shall beg my passage on board the first ship to
Cyrene, and go and study life in Italy with Heraclian's expedition.
Quick--take the jewels, and breed fresh troubles for yourself with
them. I am going. My liberators are battering the outer door
already.'

Miriam greedily tore out of the closet diamonds and pearls, rubies
and emeralds, and concealed them among her ample robes--'Go! go!
Escape from her! I will hide your jewels!'

'Ay, hide them, as mother earth does all things, in that all-
embracing bosom. You will have doubled them before we meet again,
no doubt. Farewell, mother!'

'But not for ever, Raphael! not for ever! Promise me, in the name
of the four archangels, that if you are in trouble or danger, you
will write to me, at the house of Eudaimon.'

'The little porter philosopher, who hangs about Hypatia's lecture-
room?'

'The same, the same. He will give me your letter, and I swear to
you, I will cross the mountains of Kaf, to deliver you!--I will pay
you all back. By Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I swear! May my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not account to you for the
last penny!'

'Don't commit yourself to rash promises, my dear lady. If I am
bored with poverty, I can but borrow a few gold pieces of a rabbi,
and turn pedler. I really do not trust you to pay me back, so I
shall not be disappointed if you do not. Why should I?'

'Because--because--O God! No--never mind! You shall have all back.
Spirit of Elias! where is the black agate? Why is it not among
these?--The broken half of the black agate talisman!'

Raphael turned pale. 'How did you know that I have a black agate?'

'How did I? How did I not?' cried she, clutching him by the arm.
'Where is it? All depends on that! Fool!' she went on, throwing
him off from her at arm's length, as a sudden suspicion stung her--
'you have not given it to the heathen woman?'

'By the soul of my fathers, then, you mysterious old witch, who seem
to know everything, that is exactly what I have done.'

Miriam clapped her hands together wildly. 'Lost! lost! lost! Not I
will have it, if I tear it out of her heart! I will be avenged of
her--the strange woman who flatters with her words, to whom the
simple go in, and know not that the dead are there, and that her
guests are in the depths of hell! God do so to me, and more also,
if she and her sorceries be on earth a twelvemonth hence!'

'Silence, Jezebel! Heathen or none, she is as pure as the sunlight!
I only gave it her because she fancied the talisman upon it.'

'To enchant you with it, to your ruin!'

'Brute of a slave-dealer! you fancy every one as base as the poor
wretches whom you buy and sell to shame, that you may make them as
much the children of hell, if that be possible, as yourself!'

Miriam looked at him, her large black eyes widening and kindling.
For an instant she felt for her poniard--and then burst into an
agony of tears, hid her face in her withered hands, and rushed from
the room, as a crash and shout below announced the bursting of the
door.