“The Rabbis? Are you a Jew?” asked the officer.
“Yes, sir, a Jew. And you, I presume, a Christian: perhaps you may have scruples about receiving—your sect has generally none about taking—from one of our stubborn and unbelieving race. Don’t be frightened, though, for your conscience; I assure you I am no more a Jew at heart than I am a Christian.”
“God help you then!”
“Someone, or something, has helped me a great deal too much, for three-and-thirty years of pampering. But, pardon me, that was a strange speech for a Christian.”
“You must be a good Jew, sir, before you can be a good Christian.”
“Possibly. I intend to be neither—nor a good Pagan either. My dear sir, let us drop the subject. It is beyond me. If I can be as good a brute animal as my dog there—it being first demonstrated that it is good to be good—I shall be very well content.”
The officer looked down on with a stately, loving sorrow. Raphael caught his eye, and felt that he was in the presence of no common man.
“I must take care what I say here, I suspect, or I shall be entangled shortly in a regular Socratic dialogue. … And now, sir, may I return your question, and ask who and what are you? I really have no intention of giving you up to any Caesar, Antiochus, Tiglath-Pileser, or other flea-devouring flea. … They will fatten well enough without your blood. So I only ask as a student of the great nothing-in-general, which men call the universe.”
“I was prefect of a legion this morning. What I am now, you know as well as I.”
“Just what I do not. I am in deep wonder at seeing your hilarity, when, by all flea-analogies, you ought to be either be howling your fate like Achilles on the shores of Styx, or pretending to grin and bear it, as I was taught to do when I played at Stoicism. You are not of that sect certainly, for you confessed yourself a fool just now.”
“And it would be long, would it not, before you made one of them do as much? Well, be it so. A fool I am; yet, if God helps us as far as Ostia, why should I not be cheerful?”
“Why should you?”
“What better thing can happen to a fool, than that God should teach that he is one, when he fancied himself the wisest of the wise? Listen to me, sir. Four mouths ago I was blessed with health, honour, lands, friends—all for which the heart of man could wish. And if, for an insane ambition, I have chosen to risk all those, against the solemn warnings of the truest friend, and the wisest saint who treads this earth of God’s—should I not rejoice to have it proved to me, even by such a lesson as this, that the friend who never deceived me before was right in this case too; and that the God who has checked and turned me for forty years of wild toil and warfare, whenever I dared to do what was right in the sight of my own eyes, has not forgotten me yet, or given up the thankless task of my education?”
“And who, pray, is this peerless friend?”
“Augustine of Hippo.”
“Humph! It had been better for the world in general, if the great dialectician had exerted his powers of persuasion on Heraclian himself.”
“He did so, but in vain.”
“I don’t doubt it. I know the sleek Count well enough to judge what effect a sermon would have upon that smooth vulpine determination of his. … ‘An instrument in the hands of God, my dear brother. … We must obey His call, even to the death,’ etc. etc.” And Raphael laughed bitterly.
“You know the Count?”
“As well, sir, as I care to know any man.”
“I am sorry for your eyesight, then, sir,” said the Prefect severely, “if it has been able to discern no more than that in so august a character.”
“My dear sir, I do not doubt his excellence—nay, his inspiration. How well he divined the perfectly fit moment for stabbing his old comrade Stilicho! But really, as two men of the world, we must be aware by this time that every man has his price. …”
“Oh, hush! hush!” whispered the girl. “You cannot guess how you pain him. He worships the Count. It was not ambition, as he pretends, but merely loyalty to him, which brought here against his will.”
“My dear madam, forgive me. For your sake I am silent. …”
“For her sake! A pretty speech for me! What next?” said he to himself. “Ah, Bran, Bran, this is all your fault!”
“For my sake! Oh, why not for your own sake? How sad to hear one—one like you, only sneering and speaking evil!”
“Why then? If fools are fools, and one can safely call them so, why not do it?”
“Ah—if God was merciful enough to send down His own Son to die for them, should we not be merciful enough not to judge their failings harshly!”
“My dear young lady, spare a worn-out philosopher any new anthropologic theories. We really must push on a little faster, if we intend to reach Ostia tonight.”
But, for some reason or other, Raphael sneered no more for a full half-hour.
Long, however, ere they reached Ostia, the night had fallen; and their situation began to be more than questionably safe. Now and then a wolf, slinking across the road towards his ghastly feast, glided like a lank ghost out of the darkness, and into it again, answering Bran’s growl by a gleam of his white teeth. Then the voices of some marauding party rang coarse and loud through the still night, and made them hesitate and stop a while.
