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

it was ‘to the beast’, and not to her, that her vassal kings of the earth had been giving their power and strength; and the ferocity and lust which she had pampered so cunningly in them, had become her curse and her destruction.... Drunk with the blood of the saints; blinded by her own conceit and jealousy to the fact that she had been crushing and extirpating out of her empire for centuries past all which was noble, purifying, regenerative, divine, she sat impotent and doting, the prey of every fresh adventurer, the slave of her own slaves.... ‘And the kings of the earth, who had sinned with her, hated the harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and devoured her flesh, and burned her with fire. For God had put into their hearts to fulfil His will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be fulfilled.’.... Everywhere sensuality, division, hatred, treachery, cruelty, uncertainty, terror; the vials of God’s wrath poured out. Where was to be the end of it all? asked every man of his neighbour, generation after generation; and received for answer only, ‘It is better to die than to live.’

And yet in one ship out of that sad fleet, there was peace; peace amid shame and terror; amid the groans of the wounded, and the sighs of the starving; amid all but blank despair. The great triremes and quinqueremes rushed onward past the lagging transports, careless, in the mad race for safety, that they were leaving the greater number of their comrades defenceless in the rear of the flight; but from one little fishing-craft alone no base entreaties, no bitter execrations greeted the passing flash and roll of their mighty oars. One after another, day by day, they came rushing up out of the northern offing, each like a huge hundred-footed dragon, panting and quivering, as if with terror, at every loud pulse of its oars, hurling the wild water right and left with the mighty share of its beak, while from the bows some gorgon or chimaera, elephant or boar, stared out with brazen eyes toward the coast of Africa, as if it, too, like the human beings which it carried, was dead to every care but that of dastard flight. Past they rushed, one after another; and off the poop some shouting voice chilled all hearts for a moment, with the fearful news that the Emperor’s Neapolitan fleet was in full chase.... And the soldiers on board that little vessel looked silently and steadfastly into the silent steadfast face of the old Prefect, and Victoria saw him shudder, and turn his eyes away—and stood up among the rough fighting men, like a goddess, and cried aloud that ‘the Lord would protect His own’; and they believed her, and were still; till many days and many ships were passed, and the little fishing-craft, outstripped even by the transports and merchantmen, as it strained and crawled along before its single square-sail, was left alone upon the sea.

And where was Raphael Aben-Ezra?

He was sitting, with Bran’s head between his knees, at the door of a temporary awning in the vessel’s stern, which shielded the wounded men from sun and spray; and as he sat he could hear from within the tent the gentle voices of Victoria and her brother, as they tended the sick like ministering angels, or read to them words of divine hope and comfort-in which his homeless heart felt that he had no share....

‘As I live, I would change places now with any one of those poor mangled ruffians to have that voice speaking such words to me....and to believe them.’.... And he went on perusing the manuscript which he held in his hand. ...............

‘Well!’ he sighed to himself after a while ‘at least it is the most complimentary, not to say hopeful, view of our destinies with which I have met since I threw away my curse’s belief that the seed of David was fated to conquer the whole earth, and set up a second Roman Empire at Jerusalem, only worse than the present one, in that the devils of superstition and bigotry would be added to those of tyranny and rapine.’

A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice asked’ ‘And what may this so hopeful view be?’

‘Ah! my dear General!’ said Raphael, looking up. ‘I have a poor bill of fare whereon to exercise my culinary powers this morning. Had it not been for that shark who was so luckily deluded last night, I should have been reduced to the necessity of stewing my friend the fat decurion’s big boots.’

‘They would have been savoury enough, I will warrant, after they had passed under your magical hand.’

‘It is a comfort, certainly, to find that after all one did learn something useful in Alexandria! So I will even go forward at once, and employ my artistic skill.’

‘Tell me first what it was about which I heard you just now soliloquising, as so hopeful a view of some matter or other?’

‘Honestly—if you will neither betray me to your son and daughter, nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself—it was Paul of Tarsus’s notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!’ And he held up a manuscript of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

‘It is execrable Greek. But it is sound philosophy, I cannot deny. He knows Plato better than all the ladies and gentlemen in Alexandria put together, if my opinion on the point be worth having.’

‘I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that point, sir. He may or may not know Plato; but I am right sure that he knows God.’

‘Not too fast,’ said Raphael with a smile. ‘You do not know, perhaps, that I have spent the last ten years of my life among men who professed the same knowledge?’

‘Augustine, too, spent the best ten years of his life among such; and yet he is now combating the very errors which he once taught.’

‘Having found, he fancies, something better!’

‘Having found it, most truly. But you must talk to him yourself, and argue the matter over, with one who can argue. To me such questions are an unknown land.’

‘Well.... Perhaps I may be tempted to do even that. At least a thoroughly converted philosopher—for poor dear Synesius is half heathen still, I often fancy, and hankers after the wisdom of the Egyptian—will be a curious sight; and to talk with so famous and so learned a man would always be a pleasure; but to argue with him, or any other human being, none whatsoever.’

‘Why, then?’

‘My dear sir, I am sick of syllogisms, and probabilities, and pros and contras. What do I care if, on weighing both sides, the nineteen pounds weight of questionable arguments against, are overbalanced by the twenty pounds weight of equally questionable arguments for? Do you not see that my belief of the victorious proposition will be proportioned to the one over-balancing pound only, while the whole other nineteen will go for nothing?’

‘I really do not.’

‘Happy are you, then. I do, from many a sad experience. No, my worthy sir. I want a faith past arguments; one which, whether I can prove it or not to the satisfaction of the lawyers, I believe to my own satisfaction, and act on it