CHAPTER VIII: THE EAST WIND
As Hypatia went forth the next morning, in all her glory, with a crowdof philosophers and philosophasters, students, and fine gentlemen,following her in reverend admiration across the street to herlecture-room, a ragged beggar-man, accompanied by a huge andvillainous-looking dog, planted himself right before her, and extendinga dirty hand, whined for an alms.
Hypatia, whose refined taste could never endure the sight, much less thecontact, of anything squalid and degraded, recoiled a little, and badethe attendant slave get rid of the man with a coin. Several of theyounger gentlemen, however, considered themselves adepts in that nobleart of 'upsetting' then in vogue in the African universities, to whichwe all have reason enough to be thankful, seeing that it drove SaintAugustine from Carthage to Rome; and they, in compliance with the usualfashion of tormenting any simple creature who came in their way bymystification and insult, commenced a series of personal witticisms,which the beggar bore stoically enough. The coin was offered him, buthe blandly put aside the hand of the giver, and keeping his place on thepavement, seemed inclined to dispute Hypatia's farther passage.
'What do you want? Send the wretch and his frightful dog away,gentlemen!' said the poor philosopher in some trepidation.
'I know that dog,' said one of them; 'it is Aben-Ezra's. Where did youfind it before it was lost, you rascal.'
'Where your mother found you when she palmed you off upon her goodman,my child--in the slave-market. Fair Sybil, have you already forgottenyour humblest pupil, as these young dogs have, who are already trying toupset their master and instructor in the angelic science of bullying?'
And the beggar, lifting his broad straw hat, disclosed the features ofRaphael Aben-Ezra. Hypatia recoiled with a shriek of surprise.
'Ah! you are astonished. At what, I pray?'
'To see you, sir, thus!'
'Why, then? You have been preaching to us all a long time the glory ofabstraction from the allurements of sense. It augurs ill, surely, foryour estimate either of your pupils or of your own eloquence, if you areso struck with consternation because one of them has actually at lastobeyed you.'
'What is the meaning of this masquerade, most excellent sir?' askedHypatia and a dozen voices beside.
'Ask Cyril. I am on my way to Italy, in the character of the NewDiogenes, to look, like him, for a man. When I have found one, I shallfeel great pleasure in returning to acquaint you with the amazing news.Farewell! I wished to look once more at a certain countenance, thoughI have turned, as you see, Cynic; and intend henceforth to attend noteacher but my dog, who will luckily charge no fees for instruction; ifshe did, I must go untaught, for my ancestral wealth made itself wingsyesterday morning. You are aware, doubtless, of the Plebiscitum againstthe Jews, which was carried into effect under the auspices of a certainholy tribune of the people?'
'Infamous!'
'And dangerous, my dear lady. Success is inspiriting.... and Theon'shouse is quite as easily sacked, as the Jews' quarter.... Beware.'
'Come, come, Aben-Ezra,' cried the young men; 'you are far too goodcompany for us to lose you for that rascally patriarch's fancy. We willmake a subscription for you, eh? And you shall live with each of us,month and month about. We shall quite lose the trick of joking withoutyou.'
'Thank you, gentlemen. But really you have been my butts far too longfor me to think of becoming yours. Madam, one word in private before Igo.'
Hypatia leant forward, and speaking in Syriac, whispered hurriedly--
'Oh, stay, sir, I beseech you: You are the wisest of my pupils--perhapsmy only true pupil.... My father will find some concealment for you fromthese wretches; and if you need money, remember, he is your debtor. Wehave never repaid you the gold which--'
'Fairest Muse, that was but my entrance-fee to Parnassus. It is I whoam in your debt; and I have brought my arrears, in the form of thisopal ring. As for shelter near you,' he went on, lowering his voice, andspeaking like her, in Syriac--'Hypatia the Gentile is far too lovelyfor the peace of mind of Raphael the Jew.' And he drew from his fingerMiriam's ring and offered it.
'Impossible!'said Hypatia, blushing scarlet: 'I cannot accept it.'
'I beseech you. It is the last earthly burden I have, except thissnail's prison of flesh and blood. My dagger will open a crack throughthat when it becomes intolerable. But as I do not intend to leave myshell, if I can help it, except just when and how I choose, and as, ifI take this ring with me, some of Heraclian's Circumcellions willassuredly knock my brains out for the sake of it-I must entreat.'
'Never! Can you not sell the ring, and escape to Synesius? He will giveyou shelter.'
'The hospitable hurricane! Shelter, yes; but rest, none. As soon pitchmy tent in the crater of Aetna. Why, he will be trying day and night toconvert me to that eclectic farrago of his, which he calls philosophicChristianity. Well, if you will not have the ring, it is soon disposedof. We Easterns know how to be magnificent, and vanish as the lords ofthe world ought.'
And he turned to the philosophic crowd.
'Here, gentlemen of Alexandria! Does any gay youth wish to pay hisdebts once and for all?--Behold the Rainbow of Solomon, an opal suchas Alexandria never saw before, which would buy any one of you, and hisMacedonian papa, and his Macedonian mamma, and his Macedonian sisters,and horses, and parrots, and peacocks, twice over, in any slave-marketin the world. Any gentleman who wishes to possess a jewel worth tenthousand gold pieces, will only need to pick it out of the gutter intowhich I throw it. Scramble for it, you young Phaedrias and Pamphili!There are Laides and Thaides enough about, who will help you to spendit.'
And raising the jewel on high, he was in the act of tossing it into thestreet, when his arm was seized from behind, and the ring snatchedfrom his hand. He turned, fiercely enough, and saw behind him, her eyesflashing fury and contempt, old Miriam.
Bran sprang at the old woman's throat in an instant; but recoiled againbefore the glare of her eye. Raphael called the dog off, and turningquietly to the disappointed spectators--
'It is all right, my luckless friends. You must raise money foryourselves, after all; which, since the departure of my nation, will bea somewhat more difficult matter than ever. The over-ruling destinies,whom, as you all know so well when you are getting tipsy, not evenphilosophers can resist, have restored the Rainbow of Solomon to itsoriginal possessor. Farewell, Queen of Philosophy! When I find the man,you shall hear of it. Mother, I am coming with you for a friendly wordbefore we part, though' he went on, laughing, as the two walked awaytogether, 'it was a scurvy trick of you to balk one of The Nation of theexquisite pleasure of seeing those heathen dogs scrambling in the gutterfor his bounty.'
Hypatia went on to the Museum, utterly bewildered by this strangemeeting, and its still stranger end. She took care, nevertheless, tobetray no sign of her deep interest till she found herself alone inher little waiting-room adjoining the lecture-hall; and there, throwingherself into a chair, she sat and thought, till she found, to hersurprise and anger, the tears trickling down her cheeks. Not that herbosom held one spark of affection for Raphael. If there had ever beenany danger of that the wily Jew had himself taken care to ward it off,by the sneering and frivolous tone with which he quashed every approachto deep feeling, either in himself or in others. As for his complimentsto her beauty, she was far too much accustomed to such, to be eitherpleased or displeased by them. But she felt, as she said, that shehad lost perhaps her only true pupil; and more--perhaps her only truemaster. For she saw clearly enough, that under that Silenus' mask washidden a nature capable of--perhaps more than she dare think of. She hadalways felt him her superior in practical cunning; and that morning hadproved to her what she had long suspected, that he was possibly also hersuperior in that moral earnestness and strength of will for which shelooked in vain among the enervated Greeks who surrounded her. And evenin those matters in which he professed himself her pupil, she had longbeen alternately delighted by finding that he alone, of all her school,seemed thoroughly a
nd instinctively to comprehend her every word, andchilled by the disagreeable suspicion that he was only playing with her,and her mathematics and geometry, and meta-physic and dialectic, likea fencer practising with foils, while he reserved his real strength forsome object more worthy of him. More than once some paradox or questionof his had shaken her neatest systems into a thousand cracks, andopened up ugly depths of doubt, even on the most seemingly-palpablecertainties; or some half-jesting allusion to those Hebrew Scriptures,the quantity and quality of his faith in which he would never confess,made her indignant at the notion that he considered himself inpossession of a reserved ground of knowledge, deeper and surer than herown, in which he did not deign to allow her to share.
And yet she was irresistibly attracted to him. That deliberate andconsistent luxury of his, from which she shrank, he had always boastedthat he was able to put on and take off at will like a garment: and nowhe seemed to have proved his words; to be a worthy rival of the greatStoics of old time. Could Zeno himself have asked more from frailhumanity? Moreover, Raphael had been of infinite practical use toher. He worked out, unasked, her mathematical problems; he looked outauthorities, kept her pupils in order by his bitter tongue, and drewfresh students to her lectures by the attractions of his wit, hisarguments, and last, but not least, his unrivalled cook and cellar.Above all he acted the part of a fierce and valiant watch-dog on herbehalf, against the knots of clownish and often brutal sophists, thewrecks of the old Cynic, Stoic, and Academic schools, who, with venomincreasing, after the wont of parties, with their decrepitude, assailedthe beautifully bespangled card-castle of Neo-Platonism, as an emptymedley of all Greek philosophies with all Eastern superstitions. Allsuch Philistines had as yet dreaded the pen and tongue of Raphael, evenmore than those of the chivalrous Bishop of Cyrene, though he certainly,to judge from certain of his letters, hated them as much as he couldhate any human being; which was after all not very bitterly.
But the visits of Synesius were few and far between; the distancebetween Carthage and Alexandria, and the labour of his diocese, and,worse than all, the growing difference in purpose between him andhis beautiful teacher, made his protection all but valueless. And nowAben-Ezra was gone too, and with him were gone a thousand plans andhopes. To have converted him at last to a philosophic faith in the oldgods! To have made him her instrument for turning back the stream ofhuman error I... How often had that dream crossed her! And now, whowould take his place? Athanasius? Synesius in his good-nature mightdignify him with the name of brother, but to her he was a powerlesspedant, destined to die without having wrought any deliverance onthe earth, as indeed the event proved. Plutarch of Athens? He wassuperannuated. Syrianus? A mere logician, twisting Aristotle to meanwhat she knew, and he ought to have known, Aristotle never meant. Herfather? A man of triangles and conic sections. How paltry they alllooked by the side of the unfathomable Jew!--Spinners of charmingcobwebs..... But would the flies condescend to be caught in them?Builders of pretty houses..... If people would but enter and live inthem! Preachers of superfine morality.... which their admiring pupilsnever dreamt of practising. Without her, she well knew, philosophy mustdie in Alexandria. And was it her wisdom--or other and more earthlycharms of hers--which enabled her to keep it alive? Sickening thought!Oh, that she were ugly, only to test the power of her doctrines!
Ho! The odds were fearful enough already; she would be glad of any help,however earthly and carnal. But was not the work hopeless? What shewanted was men who could act while she thought. And those were just themen whom she would find nowhere but--she knew it too well--in the hatedChristian priesthood. And then that fearful Iphigenia sacrifice loomedin the distance as inevitable. The only hope of philosophy was in herdespair! ...............
She dashed away the tears, and proudly entered the lecture-hall, andascended the tribune like a goddess, amid the shouts of her audience....What did she care for them? Would they do what she told them? She washalf through her lecture before she could recollect herself, and banishfrom her mind the thought of Raphael. And at that point we will take thelecture up. ...............
'Truth? Where is truth but in the soul itself? Facts, objects, are butphantoms matter-woven--ghosts of this earthly night, at which the soul,sleeping here in the mire and clay of matter, shudders and names its ownvague tremors sense and perception. Yet, even as our nightly dreams stirin us the suspicion of mysterious and immaterial presences, unfetteredby the bonds of time and space, so do these waking dreams which we callsight and sound. They are divine messengers, whom Zeus, pityinghis children, even when he pent them in this prison-house of flesh,appointed to arouse in them dim recollections of that real world ofsouls whence they came. Awakened once to them; seeing, through theveil of sense and fact, the spiritual truth of which they are but theaccidental garment, concealing the very thing which they make palpable,the philosopher may neglect the fact for the doctrine, the shell forthe kernel, the body for the soul, of which it is but the symbol and thevehicle. What matter, then, to the philosopher whether these names ofmen, Hector or Priam, Helen or Achilles, were ever visible as phantomsof flesh and blood before the eyes of men? What matter whether theyspoke or thought as he of Scios says they did? What matter, even,whether he himself ever had earthly life? The book is here--the wordwhich men call his. Let the thoughts thereof have been at first whosethey may, now they are mine. I have taken them to myself, and thoughtthem to myself, and made them parts of my own soul. Nay, they were andever will be parts of me; for they, even as the poet was, even as I am,are but a part of the universal soul. What matter, then, what mythsgrew up around those mighty thoughts of ancient seers? Let others tryto reconcile the Cyclic fragments, or vindicate the Catalogue of ships.What has the philosopher lost, though the former were proved to becontradictory, and the latter interpolated? The thoughts are there, andours, Let us open our hearts lovingly to receive them, from whencesoeverthey may have come. As in men, so in books, the soul is all with whichour souls must deal; and the soul of the book is whatsoever beautiful,and true, and noble we can find in it. It matters not to us whether thepoet was altogether conscious of the meanings which we can find in him.Consciously or unconsciously to him, the meanings must be there; forwere they not there to be seen, how could we see them? There arethose among the uninitiate vulgar--and those, too, who carry underthe philosophic cloak hearts still uninitiate--who revile suchinterpretations as merely the sophistic and arbitrary sports of fancy.It lies with them to show what Homer meant, if our spiritual meanings beabsurd; to tell the world why Homer is admirable, if that for which wehold him up to admiration does not exist in him. Will they say that thehonour which he has enjoyed for ages was inspired by that which seems tobe his first and literal meaning? And more, will they venture to imputethat literal meaning to him? can they suppose that the divine soul ofHomer could degrade itself to write of actual and physical feastings,and nuptials, and dances, actual nightly thefts of horses, actualfidelity of dogs and swineherds, actual intermarriages between deitiesand men, or that it is this seeming vulgarity which has won for him fromthe wisest of every age the title of the father of poetry? Degradingthought! fit only for the coarse and sense-bound tribe who canappreciate nothing but what is palpable to sense and sight! As soonbelieve the Christian scriptures, when they tell us of a deity who hashands and feet, eyes and ears, who condescends to command the patternsof furniture and culinary utensils, and is made perfect by beingborn--disgusting thought!--as the son of a village maiden, and defilinghimself with the wants and sorrows of the lowest slaves!'
'It is false! blasphemous! The Scriptures cannot lie!' cried a voicefrom the farther end of the room.
It was Philammon's. He had been listening to the whole lecture; and yetnot so much listening as watching, in bewilderment, the beauty of thespeaker, the grace of her action, the melody of her voice, and last, butnot least, the maze of her rhetoric, as it glittered before hismind's eye like a cobweb diamonded with dew. A sea of new thoughts andquestions, if not of doubts, came rushing in at ever
y sentence on hisacute Greek intellect, all the more plentifully and irresistiblybecause his speculative faculty was as yet altogether waste and empty,undefended by any scientific culture from the inrushing flood. Forthe first time in his life he found himself face to face with theroot-questions of all thought--'What am I, and where?' 'What can Iknow?' And in the half-terrified struggle with them, he had all butforgotten the purpose for which he entered the lecture-hall. Hefelt that he must break the spell. Was she not a heathen and afalse prophetess? Here was something tangible to attack; and halfin indignation at the blasphemy, half in order to force himself intoaction, he had sprung up and spoken.
A yell arose. 'Turn the monk out!''Throw the rustic through the window!'cried a dozen young gentlemen. Several of the most valiant began toscramble over the benches up to him; and Philammon was congratulatinghimself on the near approach of a glorious martyrdom, when Hypatia'svoice, calm and silvery, stifled the tumult in a moment.
'Let the youth listen, gentlemen. He is but a monk and a plebeian, andknows no better; he has been taught thus. Let him sit here quietly, andperhaps we may be able to teach him otherwise.'
And without interrupting, even by a change of tone, the thread of herdiscourse, she continued--
'Listen, then, to a passage from the sixth book of the _Iliad_, in whichlast night I seemed to see glimpses of some mighty mystery. You know itwell: yet I will read it to you; the very sound and pomp of that greatverse may tune our souls to a fit key for the reception of lofty wisdom.For well said Abamnon the Teacher, that "the soul consisted first ofharmony and rhythm, and ere it gave itself to the body, had listened tothe divine harmony. Therefore it is that when, after having come intoa body, it hears such melodies as most preserve the divine footstep ofharmony, it embraces such, and recollects from them that divine harmony,and is impelled to it, and finds its home in it, and shares of it asmuch as it can share."'
And therewith fell on Philammon's ear, for the first time, the mightythunder-roll of Homer's verse--
So spoke the stewardess: but Hector rushed From the house, the same wayback, down stately streets, Through the broad city, to the Scaian gates,Whereby he must go forth toward the plain, There running toward himcame Andromache, His ample-dowered wife, Eetion's child-- Eetion thegreat-hearted, he who dwelt In Thebe under Placos, and the woods OfPlacos, ruling over Kilic men. His daughter wedded Hector brazen-helmed,And met him then; and with her came a maid, Who bore in arms aplayful-hearted babe An infant still, akin to some fair star, Only andwell-loved child of Hector's house, Whom he had named Scamandrios, butthe rest Astyanax, because his sire alone Upheld the weal of Ilion theholy. He smiled in silence, looking on his child But she stood close tohim, with many tears; And hung upon his hand, and spoke, and called him.'My hero, thy great heart will wear thee out; Thou pitiest not thineinfant child, nor me The hapless, soon to be thy widow; The Greeks willslay thee, falling one and all Upon thee: but to me were sweeter far,Having lost thee, to die; no cheer to me Will come thenceforth, if thoushouldst meet thy fate; Woes only: mother have I none, nor sire. Forthat my sire divine Achilles slew, And wasted utterly the pleasant homesOf Kilic folk in Thebe lofty-walled, And slew Eetion with the sword!yet spared To strip the dead: awe kept his soul from that. Therefore heburnt him in his graven arms, And heaped a mound above him; and aroundThe damsels of the Aegis-holding Zeus, The nymphs who haunt the upland,planted elms. And seven brothers bred with me in the halls, All in oneday went down to Hades there; For all of them swift-foot Achilles slewBeside the lazy kine and snow-white sheep. And her, my mother, who oflate was queen Beneath the woods of Places, he brought here Among hisother spoils; yet set her free Again, receiving ransom rich and great.But Artemis, whose bow is all her joy, Smote her to death within herfather's halls. Hector! so thou art father to me now, Mother, andbrother, and husband fair and strong! Oh, come now, pity me, and staythou here Upon the tower, nor make thy child an orphan And me thy wifea widow; range the men Here by the fig-tree, where the city lies Lowest,and where the wall can well be scaled; For here three times the besthave tried the assault Round either Ajax, and Idomeneus, And round theAtridai both, and Tydeus' son, Whether some cunning seer taught themcraft, Or their own spirit stirred and drove them on.' Then spake tallHector, with the glancing helm All this I too have watched, my wife; yetmuch I hold in dread the scorn of Trojan men And Trojan women with theirtrailing shawls, If, like a coward, I should skulk from war. Beside, Ihave no lust to stay; I have learnt Aye to be bold, and lead the van offight, To win my father, and myself, a name. For well I know, at heartand in my thought, The day will come when Ilios the holy Shall lie inheaps, and Priam, and the folk Of ashen-speared Priam, perish all. Butyet no woe to come to Trojan men, Nor even to Hecabe, nor Priam king,Nor to my brothers, who shall roll in dust, Many and fair, beneath thestrokes of foes, So moves me, as doth thine, when thou shalt go Weeping,led off by some brass-harnessed Greek, Robbed of the daylight of thyliberty, To weave in Argos at another's loom, Or bear the water ofMesseis home, Or Hypereia, with unseemly toils, While heavy doomconstrains thee, and perchance The folk may say, who see thy tearsrun down, "This was the wife of Hector, best in fight At Ilium, ofhorse-taming Trojan men." So will they say perchance; while unto theeNow grief will come, for such a husband's loss, Who might have wardedoff the day of thrall. But may the soil be heaped above my corpse BeforeI hear thy shriek and see thy shame!' He spoke, and stretched his armsto take the child, But back the child upon his nurse's breast Shrankcrying, frightened at his father's looks. Fearing the brass and crest ofhorse's hair Which waved above the helmet terribly. Then out that fatherdear and mother laughed, And glorious Hector took the helmet off, Andlaid it gleaming on the ground, and kissed His darling child, and dancedhim in his arm; And spoke in prayer to Zeus, and all the gods 'Zeu,and ye other gods, oh grant that this My child, like me, may grow thechampion here As good in strength, and rule with might in Troy That menmay say, "The boy is better far Than was his sire," when he returnsfrom war, Bearing a gory harness, having slain A foeman, and his mothersheart rejoice. Thus saying, on the hands of his dear wife He laid thechild; and she received him back In fragrant bosom, smiling through hertears.
[Footnote: The above lines are not meant as a 'translation,' but as anhumble attempt to give the literal sense in some sort of metre. It wouldbe an act of arrogance even to aim at success where Pope and Chapmanfailed. It is simply, I believe, impossible to render Homer into Englishverse; because, for one reason among many, it is impossible to preservethe pomp of sound, which invests with grandeur his most common words.How can any skill represent the rhythm of Homeric Greek in a languagewhich--to take the first verse which comes to hand--transforms 'boosmegaloio boeien,' into 'great ox's hide'?]
'Such is the myth. Do you fancy that in it Homer meant to hand down tothe admiration of ages such earthly commonplaces as a mother's bruteaffection, and the terrors of an infant? Surely the deeper insight ofthe philosopher may be allowed without the reproach of fancifulness, tosee in it the adumbration of some deeper mystery!
'The elect soul, for instance--is not its name Astyanax, king of thecity; by the fact of its ethereal parentage, the leader and lord ofall around it, though it knows it not? A child as yet, it lies uponthe fragrant bosom of its mother Nature, the nurse and yet the enemyof man--Andromache, as the poet well names her, because she fights withthat being, when grown to man's estate, whom as a child she nourished.Fair is she, yet unwise; pampering us, after the fashion of mothers,with weak indulgences; fearing to send us forth into the great realitiesof speculation, there to forget her in the pursuit of glory, she wouldhave us while away our prime within the harem, and play for ever roundher knees. And has not the elect soul a father, too, whom it knows not?Hector, he who is without--unconfined, unconditioned by Nature, yet itshusband?--the all-pervading, plastic Soul, informing, organising, whommen call Zeus the lawgiver, Aether the fire, Osiris the lifegiver; whomhere the poet has set forth as the defender of the mystic city, thedefender of harmony, and order, and beauty
throughout the universe?Apart sits his great father--Priam, the first of existences, fatherof many sons, the Absolute Reason; unseen, tremendous, immovable, indistant glory; yet himself amenable to that abysmal unity which Homercalls Fate, the source of all which is, yet in Itself Nothing, withoutpredicate, unnameable.
'From It and for It the universal Soul thrills through the wholeCreation, doing the behests of that Reason from which it overflowed,unwillingly, into the storm and crowd of material appearances; warringwith the brute forces of gross matter, crushing all which is foul anddissonant to itself, and clasping to its bosom the beautiful, and allwherein it discovers its own reflex; impressing on it its signature,reproducing from it its own likeness, whether star, or daemon, or soulof the elect:--and yet, as the poet hints in anthropomorphic language,haunted all the while by a sadness--weighed down amid all its labours bythe sense of a fate--by the thought of that First One from whom the Soulis originally descended; from whom it, and its Father the Reason beforeit, parted themselves when they dared to think and act, and assert theirown free will.
'And in the meanwhile, alas! Hector, the father, fights around, whilehis children sleep and feed; and he is away in the wars, and they knowhim not-know not that they the individuals are but parts of him theuniversal. And yet at moments--oh! thrice blessed they whose celestialparentage has made such moments part of their appointed destiny--atmoments flashes on the human child the intuition of the unutterablesecret. In the spangled glory of the summer night--in the roar of theNile-flood, sweeping down fertility in every wave--in the awful depthsof the temple-shrine--in the wild melodies of old Orphic singers, orbefore the images of those gods of whose perfect beauty the divinetheosophists of Greece caught a fleeting shadow, and with the suddenmight of artistic ecstasy smote it, as by an enchanter's wand, into aneternal sleep of snowy stone--in these there flashes on the inner eye avision beautiful and terrible, of a force, an energy, a soul, an idea,one and yet million-fold, rushing through all created things, like thewind across a lyre, thrilling the strings into celestial harmony--onelife-blood through the million veins of the universe, from one greatunseen heart, whose thunderous pulses the mind hears far away, beatingfor ever in the abysmal solitude, beyond the heavens and the galaxies,beyond the spaces and the times, themselves but veins and runnels fromits all-teeming sea.
'Happy, thrice happy! they who once have dared, even though breathless,blinded with tears of awful joy, struck down upon their knees in utterhelplessness, as they feel themselves but dead leaves in the wind whichsweeps the universe--happy they who have dared to gaze, if but for aninstant, on the terror of that glorious pageant; who have not, like theyoung Astyanax, clung shrieking to the breast of mother Nature, scaredby the heaven-wide flash of Hector's arms, and the glitter of hisrainbow crest! Happy, thrice happy,! even though their eyeballs, blastedby excess of light, wither to ashes in their sockets!--Were it not anoble end to have seen Zeus, and die like Semele, burnt up by hisglory? Happy, thrice happy! though their mind reel from the divineintoxication, and the hogs of Circe call them henceforth madmen andenthusiasts. Enthusiasts they are; for Deity is in them, and they inIt. For the time, this burden of individuality vanishes, and recognisingthemselves as portions of the universal Soul, they rise upward, throughand beyond that Reason from whence the soul proceeds, to the fount ofall--the ineffable and Supreme One--and seeing It, become by that actportions of Its essence. They speak no more, but It speaks in them, andtheir whole being, transmuted by that glorious sunlight into whose raysthey have dared, like the eagle, to gaze without shrinking, becomes anharmonious vehicle for the words of Deity, and passive itself, uttersthe secrets of the immortal gods! What wonder if to the brute mass theyseem as dreamers? Be it so.... Smile if you will. But ask me not toteach you things unspeakable, above all sciences, which the word-battleof dialectic, the discursive struggles of reason, can never reach, butwhich must be seen only, and when seen confessed to be unspeakable.Hence, thou disputer of the Academy!--hence, thou sneeringCynic!--hence, thou sense-worshipping Stoic, who fanciest that the soulis to derive her knowledge from those material appearances which sheherself creates!.... hence--; and yet no: stay and sneer if you will.It is but a little time--a few days longer in this prison-house ofour degradation, and each thing shall return to its own fountain; theblood-drop to the abysmal heart, and the water to the river, and theriver to the shining sea; and the dew-drop which fell from heaven shallrise to heaven again, shaking off the dust-grains which weighed it down,thawed from the earth-frost which chained it here to herb and sward,upward and upward ever through stars and suns, through gods, and throughthe parents of the gods, purer and purer through successive lives,till it enters The Nothing, which is The All, and finds its home atlast.'....
And the speaker stopped suddenly, her eyes glistening with tears, herwhole figure trembling and dilating with rapture. She remained for amoment motionless, gazing earnestly at her audience, as if in hopes ofexciting in them some kindred glow; and then recovering herself, addedin a more tender tone, not quite unmixed with sadness--
'Go now, my pupils. Hypatia has no more for you to-day. Go now, andspare her at least--woman as she is after all--the shame of findingthat she has given you too much, and lifted the veil of Isis beforeeyes which are not enough purified to behold the glory of thegoddess.--Farewell!'
She ended: and Philammon, the moment that the spell of her voice wastaken off him, sprang up, and hurried out through the corridor into thestreet....
So beautiful! So calm and merciful to him So enthusiastic towards allwhich was noble! Had not she too spoken of the unseen world, of the hopeof immortality, of the conquest of the spirit over the flesh, just as aChristian might have done? Was the gulf between them so infinite? If so,why had her aspirations awakened echoes in his own heart--echoes too,just such as the prayers and lessons of the Laura used to awaken? If thefruit was so like, must not the root be like also?.... Could that be acounterfeit? That a minister of Satan in the robes of an angel oflight? Light, at least, it was purity, simplicity, courage, earnestness,tenderness, flashed out from eye, lip, gesture.... A heathen, whodisbelieved? .... What was the meaning of it all?
But the finishing stroke yet remained which was to complete the utterconfusion of his mind. For before he had gone fifty yards up the street,his little friend of the fruit-basket, whom he had not seen sincehe vanished under the feet of the mob in the gateway of the theatre,clutched him by the arm, and burst forth, breathless with running--
'The--gods--heap their favours--on those who--who least deserve them!Rash and insolent rustic! And this is the reward of thy madness!'
'Off with you!' said Philammon, who had no mind at the moment to renewhis acquaintance with the little porter. But the guardian of parasolskept a firm hold on his sheepskin.
'Fool! Hypatia herself commands! Yes, you will see her, have speech withher! while I--I the illuminated--I the appreciating--I the obedient--Ithe adoring--who for these three years past have grovelled in thekennel, that the hem of her garment might touch the tip of my littlefinger--I--I--I--'
'What do you want, madman?'
'She calls for thee, insensate wretch! Theon sent me--breathless at oncewith running and with envy--Go! favourite of the unjust gods!'
'Who is Theon?'
'Her father, ignorant! He commands thee to be at herhouse--here-opposite--to-morrow at the third hour. Hear and obey! Therethey are coming out of the Museum, and all the parasols will get wrong!Oh, miserable me!' And the poor little fellow rushed back again, whilePhilammon, at his wits' end between dread and longing, started off,and ran the whole way home to the Serapeium, regardless of carriages,elephants, and foot-passengers; and having been knocked down by asurly porter, and left a piece of his sheepskin between the teeth of aspiteful camel-neither of which insults he had time to resent-arrived atthe archbishop's house, found Peter the Reader, and tremblingly beggedan audience from Cyril.