Hypatia by Charles Kingsley (phonics story books txt) 📖

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 highersource 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 …. 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 fromall 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.’

‘There are a great many fair daughters of your nation who might suit me, without any cargo at all.’

‘Ah, they have had good practice, the little fools, ever since the days of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. But I mean old Miriam—you know. She has been lending Synesius money to fight the black fellows with; and really it was high time. They had burnt every homestead for miles through the province. But the daring old girl must do a little business for herself; so she went off, in the teeth of the barbarians, right away to the Atlas, bought all their lady prisoners, and some of their own sons and daughters, too, of them, for beads and old iron; and has come back with as pretty a cargo of Lybian beauties as a prefect of good taste could wish to have the first choice of. You may thank me for that privilege.’

‘After, of course, you had suited yourself, my cunning Raphael?’

‘Not I. Women are bores, as Solomon found out long ago. Did I never tell you? I began, as he did, with the most select harem in Alexandria. But they quarrelled so, that one day I went out, and sold them all but one, who was a Jewess—so there were objections on the part of the Rabbis. Then I tried one, as Solomon did; but my “garden shut up,” and my “sealed fountain” wanted me to be always in love with her, so I went to the lawyers, allowed her a comfortable maintenance, and now I am as free as a monk, and shall be happy to give your excellency the benefit of any good taste or experience which I may possess.’

‘Thanks, worthy Jew. We are not yet as exalted as yourself, and will send for the old Erictho this very afternoon. Now listen a moment to base, earthly, and political business. Cyril has written to me, to say that you Jews have plotted to murder all the Christians.’

‘Well—why not? I most heartily wish it were true, and think, on the whole, that it very probably is so.’

‘By the immortal—saints, man! you are not serious?’

‘The four archangels forbid! It is no concern of mine. All I say is, that my people are great fools, like the rest of the world; and have, for aught I know or care, some such intention. They won’t succeed, of course; and that is all you have to care for. But if you think it worth the trouble—which I do not—I shall have to go to the synagogue on business in a week or so, and then I would ask some of the Rabbis.’

‘Laziest of men!—and I must answer Cyril this very day.’

‘An additional reason for asking no questions of our people. Now you can honestly say that you know nothing about the matter.’

‘Well, after all, ignorance is a stronghold for poor statesmen. So you need not hurry yourself.’

‘I assure your excellency I will not.’

‘Ten days hence, or so, you know.’

‘Exactly, after it is all over.’

‘And can’t be helped. What a comfort it is, now and then, that Can’t be helped!’

‘It is the root and marrow of all philosophy. Your practical man, poor wretch, will try to help this and that, and torment his soul with ways and means, and preventives and forestallings; your philosopher quietly says—It can’t be helped. If it ought to be, it will be—if it is, it ought to be. We did not make the world, and we are not responsible for it.—There is the sum and substance of all true wisdom, and the epitome of all that has been said and writtenthereon from Philo the Jew to Hypatia the Gentile. By the way, here’s Cyril coming downthe steps of the Caesareum. A very handsome fellow, after all, though lie is looking as sulky as a bear.’

‘With his cubs at his heels. What a scoundrelly visage that tall fellow-deacon, or reader, or whatever he is by his dress—has!’

‘There they are—whispering together. Heaven give them pleasant thoughts and pleasanter faces!’

‘Amen!’ quoth Orestes, with a sneer: and he would have said Amen in good earnest, had he been able to take the liberty—which we shall— and listen to Cyril’s answer to Peter, the tall reader.

‘From Hypatia’s, you say? Why, he only returned to the city this morning.’

‘I saw his four-in-hand standing at her door, as I came down the Museum Street hither, half an hour ago.’

‘And twenty carriages besides, I don’t doubt?’

‘The street was blocked up with them. There! Look round the corner now.—Chariots, litters, slaves, and fops.—When shall we see such a concourse as that where it ought to be?’

Cyril made no answer; and Peter went on—‘Where it ought to be, my father—in front of your door at the Serapeium?’

‘The world, the flesh, and the devil know their own, Peter: and as long as they have their own to go to, we cannot expect them to come to us.’

‘But what if their own were taken out of the way?’

‘They might come to us for want of better amusement …. devil and all. Well—if I could get a fair hold of the two first, I would take the third into the bargain, and see whatcould be done with