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

‘But, fairest Hypatia, conceive yourself struck in the face by a great stone, several hundred howling wretches leaping up at you like wild beasts—two minutes more, and you are torn limb from limb. What would even you do in such a case?’

‘Let them tear me limb from limb, and die as I have lived.’

‘Ah, but—When it came to fact, and death was staring you in the face?’

‘And why should man fear death?’

‘Ahem! No, not death, of course; but the act of dying. That may be, surely, under such circumstances, to say the least, disagreeable. If our ideal, Julian the Great, found a little dissimulation necessary, and was even a better Christian than I have ever pretended to be, till he found himself able to throw off the mask, why should not I? Consider me as a lower being than yourself,—one of the herd, if you will; but a penitent member thereof, who comes to make the fullest possible reparation, by doing any desperate deed on which you may choose to put him, and prove myself as able and willing, if once I have the power, as Julian himself.’

Such was the conversation which passed between Hypatia and Orestes half an hour after Philammon had taken possession of his new abode.

Hypatia looked at the Prefect with calm penetration, not unmixed with scorn and fear.

‘And pray what has produced this sudden change in your Excellency’s earnestness? For four months your promises have been lying fallow.’ She did not confess how glad she would have been at heart to see them lying fallow still.

‘Because—This morning I have news; which I tell to you the first as a compliment. We will take care that all Alexandria knows it before sundown. Heraclian has conquered.’

‘Conquered?’ cried Hypatia, springing from her seat.

‘Conquered, and utterly destroyed the emperor’s forces at Ostia. So says a messenger on whom I can depend. And even if the news should prove false, I can prevent the contrary report from spreading, or what is the use of being prefect? You demur? Do you not see that if we can keep the notion alive but a week our cause is won?’

‘How so?’

‘I have treated already with all the officers of the city, and every one of them has acted like a wise man, and given me a promise of help, conditional of course on Heraclian’s success, being as tired as I am of that priest-ridden court at Byzantium. Moreover, the stationaries are mine already. So are the soldiery all the way up the Nile. Ah! you have been fancying me idle for these four months, but—You forget that you yourself were the prize of my toil. Could I be a sluggard with that goal in sight?’

Hypatia shuddered, but was silent; and Orestes went on—

‘I have unladen several of the wheat-ships for enormous largesses of bread: though those rascally monks of Tabenne had nearly forestalled my benevolence, and I was forced to bribe a deacon or two, buy up the stock they had sent down, and retail it again as my own. It is really most officious of them to persist in feeding gratuitously half the poor of the city! What possible business have they with Alexandria?’

‘The wish for popularity, I presume.’

‘Just so; and then what hold can the government have on a set of rogues whose stomachs are filled without our help?’

‘Julian made the same complaint to the high priest of Galatia, in that priceless letter of his.’

‘Ah, you will set that all right, you know, shortly. Then again, I do not fear Cyril’s power just now. He has injured himself deeply, I am happy to say, in the opinion of the wealthy and educated, by expelling the Jews. And as for his mob, exactly at the right moment, the deities—there are no monks here, so I can attribute my blessings to the right source—have sent us such a boon as may put them into as good a humour as we need.’

‘And what is that?’ asked Hypatia.

‘A white elephant.’

‘A white elephant?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, mistaking or ignoring the tone of her answer. ‘A real, live, white elephant; a thing which has not been seen in Alexandria for a hundred years! It was passing through with two tame tigers, as a present to the boy at Byzantium, from some hundred-wived kinglet of the Hyperborean Taprobane, or other no-man’s-land in the far East. I took the liberty of laying an embargo on them, and, after a little argumentation and a few hints of torture, elephant and tigers are at our service.’

‘And of what service are they to be?’

‘My dearest madam— Conceive.... How are we to win the mob without a show?.... When were there more than two ways of gaining either the whole or part of the Roman Empire—by force of arms or force of trumpery? Can even you invent a third? The former is unpleasantly exciting, and hardly practicable just now. The latter remains, and, thanks to the white elephant, may be triumphantly successful. I have to exhibit something every week. The people are getting tired of that pantomime; and since the Jews were driven out, the fellow has grown stupid and lazy, having lost the more enthusiastic half of his spectators. As for horse-racing, they are sick of it.... Now, suppose we announce, for the earliest possible day—a spectacle—such a spectacle as never was seen before in this generation. You and I—I as exhibitor, you as representative—for the time being only—of the Vestals of old—sit side by side.... Some worthy friend has his instructions, when the people are beside themselves with rapture, to cry, “Long live Orestes Caesar!”....Another reminds them of Heraclian’s victory—another couples your name with mine.... the people applaud.... some Mark Antony steps forward, salutes me as Imperator, Augustus—what you will—the cry is taken up—I refuse as meekly as Julius Caesar himself—am compelled, blushing, to accept the honour—I rise, make an oration about the future independence of the southern continent—union of Africa and Egypt—the empire no longer to be divided into Eastern and Western, but Northern and Southern. Shouts of applause, at two drachmas per man, shake the skies. Everybody believes that everybody else approves, and follows the lead.... And the thing is won.’

‘And pray,’ asked Hypatia, crushing down her contempt and despair, ‘how is this to bear on the worship of the gods?

‘Why.... why,.... if you thought that people’s minds were sufficiently prepared, you might rise in your turn, and make an oration—you can conceive one. Set forth how these spectacles, formerly the glory of the empire, had withered under Galilaean superstition.... How the only path toward the full enjoyment of eye and ear was a frank return to those deities, from whose worship they originally sprang, and connected with which they could alone be enjoyed in their perfection.... But I need not teach you how to do that which you have so often taught me: so now to consider our spectacle, which, next to the largess, is the most important part of our plans. I ought to have exhibited to them the monk who so