Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face, Charles Kingsley [thriller novels to read TXT] 📗

‘Ah! I can afford a few sulky looks to-night!’ said the old woman to herself, with a smile, as she picked up from the floor the prize for which she had been plotting so long—Raphael’s half of the black agate.

‘I wonder whether she will miss it! Perhaps she will have no fancy for its company any longer, now that she has discovered what over-palpable archangels appear when she rubs it. But if she does try to recover it.... why—let her try her strength with mine—or, rather, with a Christian mob.’

And then, drawing from her bosom the other half of the talisman, she fitted the two pieces together again and again, fingering them over, and poring upon them with tear-brimming eyes, till she had satisfied herself that the fracture still fitted exactly; while she murmured to herself from time to time—‘Oh, that he were here! Oh, that he would return now—now! It may be too late to-morrow! Stay—I will go and consult the teraph; it may know where he is....’

And she departed to her incantations; while Hypatia threw herself upon her bed at home, and filled the chamber with a long, low wailing, as of a child in pain, until the dreary dawn broke on her shame and her despair. And then she rose, and rousing herself for one great effort, calmly prepared a last oration, in which she intended to bid farewell for ever to Alexandria and to the schools.

Philammon meanwhile was striding desperately up the main street which led towards the Serapeium. But he was not destined to arrive there as soon as he had hoped to do. For ere he had gone half a mile, behold a crowd advancing towards him blocking up the whole street.

The mass seemed endless. Thousands of torches flared above their heads, and from the heart of the procession rose a solemn chant, in which Philammon soon recognised a well-known Catholic hymn. He was half minded to turn up some by-street, and escape meeting them. But on attempting to do so, he found every avenue which he tried similarly blocked up by a tributary stream of people; and, almost ere he was aware, was entangled in the vanguard of the great column.

‘Let me pass!’ cried he in a voice of entreaty.

‘Pass, thou heathen?’

In vain he protested his Christianity.

‘Origenist, Donatist, heretic! Whither should a good Catholic be going to-night, save to the Caesareum?’

‘My friends, my friends, I have no business at the Caesareum!’ cried he, in utter despair. ‘I am on my way to seek a private interview with the patriarch, on matters of importance.’

‘Oh, liar! who pretends to be known to the patriarch, and yet is ignorant that this night he visits at the Caesareum the most sacred corpse of the martyr Ammonius!’

‘What! Is Cyril with you?’

‘He and all his clergy.’

‘Better so; better in public,’ said Philammon to himself; and, turning, he joined the crowd.

Onward, with chant and dirge, they swept out through the Sun-gate, upon the harbour esplanade, and wheeled to the right along the quay, while the torchlight bathed in a red glare the great front of the Caesareum, and the tall obelisks before it, and the masts of the thousand ships which lay in the harbour on their left; and last, but not least, before the huge dim mass of the palace which bounded the esplanade in front, a long line of glittering helmets and cuirasses, behind a barrier of cables which stretched from the shore to the corner of the museum.

There was a sudden halt; a low ominous growl; and then the mob pressed onward from behind, surged up almost to the barrier. The soldiers dropped the points of their lances, and stood firm. Again the mob recoiled; again surged forward. Fierce cries arose; some of the boldest stooped to pick up stones: but, luckily, the pavement was too firm for them....Another moment, and the whole soldiery of Alexandria would have been fighting for life and death against fifty thousand Christians....

But Cyril had not forgotten his generalship. Reckless as that night’s events proved him to be about arousing the passions of his subjects, he was yet far too wary to risk the odium and the danger of a night attack, which, even if successful, would have cost the lives of hundreds. He knew well enough the numbers and the courage of the enemy, and the certainty that, in case of a collision, no quarter would be given or accepted on either side.... Beside, if a battle must take place—and that, of course, must happen sooner or later—it must not happen in his presence and under his sanction. He was in the right now, and Orestes in the wrong; and in the right he would keep—at least till his express to Byzantium should have returned, and Orestes was either proscribed or superseded. So looking forward to some such chance as this, the wary prelate had schooled his aides-de-camp, the deacons of the city, and went on his way up the steps of the Caesareum, knowing that they could be trusted to keep the peace outside.

And they did their work well. Before a blow had been struck, or even an insult passed on either side, they had burst through the front rank of the mob, and by stout threats of excommunication, enjoined not only peace, but absolute silence until the sacred ceremony which was about to take place should be completed; and enforced their commands by marching up and down like sentries between the hostile ranks for the next weary two hours, till the very soldiers broke out into expressions of admiration, and the tribune of the cohort, who ad no great objection, but also no great wish, fight, paid them a high-flown compliment on their laudable endeavours to maintain public order, and received the somewhat ambiguous reply, that the ‘weapons of their warfare were not carnal, that they wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers,’.... an answer which the tribune, being now somewhat sleepy, thought it best to leave unexplained.

In the meanwhile, there had passed up the steps of the Temple a gorgeous line of priests, among whom glittered, more gorgeous than all, the stately figure of the pontiff. They were followed close by thousands of monks, not only from Alexandria and Nitria, but from all the adjoining towns and monasteries. And as Philammon, unable for some half hour more to force his way into the church, watched their endless stream, he could well believe the boast which he had so often heard in Alexandria, that one half of the population of Egypt was at that moment in ‘religious orders.’

After the monks, the laity began to enter but even then so vast was the crowd, and so dense the crush upon the steps, that before he could force his way into the church, Cyril’s sermon had begun. ...............

—‘What went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Nay, such are in kings’ palaces, and in the palaces of prefects who would needs be emperors, and cast away the Lord’s bonds from them—of whom it is written, that He that sitteth in the heavens laugheth them to scorn, and taketh the wicked in their own snare, and maketh the devices of princes of none effect. Ay, in king’s palaces, and in theatres too, where the rich of this world, poor in faith, deny their covenant, and defile their baptismal robes that they may do honour to the devourers of the earth. Woe to them who