Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face Part 2

'And multiplying, I don't doubt. Well, there will be less loss to the empire if I have to crucify a dozen or two, as I positively will, the next riot. It is really a great comfort to a statesman that the ma.s.ses are so well aware that they deserve hanging, and therefore so careful to prevent any danger of public justice depopulating the province. But how go on the schools?'

Hypatia shook her head sadly.

'Ah, boys will be boys.... I plead guilty myself. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. You must not be hard on us.... Whether we obey you or not in private life, we do in public; and if we enthrone you queen of Alexandria, you must allow your courtiers and bodyguards a few court licences. Now don't sigh or I shall be inconsolable. At all events, your worst rival has betaken herself to the wilderness, and gone to look for the city of the G.o.ds above the cataracts.'

'Whom do you mean?' asked Hypatia, in a tone most unphilosophically eager.

'Pelagia, of course. I met that prettiest and naughtiest of humanities half-way between here and Thebes, transformed into a perfect Andromache of chaste affection.'

'And to whom, pray?'

'To a certain Gothic giant. What men those barbarians do breed! I was afraid of being crushed under the elephant's foot at every step I took with him!'

'What!' asked Hypatia, 'did your excellency condescend to converse with such savages?'

'To tell you the truth, he had some forty stout countrymen of his with him, who might have been troublesome to a perplexed prefect; not to mention that it is always as well to keep on good terms with these Goths. Really, after the sack of Rome, and Athens cleaned out like a beehive by wasps, things begin to look serious. And as for the great brute himself, he has rank enough in his way,-boasts of his descent from some cannibal G.o.d or other,-really hardly deigned to speak to a paltry Roman governor, till his faithful and adoring bride interceded for me. Still, the fellow understood good living, and we celebrated our new treaty of friendship with n.o.ble libations-but I must not talk about that to you. However, I got rid of them; quoted all the geographical lies I had ever heard, and a great many more; quickened their appet.i.te for their fool's errand notably, and started them off again. So now the star of Venus is set, and that of Pallas in the ascendant. Wherefore tell me-what am I to do with Saint Firebrand?'

'Cyril?'

'Cyril.'

'Justice.'

'Ah, Fairest Wisdom, don't mention that horrid word out of the lecture-room. In theory it is all very well; but in poor imperfect earthly practice, a governor must be content with doing very much what comes to hand. In abstract justice, now, I ought to nail up Cyril, deacons, district visitors, and all, in a row, on the sandfill out side. That is simple enough; but, like a great many simple and excellent things, impossible.'

'You fear the people?'

'Well, my dear lady, and has not the villainous demagogue got the whole mob on his side? Am I to have the Constantinople riots re-enacted here? I really cannot face it; I have not nerve for it; perhaps I am too lazy. Be it so.'

Hypatia sighed. 'Ah, that your excellency but saw the great duel which depends on you alone! Do not fancy that the battle is merely between Paganism and Christianity-'

'Why, if it were, you know, I, as a Christian, under a Christian and sainted emperor, not to mention his august sister-'

'We understand,' interrupted she, with an impatient wave of her beautiful hand. 'Not even between them; not even between philosophy and barbarism. The struggle is simply one between the aristocracy and the mob,-between wealth, refinement, art, learning, all that makes a nation great, and the savage herd of child-breeders below, the many ign.o.ble, who were meant to labour for the n.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 acc.u.mulated 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 G.o.d 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 doc.u.ment-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 a.s.sistance, 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 pet.i.tion 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.... horses are a bore, I begin to find, like everything else. Always falling sick, or running away, or breaking one's peace of mind in some way or other. Besides, I have been pestered out of my life there in Cyrene, by commissions for dogs and horses and bows from that old Episcopal Nimrod, Synesius.'

'What, is the worthy man as lively as ever?'

'Lively? He nearly drove me into a nervous fever in three days. Up at four in the morning, always in the most disgustingly good health and spirits, farming, coursing, shooting, riding over hedge and ditch after rascally black robbers; preaching, intriguing, borrowing money; baptizing and excommunicating; bullying that bully, Andronicus; comforting old women, and giving pretty girls dowries; scribbling one half-hour on philosophy, and the next on farriery; sitting up all night writing hymns and drinking strong liquors; off again on horseback at four the next morning; and talking by the hour all the while about philosophic abstraction from the mundane tempest. Heaven defend me from all two-legged whirlwinds! By the bye, there was a fair daughter of my nation came back to Alexandria in the same ship with me, with a cargo that may suit your highness.'