The house which Pelagia and the Amal had hired after their return to Alexandria, was one of the most splendid in the city. They had been now living there three months or more, and in that time Pelagia’s taste had supplied the little which it needed to convert it into a paradise of lazy luxury. She herself was wealthy; and her Gothic guests, overburdened with Roman spoils, the very use of which they could not understand, freely allowed her and her nymphs to throw away for them the treasures which they had won in many a fearful fight. What matter? If they had enough to eat, and more than enough to drink, how could the useless surplus of their riches be better spent than in keeping their ladies in good humour?.... And when it was all gone....they would go somewhere or other—who cared whither?—and win more. The whole world was before them waiting to be plundered, and they would fulfil their mission, whensoever it suited them. In the meantime they were in no hurry. Egypt furnished in profusion every sort of food which could gratify palates far more nice than theirs. And as for wine—few of them went to bed sober from one week’s end to another. Could the souls of warriors have more, even in the halls of Valhalla?
So thought the party who occupied the inner court of the house, one blazing afternoon in the same week in which Cyril’s messenger had so rudely broken in on the repose of the Scetis. Their repose, at least, was still untouched. The great city roared without; Orestes plotted, and Cyril counterplotted, and the fate of a continent hung—or seemed to hang—trembling in the balance; but the turmoil of it no more troubled those lazy Titans within, than did the roll and rattle of the carriage-wheels disturb the parakeets and sunbirds which peopled, under an awning of gilded wire, the inner court of Pelagia’s house. Why should they fret themselves with it all? What was every fresh riot, execution, conspiracy, bankruptcy, but a sign—that the fruit was growing ripe for the plucking? Even Heraclian’s rebellion, and Orestes’ suspected conspiracy, were to the younger and coarser Goths a sort of child’s play, at which they could look on and laugh, and bet, from morning till night; while to the more cunning heads, such as Wulf and Smid, they were but signs of the general rottenness—new cracks in those great walls over which they intended, with a simple and boyish consciousness of power, to mount to victory when they chose.
And in the meantime, till the right opening offered, what was there better than to eat, drink, and sleep? And certainly they had chosen a charming retreat in which to fulfil that lofty mission. Columns of purple and green porphyry, among which gleamed the white limbs of delicate statues, surrounded a basin of water, fed by a perpetual jet, which sprinkled with cool spray the leaves of the oranges and mimosas, mingling its murmurs with the warblings of the tropic birds which nestled among the branches.
On one side of the fountain, under the shade of a broad-leaved palmetto, lay the Amal’s mighty limbs, stretched out on cushions, his yellow hair crowned with vine-leaves, his hand grasping a golden cup, which had been won from Indian Rajahs by Parthian Chosroos, from Chosroos by Roman generals, from Roman generals by the heroes of sheepskin and horsehide; while Pelagia, by the side of the sleepy Hercules-Dionysos, lay leaning over the brink of the fountain, lazily dipping her fingers into the water, and basking, like the gnats which hovered over its surface, in the mere pleasure of existence.
On the opposite brink of the basin, tended each by a dark-eyed Hebe, who filled the wine-cups, and helped now and then to empty them, lay the especial friends and companions in arms of the Amal, Goderic the son of Ermenric, and Agilmund the son of Cniva, who both, like the Amal, boasted a descent from gods; and last, but not least, that most important and all but sacred personage, Smid the son of Troll, reverenced for cunning beyond the sons of men; for not only could he make and mend all matters, from a pontoon bridge to a gold bracelet, shoe horses and doctor them, charm all diseases out of man and beast, carve runes, interpret war-omens, foretell weather, raise the winds, and finally, conquer in the battle of mead-horns all except Wulf the son of Ovida; but he had actually, during a sojourn among the half-civilised Maesogoths, picked up a fair share of Latin and Greek, and a rough knowledge of reading and writing.
A few yards off lay old Wulf upon his back, his knees in the air, his hands crossed behind his head, keeping up, even in his sleep, a half-conscious comment of growls on the following intellectual conversation:—
‘Noble wine this, is it not?’
‘Perfect. Who bought it for us?’
‘Old Miriam bought it, at some great tax-farmer’s sale. The fellow was bankrupt, and Miriam said she got it for the half what it was worth.’
‘Serve the penny-turning rascal right. The old vixen-fox took care, I’ll warrant her, to get her profit out of the bargain.’
‘Never mind if she did. We can afford to pay like men, if we earn like men.’
‘We shan’t afford it long, at this rate,’ growled Wulf.
‘Then we’ll go and earn more. I am tired of doing nothing.’
‘People need not do nothing, unless they choose,’ said Goderic. ‘Wulf and I had coursing fit for a king, the other morning on the sand-hills. I had had no appetite for a week before, and I have been as sharp-set as a Danube pike ever since.’
‘Coursing? What, with those long-legged brush-tailed brutes, like a fox upon stilts, which the prefect cozened you into buying.’
‘All I can say is, that we put up a herd of those—what do you call them here—deer with goats’ horns?’
‘Antelopes?’
‘That’s it—and the curs ran into them as a falcon does into a skein of ducks. Wulf and I galloped and galloped over those accursed sand-heaps till the horses stuck fast; and when they got their wind again, we found each pair of dogs with a deer down between them—and what can man want more, if he cannot get fighting? You eat them, so you need not sneer.’
‘Well, dogs are the only things worth having, then, that this Alexandria does produce.’
‘Except fair ladies!’ put in one of the girls.
‘Of course. I’ll except the women. But the men-’
‘The what? I have not seen a man since I came here, except a dock-worker or two—priests and fine gentlemen they are all—and you don’t call them men, surely?’
‘What on earth do they do, beside riding donkeys?’
‘Philosophise, they say.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know; some sort of slave’s quill-driving, I suppose.’
‘Pelagia! do you know what philosophising is?’
‘No—and I don’t care.’
‘I do,’ quoth Agilmund, with a look of superior wisdom; ‘I saw a philosopher the other day.’
‘And what sort of a thing was it?’
‘I’ll tell you. I was walking down the great street there, going to the harbour; and I saw a crowd of boys—men they call them here—going into a large doorway. So I asked one of them what was doing, and the fellow, instead of answering me, pointed at my legs, and set all the other monkeys laughing. So I boxed his ears, and he tumbled down.’
‘They all do so here, if you box their ears,’ said the Amal meditatively, as if he had bit upon a great inductive law.
‘Ah,’ said Pelagia, looking up with her most winning smile, ‘they are not such giants as you, who make a poor little woman feel like a gazelle in a lion’s paw!’
‘Well—it struck me that, as I spoke in Gothic, the boy might not have understood me, being a Greek. So I walked in at the door, to save questions, and see for myself. And there a fellow held out his hand—I suppose for money, So I gave him two or three gold pieces, and a box on the ear, at which he tumbled down, of course, but seemed very well satisfied. So I walked in.’
‘And what did you see?’
‘A great hall, large enough for a thousand heroes, full of these Egyptian rascals scribbling with pencils on tablets. And at the farther end of it the most beautiful woman I ever saw—with right fair hair and blue eyes, talking, talking—I could not understand it; but the donkey-riders seemed to think it very fine; for they went on looking first at her, and then at their tablets, gaping like frogs in drought. And, certainly, she looked as fair as the sun, and talked like an Alruna-wife. Not that I knew what it was about, but one can see somehow, you know.—So I fell asleep; and when I woke, and came out, I met some one who understood me, and he told me that it was the famous maiden, the great philosopher. And that’s what I know about philosophy.’
‘She was very much wasted then, on such soft-handed starvelings. Why don’t she marry some hero?’
‘Because there are none here to marry,’ said Pelagia; ‘except some who are fast netted, I fancy, already.’
‘But what do they talk about, and tell people to do, these philosophers, Pelagia?’
‘Oh, they don’t tell any one to do anything—at least, if they do, nobody ever does it, as far as I can see; but they talk about suns and stars, and right and wrong, and ghosts and spirits, and that sort of thing; and about not enjoying oneself too much. Not that I ever saw that they were any happier than any one else.’
‘She must have been an Alruna-maiden,’ said Wulf, half to himself.
‘She is a very conceited creature, and I hate her,’ said Pelagia.
‘I believe you,’ said Wulf.
‘What is an Alruna-maiden?’ asked one of the girls.
‘Something as like you as a salmon is like a horse-leech. Heroes, will you hear a saga?’
‘If it is a cool one,’ said Agilmund; ‘about ice, and pine-trees, and snowstorms, I shall be roasted brown in three days more.’
‘Oh,’ said the Amal, ‘that we were on the Alps again for only two hours, sliding down those snow-slopes on our shields, with the sleet whistling about our ears! That was sport!’
‘To those who could keep their seat,’ said Goderic. ‘Who went head over heels into a glacier-crack, and was dug out of fifty feet of snow, and had to be put inside a fresh-killed horse before he could be brought to life?’
‘Not you, surely,’ said Pelagia. ‘Oh, you wonderful creature! what things you have done and suffered!’
‘Well,’ said the Amal, with a look of stolid self-satisfaction, ‘I suppose I have seen a good deal in my time, eh?’
‘Yes, my Hercules, you have gone through your twelve labours, and saved your poor little Hesione after them all, when she was chained to the rock, for the ugly sea-monsters to eat; and she will cherish you, and keep you out of scrapes now, for her own sake;’ and Pelagia threw her arms round the great bull-neck, and drew it down to her.
‘Will you hear my saga?’ said Wulf impatiently.
‘Of course we will,’ said the Amal; ‘anything to pass the time.’
‘But let it be about snow,’ said Agilmund.
‘Not about Alruna-wives?’
‘About them, too,’ said Goderic; ‘my mother was one, so I must needs stand up for them.’
‘She was, boy. Do you be her son. Now hear, Wolves of the Goths!’
And the old man took up his little lute, or as he would probably have called it, ‘fidel,’ and began chanting to his own accompaniment.
Over the camp fires Drank I with heroes, Under the Donau bank Warm in the snow-trench, Sagamen heard I there, Men of the Longbeards, Cunning and ancient, Honey-sweet-voiced. Scaring the wolf-cub, Scaring the horn-owl out, Shaking the snow-wreaths Down from the pine-boughs, Up to the star-roof Rang out their song. Singing how Winil men Over the icefloes Sledging from Scanland on Came unto Scoring; Singing of Gambara Freya’s beloved. Mother of Ayo Mother of Ibor. Singing of Wendel men, Ambri and Assi; How to the Winilfolk Went they with war-words— ‘Few are ye, strangers, And many are we; Pay us now toll and fee, Clothyarn, and rings, and beeves; Else at the raven’s meal Bide the sharp bill’s doom.’
Clutching the dwarfs’ work then, Clutching the bullock’s shell, Girding gray iron on, Forth fared the Winils all, Fared the Alruna’s sons, Ayo and Ibor. Mad of heart stalked they Loud wept the women all, Loud the Alruna-wife; Sore was their need.
Out of the morning land, Over the snowdrifts, Beautiful Freya came, Tripping to Scoring. White were the moorlands, And frozen before her; But green were the moorlands, And blooming behind her, Out of her golden locks Shaking the spring flowers, Out of her garments Shaking the south wind, Around in the birches Awaking the throstles, And making chaste housewives all Long for their heroes home, Loving and love-giving, Came she to Scoring. Came unto Gambara, Wisest of Valas— ‘Vala, why weepest thou Far in the wide-blue, High up in the Elfin-home, Heard I thy weeping.’
‘Stop not thy weeping, Till one can fight seven, Sons have I, heroes tall, First in the sword-play; This day at the Wendels’ hands Eagles must tear them; While their mothers, thrall-weary, Must grind for the Wendels’
Wept the Alruna-wife; Kissed her fair Freya— ‘Far off in the morning land High in Valhalla, A window stands open, Its sill is the snow-peaks, Its posts are the water-spouts Storm rack its lintel, Gold cloud-flakes above it Are piled for the roofing. Far up to the Elfin-home, High in the wide-blue. Smiles out each morning thence Odin Allfather; From under the cloud-eaves, Smiles out on the heroes, Smiles out on chaste housewives all, Smiles on the brood-mares, Smiles on the smith’s work: And theirs is the sword-luck, With them is the glory— So Odin hath sworn it—
Still the Alruna wept— ‘Who then shall greet him? Women alone are here: Far on the moorlands Behind the war-lindens, In vain for the bill’s doom Watch Winil heroes all, One against seven.’
Sweetly the Queen laughed— ‘Hear thou my counsel now; Take to thee cunning, Beloved of Freya. Take thou thy women-folk, Maidens and wives: Over your ankles Lace on the white war-hose; Over your bosoms Link up the hard mailnets; Over your lips Plait long tresses with cunning;— So war-beasts full bearded King Odin shall deem you, When off the gray sea-beach At sunrise ye greet him.’
Night’s son was driving His golden-haired horses up. Over the Eastern firths High flashed their manes. Smiled from the cloud-eaves out Allfather Odin, Waiting the battle-sport: Freya stood by him. ‘Who are these heroes tall— Lusty-limbed Longbeards? Over the swans’ bath Why cry they to me? Bones should be crashing fast, Wolves should be full-fed, Where’er such, mad-hearted, Swing hands in the sword-play.’
Sweetly laughed Freya— ‘A name thou hast given them— Shames neither thee nor them, Well can they wear it. Give them the victory, First have they greeted thee; Give them the victory, Yokefellow mine! Maidens and wives are these— Wives of the Winils; Few are their heroes And far on the war-road, So over the swans’ bath They cry unto thee.’
Royally laughed he then; Dear was that craft to him, Odin Allfather, Shaking the clouds. ‘Cunning are women all, Bold and importunate! Longbeards their name shall be, Ravens shall thank them: Where the women are heroes, What must the men be like? Theirs is the victory; No need of me!’
[Footnote: This punning legend may be seen in Paul Warnefrid’s Gesta Langobardorum. The metre and language are intended as imitations of those of the earlier Eddaic poems.]
‘There!’ said Wulf, when the song was ended; ‘is that cool enough for you?’
‘Rather too cool; eh, Pelagia?’ said the Amal, laughing.
‘Ay,’ went on the old man, bitterly enough, ‘such were your mothers; and such were your sisters; and such your wives must be, if you intend to last much longer on the face of the earth—women who care for something better than good eating, strong drinking, and soft lying.’
‘All very true, Prince Wulf,’ said Agilmund, ‘but I don’t like the saga after all. It was a great deal too like what Pelagia here says those philosophers talk about—right and wrong, and that sort of thing.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘Now I like a really good saga, about gods and giants, and the fire kingdoms and the snow kingdoms, and the Aesir making men and women out of two sticks, and all that.’
‘Ay,’ said the Amal, ‘something like nothing one ever saw in one’s life, all stark mad and topsy-turvy, like one’s dreams when one has been drunk; something grand which you cannot understand, but which sets you thinking over it all the morning after.’
‘Well,’ said Goderic, ‘my mother was an Alruna-woman, so I will not be the bird to foul its own nest. But I like to hear about wild beasts and ghosts, ogres, and fire-drakes, and nicors—something that one could kill if one had a chance, as one’s fathers had.’
‘Your fathers would never have killed nicors,’ said Wulf, ‘if they had been—’
‘Like us—I know,’ said the Amal. ‘Now tell me, prince, you are old enough to be our father; and did you ever see a nicor?’
‘My brother saw one, in the Northern sea, three fathoms long, with the body of a bison-bull, and the head of a cat, and the beard of a man, and tusks an ell long, lying down on its breast, watching for the fishermen; and he struck it with an arrow, so that it fled to the bottom of the sea, and never came up again.’
‘What is a nicor, Agilmund?’ asked one of the girls.
‘A sea-devil who eats sailors. There used to be plenty of them where our fathers came from, and ogres too, who came out of the fens into the hall at night, when the warriors were sleeping, to suck their blood, and steal along, and steal along, and jump upon you—so!’
Pelagia, during the saga, had remained looking into the fountain, and playing with the water-drops, in assumed indifference. Perhaps it was to hide burning blushes, and something very like two hot tears, which fell unobserved into the ripple. Now she looked up suddenly—
‘And of course you have killed some of these dreadful creatures, Amalric?’
‘I never had such good luck, darling. Our forefathers were in such a hurry with them, that by the time we were born, there was hardly one left.’
‘Ay, they were men,’ growled Wulf.
‘As for me,’ went on the Amal, ‘the biggest thing I ever killed was a snake in the Donau fens. How long was he, prince? You had time to see, for you sat eating your dinner and looking on, while he was trying to crack my bones.’
‘Four fathom,’ answered Wulf.
‘With a wild bull lying by him, which he had just killed. I spoilt his dinner, eh, Wulf?’
‘Yes,’ said the old grumbler, mollified, ‘that was a right good fight.’
‘Why don’t you make a saga about it, then, instead of about right and wrong, and such things?’
‘Because I am turned philosopher. I shall go and hear that Alruna-maiden this afternoon.’
‘Well said. Let us go too, young men: it will pass the time, at all events.’
‘Oh, no! no! no! do not! you shall not!’ almost shrieked Pelagia.
‘Why not, then, pretty one?’
‘She is a witch—she—I will never love you again if you dare to go. Your only reason is that Agilmund’s report of her beauty.’
‘So? You are afraid of my liking her golden locks better than your black ones?’
‘I? Afraid?’ And she leapt up, panting with pretty rage. ‘Come, we will go too—at once—and brave this nun, who fancies herself too wise to speak to a woman, and too pure to love a man! Lookout my jewels! Saddle my white mule! We will go royally. We will not be ashamed of Cupid’s livery, my girls—saffron shawl and all! Come, and let us see whether saucy Aphrodite is not a match after all for Pallas Athene and her owl!’
And she darted out of the cloister.
The three younger men burst into a roar of laughter, while Wulf looked with grim approval.
‘So you want to go and hear the philosopher, prince?’ said Smid.
‘Wheresoever a holy and a wise woman speaks, a warrior need not be ashamed of listening. Did not Alaric bid us spare the nuns in Rome, comrade? And though I am no Christian as he was, I thought it no shame for Odin’s man to take their blessing; nor will I to take this one’s, Smid, son of Troll.’
‘Here am I, at last!’ said Raphael Aben-Ezra to himself. ‘Fairly and safely landed at the very bottom of the bottomless; disporting myself on the firm floor of the primeval nothing, and finding my new element, like boys when they begin to swim, not so impracticable after all. No man, angel, or demon, can this day cast it in my teeth that I am weak enough to believe or disbelieve any phenomenon or theory in or concerning heaven or earth; or even that any such heaven, earth, phenomena, or theories exist—or otherwise.... I trust that is a sufficiently exhaustive statement of my opinions? .... I am certainly not dogmatic enough to deny—or to assert either—that there are sensations.... far too numerous for comfort .... but as for proceeding any further, by induction, deduction, analysis, or synthesis, I utterly decline the office of Arachne, and will spin no more cobwebs out of my own inside—if I have any. Sensations? What are they, but parts of oneself—if one has a self! What put this child’s fancy into one’s head, that there is anything outside of one which produces them? You have exactly similar feelings in your dreams, and you know that there is no reality corresponding to them—No, you don’t! How dare you be dogmatic enough to affirm that? Why should not your dreams be as real as your waking thoughts? Why should not your dreams be the reality, and your waking thoughts the dream? What matter which?
‘What matter indeed? Here have I been staring for years—unless that, too, is a dream, which it very probably is—at every mountebank “ism” which ever tumbled and capered on the philosophic tight-rope; and they are every one of them dead dolls, wooden, worked with wires, which are petitiones principii.... Each philosopher begs the question in hand, and then marches forward, as brave as a triumph, and prides himself—on proving it all afterwards. No wonder that his theory fits the universe, when he has first clipped the universe to fit his theory. Have I not tried my hand at many a one—starting, too, no one can deny, with the very minimum of clipping,.... for I suppose one cannot begin lower than at simple “I am I”.... unless—which is equally demonstrable—at “I am not I.” I recollect—or dream—that I offered that sweet dream, Hypatia, to deduce all things in heaven and earth, from the Astronomics of Hipparchus to the number of plumes in an archangel’s wing, from that one simple proposition, if she would but write me out a demonstration of it first, as some sort of [Greek expression] for the apex of my inverted pyramid. But she disdained.... People are apt to disdain what they know they cannot do.... “It was an axiom,” it was, “like one and one making two.”.... How cross the sweet dream was, at my telling her that I did not consider that any axiom either, and that one thing and one thing seeming to us to be two things, was no more proof that they really were two, and not three hundred and sixty-five, than a man seeming to be an honest man, proved him not to be a rogue; and at my asking her, moreover, when she appealed to universal experience, how she proved that the combined folly of all fools resulted in wisdom!
‘“I am I” an axiom, indeed! What right have I to say that I am not any one else? How do I know it? How do I know that there is any one else for me not to be? I, or rather something, feel a number of sensations, longings, thoughts, fancies—the great devil take them all—fresh ones every moment, and each at war tooth and nail with all the rest; and then on the strength of this infinite multiplicity and contradiction, of which alone I am aware, I am to be illogical enough to stand up, and say, “I by myself I,” and swear stoutly that I am one thing, when all I am conscious of is the devil only knows how many things. Of all quaint deductions from experience, that is the quaintest! Would it not be more philosophical to conclude that I, who never saw or felt or heard this which I call myself, am what I have seen, heard, and felt—and no more and no less—that sensation which I call that horse, that dead man, that jackass, those forty thousand two-legged jackasses who appear to be running for their lives below there, having got hold of this same notion of their being one thing each—as I choose to fancy in my foolish habit of imputing to them the same disease of thought which I find in myself—crucify the word!—The folly of my ancestors—if I ever had any—prevents my having any better expression.... Why should I not be all I feel—that sky, those clouds—the whole universe? Hercules! what a creative genius my sensorium must be!—I’ll take to writing’ poetry—a mock-epic, in seventy-two books, entitled “The Universe: or, Raphael Aben-Ezra,” and take Homer’s Margites for my model. Homer’s? Mine! Why must not the Margites, like everything else, have been a sensation of my own? Hypatia used to say Homer’s poetry was a part of her.... only she could not prove it.... but I have proved that the Margites is a part of me.... not that I believe my own proof—scepticism forbid! Oh, would to heaven that the said whole disagreeable universe were annihilated, if it were only just to settle by fair experiment whether any of master “I” remained when they were gone! Buzzard and dogmatist! And how do you know that that would settle it? And if it did—why need it be settled?....
‘I daresay there is an answer pat for all this. I could write a pretty one myself in half an hour. But then I should not believe it .... nor the rejoinder to that.... nor the demurrer to that again .... So.... I am both sleepy and hungry.... or rather, sleepiness and hunger are me. Which is it! Heigh-ho....’ and Raphael finished his meditation by a mighty yawn.
This hopeful oration was delivered in a fitting lecture-room. Between the bare walls of a doleful fire-scarred tower in the Campagna of Rome, standing upon a knoll of dry brown grass, ringed with a few grim pines, blasted and black with smoke; there sat Raphael Aben-Ezra, working out the last formula of the great world problem—‘Given Self; to find God.’ Through the doorless stone archway he could see a long vista of the plain below, covered with broken trees, trampled crops, smoking villas, and all the ugly scars of recent war, far onward to the quiet purple mountains and the silver sea, towards which struggled, far in the distance, long dark lines of moving specks, flowing together, breaking up, stopping short, recoiling back to surge forward by some fresh channel, while now and then a glitter of keen white sparks ran through the dense black masses.... The Count of Africa had thrown for the empire of the world—and lost.
‘Brave old Sun!’ said Raphael, ‘how merrily he flashes off the sword-blades yonder, and never cares that every tiny spark brings a death-shriek after it! Why should he? It is no concern of his. Astrologers are fools. His business is to shine; and on the whole, he is one of my few satisfactory sensations. How now? This is questionably pleasant!’
As he spoke, a column of troops came marching across the field, straight towards his retreat.
‘If these new sensations of mine find me here, they will infallibly produce in me a new sensation, which will render all further ones impossible.... Well? What kinder thing could they do for me?.... Ay—but how do I know that they would do it? What possible proof is there that if a two-legged phantasm pokes a hard iron-gray phantasm in among my sensations, those sensations will be my last? Is the fact of my turning pale, and lying still, and being in a day or two converted into crows’ flesh, any reason why I should not feel? And how do I know that would happen? It seems to happen to certain sensations of my eyeball—or something else—who cares? which I call soldiers; but what possible analogy can there be between what seems to happen to those single sensations called soldiers, and what may or may not really happen to all my sensations put together, which I call me? Should I bear apples if a phantasm seemed to come and plant me? Then why should I die if another phantasm seemed to come and poke me in the ribs?
‘Still I don’t intend to deny it.... I am no dogmatist. Positively the phantasms are marching straight for my tower! Well, it may be safer to run away, on the chance. But as for losing feeling,’ continued he, rising and cramming a few mouldy crusts into his wallet, ‘that, like everything else, is past proof. Why—if now, when I have some sort of excuse for fancying myself one thing in one place, I am driven mad with the number of my sensations, what will it be when I am eaten, and turned to dust, and undeniably many things in many places.... Will not the sensations be multiplied by—unbearable! I would swear at the thought, if I had anything to swear by! To be transmuted into the sensoria of forty different nasty carrion crows, besides two or three foxes, and a large black beetle! I’ll run away, just like anybody else.... if anybody existed. Come, Bran! ...............
‘Bran! where are you; unlucky inseparable sensation of mine? Picking up a dinner already off these dead soldiers? Well, the pity is that this foolish contradictory taste of mine, while it makes me hungry, forbids me to follow your example. Why am I to take lessons from my soldier-phantasms, and not from my canine one? Illogical! Bran! Bran!’ and he went out and whistled in vain for the dog.
‘Bran! unhappy phantom, who will not vanish by night or day, lying on my chest even in dreams; and who would not even let me vanish, and solve the problem—though I don’t believe there is any—why did you drag me out of the sea there at Ostia? Why did you not let me become a whole shoal of crabs? How did you know, or I either, that they may not be very jolly fellows, and not in the least troubled with philosophic doubts?.... But perhaps there were no crabs, but only phantasms of crabs.... And, on the other hand, if the crab-phantasms give jolly sensations, why should not the crow-phantasms? So whichever way it turns out, no matter; and I may as well wait here, and seem to become crows, as I certainly shall do.—Bran!.... Why should I wait for her? What pleasure can it be to me to have the feeling of a four-legged, brindled, lop-eared, toad-mouthed thing always between what seem to be my legs? There she is! Where have you been, madam? Don’t you see I am in marching order, with staff and wallet ready shouldered? Come!’
But the dog, looking up in his face as only dogs can look, ran toward the back of the ruin, and up to him again, and back again, until he followed her.
‘What’s this? Here is a new sensation with a vengeance! O storm and cloud of material appearances, were there not enough of you already, that you must add to your number these also? Bran! Bran! Could you find no other day in the year but this, whereon to present my ears with the squeals of—one—two—three—nine blind puppies?’
Bran answered by rushing into the hole where her new family lay tumbling and squalling, bringing out one in her mouth, and laying it at his feet.
‘Needless, I assure you. I am perfectly aware of the state of the case already. What! another? Silly old thing!—do you fancy, as the fine ladies do, that burdening the world with noisy likenesses of your precious self, is a thing of which to be proud? Why, she’s bringing out the whole litter!.... What was I thinking of last? Ah—the argument was self-contradictory, was it, because I could not argue without using the very terms which I repudiated. Well.... And—why should it not be contradictory; Why not? One must face that too, after all. Why should not a thing be true and false also? What harm in a thing’s being false? What necessity for it to be true? True? What is truth? Why should a thing be the worse for being illogical? Why should there be any logic at all? Did I ever see a little beast flying about with “Logic” labelled on its back? What do I know of it, but as a sensation of my own mind—if I have any? What proof is that that I am to obey it, and not it me? If a flea bites me I get rid of that sensation; and if logic bothers me, I’ll get rid of that too. Phantasms must be taught to vanish courteously. One’s only hope of comfort lies in kicking feebly against the tyranny of one’s own boring notions and sensations—every philosopher confesses that—and what god is logic, pray, that it is to be the sole exception?.... What, old lady? I give you fair warning, you must choose this day, like any nun, between the ties of family and those of duty.’
Bran seized him by the skirt, and pulled him down towards the puppies; took up one of the puppies and lifted it towards him; and then repeated the action with another.
‘You unconscionable old brute! You don’t actually dare to expect the to carry your puppies for you?’ and he turned to go.
Bran sat down on her tail and began howling.
‘Farewell, old dog! you have been a pleasant dream after all.... But if you will go the way of all phantasms.’.... And he walked away.
Bran ran with him, leaping and barking; then recollected her family and ran back; tried to bring them, one by one, in her mouth, and then to bring them all at once; and failing sat down and howled.
‘Come, Bran! Come, old girl!’
She raced halfway up to him; then halfway back again to the puppies; then towards him again: and then suddenly gave it up, and dropping her tail, walked slowly back to the blind suppliants, with a deep reproachful growl.
‘* * *!’ said Raphael with a mighty oath; ‘you are right after all! Here are nine things come into the world, phantasms or not, there it is; I can’t deny it. They are something, and you are something, old dog; or at least like enough to something to do instead of it; and you are not I, and as good as I, and they too, for aught I know, and have as good a right to live as I; and by the seven planets and all the rest of it, I’ll carry them!’
And he went back, tied up the puppies in his blanket, and set forth, Bran barking, squeaking, wagging, leaping, running between his legs and upsetting him, in her agonies of joy.
‘Forward! Whither you will, old lady! The world is wide. You shall be my guide, tutor, queen of philosophy, for the sake of this mere common sense of yours. Forward, you new Hypatia! I promise you I will attend no lectures but yours this day!’
He toiled on, every now and then stepping across a dead body, or clambering a wall out of the road, to avoid some plunging, shrieking horse, or obscene knot of prowling camp followers, who were already stripping and plundering the slain.... At last, in front of a large villa, now a black and smoking skeleton, he leaped a wall, and found himself landed on a heap of corpses.... They were piled up against the garden fence for many yards. The struggle had been fierce there some three hours before.
‘Put me out of my misery! In mercy kill me!’ moaned a voice beneath his feet.
Raphael looked down; the poor wretch was slashed and mutilated beyond all hope.
‘Certainly, friend, if you wish it,’ and he drew his dagger. The poor fellow stretched out his throat, and awaited the stroke with a ghastly smile. Raphael caught his eye; his heart failed him, and he rose.
‘What do you advise, Bran?’ But the dog was far ahead, leaping and barking impatiently.
‘I obey,’ said Raphael; and he followed her, while the wounded man called piteously and upbraidingly after him.
‘He will not have long to wait. Those plunderers will not be as squeamish as I.... Strange, now! From Armenian reminiscences I should have fancied myself as free from such tender weakness as any of my Canaanite-slaying ancestors.... And yet by some mere spirit of contradiction, I couldn’t kill that fellow, exactly because he asked me to do it.... There is more in that than will fit into the great inverted pyramid of “I am I.”. Never mind, let me get the dog’s lessons by heart first. What next, Bran? Ah! Could one believe the transformation? Why, this is the very trim villa which I passed yesterday morning, with the garden-chairs standing among the flower-beds, just as the young ladies had left them, and the peacocks and silver pheasants running about, wondering why their pretty mistresses did not come to feed them. And here is a trampled mass of wreck and corruption for the girls to find, when they venture back from Rome, and complain how horrible war is for breaking down all their shrubs, and how cruel soldiers must be to kill and cook all their poor dear tame turtle-doves! Why not? Why should they lament over other things—which they can just as little mend—and which perhaps need no more mending? Ah! there lies a gallant fellow underneath that fruit-tree!’
Raphael walked up to a ring of dead, in the midst of which lay, half-sitting against the trunk of the tree, a tall and noble officer in the first bloom of manhood. His casque and armour, gorgeously inlaid with gold, were hewn and battered by a hundred blows; his shield was cloven through and through; his sword broken in the stiffened hand which grasped it still. Cut off from his troop, he had made his last stand beneath the tree, knee-deep in the gay summer flowers, and there he lay, bestrewn, as if by some mockery—or pity—of mother nature, with faded roses, and golden fruit, shaken from off the boughs in that last deadly struggle. Raphael stood and watched him with a sad sneer.
‘Well!—you have sold your fancied personality dear! How many dead men?.... Nine.... Eleven! Conceited fellow! Who told you that your one life was worth the eleven which you have taken?’
Bran went up to the corpse—perhaps from its sitting posture fancying it still living—smelt the cold cheek, and recoiled with a mournful whine.
‘Eh? That is the right way to look at the phenomena, is it? Well, after all, I am sorry for you.... almost like you.... All your wounds in front, as a man’s should be. Poor fop! Lais and Thais will never curl those dainty ringlets for you again! What is that bas-relief upon your shield? Venus receiving Psyche into the abode of the gods!.... Ah! you have found out all about Psyche’s wings by this time.... How do I know that? And yet, why am I, in spite of my common sense—if I have any—talking to you as you, and liking you, and pitying you, if you are nothing now, and probably never were anything? Bran! What right had you to pity him without giving your reasons in due form, as Hypatia would have done? Forgive me, sir, however—whether you exist or not, I cannot leave that collar round your neck for these camp-wolves to convert into strong liquor.’
And as he spoke, he bent down, and detached, gently enough, a magnificent necklace.
‘Not for myself, I assure you. Like Ate’s golden apple, it shall go to the fairest. Here, Bran!’ And he wreathed the jewels round the neck of the mastiff, who, evidently exalted in her own eyes by the burden, leaped and barked forward again, taking, apparently as a matter of course, the road back towards Ostia, by which they had come thither from the sea. And as he followed, careless where he went, he continued talking to himself aloud after the manner of restless self-discontented men.
....‘And then man talks big about his dignity and his intellect, and his heavenly parentage, and his aspirations after the unseen, and the beautiful, and the infinite—and everything else unlike himself. How can he prove it? Why, these poor blackguards lying about are very fair specimens of humanity.—And how much have they been bothered since they were born with aspirations after anything infinite, except infinite sour wine? To eat, to drink; to destroy a certain number of their species; to reproduce a certain number of the same, two-thirds of whom will die in infancy, a dead waste of pain to their mothers and of expense to their putative sires.... and then—what says Solomon? What befalls them befalls beasts. As one dies, so dies the other; so that they have all one breath, and a man has no pre-eminence over a beast; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are of the dust, and turn to dust again. Who knows that the breath of man goes upward, and that the breath of the beast goes downward to the earth? Who, indeed, my most wise ancestor? Not I, certainly. Raphael Aben-Ezra, how art thou better than a beast? W hat pre-eminence hast thou, not merely over this dog, But over the fleas whom thou so wantonly cursest? Man must painfully win house, clothes, fire.... A pretty proof of his wisdom, when every flea has the wit to make my blanket, without any labour of his own, lodge him a great deal better than it lodges me! Man makes clothes, and the fleas live in them.... Which is the wiser of the two?....
‘Ah, but—man is fallen.... Well—and the flea is not. So much better he than the man; for he is what he was intended to be, and so fulfils the very definition of virtue, which no one can say of us of the red-ochre vein. And even if the old myth be true, and the man only fell, because he was set to do higher work than the flea, what does that prove—but that he could not do it?
‘But his arts and his sciences?.... Apage! The very sound of those grown-children’s rattles turns me sick.... One conceited ass in a generation increasing labour and sorrow, and dying after all even as the fool dies, and ten million brutes and slaves, just where their fore-fathers were, and where their children will be after them, to the end of the farce.... The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and there is no new thing under the sun....
‘And as for your palaces, and cities, and temples.... look at this Campagna, and judge. Flea-bites go down after a while—and so do they. What are they but the bumps which we human fleas make in the old earth’s skin?. Make them? We only cause them, as fleas cause flea-bites.... What are all the works of man, but a sort of cutaneous disorder in this unhealthy earth-hide, and we a race of larger fleas, running about among its fur, which we call trees? Why should not the earth be an animal? How do I know it is not? Because it is too big? Bah! What is big, and what is little? Because it has not the shape of one?.... Look into a fisherman’s net, and see what forms are there! Because it does not speak?.... Perhaps it has nothing to say, being too busy. Perhaps it can talk no more sense than we.... In both cases it shows its wisdom by holding its tongue. Because it moves in one necessary direction? .... How do I know that it does? How can I tell that it is not flirting with all the seven spheres at once, at this moment? But if it does—so much the wiser of it, if that be the best direction for it. Oh, what a base satire on ourselves and our notions of the fair and fitting, to say that a thing cannot be alive and rational, just because it goes steadily on upon its own road, instead of skipping and scrambling fantastically up and down without method or order, like us and the fleas, from the cradle to the grave! Besides, if you grant, with the rest of the world, that fleas are less noble than we, because they are our parasites, then you are bound to grant that we are less noble than the earth, because we are its parasites. .... Positively, it looks more probable than anything I have seen for many a day.... And, by the bye, why should not earthquakes, and floods, and pestilences, be only just so many ways which the cunning old brute earth has of scratching herself when the human fleas and their palace and city bites get too troublesome?’
At a turn of the road he was aroused from this profitable meditation by a shriek, the shrillness of which told him that it was a woman’s. He looked up, and saw close to him, among the smouldering ruins of a farmhouse, two ruffians driving before them a young girl, with her hands tied behind her, while the poor creature was looking back piteously after something among the ruins, and struggling in vain, bound as she was, to escape from her captors and return.
‘Conduct unjustifiable in any fleas,—eh, Bran? How do I know that, though? Why should it not be a piece of excellent fortune for her, if she had but the equanimity to see it? Why—what will happen to her? She will betaken to Rome, and sold as a slave.... And in spite of a few discomforts in the transfer, and the prejudice which some persons have against standing an hour on the catasta to be handled from head to foot in the minimum of clothing, she will most probably end in being far better housed, fed, bedizened, and pampered to her heart’s desire, than ninety-nine out of a hundred of her sister fleas.... till she begins to grow old.... which she must do in any case....And if she have not contrived to wheedle her master out of her liberty, and to make tip a pretty little purse of savings, by that time—why, it is her own fault. Eh, Bran?’
But Bran by no means agreed with his view of the case; for after watching the two ruffians, with her head stuck on one side, for a minute or two, she suddenly and silently, after the manner of mastiffs, sprang upon them, and dragged one to the ground.
‘Oh! that is the “fit and beautiful,” in this case, as they say in Alexandria, is it? Well—I obey. You are at least a more practical teacher than ever Hypatia was. Heaven grant that there may be no more of them in the ruins!’
And rushing on the second plunderer, he laid him dead with a blow of his dagger, and then turned to the first, whom Bran was holding down by the throat.
‘Mercy, mercy!’ shrieked the wretch. ‘Life! only life!’
‘There was a fellow half a mile back begging me to kill him: with which of you two am I to agree?—for you can’t both be right.’
‘Life! Only life!’
‘A carnal appetite, which man must learn to conquer,’ said Raphael, as he raised the poniard..... In a moment it was over, and Bran and he rose—Where was the girl? She had rushed back to the ruins, whither Raphael followed her; while Bran ran to the puppies, which he had laid upon a stone, and commenced her maternal cares.
‘What do you want, my poor girl?’ asked he in Latin. ‘I will not hurt you.’
‘My father! My father!’
He untied her bruised and swollen wrists; and without stopping to thank him, she ran to a heap of fallen stones and beams, and began digging wildly with all her little strength, breathlessly calling ‘Father!’
‘Such is the gratitude of flea to flea! What is there, now, in the mere fact of being accustomed to call another person father, and not master, or slave, which should produce such passion as that?.... Brute habit!.... What services can the said man render, or have rendered, which make him worth—Here is Bran!.... What do you think of that, my female philosopher?’
Bran sat down and watched too. The poor girl’s tender hands were bleeding from the stones, while her golden tresses rolled down over her eyes, and entangled in her impatient fingers; but still she worked frantically. Bran seemed suddenly to comprehend the case, rushed to the rescue, and began digging too, with all her might.
Raphael rose with a shrug, and joined in the work. ...............
‘Hang these brute instincts! They make one very hot. What was that?’
A feeble moan rose from under the stones. A human limb was uncovered. The girl threw herself on the place, shrieking her father’s name. Raphael put her gently back and exerting his whole strength, drew out of the ruins a stalwart elderly man, in the dress of an officer of high rank.
He still breathed. The girl lifted up his head and covered him with wild kisses. Raphael looked round for water; found a spring and a broken sherd, and bathed the wounded man’s temples till he opened his eyes and showed signs of returning life.
The girl still sat by him, fondling her recovered treasure, and bathing the grizzled face in holy tears.
‘It is no business of mine,’ said Raphael. ‘Come, Bran!’
The girl sprang up, threw herself at his feet, kissed his hands, called him her saviour, her deliverer, sent by God.
‘Not in the least, my child. You must thank my teacher the dog, not me.’
And she took him at his word, and threw her soft arms round Bran’s Deck; and Bran understood it, and wagged her tail, and licked the gentle face lovingly.
‘Intolerably absurd, all this!’ said Raphael. ‘I must be going, Bran.’
‘You will not leave us? You surely will not leave an old man to die here?’
‘Why not? What better thing could happen to him?’
‘Nothing,’ murmured the officer, who had not spoken before.
‘Ah, God! he is my father!’
‘Well?’
‘He is my father!’
‘Well?’
‘You must save him! You shall, I say!’ And she seized Raphael’s arm in the imperiousness of her passion.
He shrugged his shoulders: but felt, he knew not why, marvellously inclined to obey her.
‘I may as well do this as anything else, having nothing else to do. Whither now, sir?’
‘Whither you will. Our troops are disgraced, our eagles taken. We are your prisoners by right of war. We follow you.’
‘Oh, my fortune! A new responsibility! Why cannot I stir, without live animals, from fleas upward, attaching themselves to me? Is it not enough to have nine blind puppies at my back, and an old brute at my heels, who will persist in saving my life, that I must be burdened over and above with a respectable elderly rebel and his daughter? Why am I not allowed by fate to care for nobody but myself? Sir, I give you both your freedom. The world is wide enough for us all. I really ask no ransom.’
‘You seem philosophically disposed, my friend.’
‘I? Heaven forbid! I have gone right through that slough, and come out sheer on the other side. For sweeping the last lingering taint of it out of me, I have to thank, not sulphur and exorcisms, but your soldiers and their morning’s work. Philosophy is superfluous in a world where all are fools.’
‘Do you include yourself under that title?’
‘Most certainly, my best sir. Don’t fancy that I make any exceptions. If I can in any way prove my folly to you, I will do it.’
‘Then help me and my daughter to Ostia.’
‘A very fair instance. Well—my dog happens to be going that way; and after all, you seem to have a sufficient share of human imbecility to be a very fit companion for me. I hope, though, you do not set up for a wise man!’
‘God knows—no! Am I not of Heraclian’s army?’
‘True; and the young lady here made herself so great a fool about you, that she actually infected the very dog.’
‘So we three fools will forth together.’
‘And the greatest one, as usual, must help the rest. But I have nine puppies in my family already. How am I to carry you and them?’
‘I will take them,’ said the girl; and Bran, after looking on at the transfer with a somewhat dubious face, seemed to satisfy herself that all was right, and put her head contentedly under the girl’s hand.
‘Eh? You trust her, Bran?’ said Raphael, in an undertone. ‘I must really emancipate myself from your instructions if you require a similar simplicity in me. Stay! there wanders a mule without a rider; we may as well press into the service.’
He caught the mule, lifted the wounded man into the saddle, and the cavalcade set forth, turning out of the highroad into a by-lane, which the officer, who seemed to know the country thoroughly, assured would lead them to Ostia by an unfrequented route.
‘If we arrive there before sundown, we are saved,’ said he.
‘And in the meantime,’ answered Raphael, ‘between the dog and this dagger, which, as I take care to inform all comers, is delicately poisoned, we may keep ourselves clear of marauders. And yet, what a meddling fool I am!’ he went on to himself. ‘What possible interest can I have in this uncircumcised rebel! The least evil is, that if we are taken, which we most probably shall be, I shall be crucified for helping to escape. But even if we get safe off—here is a fresh tie between me and those very brother fleas, to be rid of whom I have chosen beggary and starvation. Who knows where it may end? Pooh! The man is like other men. He is certain, before the day is over, to prove ungrateful, or attempt the mountebank-heroic, or give me some other excuse for bidding good-evening. And in the meantime there is something quaint in the fact of finding so sober a respectability, with a young daughter too, abroad on this fool’s errand, which really makes me curious to discover with what variety of flea I am to class him.’
But while Aben-Ezra was talking to himself about the father, he could not help, somehow, thinking about the daughter. Again and again he found himself looking at her. She was, undeniably, most beautiful. Her features were not as regularly perfect as Hypatia’s, nor her stature so commanding; but her face shone with a clear and joyful determination, and with a tender and modest thoughtfulness, such as he had never beheld before united in one countenance; and as she stepped along, firmly and lightly, by her father’s side, looping up her scattered tresses as she went, laughing at the struggles of her noisy burden, and looking up with rapture at her father’s gradually brightening face, Raphael could not help stealing glance after glance, and was surprised to find them returned with a bright, honest, smiling gratitude, which met full-eyed, as free from prudery as it was from coquetry.... ‘A lady she is,’ said he to himself; ‘but evidently no city one. There is nature—or something else, there, pure and unadulterated, without any of man’s additions or beautifications.’ And as he looked, he began to feel it a pleasure such as his weary heart had not known for many a year, simply to watch her....
‘Positively there is a foolish enjoyment after all in making other fleas smile.... Ass that I am! As if I had not drunk all that ditch-water cup to the dregs years ago!’
They went on for some time in silence, till the officer, turning to him—
‘And may I ask you, my quaint preserver, whom I would have thanked before but for this foolish faintness, which is now going off, what and who you are?’
‘A flea, sir—a flea—nothing more.’
‘But a patrician flea, surely, to judge by your language and manners?’
‘Not that exactly. True, I have been rich, as the saying is; I may be rich again, they tell me, when I am fool enough to choose.’
‘Oh if we were but rich!’ sighed the girl.
‘You would be very unhappy, my dear young lady. Believe a flea who has tried the experiment thoroughly.’
‘Ah! but we could ransom my brother! and now we can find no money till we get back to Africa.’
‘And none then,’ said the officer, in a low voice. ‘You forget, my poor child, that I mortgaged the whole estate to raise my legion. We must not shrink from looking at things as they are.’
‘Ah! and he is prisoner! he will be sold for a slave—perhaps—ah! perhaps crucified, for he is not a Roman! Oh, he will be crucified!’ and she burst into an agony of weeping....Suddenly she dashed away her tears and looked up clear and bright once more.
‘No! forgive me, father! God will protect His own!’
‘My dear young lady,’ said Raphael, ‘if you really dislike such a prospect for your brother, and are in want of a few dirty coins wherewith to prevent it, perhaps I may be able to find you them in Ostia.’
She looked at incredulously, as her eye glanced over his rags, and then, blushing, begged his pardon for her unspoken thoughts.
‘Well, as you choose to suppose. But my dog has been so civil to you already, that perhaps she may have no objection to make you a present of that necklace of hers. I will go to the Rabbis, and we will make all right; so don’t cry. I hate crying; and the puppies are quite chorus enough for the present tragedy.’
‘The Rabbis? Are you a Jew?’ asked the officer.
‘Yes, sir, a Jew. And you, I presume, a Christian: perhaps you may have scruples about receiving—your sect has generally none about taking—from one of our stubborn and unbelieving race. Don’t be frightened, though, for your conscience; I assure you I am no more a Jew at heart than I am a Christian.’
‘God help you then!’
‘Some one, or something, has helped me a great deal too much, for three-and-thirty years of pampering. But, pardon me, that was a strange speech for a Christian.’
‘You must be a good Jew, sir, before you can be a good Christian.’
‘Possibly. I intend to be neither—nor a good Pagan either. My dear sir, let us drop the subject. It is beyond me. If I can be as good a brute animal as my dog there—it being first demonstrated that it is good to be good—I shall be very well content.’
The officer looked down on with a stately, loving sorrow. Raphael caught his eye, and felt that he was in the presence of no common man.
‘I must take care what I say here, I suspect, or I shall be entangled shortly in a regular Socratic dialogue.... And now, sir, may I return your question, and ask who and what are you? I really have no intention of giving you up to any Caesar, Antiochus, Tiglath-Pileser, or other flea-devouring flea.... They will fatten well enough without your blood. So I only ask as a student of the great nothing-in-general, which men call the universe.’
‘I was prefect of a legion this morning. What I am now, you know as well as I.’
‘Just what I do not. I am in deep wonder at seeing your hilarity, when, by all flea-analogies, you ought to be either be howling your fate like Achilles on the shores of Styx, or pretending to grin and bear it, as I was taught to do when I played at Stoicism. You are not of that sect certainly, for you confessed yourself a fool just now.’
‘And it would be long, would it not, before you made one of them do as much? Well, be it so. A fool I am; yet, if God helps us as far as Ostia, why should I not be cheerful?’
‘Why should you?’
‘What better thing can happen to a fool, than that God should teach that he is one, when he fancied himself the wisest of the wise? Listen to me, sir. Four mouths ago I was blessed with health, honour, lands, friends—all for which the heart of man could wish. And if, for an insane ambition, I have chosen to risk all those, against the solemn warnings of the truest friend, and the wisest saint who treads this earth of God’s—should I not rejoice to have it proved to me, even by such a lesson as this, that the friend who never deceived me before was right in this case too; and that the God who has checked and turned me for forty years of wild toil and warfare, whenever I dared to do what was right in the sight of my own eyes, has not forgotten me yet, or given up the thankless task of my education?’
‘And who, pray, is this peerless friend?’
‘Augustine of Hippo.’
‘Humph! It had been better for the world in general, if the great dialectician had exerted his powers of persuasion on Heraclian himself.’
‘He did so, but in vain.’
‘I don’t doubt it. I know the sleek Count well enough to judge what effect a sermon would have upon that smooth vulpine determination of his.... “An instrument in the hands of God, my dear brother.... We must obey His call, even to the death,” etc. etc.’ And Raphael laughed bitterly.
‘You know the Count?’
‘As well, sir, as I care to know any man.’
‘I am sorry for your eyesight, then, sir,’ said the Prefect severely, ‘if it has been able to discern no more than that in so august a character.’
‘My dear sir, I do not doubt his excellence—nay, his inspiration. How well he divined the perfectly fit moment for stabbing his old comrade Stilicho! But really, as two men of the world, we must be aware by this time that every man has his price.’....
‘Oh, hush! hush!’ whispered the girl. ‘You cannot guess how you pain him. He worships the Count. It was not ambition, as he pretends, but merely loyalty to him, which brought here against his will.’
‘My dear madam, forgive me. For your sake I am silent.’....
‘For her sake! A pretty speech for me! What next?’ said he to himself. ‘Ah, Bran, Bran, this is all your fault!’
‘For my sake! Oh, why not for your own sake? How sad to hear one—one like you, only sneering and speaking evil!’
‘Why then? If fools are fools, and one can safely call them so, why not do it?’
‘Ah,—if God was merciful enough to send down His own Son to die for them, should we not be merciful enough not to judge their failings harshly!’
‘My dear young lady, spare a worn-out philosopher any new anthropologic theories. We really must push on a little faster, if we intend to reach Ostia to-night.’
But, for some reason or other, Raphael sneered no more for a full half-hour.
Long, however, ere they reached Ostia, the night had fallen; and their situation began to be more than questionably safe. Now and then a wolf, slinking across the road towards his ghastly feast, glided like a lank ghost out of the darkness, and into it again, answering Bran’s growl by a gleam of his white teeth. Then the voices of some marauding party rang coarse and loud through the still night, and made them hesitate and stop a while. And at last, worst of all, the measured tramp of an imperial column began to roll like distant thunder along the plain below. They were advancing upon Ostia! What if they arrived there before the routed army could rally, and defend themselves long enough to re-embark!.... What if—a thousand ugly possibilities began to crowd up.
‘Suppose we found the gates of Ostia shut, and the Imperialists bivouacked outside?’ said Raphael half to himself.
‘God would protect His own,’ answered the girl; and Raphael had no heart to rob her of her hope, though he looked upon their chances of escape as growing smaller and smaller every moment. The poor girl was weary; the mule weary also; and as they crawled along, at a pace which made it certain that the fast passing column would be at Ostia an hour before them, to join the vanguard of the pursuers, and aid them in investing the town, she had to lean again and again on Raphael’s arm. Her shoes, unfitted for so rough a journey, bad been long since torn off, and her tender feet were marking every step with blood. Raphael knew it by her faltering gait; and remarked, too, that neither sigh nor murmur passed her lips. But as for helping her, he could not; and began to curse the fancy which had led to eschew even sandals as unworthy the self-dependence of a Cynic.