'What did I say to thee in the garden? Go, and see our son, and send me news of him.'

'Ah! shame on my worldly-mindedness! I had forgotten all this time to inquire for him. How is the youth, reverend sir?'

'Whom do you mean?'

'Philammon, our spiritual son, whom we sent down to you three months ago,' said Pambo. 'Risen to honour he is, by this time, I doubt not?'

'He? He is gone!'

'Gone?'

'Ay, the wretch, with the curse of Judas on him. He had not been with us three days before he beat me openly in the patriarch's court, cast off the Christian faith, and fled away to the heathen woman, Hypatia, of whom he is enamoured.'

The two old men looked at each other with blank and horror-stricken faces.

'Enamoured of Hypatia?' said a.r.s.enius at last.

'It is impossible!' sobbed Pambo. 'The boy must have been treated harshly, unjustly? Some one has wronged him, and he was accustomed only to kindness, and could not bear it. Cruel men that you are, and unfaithful stewards. The Lord will require the child's blood at your hands!'

'Ay,' said Peter, rising fiercely, that is the world's justice! Blame me, blame the patriarch, blame any and every one but the sinner. As if a hot head and a hotter heart were not enough to explain it all! As if a young fool had never before been bewitched by a fair face!'

'Oh, my friends, my friends,' cried a.r.s.enius, 'why revile each other without cause? I, I only am to blame. I advised you, Pambo!-I sent him-I ought to have known-what was I doing, old worldling that I am, to thrust the poor innocent forth into the temptations of Babylon? This comes of all my schemings and my plottings! And now his blood will be on my head-as if I bad not sins enough to bear already, I must go and add this over and above all, to sell my own Joseph, the son of my old age, to the Midianites! Here, I will go with you-now-at once-I will not rest till I find hint, clasp his knees till he pities my gray hairs! Let Heraclian and Orestes go their way for aught I care-I will find him, I say. O Absalom, my son! would to G.o.d I had died for thee, my son! my son!'

CHAPTER XII: THE BOWER OF ACRASIA

The house which Pelagia and the Amal had hired after their return to Alexandria, was one of the most splendid in the city. They had been now living there three months or more, and in that time Pelagia's taste had supplied the little which it needed to convert it into a paradise of lazy luxury. She herself was wealthy; and her Gothic guests, overburdened with Roman spoils, the very use of which they could not understand, freely allowed her and her nymphs to throw away for them the treasures which they had won in many a fearful fight. What matter? If they had enough to eat, and more than enough to drink, how could the useless surplus of their riches be better spent than in keeping their ladies in good humour?.... And when it was all gone....they would go somewhere or other-who cared whither?-and win more. The whole world was before them waiting to be plundered, and they would fulfil their mission, whensoever it suited them. In the meantime they were in no hurry. Egypt furnished in profusion every sort of food which could gratify palates far more nice than theirs. And as for wine-few of them went to bed sober from one week's end to another. Could the souls of warriors have more, even in the halls of Valhalla?

So thought the party who occupied the inner court of the house, one blazing afternoon in the same week in which Cyril's messenger had so rudely broken in on the repose of the Scetis. Their repose, at least, was still untouched. The great city roared without; Orestes plotted, and Cyril counterplotted, and the fate of a continent hung-or seemed to hang-trembling in the balance; but the turmoil of it no more troubled those lazy t.i.tans within, than did the roll and rattle of the carriage-wheels disturb the parakeets and sunbirds which peopled, under an awning of gilded wire, the inner court of Pelagia's house. Why should they fret themselves with it all? What was every fresh riot, execution, conspiracy, bankruptcy, but a sign-that the fruit was growing ripe for the plucking? Even Heraclian's rebellion, and Orestes' suspected conspiracy, were to the younger and coa.r.s.er Goths a sort of child's play, at which they could look on and laugh, and bet, from morning till night; while to the more cunning heads, such as Wulf and Smid, they were but signs of the general rottenness-new cracks in those great walls over which they intended, with a simple and boyish consciousness of power, to mount to victory when they chose.

And in the meantime, till the right opening offered, what was there better than to eat, drink, and sleep? And certainly they had chosen a charming retreat in which to fulfil that lofty mission. Columns of purple and green porphyry, among which gleamed the white limbs of delicate statues, surrounded a basin of water, fed by a perpetual jet, which sprinkled with cool spray the leaves of the oranges and mimosas, mingling its murmurs with the warblings of the tropic birds which nestled among the branches.

On one side of the fountain, under the shade of a broad-leaved palmetto, lay the Amal's mighty limbs, stretched out on cushions, his yellow hair crowned with vine-leaves, his hand grasping a golden cup, which had been won from Indian Rajahs by Parthian Chosroos, from Chosroos by Roman generals, from Roman generals by the heroes of sheepskin and horsehide; while Pelagia, by the side of the sleepy Hercules-Dionysos, lay leaning over the brink of the fountain, lazily dipping her fingers into the water, and basking, like the gnats which hovered over its surface, in the mere pleasure of existence.

On the opposite brink of the basin, tended each by a dark-eyed Hebe, who filled the wine-cups, and helped now and then to empty them, lay the especial friends and companions in arms of the Amal, G.o.deric the son of Ermenric, and Agilmund the son of Cniva, who both, like the Amal, boasted a descent from G.o.ds; and last, but not least, that most important and all but sacred personage, Smid the son of Troll, reverenced for cunning beyond the sons of men; for not only could he make and mend all matters, from a pontoon bridge to a gold bracelet, shoe horses and doctor them, charm all diseases out of man and beast, carve runes, interpret war-omens, foretell weather, raise the winds, and finally, conquer in the battle of mead-horns all except Wulf the son of Ovida; but he had actually, during a sojourn among the half-civilised Maesogoths, picked up a fair share of Latin and Greek, and a rough knowledge of reading and writing.

A few yards off lay old Wulf upon his back, his knees in the air, his hands crossed behind his head, keeping up, even in his sleep, a half-conscious comment of growls on the following intellectual conversation:-

'n.o.ble wine this, is it not?'

'Perfect. Who bought it for us?'

'Old Miriam bought it, at some great tax-farmer's sale. The fellow was bankrupt, and Miriam said she got it for the half what it was worth.'

'Serve the penny-turning rascal right. The old vixen-fox took care, I'll warrant her, to get her profit out of the bargain.'

'Never mind if she did. We can afford to pay like men, if we earn like men.'

'We shan't afford it long, at this rate,' growled Wulf.

'Then we'll go and earn more. I am tired of doing nothing.'

'People need not do nothing, unless they choose,' said G.o.deric. 'Wulf and I had coursing fit for a king, the other morning on the sand-hills. I had had no appet.i.te for a week before, and I have been as sharp-set as a Danube pike ever since.'

'Coursing? What, with those long-legged brush-tailed brutes, like a fox upon stilts, which the prefect cozened you into buying.'

'All I can say is, that we put up a herd of those-what do you call them here-deer with goats' horns?'

'Antelopes?'

'That's it-and the curs ran into them as a falcon does into a skein of ducks. Wulf and I galloped and galloped over those accursed sand-heaps till the horses stuck fast; and when they got their wind again, we found each pair of dogs with a deer down between them-and what can man want more, if he cannot get fighting? You eat them, so you need not sneer.'

'Well, dogs are the only things worth having, then, that this Alexandria does produce.'

'Except fair ladies!' put in one of the girls.

'Of course. I'll except the women. But the men-'

'The what? I have not seen a man since I came here, except a dock-worker or two-priests and fine gentlemen they are all-and you don't call them men, surely?'

'What on earth do they do, beside riding donkeys?'

'Philosophise, they say.'

'What's that?'

'I'm sure I don't know; some sort of slave's quill-driving, I suppose.'

'Pelagia! do you know what philosophising is?'

'No-and I don't care.'

'I do,' quoth Agilmund, with a look of superior wisdom; 'I saw a philosopher the other day.'

'And what sort of a thing was it?'

'I'll tell you. I was walking down the great street there, going to the harbour; and I saw a crowd of boys-men they call them here-going into a large doorway. So I asked one of them what was doing, and the fellow, instead of answering me, pointed at my legs, and set all the other monkeys laughing. So I boxed his ears, and he tumbled down.'

'They all do so here, if you box their ears,' said the Amal meditatively, as if he had bit upon a great inductive law.

'Ah,' said Pelagia, looking up with her most winning smile, 'they are not such giants as you, who make a poor little woman feel like a gazelle in a lion's paw!'

'Well-it struck me that, as I spoke in Gothic, the boy might not have understood me, being a Greek. So I walked in at the door, to save questions, and see for myself. And there a fellow held out his hand-I suppose for money, So I gave him two or three gold pieces, and a box on the ear, at which he tumbled down, of course, but seemed very well satisfied. So I walked in.'

'And what did you see?'