and the mob,—between wealth, refinement, art, learning, all that makes a nation great, and the savage herd of child-breeders below, the many ignoble, who were meant to labour for the noble few. Shall the Roman empire command or obey her own slaves? is the question which you and Cyril have to battle out; and the fight must be internecine.’
‘I should not wonder if it became so, really,’ answered the prefect, with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘I expect every time I ride, to have my brains knocked out by some mad monk.’
‘Why not? In an age when, as has been well and often said, emperors and consulars crawl to the tombs of a tent-maker and a fisherman, and kiss the mouldy bones of the vilest slaves? Why not, among a people whose God is the crucified son of a carpenter? Why should learning, authority, antiquity, birth, rank, the system of empire which has been growing up, fed by the accumulated wisdom of ages,—why, I say, should any of these things protect your life a moment from the fury of any beggar who believes that the Son of God died for him as much as for you, and that he is your equal if not your superior in the sight of his low-born and illiterate deity!’ [Footnote: These are the arguments and the language which were commonly employed by Porphyry, Julian, and the other opponents of Christianity.]
‘My most eloquent philosopher, this may be—and perhaps is—all very true. I quite agree that there are very great practical inconveniences of this kind in the new—I mean the Catholic faith; but the world is full of inconveniences. The wise man does not quarrel with his creed for being disagreeable, any more than he does with his finger for aching: he cannot help it, and must make the best of a bad matter. Only tell me how to keep the peace.’
‘And let philosophy be destroyed?’
‘That it never will be, as long as Hypatia lives to illuminate the earth; and, as far as I am concerned, I promise you a clear stage and—a great deal of favour; as is proved by my visiting you publicly at this moment, before I have given audience to one of the four hundred bores, great and small, who are waiting in the tribunal to torment me. Do help me and advise me. What am I to do?’
‘I have told you.’
‘Ah, yes, as to general principles. But out of the lecture-room I prefer a practical expedient for instance, Cyril writes to me here—plague on him! he would not let me even have a week’s hunting in peace-that there is a plot on the part of the Jews to murder all the Christians. Here is the precious document—do look at it, in pity. For aught I know or care, the plot may be an exactly opposite one, and the Christians intend to murder all the Jews. But I must take some notice of the letter.’
‘I do not see that, your excellency.’
‘Why, if anything did happen, after all, conceive the missives which would be sent flying off to Constantinople against me!’
‘Let them go. If you are secure in the consciousness of innocence, what matter?’
‘Consciousness of innocence? I shall lose my prefecture!’
‘Your danger would just be as great if you took notice of it. Whatever happened, you would be accused of favouring the Jews.’
‘And really there might be some truth in the accusation. How the finances of the provinces would go on without their kind assistance, I dare not think. If those Christians would but lend me their money, instead of building alms-houses and hospitals with it, they might burn the Jews’ quarter to-morrow, for aught I care. But now....’
‘But now, you must absolutely take no notice of this letter. The very tone of it forbids you, for your own honour, and the honour of the empire. Are you to treat with a man who talks of the masses at Alexandria as “the flock whom the King of kings has committed to his rule and care”? Does your excellency, or this proud bishop, govern Alexandria?’
‘Really, my dear lady, I have given up inquiring.’
‘But he has not. He comes to you as a person possessing an absolute authority over two-thirds of the population, which he does not scruple to hint to you is derived from a higher source than your own. The consequence is clear. If it be from a higher source than yours, of course it ought to control yours’; and you will confess that it ought to control it—you will acknowledge the root and ground of every extravagant claim which he makes, if you deign to reply.’
‘But I must say something, or I shall be pelted in the streets. You philosophers, however raised above your own bodies you may be, must really not forget that we poor worldlings have bones to be broken.’
‘Then tell him, and by word of mouth merely, that as the information which he sends you comes from his private knowledge and concerns not him as bishop, but you as magistrate, you can only take it into consideration when he addresses you as a private person, laying a regular information at your tribunal.’
‘Charming! queen of diplomatists as well as philosophers! I go to obey you. Ah! why were you not Pulcheria? No, for then Alexandria had been dark, and Orestes missed the supreme happiness of kissing a hand which Pallas, when she made you, must have borrowed from the workshop of Aphrodite.’
‘Recollect that you are a Christian,’ answered Hypatia, half smiling.
So the prefect departed; and passing through the outer hall, which was already crowded with Hypatia’s aristocratic pupils and visitors, bowed his way out past them and regained his chariot, chuckling over the rebuff which he intended to administer to Cyril, and comforting himself with the only text of Scripture of the inspiration of which he was thoroughly convinced—‘Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’
At the door was a crowd of chariots, slaves with their masters’ parasols, and the rabble of onlooking boys and market-folk, as usual in Alexandria then, as in all great cities since, who were staring at the prefect, and having their heads rapped by his guards, and wondering what sort of glorious personage Hypatia might be, and what sort of glorious house she must live in, to be fit company for the great governor of Alexandria. Not that there was not many a sulky and lowering face among the mob, for the great majority of them were Christians, and very seditious and turbulent politicians, as Alexandrians, ‘men of Macedonia,’ were bound to be; and there was many a grumble among them, all but audible, at the prefect’s going in state to the heathen woman’s house—heathen sorceress, some pious old woman called her—before he heard any poor soul’s petition in the tribunal, or even said his prayers in church.
Just as he was stepping into his curricle a tall young man, as gorgeously bedizened as himself, lounged down the steps after him, and beckoned lazily to the black boy who carried his parasol.
‘Ah, Raphael Aben-Ezra! my excellent friend, what propitious deity—ahem! martyr—brings you to Alexandria just as I want you? Get up by my side, and let us have a chat on our way to the tribunal.’
The man addressed came slowly forward with an ostentatiously low salutation, which could not hide, and indeed was not intended to hide, the contemptuous and lazy expression of his face; and asked in a drawling tone—
‘And for what kind purpose does the representative of the Caesars bestow such an honour on the humblest of his, etc. etc.—your penetration will supply the rest.’
‘Don’t be frightened; I am not going to borrow money of you,’ answered Orestes, laughingly, as the Jew got into the curricle.
‘I am glad to hear it. Really one usurer in a family is enough. My father made the gold, and if I spend it, I consider that I do all that is required of a philosopher.’
‘A charming team of white Nisaeans, is not this? And only one gray foot among all the four.’
‘Yes....
