Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face Part 43

'Then, my G.o.ddess, thou must wait the pleasure of these base ones! At least the young Apollo will have charms even for them.'

'Ah, but who will represent him? This puny generation does not produce such figures as Pylades and Bathyllus-except among those Goths. Besides, Apollo must have golden hair; and our Greek race has intermixed itself so shamefully with these Egyptians, that our stage-troop is as dark as Andromeda, and we should have to apply again to those accursed Goths, who have nearly' (with a bow) 'all the beauty, and nearly all the money and the power, and will, I suspect, have the rest of it before I am safe out of this wicked world, because they have not nearly, but quite, all the courage. Now-Shall we ask a Goth to dance Apollo? for we can get no one else.'

Hypatia smiled in spite of herself at the notion. 'That would be too shameful! I must forego the G.o.d of light himself, if I am to see him in the person of a clumsy barbarian.'

'Then why not try my despised and rejected Aphrodite? Suppose we had her triumph, finishing with a dance of Venus Anadyomene. Surely that is a graceful myth enough.'

'As a myth; but on the stage in reality?'

'Not worse than what this Christian city has been looking at for many a year. We shall not run any danger of corrupting morality, be sure.'

Hypatia blushed.

'Then you must not ask for my help.'

'Or for your presence at the spectacle? For that be sure is a necessary point. You are too great a person, my dearest madam, in the eyes of these good folks to be allowed to absent yourself on such an occasion. If my little stratagem succeeds, it will be half owing to the fact of the people knowing that in crowning me, they crown Hypatia.... Come now-do you not see that as you must needs be present at their harmless sc.r.a.p of mythology, taken from the authentic and undoubted histories of those very G.o.ds whose worship we intend to restore, you will consult your own comfort most in agreeing to it cheerfully, and in lending me your wisdom towards arranging it? Just conceive now, a triumph of Aphrodite, entering preceded by wild beasts led in chains by Cupids, the white elephant and all-what a field for the plastic art! You might have a thousand groupings, dispersions, regroupings, in as perfect bas-relief style as those of any Sophoclean drama. Allow me only to take this paper and pen-'

And he began sketching rapidly group after group.

'Not so ugly, surely?'

'They are very beautiful, I cannot deny,' said poor Hypatia.

'Ah, sweetest Empress! you forget sometimes that I, too, world-worm as I am, am a Greek, with as intense a love of the beautiful as even you yourself have. Do not fancy that every violation of correct taste does not torture me as keenly as it does you. Some day, I hope, you will have learned to pity and to excuse the wretched compromise between that which ought to be and that which can be, in which we hapless statesmen must struggle on, half-stunted, and wholly misunderstood-Ah, well! Look, now, at these fauns and dryads among the shrubs upon the stage, pausing in startled wonder at the first blast of music which proclaims the exit of the G.o.ddess from her temple.'

'The temple? Why, where are you going to exhibit?'

'In the Theatre, of course. Where else pantomimes?'

'But will the spectators have time to move all the way from the Amphitheatre after that-those-'

'The Amphitheatre? We shall exhibit the Libyans, too, in the Theatre.'

'Combats in the Theatre sacred to Dionusos?'

'My dear lady'-penitently-'I know it is an offence against all the laws of the drama.'

'Oh, worse than that! Consider what an impiety toward the G.o.d, to desecrate his altar with bloodshed?'

'Fairest devotee, recollect that, after all, I may fairly borrow Dionusos's altar in this my extreme need; for I saved its very existence for him, by preventing the magistrates from filling up the whole orchestra with benches for the patricians, after the barbarous Roman fashion. And besides, what possible sort of representation, or misrepresentation, has not been exhibited in every theatre of the empire for the last four hundred years? Have we not had tumblers, conjurers, allegories, martyrdoms, marriages, elephants on the tight-rope, learned horses, and learned a.s.ses too, if we may trust Apuleius of Madaura; with a good many other spectacles of which we must not speak in the presence of a vestal? It is an age of execrable taste, and we must act accordingly.'

'Ah!' answered Hypatia; 'the first step in the downward career of the drama began when the successors of Alexander dared to profane theatres which had re-echoed the choruses of Sophocles and Euripides by degrading the altar of Dionusos into a stage for pantomimes!'

'Which your pure mind must, doubtless, consider not so very much better than a little fighting. But, after all, the Ptolemies could not do otherwise. You can only have Sophoclean dramas in a Sophoclean age; and theirs was no more of one than ours is, and so the drama died a natural death; and when that happens to man or thing, you may weep over it if you will, but you must, after all, bury it, and get something else in its place-except, of course, the worship of the G.o.ds.'

'I am glad that you except that, at least,' said Hypatia, somewhat bitterly. 'But why not use the Amphitheatre for both spectacles?'

'What can I do? I am over head and ears in debt already; and the Amphitheatre is half in ruins, thanks to that fanatic edict of the late emperor's against gladiators. There is no time or money for repairing it; and besides, how pitiful a poor hundred of combatants will look in an arena built to hold two thousand! Consider, my dearest lady, in what fallen times we live!'

'I do, indeed!' said Hypatia. 'But I will not see the altar polluted by blood. It is the desecration which it has undergone already which has provoked the G.o.d to withdraw the poetic inspiration.'

'I do not doubt the fact. Some curse from Heaven, certainly, has fallen on our poets, to judge by their exceeding badness. Indeed, I am inclined to attribute the insane vagaries of the water-drinking monks and nuns, like those of the Argive women, to the same celestial anger. But I will see that the sanct.i.ty of the altar is preserved, by confining the combat to the stage. And as for the pantomime which will follow, if you would only fall in with my fancy of the triumph of Aphrodite, Dionusos would hardly refuse his altar for the glorification of his own lady-love.'

'Ah-that myth is a late, and in my opinion a degraded one.'

'Be it so; but recollect, that another myth makes her, and not without reason, the mother of all living beings. Be sure that Dionusos will have no objection, or any other G.o.d either, to allow her to make her children feel her conquering might; for they all know well enough, that if we can once get her well worshipped here, all Olympus will follow in her train.'

'That was spoken of the celestial Aphrodite, whose symbol is the tortoise, the emblem of domestic modesty and chast.i.ty: not of that baser Pandemic one.'

'Then we will take care to make the people aware of whom they are admiring by exhibiting in the triumph whole legions of tortoises: and you yourself shall write the chant, while I will see that the chorus is worthy of what it has to sing. No mere squeaking double flute and a pair of boys: but a whole army of cyclops and graces, with such trebles and such ba.s.s-voices! It shall make Cyril's ears tingle in his palace!'

'The chant! A n.o.ble office for me, truly! That is the very part of the absurd spectacle to which you used to say the people never dreamed of attending. All which is worth settling you seemed to have settled for yourself before you deigned to consult me.'

'I said so? Surely you must mistake. But if any hired poetaster's chant do pa.s.s unheeded, what has that to do with Hypatia's eloquence and science, glowing with the treble inspiration of Athene, Phoebus, and Dionusos? And as for having arranged beforehand-my adorable mistress, what more delicate compliment could I have paid you?'

'I cannot say that it seems to me to be one.'

'How? After saving you every trouble which I could, and racking my overburdened wits for stage effects and properties, have I not brought hither the darling children of my own brain, and laid them down ruthlessly, for life or death, before the judgment-seat of your lofty and unsparing criticism?'

Hypatia felt herself tricked: but there was no escape now.

'And who, pray, is to disgrace herself and me, as Venus Anadyomene?'

'Ah! that is the most exquisite article in all my bill of fare! What if the kind G.o.ds have enabled me to exact a promise from-whom, think you?'

'What care I? How can I tell?'asked Hypatia, who suspected and dreaded that she could tell.

'Pelagia herself!'

Hypatia rose angrily.

'This, sir, at least, is too much! It was not enough for you, it seems, to claim, or rather to take for granted, so imperiously, so mercilessly, a conditional promise-weakly, weakly made, in the vain hope that you would help forward aspirations of mine which you have let lie fallow for months-in which I do not believe that you sympathise now!-It was not enough for you to declare yourself publicly yesterday a Christian, and to come hither this morning to flatter me into the belief that you will dare, ten days hence, to restore the worship of the G.o.ds whom you have abjured!-It was not enough to plan without me all those movements in which you told me I was to be your fellow-counsellor-the very condition which you yourself offered!-It was not enough for you to command me to sit in that theatre, as your bait, your puppet, your victim, blushing and shuddering at sights unfit for the eyes of G.o.ds and men:-but, over and above all this, I must a.s.sist in the renewed triumph of a woman who has laughed down my teaching, seduced away my scholars, braved me in my very lecture-room-who for four years has done more than even Cyril himself to destroy all the virtue and truth which I have toiled to sow-and toiled in vain! Oh, beloved G.o.ds! where will end the tortures through which your martyr must witness for you to a fallen race?'

And, in spite of all her pride, and of Orestes's presence, her eyes filled with scalding tears.

Orestes's eyes had sunk before the vehemence of her just pa.s.sion; but as she added the last sentence in a softer and sadder tone, he raised them again, with a look of sorrow and entreaty as his heart whispered-

'Fool!-fanatic! But she is too beautiful! Win her I must and will!'

'Ah! dearest, n.o.blest Hypatia! What have I done? Unthinking fool that I was! In the wish to save you trouble-In the hope that I could show you, by the aptness of my own plans, that my practical statesmanship was not altogether an unworthy helpmate for your loftier wisdom-wretch that I am, I have offended you; and I have ruined the cause of those very G.o.ds for whom, I swear, I am as ready to sacrifice myself as ever you can be!'

The last sentence had the effect which it was meant to have.

'Ruined the cause of the G.o.ds?'asked she, in a startled tone.

'Is it not ruined without your help? And what am I to understand from your words but that-hapless man that I am!-you leave me and them henceforth to our own una.s.sisted strength?'

'The una.s.sisted strength of the G.o.ds is omnipotence.'