And where was Raphael Aben-Ezra?
He was sitting, with Bran’s head between his knees, at the door of a temporary awning in the vessel’s stern, which shielded the wounded men from sun and spray; and as he sat he could hear from within the tent the gentle voices of Victoria and her brother, as they tended the sick like ministering angels, or read to them words of divine hope and comfort-in which his homeless heart felt that he had no share. …
“As I live, I would change places now with any one of those poor mangled ruffians to have that voice speaking such words to me … and to believe them. …” And he went on perusing the manuscript which he held in his hand.
“Well!” he sighed to himself after a while, “at least it is the most complimentary, not to say hopeful, view of our destinies with which I have met since I threw away my curse’s belief that the seed of David was fated to conquer the whole earth, and set up a second Roman Empire at Jerusalem, only worse than the present one, in that the devils of superstition and bigotry would be added to those of tyranny and rapine.”
A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice asked, “And what may this so hopeful view be?”
“Ah! my dear General!” said Raphael, looking up. “I have a poor bill of fare whereon to exercise my culinary powers this morning. Had it not been for that shark who was so luckily deluded last night, I should have been reduced to the necessity of stewing my friend the fat decurion’s big boots.”
“They would have been savoury enough, I will warrant, after they had passed under your magical hand.”
“It is a comfort, certainly, to find that after all one did learn something useful in Alexandria! So I will even go forward at once, and employ my artistic skill.”
“Tell me first what it was about which I heard you just now soliloquising, as so hopeful a view of some matter or other?”
“Honestly—if you will neither betray me to your son and daughter, nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself—it was Paul of Tarsus’s notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!” And he held up a manuscript of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
“It is execrable Greek. But it is sound philosophy, I cannot deny. He knows Plato better than all the ladies and gentlemen in Alexandria put together, if my opinion on the point be worth having.”
“I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that point, sir. He may or may not know Plato; but I am right sure that he knows God.”
“Not too fast,” said Raphael with a smile. “You do not know, perhaps, that I have spent the last ten years of my life among men who professed the same knowledge?”
“Augustine, too, spent the best ten years of his life among such; and yet he is now combating the very errors which he once taught.”
“Having found, he fancies, something better!”
“Having found it, most truly. But you must talk to him yourself, and argue the matter over, with one who can argue. To me such questions are an unknown land.”
“Well. … Perhaps I may be tempted to do even that. At least a thoroughly converted philosopher—for poor dear Synesius is half heathen still, I often fancy, and hankers after the wisdom of the Egyptian—will be a curious sight; and to talk with so famous and so learned a man would always be a pleasure; but to argue with him, or any other human being, none whatsoever.”
“Why, then?”
“My dear sir, I am sick of syllogisms, and probabilities, and pros and contras. What do I care if, on weighing both sides, the nineteen pounds weight of questionable arguments against, are overbalanced by the twenty pounds weight of equally questionable arguments for? Do you not see that my belief of the victorious proposition will be proportioned to the one overbalancing pound only, while the whole other nineteen will go for nothing?”
“I really do not.”
“Happy are you, then. I do, from many a sad experience. No, my worthy sir. I want a faith past arguments; one which, whether I can prove it or not to the satisfaction of the lawyers, I believe to my own satisfaction, and act on it as undoubtingly and unreasoningly as I do upon my own newly-rediscovered personal identity. I don’t want to possess a faith. I want a faith which will possess me. And if I ever arrived at such a one, believe me, it would be by some such practical demonstration as this very tent has given me.”
“This tent?”
“Yes, sir, this tent; within which I have seen you and your children lead a life of deeds as new to me the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia the Gentile. I have watched you for many a day, and not in vain. When I saw you, an experienced officer, encumber your flight with wounded men, I was only surprised. But since I have seen you and your daughter, and, strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades of a son, starving yourselves to feed those poor ruffians—performing for them, day and night, the offices of menial slaves—comforting them, as no man ever comforted me—blaming no
