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

us than it is now, and that they carried their mystic vessel over these very hills to the Syrtis. However, we have forgotten all about the sea thoroughly enough since that time. I well remember my first astonishment at the side of a galley in Alexandria, and the roar of laughter with which my fellow-students greeted my not unreasonable remark, that it looked very like a centipede.’

‘And do you recollect, too, the argument which I had once with your steward about the pickled fish which I brought you from Egypt; and the way in which, when the jar was opened, the servants shrieked and ran right and left, declaring that the fish-bones were the spines of poisonous serpents?’

‘The old fellow is as obstinate as ever, I assure you, in his disbelief in salt water. He torments me continually by asking me to tell him the story of my shipwreck, and does not believe me after all, though he has heard it a dozen times. “Sir,” he said to me solemnly, after you were gone, “will that strange gentleman pretend to persuade me that anything eatable can come out of his great pond there at Alexandria, when every one can see that the best fountain in the country never breeds anything but frogs and leeches?”’

As he spoke they left the last field behind them, and entered upon a vast sheet of breezy down, speckled with shrubs and copse, and split here and there by rocky glens ending in fertile valleys once thick with farms and homesteads.

‘Here,’ cried Synesius, ‘are our hunting-grounds. And now for one hour’s forgetfulness, and the joys of the noble art. What could old Homer have been thinking of when he forgot to number it among the pursuits which are glorious to heroes, and make man illustrious, and yet could laud in those very words the forum?’

‘The forum?’ said Raphael. ‘I never saw it yet make men anything but rascals.’

‘Brazen-faced rascals, my friend. I detest the whole breed of lawyers, and never meet one without turning him into ridicule; effeminate pettifoggers, who shudder at the very sight of roast venison, when they think of the dangers by which it has been procured. But it is a cowardly age, 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 like a bishop, is all I have left—except Hypatia, the perfect, the wise! I tell you, friend, it is a comfort to me, even in my deepest misery, to recollect 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 have begun 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 making me a better man. A selfish criterion, you will say. Be it so.... What a noble horse that is of yours!’

‘He has been—he has been; but worn out now, like his master and his master’s fortunes....’

‘Not so, certainly, the colt on which you have done me the honour to mount me.’

‘Ah, my poor boy’s pet!.... You are the first person who has crossed him since—’

‘Is he of your own breeding?’ asked Raphael, trying to turn the conversation.

‘A cross between that white Nisaean which you sent me, and one of my own mares.’

‘Not a bad cross; though he keeps a little of the bull head and greyhound flank of your Africans.’

‘So much the better, friend. Give me bone—bone and endurance for this rough down country. Your delicate Nisaeans are all very well for a few minutes over those flat sands of Egypt: but here you need a horse who will go forty miles a day over rough and smooth, and dine thankfully off thistles at night. Aha, poor little man!’—as a jerboa sprang up from a tuft of bushes at his feet—‘I fear you must help to fill our soup-kettle in these hard times.’

And with a dexterous sweep of his long whip, the worthy bishop entangled the jerboas long legs, whisked him up to his saddle-bow, and delivered him to the groom and the game-bag.

‘Kill him at once. Don’t let him squeak, boy!—he cries too like a child....’

‘Poor little wretch!’ said Raphael. ‘What more right, now, have we to eat him than he to eat us?’

‘Eh? If he can eat us, let him try. How long have you joined the Manichees?’

‘Have no fears on that score. But, as I told you, since my wonderful conversion by Bran, the dog, I have begun to hold dumb animals in respect, as probably quite as good as myself.’

‘Then you need a further conversion, friend Raphael, and to learn what is 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 would be a cheap price to pay in exchange for the life of the meanest human being.’

‘Yes, if they be required for food: but really, to kill them for our amusement!’

‘Friend, when I was still a heathen, I recollect well how I used to haggle at that story of the cursing of the fig-tree; but when I learnt to know what man was, and that I had been all my life mistaking for a part of nature that race which was originally, and can be again, made in the likeness of God, then I began to see that it were well if every fig-tree upon earth were cursed, if the spirit of one man could be taught thereby a single lesson. And so I speak of these, my darling field-sports, on which I have not been ashamed, as you know, to write a book.’

‘And a very charming one: yet you were still a pagan, recollect, when you 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 me endurance, promptness, courage, self-control, as well as health and cheerfulness: 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 your horse’s neck, as I do, or the long-necked rogues may see you. They must be 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 to them!’

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 to imitate.

Two or three minutes more of breathless