Raphael could not help laughing in his turn.
“Synesius is himself still, I see, and not unworthy of his ancestor Hercules; and though he shrinks from cleansing the Augean stable of my soul, paws like the warhorse in the valley at the hope of undertaking any lesser labours in my behalf. But, my dear generous bishop, this matter is more serious, and I, the subject of it, have become more serious also, than you fancy. Consider: by the uncorrupt honour of your Spartan forefathers, Agis, Brasidas, and the rest of them, don’t you think that you are, in your hasty kindness, tempting me to behave in a way which they would have called somewhat rascally?”
“How then, my dear man! You have a very honourable and praiseworthy desire; and I am willing to help you to compass it.”
“Do you think that I have not cast about before now for more than one method of compassing it for myself? My good man, I have been tempted a dozen times already to turn Christian: but there has risen up in me the strangest fancy about conscience and honour. … I never was scrupulous before, Heaven knows—I am not over-scrupulous now—except about her. I cannot dissemble before her. I dare not look in her face when I had a lie in my right hand. … She looks through one—into one—like a clear-eyed awful goddess. … I never was ashamed in my life till my eyes met hers. …”
“But if you really became a Christian?”
“I cannot. I should suspect my own motives. Here is another of these absurd soul-anatomising scruples which have risen up in me. I should suspect that I had changed my creed because I wished to change it—that if I was not deceiving her I was deceiving myself. If I had not loved her it might have been different: but now—just because I do love her, I will not, I dare not, listen to Augustine’s arguments, or my own thoughts on the matter.”
“Most wayward of men!” cried Synesius, half peevishly; “you seem to take some perverse pleasure in throwing yourself into the waves again, the instant you have climbed a rock of refuge!”
“Pleasure? Is there any pleasure in feeling oneself at death-grips with the devil? I had given up believing in him for many a year. … And behold, the moment that I awaken to anything noble and right, I find the old serpent alive and strong at my throat! No wonder that I suspect him, you, myself—I, who have been tempted, every hour in the last week, temptations to become a devil. Ay,” he went on, raising his voice, as all the fire of his intense Eastern nature flashed from his black eyes, “to be a devil! From my childhood till now never have I known what it was to desire and not to possess. It is not often that I have had to trouble any poor Naboth for his vineyard: but when I have taken a fancy to it, Naboth has always found it wiser to give way. And now. … Do you fancy that I have not had a dozen hellish plots flashing across me in the last week? Look here! This is the mortgage of her father’s whole estate. I bought it—whether by the instigation of Satan or of God—of a banker in Berenice, the very day I left them; and now they, and every straw which they possess, are in my power. I can ruin them—sell them as slaves—betray them to death as rebels—and last, but not least, cannot I hire a dozen worthy men to carry her off, and cut the Gordian knot most simply and summarily? And yet I dare not. I must be pure to approach the pure; and righteous, to kiss the feet of the righteous. Whence came this new conscience to me I know not, but come it has; and I dare no more do a base thing toward her, than I dare toward a God, if there be one. This very mortgage—I hate it, curse it, now that I possess it—the tempting devil!”
“Burn it,” said Synesius quietly.
“Perhaps I may. At least, used it never shall be. Compel her? I am too proud, or too honourable, or something or other, even to solicit her. She must come to me; tell me with her own lips that she loves me, that she will take me, and make me worthy of her. She must have mercy on me, of her own free will, or—let her pine and die in that accursed prison; and then a scratch with the trusty old dagger for her father, and another for myself, will save him from any more superstitions, and me from any more philosophic doubts, for a few aeons of ages, till we start again in new lives—he, I suppose, as a jackass, and I as a baboon. What matter? but unless I possess her by fair means, God do so to me, and more also, if I attempt base ones!”
“God be with you, my son, in the noble warfare!” said Synesius, his eyes filling with kindly tears.
“It is no noble warfare at all. It is a base coward fear, in one who never before feared man or devil, and is now fallen low enough to be afraid of a helpless girl!”
“Not so,” cried Synesius, in his turn; “it is a noble and a holy fear. You fear her goodness. Could you see her goodness, much less fear it, were there not a Divine Light within you which showed you what, and how awful, goodness was? Tell me no more, Raphael Aben-Ezra, that you do not fear God; for he who fears Virtue, fears Him whose likeness Virtue is. Go on—go on. … Be brave, and His strength will be made manifest in your weakness.”
It was late that night before Synesius compelled his guest to retire, after having
