“Idolatry? Do I worship the Pharos when I gaze at it, as I do for hours, with loving awe, as the token to me of the all-conquering might of Hellas? Do I worship the roll on which Homer’s words are written, when I welcome with delight the celestial truths which it unfolds to me, and even prize and love the material book for the sake of the message which it brings? Do you fancy that any but the vulgar worship the image itself, or dream that it can help or hear them? Does the lover mistake his mistress’s picture for the living, speaking reality? We worship the idea of which the image is a symbol. Will you blame us because we use that symbol to represent the idea to our own affections and emotions instead of leaving it a barren notion, a vague imagination of our own intellect?”
“Then,” asked Philammon, with a faltering voice, yet unable to restrain his curiosity, “then you do reverence the heathen gods?”
Why Hypatia should have felt this question a sore one, puzzled Philammon; but she evidently did feel it as such, for she answered haughtily enough—
“If Cyril had asked me that question, I should have disdained to answer. To you I will tell, that before I can answer your question you must learn what those whom you call heathen gods are. The vulgar, or rather those who find it their interest to calumniate the vulgar for the sake of confounding philosophers with them, may fancy them mere human beings, subject like man to the sufferings of pain and love, to the limitations of personality. We, on the other hand, have been taught by the primeval philosophers of Greece, by the priests of ancient Egypt, and the sages of Babylon, to recognise in them the universal powers of nature, those children of the all-quickening spirit, which are but various emanations of the one primeval unity—say rather, various phases of that unity, as it has been variously conceived, according to the differences of climate and race, by the wise of different nations. And thus, in our eyes, he who reverences the many, worships by that very act, with the highest and fullest adoration, the one of whose perfection they are the partial antitypes; perfect each in themselves, but each the image of only one of its perfections.”
“Why, then,” said Philammon, much relieved by this explanation, “do you so dislike Christianity? may it not be one of the many methods—”
“Because,” she answered, interrupting him impatiently, “because it denies itself to be one of those many methods, and stakes its existence on the denial; because it arrogates to itself the exclusive revelation of the Divine, and cannot see, in its self-conceit, that its own doctrines disprove that assumption by their similarity to those of all creeds. There is not a dogma of the Galileans which may not be found, under some form or other, in some of those very religions from which it pretends to disdain borrowing.”
“Except,” said Theon, “its exaltation of all which is human and lowborn, illiterate, and levelling.”
“Except that—But look! here comes someone whom I cannot—do not choose to meet. Turn this way—quick!”
And Hypatia, turning pale as death, drew her father with unphilosophic haste down a sidewalk.
“Yes,” she went on to herself, as soon as she had recovered her equanimity. “Were this Galilean superstition content to take its place humbly among the other ‘religiones licitas’ of the empire, one might tolerate it well enough, as an anthropomorphic adumbration of divine things fitted for the base and toiling herd; perhaps peculiarly fitted, because peculiarly flattering to them. But now—”
“There is Miriam again,” said Philammon, “right before us!”
“Miriam?” asked Hypatia severely. “You know her then? How is that?”
“She lodges at Eudaimon’s house, as I do,” answered Philammon frankly. “Not that I ever interchanged, or wish to interchange, a word with so base a creature.”
“Do not! I charge you!” said Hypatia, almost imploringly. But there was now no way of avoiding her, and perforce Hypatia and her tormentress met face to face.
“One word! one moment, beautiful lady,” began the old woman, with a slavish obeisance. “Nay, do not push by so cruelly. I have—see what I have for you!” and she held out with a mysterious air, The Rainbow of Solomon.
“Ah! I knew you would stop a moment—not for the ring’s sake, of course, nor even for the sake of one who once offered it to you.—Ah! and where is he now? Dead of love, perhaps! at least, here is his last token to the fairest one, the cruel one. … Well, perhaps she is right. … To be an empress—an empress! … Far finer than anything the poor Jew could have offered. … But still. … An empress need not be above hearing her subject’s petition. …”
All this was uttered rapidly, and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious hold, there was no escaping.
“What do you mean? What have I to do with this ring?” asked Hypatia, half frightened.
“He who owned it once, offers it to you now. You recollect a little black agate—a paltry thing … If you have not thrown it away, as you most likely have, he wishes to redeem it with this opal … a gem surely more fit for such a hand as that.”
“He gave me the agate, and I shall keep it.”
“But this opal—worth, oh, worth ten thousand gold pieces—in exchange for that paltry broken thing not worth one?”
“I am not a dealer, like you, and have not yet learnt to value things
