CHAPTER XXI: THE SQUIRE-BISHOP
In a small and ill-furnished upper room of a fortified country house,sat Synesius, the Bishop of Cyrene.
A goblet of wine stood beside him, on the table, but it was untasted.Slowly and sadly, by the light of a tiny lamp, he went on writing averse or two, and then burying his face in his hand, while hot tearsdropped between his fingers on the paper; till a servant entering,announced Raphael Aben-Ezra.
Synesius rose, with a gesture of surprise, and hurried towards the door.'No, ask him to come hither to me. To pass through those deserted roomsat night is more than I can bear.' And he waited for his guest at thechamber door, and as he entered, caught both his hands in his, and triedto speak; but his voice was choked within him.
'Do not speak,' said Raphael gently, leading him to his chair again. 'Iknow all.'
'You know all? And are you, then, so unlike the rest of the world,that you alone have come to visit the bereaved and the deserted in hismisery?'
'I am like the rest of the world, after all; for I came to you on my ownselfish errand, to seek comfort. Would that I could give it instead! Butthe servants told me all, below.'
'And yet you persisted in seeing me, as if I could help you? Alas! I canhelp no one now. Here I am at last, utterly alone, utterly helpless. AsI came from my mother's womb, so shall I return again. My last child--mylast and fairest--gone after the rest!--Thank God, that I have had evena day's peace wherein to lay him by his mother and his brothers; thoughHe alone knows how long the beloved graves may remain unrifled. Letit have been shame enough to sit here in my lonely tower and watch theashes of my Spartan ancestors, the sons of Hercules himself, my gloryand my pride, sinful fool that I was! cast to the winds by barbarianplunderers.... When wilt thou make an end, O Lord, and slay me?'
'And how did the poor boy die?' asked Raphael, in hope of soothingsorrow by enticing it to vent itself in words.
'The pestilence.--What other fate can we expect, who breathe an airtainted with corpses, and sit under a sky darkened with carrion birds?But I could endure even that, if I could work, if I could help. But tosit here, imprisoned now for months between these hateful towers; nightafter night to watch the sky, red with burning homesteads; day after dayto have my ears ring with the shrieks of the dying and the captives--forthey have begun now to murder every male down to the baby at thebreast--and to feel myself utterly fettered, impotent, sitting here likesome palsied idiot, waiting for my end! I long to rush out, and fallfighting, sword in hand: but I am their last, their only hope.The governors care nothing for our supplications. In vain have Imemorialised Gennadius and Innocent, with what little eloquence mymisery has not stunned in me. But there is no resolution, no unanimityleft in the land. The soldiery are scattered in small garrisons,employed entirely in protecting the private property of their officers.The Ausurians defeat them piecemeal, and, armed with their spoils,actually have begun to beleaguer fortified towns; and now there isnothing left for us, but to pray that, like Ulysses, we may be devouredthe last. What am I doing? I am selfishly pouring out my own sorrows,instead of listening to yours.'
'Nay, friend, you are talking of the sorrows of your country, not ofyour own. As for me, I have no sorrow--only a despair: which, beingirremediable, may well wait. But you--oh, you must not stay here. Whynot escape to Alexandria?'
'I will die at my post as I have lived, the father of my people. Whenthe last ruin comes, and Cyrene itself is besieged, I shall returnthither from my present outpost, and the conquerors shall find thebishop in his place before the altar. There I have offered for years theunbloody sacrifice to Him, who will perhaps require of me a bloody one,that so the sight of an altar polluted by the murder of His priest,may end the sum of Pentapolitan woe, and arouse Him to avenge Hisslaughtered sheep! There, we will talk no more of it. This, at least, Ihave left in my power, to make you welcome. And after supper you shalltell me what brings you hither.'
And the good bishop, calling his servant, set to work to show his guestsuch hospitality as the invaders had left in his power.
Raphael's usual insight had not deserted him when, in his utterperplexity, he went, almost instinctively, straight to Synesius. TheBishop of Cyrene, to judge from the charming private letters which hehas left, was one of those many-sided, volatile, restless men, whotaste joy and sorrow, if not deeply or permanently, yet abundantly andpassionately. He lived, as Raphael had told Orestes, in a whirlwind ofgood deeds, meddling and toiling for the mere pleasure of action; and assoon as there was nothing to be done, which, till lately, had happenedseldom enough with him, paid the penalty for past excitement in fits ofmelancholy. A man of magniloquent and flowery style, not without a veinof self-conceit; yet withal of overflowing kindliness, racy humour,and unflinching courage, both physical and moral; with a very clearpractical faculty, and a very muddy speculative one--though, of course,like the rest of the world, he was especially proud of his own weakestside, and professed the most passionate affection for philosophicmeditation; while his detractors hinted, not without a show of reason,that he was far more of an adept in soldiering and dog-breaking than inthe mysteries of the unseen world.
To him Raphael betook himself, he hardly knew why; certainly not forphilosophic consolation; perhaps because Synesius was, as Raphael usedto say, the only Christian from whom he had ever heard a hearty laugh;perhaps because he had some wayward hope, unconfessed even to himself,that he might meet at Synesius's house the very companions from whomhe had just fled. He was fluttering round Victoria's new and strangebrilliance like a moth round the candle, as he confessed, after supper,to his host; and now he was come hither, on the chance of being able tosinge his wings once more.
Not that his confession was extracted without much trouble to the goodold man, who, seeing at once that Raphael had some weight upon his mind,which he longed to tell, and yet was either too suspicious or tooproud to tell, set himself to ferret out the secret, and forgot all hissorrows for the time, as soon as he found a human being to whom he mightdo good. But Raphael was inexplicably wayward and unlike himself. Allhis smooth and shallow persiflage, even his shrewd satiric humour,had vanished. He seemed parched by some inward fever; restless,moody, abrupt, even peevish; and Synesius's curiosity rose with hisdisappointment, as Raphael went on obstinately declining to consult thevery physician before whom he presented himself as patient.
'And what can you do for me, if I did tell you?'
'Then allow me, my very dear friend, to ask this. As you deny havingvisited me on my own account, on what account did you visit me?'
'Can you ask? To enjoy the society of the most finished gentleman ofPentapolis.'
'And was that worth a week's journey in perpetual danger of death?'
'As for danger of death, that weighs little with a man who is carelessof life. And as for the week's journey, I had a dream one night, on myway, which made me question whether I were wise in troubling a Christianbishop with any thoughts or questions which relate merely to poor humanbeings like myself, who marry and are given in marriage.'
'You forget, friend, that you are speaking to one who has married, andloved--and lost.'
'I did not. But you see how rude I am growing. I am no fit company foryou, or any man. I believe I shall end by turning robber-chief, andheading a party of Ausurians.'
'But,' said the patient Synesius 'you have forgotten your dream all thiswhile.
'Forgotten!--I did not promise to tell it you--did I?'
'No; but as it seems to have contained some sort of accusation againstmy capacity, do you not think it but fair to tell the accused what itwas?'
Raphael smiled.
'Well then.... Suppose I had dreamt this. That a philosopher, anacademic, and a believer in nothing and in no man, had met at Berenicecertain rabbis of the Jews, and heard them reading and expounding acertain book of Solomon--the Song of Songs. You, as a learned man, knowinto what sort of trumpery allegory they would contrive to twist it; howthe bride's eyes were to mean the scribes who were
full of wisdom, asthe pools of Heshbon were of water; and her stature spreading like apalm-tree, the priests who spread out their hands when blessing thepeople; and the left hand which should be under her head, the Tephilimwhich these old pedants wore on their left wrists; and the right handwhich should hold her, the Mezuzah which they fixed on the right side oftheir doors to keep off devils; and so forth.'
'I have heard such silly Cabbalisms, certainly.'
'You have? Then suppose that I went on, and saw in my dream how thissame academic and unbeliever, being himself also a Hebrew of theHebrews, snatched the roll out of the rabbis' hands, and told them thatthey were a party of fools for trying to set forth what the book mightpossibly mean, before they had found out what it really did mean; andthat they could only find out that by looking honestly at the plainwords to see what Solomon meant by it. And then, suppose that this sameapostate Jew, this member of the synagogue of Satan, in his carnal andlawless imaginations, had waxed eloquent with the eloquence of devils,and told them that the book set forth, to those who had eyes to see,how Solomon the great king, with his threescore queens, and fourscoreconcubines, and virgins without number, forgets all his seraglio and hisluxury in pure and noble love for the undefiled, who is but one; andhow as his eyes are opened to see that God made the one man for the onewoman, and the one woman to the one man, even as it was in the garden ofEden, so all his heart and thoughts become pure, and gentle, and simple;how the song of the birds, and the scent of the grapes, and the spicysouthern gales, and all the simple country pleasures of the glens ofLebanon, which he shares with his own vine-dressers and slaves, becomemore precious in his eyes than all his palaces and artificial pomp; andthe man feels that he is in harmony, for the first time in his life,with the universe of God, and with the mystery of the seasons; thatwithin him, as well as without him, the winter is past, and the rainis over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, and the voice of theturtle is heard in the land.... And suppose I saw in my dream how therabbis, when they heard those wicked words, stopped their ears with oneaccord, and ran upon that son of Belial and cast him out, becausehe blasphemed their sacred books by his carnal interpretations. Andsuppose--I only say suppose--that I saw in my dream how the poor mansaid in his heart, "I will go to the Christians; they acknowledge thesacredness of this same book; and they say that their God taught themthat 'in the beginning God made man, male and female.' Perhaps they willtell me whether this Song of Songs does not, as it seems to me to do,show the passage upwards from brutal polygamy to that monogamy whichthey so solemnly command, and agree with me, that it is because thesong preaches this that it has a right to take its place among the holywritings? You, as a Christian bishop, should know what answer such a manwould receive.... You are silent? Then I will tell you what answerhe seemed to receive in my dream. "O blasphemous and carnal man, whopervertest Holy Scripture into a cloak for thine own licentiousness, asif it spoke of man's base and sensual affections, know that this book isto be spiritually interpreted of the marriage between the soul and itsCreator, and that it is from this very book that the Catholic Churchderives her strongest arguments in favour of holy virginity, and theglories of a celibate life."'
Synesius was still silent.
'And what do you think I saw in my dream that that man did when he foundthese Christians enforcing, as a necessary article of practice, as wellas of faith, a baseless and bombastic metaphor, borrowed from that veryNeo-Platonism out of which he had just fled for his life? He cursed theday he was born, and the hour in which his father was told, "Thou hastgotten a man-child," and said, "Philosophers, Jews, and Christians,farewell for ever and a day! The clearest words of your most sacredbooks mean anything or nothing' as the case may suit your fancies; andthere is neither truth nor reason under the sun. What better is therefor a man, than to follow the example of his people, and to turn usurer,and money-getter, and cajoler of fools in his turn, even as his fatherwas before him?"'
Synesius remained a while in deep thought, and at last-- 'And yet youcame to me?'
'I did, because you have loved and married; because you have stood outmanfully against this strange modern insanity, and refused to give up,when you were made a bishop, the wife whom God had given you. You, Ithought, could solve the riddle for me, if any man could.'
'Alas, friend! I have begun to distrust, of late, my power of solvingriddles. After all, why should they be solved? What matters one moremystery in a world of mysteries? "If thou marry, thou hast not sinned,"are St. Paul's own words; and let them be enough for us. Do not ask meto argue with you, but to help you. Instead of puzzling me with deepquestions, and tempting me to set up my private judgment, as I havedone too often already, against the opinion of the Church, tell me yourstory, and test my sympathy rather than my intellect. I shall feel withyou and work for you, doubt not, even though I am unable to explain tomyself why I do it.'
'Then you cannot solve my riddle?'
'Let me help you,' said Synesius with a sweet smile, 'to solve it foryourself. You need not try to deceive me. You have a love, an undefiled,who is but one. When you possess her, you will be able to judge betterwhether your interpretation of the Song is the true one; and if youstill think that it is, Synesius, at least, will have no quarrel againstyou. He has always claimed for himself the right of philosophising inprivate, and he will allow the same liberty to you' whether the mob door not.'
'Then you agree with me? Of course you do!'
'Is it fair to ask me whether I accept a novel interpretation, whichI have only heard five minutes ago, delivered in a somewhat hasty andrhetorical form?'
'You are shirking the question,' said Raphael peevishly.
'And what if I am? Tell me, point-blank, most self-tormenting ofmen, can I help you in practice, even though I choose to leave you toyourself in speculation?'
'Well, then, if you will have my story, take it, and judge for yourselfof Christian common sense.'
And hurriedly, as if ashamed of his own confession, and yet compelled,in spite of himself, to unbosom it, he told Synesius all, from his firstmeeting with Victoria to his escape from her at Berenice.
The good bishop, to Aben-Ezra's surprise, seemed to treat the wholematter as infinitely amusing. He chuckled, smote his hand on histhigh, and nodded approval at every pause--perhaps to give the speakercourage--perhaps because he really thought that Raphael's prospects wereconsiderably less desperate than he fancied....
'If you laugh at me, Synesius, I am silent. It is quite enough to endurethe humiliation of telling you that I am--confound it!--like any boy ofsixteen.'
'Laugh at you?--with you, you mean. A convent? Pooh, pooh! The oldPrefect has enough sense, I will warrant him, not to refuse a good matchfor his child.'
'You forget that I have not the honour of being a Christian.'
'Then we'll make you one. You won't let me convert you, I know; youalways used to gibe and jeer at my philosophy. But Augustine comesto-morrow.
'Augustine?'
'He does indeed; and we must be off by daybreak, with all the armed menwe can muster, to meet and escort him, and to hunt, of course, going andcoming; for we have had no food this fortnight, but what our own dogsand bows have furnished us. He shall take you in hand, and cure you ofall your Judaism in a week; and then just leave the rest to me; I willmanage it somehow or other. It is sure to come right. No; do not bebashful. It will be real amusement to a poor wretch who can find nothingelse to do--Heigho! And as for lying under an obligation to me, whywe can square that by your lending me three or four thousand goldpieces--Heaven knows I want them!--on the certainty of never seeing themagain.'
Raphael could not help laughing in his turn.
'Synesius is himself still, I see, and not unworthy of his ancestorHercules; and though he shrinks from cleansing the Augean stable of mysoul, paws like the war-horse in the valley at the hope of undertakingany lesser labours in my behalf. But, my dear generous bishop, thismatter is more serious, and I, the subject of it, have become moreserious also, tha
n you fancy. Consider: by the uncorrupt honour of yourSpartan forefathers, Agis, Brasidas, and the rest of them, don't youthink that you are, in your hasty kindness, tempting me to behave in away which they would have called somewhat rascally?'
'How then, my dear man! You have a very honourable and praiseworthydesire; and I am willing to help you to compass it.'
'Do you think that I have not cast about before now for more than onemethod of compassing it for myself? My good man, I have been tempted adozen times already to turn Christian: but there has risen up in me thestrangest fancy about conscience and honour.... I never was scrupulousbefore, Heaven knows--I am not over-scrupulous now--except about her.I cannot dissemble before her. I dare not look in her face when I hada lie in my right hand.... She looks through one-into one-like aclear-eyed awful goddess.... I never was ashamed in my life till my eyesmet hers....'
'But if you really became a Christian?'
'I cannot. I should suspect my own motives. Here is another of theseabsurd soul-anatomising scruples which have risen up in me. I shouldsuspect that I had changed my creed because I wished to change it--thatif I was not deceiving her I was deceiving myself. If I had not lovedher it might have been different: but now--just because I do love her,I will not, I dare not, listen to Augustine's arguments, or my ownthoughts on the matter.'
'Most wayward of men!' cried Synesius, half peevishly; 'you seem to takesome perverse pleasure in throwing yourself into the waves again, theinstant you have climbed a rock of refuge!'
'Pleasure? Is there any pleasure in feeling oneself at death-grips withthe devil? I bad given up believing in him for many a year .... Andbehold, the moment that I awaken to anything noble and right, I find theold serpent alive and strong at my throat! No wonder that I suspecthim, you, myself--I, who have been tempted, every hour in the last week,temptations to become a devil. Ay,' he went on, raising his voice, asall the fire of his intense Eastern nature flashed from his black eyes,'to be a devil! From my childhood till now never have I known what itwas to desire and not to possess. It is not often that I have had totrouble any poor Naboth for his vineyard: but when I have taken a fancyto it, Naboth has always found it wiser to give way. And now.... Do youfancy that I have not had a dozen hellish plots flashing across me inthe last week? Look here! This is the mortgage of her father's wholeestate. I bought it--whether by the instigation of Satan or of God--ofa banker in Berenice, the very day I left them; and now they, and everystraw which they possess, are in my power. I can ruin them--sell them asslaves--betray them to death as rebels--and last, but not least, cannotI hire a dozen worthy men to carry her off, and cut the Gordian knotmost simply and summarily? And yet I dare not. I must be pure toapproach the pure; and righteous, to kiss the feet of the righteous.Whence came this new conscience to me I know not, but come it has; andI dare no more do a base thing toward her, than I dare toward a God,if there be one. This very mortgage--I hate it, curse it, now that Ipossess it--the tempting devil!'
'Burn it,' said Synesius quietly.
'Perhaps I may. At least, used it never shall be. Compel her? I am tooproud, or too honourable, or something or other, even to solicit her.She must come to me; tell me with her own lips that she loves me, thatshe will take me, and make me worthy of her. She must have mercy on me,of her own free will, or--let her pine and die in that accursed prison;and then a scratch with the trusty old dagger for her father, andanother for myself, will save him from any more superstitions, and mefrom any more philosophic doubts, for a few aeons of ages, till we startagain in new lives--he, I suppose, as a jackass, and I as a baboon. Whatmatter? but unless I possess her by fair means, God do so to me, andmore also, if I attempt base ones!'
'God be with you, my son, in the noble warfare!' said Synesius, his eyesfilling with kindly tears.
'It is no noble warfare at all. It is a base coward fear, in one whonever before feared man or devil, and is now fallen low enough to beafraid of a helpless girl!'
'Not so,' cried Synesius, in his turn; 'it is a noble and a holy fear.You fear her goodness. Could you see her goodness, much less fear it,were there not a Divine Light within you which showed you what, and howawful, goodness was? Tell me no more, Raphael Aben-Ezra, that you do notfear God; for he who fears Virtue, fears Him whose likeness Virtue is.Go on--go on.... Be brave, and His strength will be made manifest inyour weakness.' ...............
It was late that night before Synesius compelled his guest to retire,after having warned him not to disturb himself if he heard thealarm-bell ring, as the house was well garrisoned, and having set thewater-clock by which he and his servants measured their respectivewatches. And then the good bishop, having disposed his sentinels, tookhis station on the top of his tower, close by the warning-bell; and ashe looked out over the broad lands of his forefathers, and prayed thattheir desolation might come to an end at last, he did not forget topray for the desolation of the guest who slept below, a happier and morehealthy slumber than he had known for many a week. For before Raphaellay down that night, he had torn to shreds Majoricus's mortgage,and felt a lighter and a better man as he saw the cunning temptationconsuming scrap by scrap in the lamp-flame. And then, wearied out withfatigue of body and mind, he forgot Synesius, Victoria, and the rest,and seemed to himself to wander all night among the vine-clad glensof Lebanon, amid the gardens of lilies, and the beds of spices; whileshepherds' music lured him on and on, and girlish voices, chanting themystic idyll of his mighty ancestor, rang soft and fitful through hisweary brain. ...............
Before sunrise the next morning, Raphael was faring forth gallantly,well armed and mounted, by Synesius's side, followed by four or fivebrace of tall brush-tailed greyhounds, and by the faithful Bran,whose lop-ears and heavy jaws, unique in that land of prick-ears andfox-noses, formed the absorbing subject of conversation among sometwenty smart retainers, who, armed to the teeth for chase and war, rodebehind the bishop on half-starved, raw-boned horses, inured by deserttraining and bad times to do the maximum of work upon the minimum offood.
For the first few miles they rode in silence, through ruined villagesand desolated farms, from which here and there a single inhabitantpeeped forth fearfully, to pour his tale of woe into the ears of thehapless bishop, and then, instead of asking alms from him, to entreathis acceptance of some paltry remnant of grain or poultry, which hadescaped the hands of the marauders; and as they clung to his hands, andblessed him as their only hope and stay, poor Synesius heard patientlyagain and again the same purposeless tale of woe, and mingled his tearswith theirs, and then spurred his horse on impatiently, as if to escapefrom the sight of misery which he could not relieve; while a voice inRaphael's heart seemed to ask him--'Why was thy wealth given to thee,but that thou mightest dry, if but for a day, such tears as these?'
And he fell into a meditation which was not without its fruit in dueseason, but which lasted till they had left the enclosed country, andwere climbing the slopes of the low rolling hills, over which lay theroad from the distant sea. But as they left the signs of war behindthem, the volatile temper of the good bishop began to rise. He pettedhis hounds, chatted to his men, discoursed on the most probable quarterfor finding game, and exhorted them cheerfully enough to play the man,as their chance of having anything to eat at night depended entirely ontheir prowess during the day.
'Ah!' said Raphael at last, glad of a pretext for breaking his own chainof painful thought, 'there is a vein of your land-salt. I suspectthat you were all at the bottom of the sea once, and that the oldEarth-shaker Neptune, tired of your bad ways, gave you a lift onemorning, and set you up as dry land, in order to be rid of you.'
'It may really be so. They say that the Argonauts returned back throughthis country from the Southern Ocean, which must have been therefore farnearer us than it is now, and that they carried their mystic vessel overthese very hills to the Syrtis. However, we have forgotten all aboutthe sea thoroughly enough since that time. I well remember my firstastonishment at the side of a galley in Alexandria, and the roar oflau
ghter with which my fellow-students greeted my not unreasonableremark, that it looked very like a centipede.'
'And do you recollect, too, the argument which I had once with yoursteward about the pickled fish which I brought you from Egypt; and theway in which, when the jar was opened, the servants shrieked andran right and left, declaring that the fish-bones were the spines ofpoisonous serpents?'
'The old fellow is as obstinate as ever, I assure you, in his disbeliefin salt water. He torments me continually by asking me to tell him thestory of my shipwreck, and does not believe me after all, though he hasheard it a dozen times. "Sir," he said to me solemnly, after you weregone, "will that strange gentleman pretend to persuade me that anythingeatable can come out of his great pond there at Alexandria, when everyone can see that the best fountain in the country never breeds anythingbut frogs and leeches?"'
As he spoke they left the last field behind them, and entered upon avast sheet of breezy down, speckled with shrubs and copse, and splithere and there by rocky glens ending in fertile valleys once thick withfarms and homesteads.
'Here,' cried Synesius, 'are our hunting-grounds. And now for one hour'sforgetfulness, and the joys of the noble art. What could old Homer havebeen thinking of when he forgot to number it among the pursuits whichare glorious to heroes, and make man illustrious, and yet could laud inthose very words the forum?'
'The forum?' said Raphael. 'I never saw it yet make men anything butrascals.'
'Brazen-faced rascals, my friend. I detest the whole breed of lawyers,and never meet one without turning him into ridicule; effeminatepettifoggers, who shudder at the very sight of roast venison, when theythink of the dangers by which it has been procured. But it is a cowardlyage, my friend--a cowardly age. Let us forget it, and ourselves.'
'And even philosophy and Hypatia?' said Raphael archly.
'I have done with philosophy. To fight like a Heracleid, and to die likea bishop, is all I have left--except Hypatia, the perfect, the wise! Itell you, friend, it is a comfort to me, even in my deepest misery, torecollect that the corrupt world yet holds one being so divine--'
And he was running on in one of his high-flown laudations of his idol,when Raphael checked him.
'I fear our common sympathy on that subject is rather weakened. I havebegun to doubt her lately nearly as much as I doubt philosophy.'
'Not her virtue?
'No, friend; nor her beauty, nor her wisdom; simply her power of makingme a better man. A selfish criterion, you will say. Be it so.... What anoble horse that is of yours!'
'He has been--he has been; but worn out now, like his master and hismaster's fortunes....'
'Not so, certainly, the colt on which you have done me the honour tomount me.'
'Ah, my poor boy's pet!.... You are the first person who has crossed himsince--'
'Is he of your own breeding?' asked Raphael, trying to turn theconversation.
'A cross between that white Nisaean which you sent me, and one of my ownmares.'
'Not a bad cross; though he keeps a little of the bull head andgreyhound flank of your Africans.'
'So much the better, friend. Give me bone--bone and endurance for thisrough down country. Your delicate Nisaeans are all very well for a fewminutes over those flat sands of Egypt: but here you need a horse whowill go forty miles a day over rough and smooth, and dine thankfully offthistles at night. Aha, poor little man!'--as a jerboa sprang up froma tuft of bushes at his feet--'I fear you must help to fill oursoup-kettle in these hard times.'
And with a dexterous sweep of his long whip, the worthy bishop entangledthe jerboas long legs, whisked him up to his saddle-bow, and deliveredhim to the groom and the game-bag.
'Kill him at once. Don't let him squeak, boy!--he cries too like achild....'
'Poor little wretch!' said Raphael. 'What more right, now, have we toeat him than he to eat us?'
'Eh? If he can eat us, let him try. How long have you joined theManichees?'
'Have no fears on that score. But, as I told you, since my wonderfulconversion by Bran, the dog, I have begun to hold dumb animals inrespect, as probably quite as good as myself.'
'Then you need a further conversion, friend Raphael, and to learn whatis the dignity of man; and when that arrives, you will learn to believe,with me, that the life of every beast upon the face of the earth wouldbe a cheap price to pay in exchange for the life of the meanest humanbeing.'
'Yes, if they be required for food: but really, to kill them for ouramusement!'
'Friend, when I was still a heathen, I recollect well how I used tohaggle at that story of the cursing of the fig-tree; but when I learntto know what man was, and that I had been all my life mistaking for apart of nature that race which was originally, and can be again, madein the likeness of God, then I began to see that it were well if everyfig-tree upon earth were cursed, if the spirit of one man could betaught thereby a single lesson. And so I speak of these, my darlingfield-sports, on which I have not been ashamed, as you know, to write abook.'
'And a very charming one: yet you were still a pagan, recollect, whenyou wrote it.'
'I was; and then I followed the chase by mere nature and inclination.But now I know I have a right to follow it, because it gives meendurance, promptness, courage, self-control, as well as health andcheerfulness: and therefore--Ah! a fresh ostrich-track!'
And stopping short, Synesius began pricking slowly up the hillside.
'Back!' whispered he, at last. 'Quietly and silently. Lie down on yourhorse's neck, as I do, or the long-necked rogues may see you. They mustbe close to us over the brow. I know that favourite grassy slope of old.Round under yon hill, or they will get wind of us, and then farewell tothem!'
And Synesius and his groom cantered on, hanging each to their horses'necks by an arm and a leg, in a way which Raphael endeavoured in vain toimitate.
Two or three minutes more of breathless silence brought them to theedge of the hill, where Synesius halted, peered down a moment, and thenturned to Raphael, his face and limbs quivering with delight, as he heldup two fingers, to denote the number of the birds.
'Out of arrow-range! Slip the dogs, Syphax!'
And in another minute Raphael found himself galloping headlong down thehill, while two magnificent ostriches, their outspread plumes waving inthe bright breeze, their necks stooped almost to the ground, and theirlong legs flashing out behind them, were sweeping away before thegreyhounds at a pace which no mortal horse could have held for tenminutes.
'Baby that I am still!' cried Synesius, tears of excitement glitteringin his eyes;.... while Raphael gave himself up to the joy, and forgoteven Victoria, in the breathless rush over rock and bush, sandhill andwatercourse.
'Take care of that dry torrent-bed! Hold up, old horse! This willnot last two minutes more. They cannot hold their pace against thisbreeze.... Well tried, good dog, though you did miss him! Ah, that myboy were here! There--they double. Spread right and left, my children,and ride at them as they pass!'
And the ostriches, unable, as Synesius said, to keep their pace againstthe breeze, turned sharp on their pursuers, and beating the air withoutspread wings, came down the wind again, at a rate even more wonderfulthan before.
'Ride at him, Raphael--ride at him, and turn him into those bushes!'cried Synesius, fitting an arrow to his bow.
Raphael obeyed, and the bird swerved into the low scrub; thewell-trained horse leapt at him like a cat; and Raphael, who dare nottrust his skill in archery, struck with his whip at the long neck as itstruggled past him, and felled the noble quarry to the ground. He wasin the act of springing down to secure his prize, when a shout fromSynesius stopped him.
'Are you mad? He will kick out your heart! Let the dogs hold him!'
'Where is the other?' asked Raphael, panting.
'Where he ought to be. I have not missed a running shot for many amonth.'
'Really, you rival the Emperor Commodus himself.'
'Ah! I tried his fancy of crescent-headed arrows once, and de
capitatedan ostrich or two tolerably: but they are only fit for the amphitheatre:they will not lie safely in the quiver on horseback, I find. But whatis that?' And he pointed to a cloud of white dust, about a mile down thevalley. 'A herd of antelopes? If so, God is indeed gracious to us! Comedown--whatsoever they are, we have no time to lose.'
And collecting his scattered forces, Synesius pushed on rapidly towardsthe object which had attracted his attention.
'Antelopes!' cried one.
'Wild horses!' cried another.
'Tame ones, rather!' cried Synesius, with a gesture of wrath. 'I saw theflash of arms!'
'The Ausurians!' And a yell of rage rang from the whole troop.
'Will you follow me, children?'
'To death!' shouted they.
'I know it. Oh that I had seven hundred of you, as Abraham had! We wouldsee then whether these scoundrels did not share, within a week, the fateof Chedorlaomer's.'
'Happy man, who can actually trust your own slaves!' said Raphael, asthe party galloped on, tightening their girdles and getting ready theirweapons.
'Slaves? If the law gives me the power of selling one or two of them whoare not yet wise enough to be trusted to take care of themselves, itis a fact which both I and they have long forgotten. Their fathers grewgray at my father's table, and God grant that they may grow gray atmine! We eat together, work together, hunt together, fight together,jest together, and weep together. God help us all! for we have but onecommon weal. Now--do you make out the enemy, boys?'
'Ausurians, your Holiness. The same party who tried Myrsinitis lastweek. I know them by the helmets which they took from the Markmen.'
'And with whom are they fighting?'
No one could see. Fighting they certainly were: but their victims werebeyond them, and the party galloped on.
'That was a smart business at Myrsinitis. The Ausurians appeared whilethe people were at morning prayers. The soldiers, of course, ran fortheir lives, and hid in the caverns, leaving the matter to the priests.'
'If they were of your presbytery, I doubt not they proved themselvesworthy of their diocesan.'
'Ah, if all my priests were but like them! or my people either!' saidSynesius, chatting quietly in full gallop, like a true son of thesaddle. 'They offered up prayers for victory, sallied out at the headof the peasants, and met the Moors in a narrow pass. There their heartsfailed them a little. Faustus, the deacon, makes them a speech; chargesthe leader of the robbers, like young David, with a stone, beats hisbrains out therewith, strips him in true Homeric fashion, and routs theAusurians with their leader's sword; returns and erects a trophy in dueclassic form, and saves the whole valley.'
'You should make him archdeacon.'
'I would send him and his townsfolk round the province, if I could,crowned with laurel, and proclaim before them at every market-place,"These are men of God." With whom can those Ausurians be dealing?Peasants would have been all killed long ago, and soldiers would haverun away long ago. It is truly a portent in this country to see a fightlast ten minutes. Who can they be? I see them now, and hewing awaylike men too. They are all on foot but two; and we have not a cohort ofinfantry left for many a mile round.'
'I know who they are!' cried Raphael, suddenly striking spurs into hishorse. 'I will swear to that armour among a thousand. And there is alitter in the midst of them. On! and fight, men, if you ever fought inyour lives!'
'Softly!' cried Synesius. 'Trust an old soldier, and perhaps--alas! thathe should have to say it--the best left in this wretched country. Roundby the hollow, and take the barbarians suddenly in flank. They will notsee us then till we are within twenty paces of them. Aha! you have athing or two to learn yet, Aben-Ezra.'
And chuckling at the prospect of action, the gallant bishop wheeled hislittle troop and in five minutes more dashed out of the copse with ashout and a flight of arrows, and rushed into the thickest of the fight.
One cavalry skirmish must be very like another. A crash of horses, aflashing of sword-blades, five minutes of blind confusion, andthen those who have not been knocked out of their saddles by theirneighbours' knees, and have not cut off their own horses' heads insteadof their enemies', find themselves, they know not how, either runningaway or being run away from--not one blow in ten having taken effect oneither side. And even so Raphael, having made vain attempts to cutdown several Moors, found himself standing on his head in an altogetherundignified posture, among innumerable horses' legs, in all possiblefrantic motions. To avoid one was to get in the way of another; so hephilosophically sat still, speculating on the sensation of having hisbrains kicked out, till the cloud of legs vanished, and he found himselfkneeling abjectly opposite the nose of a mule, on whose back sat,utterly unmoved, a tall and reverend man, in episcopal costume. Thestranger, instead of bursting out laughing, as Raphael did, solemnlylifted his hand, and gave him his blessing. The Jew sprang to his feet,heedless of all such courtesies, and, looking round, saw the Ausuriansgalloping off up the hill in scattered groups, and Synesius standingclose by him, wiping a bloody sword.
'Is the litter safe'?' were his first words.
'Safe; and so are all. I gave you up for killed when I saw you runthrough with that lance.
'Run through? I am as sound in the hide as a crocodile, said Raphael,laughing.
'Probably the fellow took the butt instead of the point, in his hurry.So goes a cavalry scuffle. I saw you hit three or four fellows runningwith the flat of your sword.'
Ah, that explains,' said Raphael, why, I thought myself once the bestswordsman on the Armenian frontier....'
'I suspect that you were thinking of some one besides the Moors,' saidSynesius, archly pointing to the litter; and Raphael, for the firsttime for many a year, blushed like a boy of fifteen, and then turnedhaughtily away, and remounted his horse, saying, 'Clumsy fool that Iwas!'
'Thank God rather that you have been kept from the shedding of blood,'said the stranger bishop, in a soft, deliberate voice, with a peculiarlyclear and delicate enunciation. 'If God have given us the victory, whygrudge His having spared any other of His creatures besides ourselves?'
'Because there are so many the more of them left to ravish, burn, andslay,' answered Synesius. 'Nevertheless, I am not going to argue withAugustine.'
Augustine! Raphael looked intently at the man, a tall, delicate-featuredpersonage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, scarred like his cheekswith the deep furrows of many a doubt and woe. Resolve, gentle butunbending, was expressed in his thin close-set lips and his clear quieteye; but the calm of his mighty countenance was the calm of a worn-outvolcano, over which centuries must pass before the earthquake-rents befilled with kindly soil, and the cinder-slopes grow gay with grass andflowers. The Jew's thoughts, however, were soon turned into anotherchannel by the hearty embraces of Majoricus and his son.
'We have caught you again, you truant!' said the young Tribune; 'youcould not escape us, you see, after all.'
'Rather,' said the father, 'we owe him a second debt of gratitude for asecond deliverance. We were right hard bested when you rode up.'
'Oh, he brings nothing but good with him whenever he appears; and thenhe pretends to be a bird of ill-omen,' said the light-hearted Tribune,putting his armour to rights.
Raphael was in his secret heart not sorry to find that his old friendsbore him no grudge for his caprice; but all he answered was-- 'Praythank any one but me; I have, as usual, proved myself a fool. Butwhat brings you here, like Gods e Machina? It is contrary to allprobabilities. One would not admit so astounding an incident, even inthe modern drama.'
'Contrary to none whatsoever, my friend. We found Augustine at Berenice,in act to set off to Synesius: we--one of us, that is--were certain thatyou would be found with him; and we decided on acting as Augustine'sguard, for none of the dastard garrison dare stir out.'
'One of us,' thought Raphael,--'which one?' And, conquering his pride,he asked, as carelessly as he could, for Victoria.
'She is there in the litter, poor child
!' said her father in a serioustone.
'Surely not ill?'
'Alas! either the overwrought excitement of months of heroism broke downwhen she found us safe at last' or some stroke from God--.... Who cantell what I may not have deserved?--But she has been utterly prostratein body and mind, ever since we parted from you at Berenice.'
The blunt soldier little guessed the meaning of his own words. ButRaphael, as he heard, felt a pang shoot through his heart, too keen forhim to discern whether it sprang from joy or from despair.
'Come,' cried the cheerful voice of Synesius, 'come, Aben-Ezra; you haveknelt for Augustine's blessing already, and now you must enter into thefruition of it. Come, you two philosophers must know each other. Mostholy, I entreat you to preach to this friend of mine, at once the wisestand the foolishest of men.'
'Only the latter,' said Raphael; 'but open to any speech of Augustine's,at least when we are safe home, and game enough for Synesius's newguests killed.'
And turning away, he rode silent and sullen by the side of hiscompanions, who began at once to consult together as to the plans ofMajoricus and his soldiers.
In spite of himself, Raphael soon became interested in Augustine'sconversation. He entered into the subject of Cyrenian misrule and ruinas heartily and shrewdly as any man of the world; and when all therest were at a loss, the prompt practical hint which cleared up thedifficulty was certain to come from him. It was by his advice thatMajoricus had brought his soldiery hither; it was his proposal that theyshould be employed for a fixed period in defending these remote southernboundaries of the province; he checked the impetuosity of Synesius,cheered the despair of Majoricus, appealed to the honour and theChristianity of the soldiers, and seemed to have a word--and that theright word--for every man; and after a while, Aben-Ezra quite forgotthe stiffness and deliberation of his manner, and the quaint use ofScripture texts in far-fetched illustrations of every opinion which hepropounded. It had seemed at first a mere affectation; but the argumentswhich it was employed to enforce were in themselves so moderate and sorational that Raphael began to feel, little by little, that his apparentpedantry was only the result of a wish to refer every matter, even themost vulgar, to some deep and divine rule of right and wrong.
'But you forget all this while, my friends,' said Majoricus at last,'the danger which you incur by sheltering proclaimed rebels.'
'The King of kings has forgiven your rebellion, in that while He haspunished you by the loss of your lands and honours, He has given youyour life for a prey in this city of refuge. It remains for you to bringforth worthy fruits of penitence; of which I know none better than thosewhich John the Baptist commanded to the soldiery of old, "Do no violenceto any man, and be content with your wages."'
'As for rebels and rebellion,' said Synesius, 'they are mattersunknown among as; for where there is no king there can be no rebellion.Whosoever will help us against Ausurians is loyal in our eyes. And asfor our political creed, it is simple enough--namely, that the emperornever dies, and that his name is Agamemnon, who fought at Troy; whichany of my grooms will prove to you syllogistically enough to satisfyAugustine himself. As thus--
'Agamemnon was the greatest and the best of kings.
'The emperor is the greatest and the best of kings.
'Therefore, Agamemnon is the emperor, and conversely.'
'It had been well,' said Augustine, with a grave smile, 'if some of ourfriends had held the same doctrine, even at the expense of their logic.'
'Or if,' answered Synesius, 'they believed with us, that the emperor'schamberlain is a clever old man, with a bald head like my own, Ulyssesby name, who was rewarded with the prefecture of all lands north of theMediterranean, for putting out the Cyclop's eye two years ago. However,enough of this. But you see, you are not in any extreme danger ofinformers and intriguers.... The real difficulty is, how you will beable to obey Augustine, by being content with your wages. For,' loweringhis voice, 'you will get literally none.'
'It will be as much as we deserve,' said the young Tribune: 'but myfellows have a trick of eating--'
'They are welcome, then, to all deer and ostriches which they cancatch. But I am not only penniless, but reduced myself to live, like theLaestrygons, on meat and nothing else; all crops and stocks for milesround being either burnt or carried off.'
'E nihilo nihil!' said Augustine, having nothing else to say. But hereRaphael woke up on a sudden with--
'Did the Pentapolitan wheat-ships go to Rome?'
'No; Orestes stopped them when he stopped the Alexandrian convoy.'
'Then the Jews have the wheat, trust them for it; and what they haveI have. There are certain moneys of mine lying at interest in theseaports, which will set that matter to rights for a month or two. Doyou find an escort to-morrow, and I will find wheat.'
'But; most generous of friends, I can neither repay you interest norprincipal.'
'Be it so. I have spent so much money during the last thirty years indoing nothing but evil, that it is hard if I may not at last spend alittle in doing good.--Unless his Holiness of Hippo thinks it wrong foryou to accept the goodwill of an infidel?'
'Which of these three,' said Augustine, 'was neighbour to him who fellamong thieves, but he who had mercy on him? Verily, my friend RaphaelAben-Ezra, thou art not far from the kingdom of God.'
'Of which God?' asked Raphael slyly.
'Of the God of thy forefather Abraham, whom thou shalt hear us worshipthis evening, if He will. Synesius, have you a church wherein I canperform the evening service, and give a word of exhortation to these mychildren?'
Synesius sighed. 'There is a ruin, which was last month a church.'
'And is one still. Man did not place there the presence of God, and mancannot expel it.'
And so, sending out hunting-parties right and left in chase ofeverything which had animal life, and picking up before nightfall atolerably abundant supply of game, they went homewards, where Victoriawas entrusted to the care of Synesius's old stewardess, and the soldierywere marched straight into the church; while Synesius's servants, towhom the Latin service would have been unintelligible, busied themselvesin cooking the still warm game.
Strangely enough it sounded to Raphael that evening to hear, among thosesmoke-grimed pillars and fallen rafters, the grand old Hebrew psalms ofhis nation ring aloft, to the very chants, too, which were said by therabbi to have been used in the Temple-worship of Jerusalem.... They, andthe invocations, thanksgivings, blessings, the very outward ceremonialitself, were all Hebraic, redolent of the thoughts, the words of hisown ancestors. That lesson from the book of Proverbs, which Augustine'sdeacon was reading in Latin--the blood of the man who wrote these wordswas flowing in Aben-Ezra's veins.... Was it a mistake, an hypocrisy? orwere they indeed worshipping, as they fancied, the Ancient One who spokeface to face with his forefathers, the Archetype of man, the friend ofAbraham and of Israel?
And now the sermon began; and as Augustine stood for a moment in prayerin front of the ruined altar, every furrow in his worn face lit up bya ray of moonlight which streamed in through the broken roof,Raphael waited impatiently for his speech. What would he, the refineddialectician, the ancient teacher of heathen rhetoric, the courtly andlearned student, the ascetic celibate and theosopher, have to sayto those coarse war-worn soldiers, Thracians and Markmen, Gauls andBelgians, who sat watching there, with those sad earnest faces? What onethought or feeling in common could there be between Augustine and hiscongregation?
At last, after signing himself with the cross, he began. The subject wasone of the psalms which had just been read--a battle psalm, concerningMoab and Amalek, and the old border wars of Palestine. What would hemake of that?
He seemed to start lamely enough, in spite of the exquisite grace of hisvoice, and manner, and language, and the epigrammatic terseness ofevery sentence. He spent some minutes over the inscription of thepsalm--allegorised it--made it mean something which it never did mean inthe writer's mind, and which it, as Raphael well knew, never could
mean,for his interpretation was founded on a sheer mis-translation. He punnedon the Latin version--derived the meaning of Hebrew words from Latinetymologies.... And as he went on with the psalm itself, the commonsense of David seemed to evaporate in mysticism. The most fantastic andfar-fetched illustrations, drawn from the commonest objects, alternatedwith mysterious theosophic dogma. Where was that learning for which hewas so famed? Where was that reverence for the old Hebrew Scriptureswhich he professed? He was treating David as ill as Hypatia used totreat Homer--worse even than old Philo did, when in the home life ofthe old Patriarchs, and in the mighty acts of Moses and Joshua, he couldfind nothing but spiritual allegories wherewith to pamper the privateexperiences of the secluded theosophist. And Raphael felt very muchinclined to get up and go away, and still more inclined to say, with asmile, in his haste, 'All men are liars.'....
And yet, what an illustration that last one was! No mere fancy, but areal deep glance into the working of the material universe, as symbolicof the spiritual and unseen one. And not drawn, as Hypatia's were,exclusively from some sublime or portentous phenomenon, but fromsome dog, or kettle, or fishwife, with a homely insight worthy of oldSocrates himself. How personal he was becoming, too!... No long burstsof declamation, but dramatic dialogue and interrogation, by-hints,and unexpected hits at one and the other most commonplace soldier'sfailing.... And yet each pithy rebuke was put in a universal,comprehensive form, which made Raphael himself wince--which might, hethought, have made any man, or woman either, wince in like manner. Well,whether or not Augustine knew truths for all men, he at least knewsins for all men, and for himself as well as his hearers. There wasno denying that. He was a real man, right or wrong. What he rebuked inothers, he had felt in himself, and fought it to the death-grip, as theflash and quiver of that worn face proclaimed.... But yet, why were theEdomites, by an utterly mistaken pun on their name, to signify one sortof sin, and the Ammonites another, and the Amalekites another? Whathad that to do with the old psalm? What had it to do with the presentauditory? Was not this the wildest and lowest form of that unreal,subtilising, mystic pedantry, of which he had sickened long ago inHypatia's lecture-room, till he fled to Bran, the dog, for honestpractical realities?
No.... Gradually, as Augustine's hints became more practical and orated,Raphael saw that there was in his mind most real and organic connection,true or false, in what seemed at first mere arbitrary allegory.Amalekites, personal sins, Ausurian robbers and ravishers, were to himonly so many different forms of one and the same evil. He who helpedany of them fought against the righteous God: he who fought against themfought for that God; but he must conquer the Amalekites within, ifhe expected to conquer the Amalekites without. Could the legionariespermanently put down the lust and greed around them, while their ownhearts were enslaved to lust and greed within? Would they not be helpingit by example, while they pretended to crush it by sword-strokes? Was itnot a mockery, an hypocrisy? Could God's blessing be on it? Could theyrestore unity and peace to the country while there was neither unity norpeace within them? What had produced the helplessness of the people, theimbecility of the military, but inward helplessness, inward weakness?They were weak against Moors, because they were weak against enemiesmore deadly than Moors. How could they fight for God outwardly, whilethey were fighting against him inwardly? He would not go forth withtheir hosts. How could He, when He was not among their hosts? He, aspirit, must dwell in their spirits .... And then the shout of a kingwould be among them, and one of them should chase a thousand.... Or ifnot--if both people and soldiers required still further chastening andhumbling--what matter, provided that they were chastened and humbled?What matter if their faces were confounded, if they were thereby drivento seek His Name, who alone was the Truth, the Light, and the Life? Whatif they were slain? Let them have conquered the inward enemies, whatmatter to them if the outward enemies seemed to prevail for a moment?They should be recompensed at the resurrection of the just, when deathwas swallowed up in victory. It would be seen then who had reallyconquered in the eyes of the just God--they, God's ministers,the defenders of peace and justice, or the Ausurians, the enemiesthereof.... And then, by some quaintest turn of fancy, he introduced aword of pity and hope, even for the wild Moorish robbers. It might begood for them to have succeeded thus far; they might learn from theirChristian captives, purified by affliction, truths which those captiveshad forgotten in prosperity. And, again, it might be good for them, aswell as for Christians, to be confounded and made like chaff before thewind, that so they too might learn His Name....And so on, through andin spite of all conceits, allegories, overstrained interpretations,Augustine went on evolving from the Psalms, and from the past, and fromthe future, the assertion of a Living, Present God, the eternal enemy ofdiscord, injustice, and evil, the eternal helper and deliverer of thosewho were enslaved and crushed thereby in soul or body.... It was allmost strange to Raphael.... Strange in its utter unlikeness to anyteaching, Platonist or Hebrew, which he had ever heard before, andstranger still in its agreement with those teachings; in the instinctiveease with which it seemed to unite and justify them all by the talismanof some one idea--and what that might be, his Jewish prejudices couldnot prevent his seeing, and yet would not allow him to acknowledge. But,howsoever he might redden with Hebrew pride; howsoever he might longto persuade himself that Augustine was building up a sound and rightpractical structure on the foundation of a sheer lie; he could not helpwatching, at first with envy, and then with honest pleasure, thefaces of the rough soldiers, as they gradually lightened up into fixedattention, into cheerful and solemn resolve.
'What wonder?' said Raphael to himself, 'what wonder, after all? He hasbeen speaking to these wild beasts as to sages and saints; he hasbeen telling them that God is as much with them as with prophets andpsalmists.... I wonder if Hypatia, with all her beauty, could havetouched their hearts as he has done?'
And when Raphael rose at the end of this strange discourse, he felt morelike an old Hebrew than he had done since he sat upon his nurse'sknee, and heard legends about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Whatif Augustine were right after all? What if the Jehovah of the oldScriptures were not merely the national patron of the children ofAbraham, as the Rabbis held; not merely, as Philo held, the DivineWisdom which inspired a few elect sages, even among the heathen; but theLord of the whole earth, and of the nations thereof?--And suddenly,for the first time in his life, passages from the psalms and prophetsflashed across him, which seemed to assert this. What else did thatwhole book of Daniel and the history of Nebuchadnezzar mean--if notthat? Philosophic latitudinarianism had long ago cured him of theRabbinical notion of the Babylonian conqueror as an incarnate fiend,devoted to Tophet, like Sennacherib before him. He had long in privateadmired the man, as a magnificent human character, a fairer one, in hiseyes, than either Alexander or Julius Caesar.... What if Augustine hadgiven him a hint which might justify his admiration?.... But more..... What if Augustine were right in going even further than Philo andHypatia? What if this same Jehovah, Wisdom, Logos, call Him what theymight, were actually the God of the spirits, as well as of the bodiesof all flesh? What if he was as near--Augustine said that He was--to thehearts of those wild Markmen, Gauls, Thracians, as to Augustine'sown heart? What if He were--Augustine said He was--yearning after,enlightening, leading home to Himself, the souls of the poorest, themost brutal, the most sinful?--What if He loved man as man, and notmerely one favoured race or one favoured class of minds?.... And in thelight of that hypothesis, that strange story of the Cross of Calvaryseemed not so impossible after all.... But then, celibacy andasceticism, utterly non-human as they were, what had they to do with thetheory of a human God?
And filled with many questionings, Raphael was not sorry to have thematter brought to an issue that very evening in Synesius's sitting-room.Majoricus, in his blunt, soldierlike way, set Raphael and Augustine ateach other without circumlocution; and Raphael, after trying to smileand pooh-pooh away the subject, was tempted to make a jest on a seemingfallacious con
ceit of Augustine's--found it more difficult than hethought to trip up the serious and wary logician, lost his temper alittle--a sign, perhaps, of returning health in a sceptic--andsoon found himself fighting desperately, with Synesius backing him,apparently for the mere pleasure of seeing a battle, and Majoricusmaking him more and more cross by the implicit dogmatic faith with whichhe hewed at one Gordian knot after another, till Augustine had to savehimself from his friends by tripping the good Prefect gently up, andleaving him miles behind the disputants, who argued on and on, tillbroad daylight shone in, and the sight of the desolation below recalledall parties to more material weapons, and a sterner warfare.
But little thought Raphael Aben-Ezra, as he sat there, calling up everyresource of his wit and learning, in the hope, half malicious, halfhonestly cautious, of upsetting the sage of Hippo, and forgetting allheaven and earth in the delight of battle with his peers, that in aneighbouring chamber, her tender limbs outspread upon the floor, herface buried in her dishevelled locks; lay Victoria, wrestling all nightlong for him in prayer and bitter tears, as the murmur of busy voicesreached her eager ears, longing in vain to catch the sense of words, onwhich hung now her hopes and bliss-how utterly and entirely, she leadnever yet confessed to herself, though she dare confess it to thatSon of Man to whom she prayed, as to One who felt with tenderness andinsight beyond that of a brother, a father, even of a mother, for hermaiden's blushes and her maiden's woes.