Raphael seemed to think that he ought not to laugh it away; for he pointed to the fragments, and with a quaint look at the young monk—
“Our nurses used to tell us,
“ ‘If you can’t make it,
You ought not to break it.’ ”
“I had no nurse,” said Philammon.
“Ah!—that accounts—for this and other things. Well,” he went on, with the most provoking good-nature, “you are in a fair road, my handsome youth; I wish you joy of your fellow-workmen, and of your apprenticeship in the noble art of monkery. Riot and pillage, shrieking women and houseless children in your twentieth summer, are the sure path to a Saintship, such as Paul of Tarsus, who, with all his eccentricities, was a gentleman, certainly never contemplated. I have heard of Phoebus Apollo under many disguises, but this is the first time I ever saw him in the wolf’s hide.”
“Or in the lion’s,” said Philammon, trying in his shame to make a fine speech.
“Like the Ass in the Fable. Farewell! Stand out of the way, friends! ’Ware teeth and poison!”
And he disappeared among the crowd, who made way respectfully enough for his dagger and his brindled companion.
VII
Those by Whom Offences Come
Philammon’s heart smote him all that day, whenever he thought of his morning’s work. Till then all Christians, monks above all, had been infallible in his eyes: all Jews and heathens insane and accursed. Moreover, meekness under insult, fortitude in calamity, the contempt of worldly comfort, the worship of poverty as a noble estate, were virtues which the Church Catholic boasted as her peculiar heritage: on which side had the balance of those qualities inclined that morning? The figure of Raphael, stalking out ragged and penniless into the wide world, haunted him, with its quiet self-assured smile. And there haunted him, too, another peculiarity in the man, which he had never before remarked in anyone but Arsenius—that ease and grace, that courtesy and self-restraint, which made Raphael’s rebukes rankle all the more keenly, because he felt that the rebuker was in some mysterious way superior to him, and saw through him, and could have won him over, or crushed him in argument, or in intrigue—or in anything, perhaps, except mere brute force. Strange—that Raphael, of all men, should in those few moments have reminded him so much of Arsenius; and that the very same qualities which gave a peculiar charm to the latter should give a peculiar unloveliness to the former, and yet be, without a doubt, the same. What was it? Was it rank which gave it? Arsenius had been a great man, he knew—the companion of kings. And Raphael seemed rich. He had heard the mob crying out against the prefect for favouring him. Was it then familiarity with the great ones of the world which produced this manner and tone? It was a real strength, whether in Arsenius or in Raphael. He felt humbled before it—envied it. If it made Arsenius a more complete and more captivating person, why should it not do the same for him? Why should not he, too, have his share of it?
Bringing with it such thoughts as these, the time ran on till noon, and the midday meal, and the afternoon’s work, to which Philammon looked forward joyfully, as a refuge from his own thoughts.
He was sitting on his sheepskin upon a step, basking, like a true son of the desert, in a blaze of fiery sunshine, which made the black stonework too hot to touch with the bare hand, watching the swallows, as they threaded the columns of the Serapeium, and thinking how often he had delighted in their air-dance, as they turned and hawked up and down the dear old glen at Scetis. A crowd of citizens with causes, appeals, and petitions, were passing in and out from the patriarch’s audience-room. Peter and the archdeacon were waiting in the shade close by for the gathering of the parabolani, and talking over the morning’s work in an earnest whisper, in which the names of Hypatia and Orestes were now and then audible.
An old priest came up, and bowing reverently enough to the archdeacon, requested the help of one of the parabolani. He had a sailor’s family, all fever-stricken, who must be removed to the hospital at once.
The archdeacon looked at him, answered an offhand “Very well,” and went on with his talk.
The priest, bowing lower than before, represented the immediate necessity for help.
“It is very odd,” said Peter to the swallows in the Serapeium, “that some people cannot obtain influence enough in their own parishes to get the simplest good works performed without tormenting his holiness the patriarch.”
The old priest mumbled some sort of excuse, and the archdeacon, without deigning a second look at him, said—“Find him a man, brother Peter. Anybody will do. What is that boy—Philammon—doing there? Let him go with Master Hieracas.”
Peter seemed not to receive the proposition favourably, and whispered something to the archdeacon. …
“No. I can spare none of the rest. Importunate persons must take their chance of being well served. Come—here are our brethren; we will all go together.”
“The farther together the better for the boy’s sake,” grumbled Peter, loud enough for Philammon—perhaps for the old priest—to overhear him.
So Philammon went out with them, and as he went questioned his companions meekly enough as to who Raphael was.
“A friend of Hypatia!”—that name, too, haunted him; and he began, as stealthily and indirectly as he could, to obtain information about her. There was no need for his caution; for the very mention of her name roused the whole party into a fury of execration.
“May
