Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley (pocket ebook reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Charles Kingsley
Book online «Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley (pocket ebook reader .txt) 📖». Author Charles Kingsley
‘A nunnery?’
‘Yes, indeed; I have intended ever since her birth to dedicate her to the service of God. And in such times as these, what better lot for a defenceless girl?’
‘Pardon me!’ said Raphael; ‘but I am too dull to comprehend what benefit or pleasure your Deity will derive from the celibacy of your daughter.... Except, indeed, on one supposition, which, as I have some faint remnants of reverence and decency reawakening in me just now, I must leave to be uttered only by the pure lips of sexless priests.’
‘You forget, sir, that you are speaking to a Christian.’
‘I assure you, no! I had certainly been forgetting it till the last two minutes, in your very pleasant and rational society. There is no danger henceforth of my making so silly a mistake.’
‘Sir!’ said the Prefect, reddening at the undisguised contempt of Raphael’s manner...., ‘When you know a little more of St. Paul’s Epistles, you will cease to insult the opinions and feelings of those who obey them, by sacrificing their most precious treasures to God.’
‘Oh, it is Paul of Tarsus, then, who gives you the advice! I thank you for informing me of the fact; for it will save me the trouble of any future study of his works. Allow me, therefore, to return by your hands this manuscript of his with many thanks from me to that daughter of yours, by whose perpetual imprisonment you intend to give pleasure to your Deity. Henceforth the less communication which passes between me and any member of your family, the better.’ And he turned away.
‘But, my dear sir!’ said the honest soldier, really chagrined, ‘you must not!—we owe you too much, and love you too well, to part thus for the caprice of a moment. If any word of mine has offended you—forget it, and forgive me, I beseech you!’ and he caught both Raphael’s hands in his own.
‘My very dear sir,’ answered the Jew quietly; ‘let me ask the same forgiveness of you; and believe me, for the sake of past pleasant passages, I shall not forget my promise about the mortgage.... But-here we must part. To tell you the truth, I half an hour ago was fearfully near becoming neither more nor less than a Christian. I had actually deluded myself into the fancy that the Deity of the Galileans might be, after all, the God of our old Hebrew forefathers—of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and David, and of the rest who believed that children and the fruit of the womb were an heritage and gift which cometh of the Lord—and that Paul was right—actually right—in his theory that the church was the development and fulfilment of our old national polity.... I must thank you for opening my eyes to a mistake which, had I not been besotted for the moment, every monk and nun would have contradicted by the mere fact of their existence, and reserve my nascent faith for some Deity who takes no delight in seeing his creature: stultify the primary laws of their being. Farewell!’
And while the Prefect stood petrified with astonishment, he retired to the further extremity of the deck, muttering to himself—
‘Did I not know all along that this gleam was too sudden and too bright to last? Did I not know that he, too, would prove himself like all the rest—an ass?.... Fool! to have looked for common sense on such an earth as this!.... Back to chaos again, Raphael Aben-Ezra, and spin ropes of sand to the end of the farce!’
And mixing with the soldiers, he exchanged no word with the Prefect and his children, till they reached the port of Berenice; and then putting the necklace into Victoria’s hands, vanished among the crowds upon the quay, no one knew whither.
CHAPTER XVIII: THE PREFECT TESTED
WHEN we lost sight of Philammon, his destiny had hurled him once more among his old friends the Goths, in search of two important elements of human comfort, freedom and a sister. The former be found at once, in a large hall where sundry Goths were lounging and toping, into the nearest corner of which he shrank, and stood, his late terror and rage forgotten altogether in the one new and absorbing thought—His sister might be in that house!.... and yielding to so sweet a dream, he began fancying to himself which of all those gay maidens she might be who had become in one moment more dear, more great to him, than all things else in heaven or earth. That fair-haired, rounded Italian? That fierce, luscious, aquiline-faced Jewess? That delicate, swart, sidelong-eyed Copt? No. She was Athenian, like himself. That tall, lazy Greek girl, then, from beneath whose sleepy lids flashed, once an hour, sudden lightnings, revealing depths of thought and feeling uncultivated, perhaps even unsuspected, by their possessor. Her? Or that, her seeming sister? Or the next?.... Or—Was it Pelagia herself, most beautiful and most sinful of them all? Fearful thought! He blushed scarlet at the bare imagination: yet why, in his secret heart, was that the most pleasant hypothesis of them all? And suddenly flashed across him that observation of one of the girls on board the boat, on his likeness to Pelagia. Strange, that he had never recollected it before! It must be so! and yet on what a slender thread, woven of scattered hints and surmises, did that ‘must’ depend! He would be sane! he would wait; he would have patience. Patience, with a sister yet unfound, perhaps perishing? Impossible!
Suddenly the train of his thoughts was changed perforce:—
‘Come! come and see! There’s a fight in the streets,’ called one of the damsels down the stairs, at the highest pitch of her voice.
‘I shan’t go,’ yawned a huge fellow, who was lying on his back on a sofa.
‘Oh come up, my hero,’ said one of the girls. ‘Such a charming riot, and the Prefect himself in the middle of it! We have not had such a one in the street this month.’
‘The princes won’t let me knock any of these donkey-riders on the head, and seeing other people do it only makes me envious. Give me the wine-jug—curse the girl! she has run upstairs!’
The shouting and trampling came nearer; and in another minute Wulf came rapidly downstairs, through the hall into the harem-court, and into the presence of the Amal.
‘Prince—here is a chance for us. These rascally Greeks are murdering their Prefect under our very windows.’
‘The lying cur! Serve him right for cheating us. He has plenty of guards. Why can’t the fool take care of himself?’
‘They have all run away, and I saw some of them hiding among the mob. As I live, the man will be
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