Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, held audience in his atrium. He received a commission of three from the Jews of Alexandria. One was Alexander Lysimachus, who came with a civil petition; the other two were despatched from the congregation with a hieratic memorial.
The three were stately and deliberate in manner, handsome even for their years, and as courtly as Jews can be when they bring up their native grace to the highest standard of culture. They were bearded, gowned in linen, covered with tarbooshes, and as they walked their indoor sandals made no sound upon the polished pavement of the atrium.
One wore on his left arm a phylactery, the last clinging to the old formality which had separated his fathers' class in Judea from the others, as a Pharisee. The second was an Alexandrian Sadducee. The third had over his shoulders the cloak of a magistrate.
Flaccus did not rise from his curule as they approached, but he returned their greetings with better grace than they had formerly expected of a Roman governor.
"Be greeted," he said bluntly. "And sit; ye are elderly men!"
Lysimachus took the nearest chair and the others retired a little way to an indoor exedra.
Flaccus thrust away parchments and writings to let his elbow rest on his table, ordered the bearers of the fasces to withdraw to a less conspicuous position, and looked at Lysimachus.
"Thou lookest grave, Alexander," he said. "Art thou commissioned with a perplexity?"
The alabarch, being a magistrate and therefore recognized by Rome before the synagogue, answered readily.
"Not so much perplexed, good sir, as troubled. I come with a petition, not in writing, but nevertheless most urgent."
"Let me hear it," Flaccus said.
"Nay, then; thou knowest that a certain celebration of the Gentiles in this city is approaching. It is a feast of much magnitude and of much lawlessness. Thou knowest the temper of the city toward my people, and after three days of drunkenness, Alexandria will love the Jew no more, but much less. Thou rememberest, as I and my people remember with mourning, that last year, the excited multitude, that followed Flora's trail of yellow roses through the Regio Judæorum, fell upon the Jews by the way and slaughtered and sacked as if it had been warfare instead of festivity. It was a new diversion for the multitude, and one like to be repeated. But we, who are led to believe by thy recent good will that thou dost not cherish Rome's ancient prejudice against our race, come unto thee and hopefully beseech thee to forbid the Flora to lead her rioters upon our peaceful community."
"I have already warned the prætor," Flaccus responded, "that Flora is not to run through the Regio Judæorum this year."
"The prætor dare not disobey thee," Lysimachus said, with a tone of finality in his voice.
Flaccus smiled grimly.
"Nor Flora," he added.
"Thou hast our people's gratitude and allegiance; mine own thankfulness and blessings," Lysimachus responded heartily.
Flaccus waved his hand, and glanced at the other two, sitting aside.
"And ye?" he said. "Are ye but a portion of the alabarch's commission?"
"Nay, good sir," the Sadducee answered, "we come upon a mission for the congregation."
Lysimachus arose, but the Sadducee turned to him with a bow.
"Pray thee, sir, it concerns thee as well. Wilt thou abide longer and hear us?"
The alabarch inclined his head and sat down. Flaccus signified that he was ready to hear them.
"Thou didst ask our brother, the alabarch, if he were commissioned with a perplexity," the Sadducee continued. "Not he, but we come perplexed. Were we Jews in Judea, the method would be laid down to us by Law. But in Alexandria we have grown away from the method, while yet we have the same object to achieve."
"We lose in guidance what we gain in freedom," the Pharisee added.
"In Judea," the Sadducee continued, "they are still bound by the usages of the Mosaic Law. An offender against the Law is stoned. We do not stone in Alexandria; yet we have the offender, and suffer the offense. What, then, shall we do to cleanse our skirt and yet offer no violence to our advanced thinking?"
"Give me thy meaning," the proconsul said impatiently.
"Perchance it hath come to thee that there is a sect known as the Nazarenes, followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which are spreading like a pestilence on the wind over the world. So full of them is Judea, even David's City, that the Sanhedrim, in alliance with the Roman legate, is proceeding against them with extreme punishment."
"I have heard," Flaccus assented.
"But the numbers have grown so great and so far-reaching that the Sanhedrim hath achieved little more than to drive them abroad into the world."
"So the legate informs me," Flaccus added.
"Perchance then thou knowest that Alexandria hath its share."
"I do."
"Even the Regio Judæorum."
"Strange," Lysimachus broke in. "Strange, if they be such law-breakers, as they are reputed to be, that they have not been brought before me for rebellion and violence, ere this!"
The Pharisee put his plump white hands together.
"Thou touchest upon the perplexity, brother," he said, addressing himself to Lysimachus. "We are warned by the scribe of Saul of Tarsus, who leadeth the war against the heretics, that they are invidious workers of sedition; whisperers of false doctrines and pretenders of love and humility. They do not persuade the rich man nor the powerful man nor the learned man. They labor among the poor and the despised and the ignorant. Saul, himself, though first to be awakened to the peril of the heresy, did not dream how immense an evil he had attacked until he found the half of Jerusalem fleeing from him. Wherefore, brother, we may be built upon the sliding sands of an evil doctrine; the whole Regio Judæorum may be going astray after this apostasy ere the powers know it."
Lysimachus stroked his white beard and looked incredulous.
"The Jews of Alexandria will not tolerate a persecution," he said emphatically.
"So thou dost grasp the perplexity wholly," the Sadducee said. "What shall we do?" he turned to the proconsul.
"I am to advise, then?" Flaccus asked indifferently.
"Thou wilt not suffer them to lead our men-servants and our maid-servants and our artisans into heresy?" the Pharisee asked.
"We do not persecute in Alexandria, thou saidst," Flaccus observed.
"No," declared Lysimachus. "If all the Regio Judæorum were as we three, the apostates might come and go, strive their best and die of their own misdeeds, unincreased in number or in goods. But the clamoring voice of the mass—nay, even Cæsar hath harkened to it! Those that have not followed the Nazarenes demand that they be cut off from us. But we can not kill, and not even death daunts a Nazarene. Commend thyself, Flaccus, that thou didst call my brothers' mission a perplexity."
"So you have come formally to me with your people's plaint and expect me to solve a question that you yourselves can not solve," Flaccus said. "Poena! But you are a helpless lot! I shall pen the heretics in Rhacotis forthwith, and command them neither to visit nor to be visited! Is it enough?"
The three Jews arose.
"It is wisdom," said the Sadducee.
"It will serve," the Pharisee observed.
"I shall ferret them out," Lysimachus said.
"Thanks," the three observed at once. "Peace to all this house."
Flaccus waved his hand and the three passed out.
The summer waxed over Egypt. The Delta, back from the yellow plain which fronted the sea, was in full flower of the wheat. The happy fellahs lay under the shade of dom-palms and drowsed the morning in and the sunset out, for there was nothing to do since Rannu of the Harvests had laid her beneficent hand upon the fields. Across the Mediterranean, nearer the snows, the wheat flowered later and the Feast of Flora held in celebration of the blossoming fields would arrive with the new moon. Egypt could have given her celebration in honor of Flora weeks earlier, but she preferred to wait for Rome.
These were not uneventful days in the alabarch's house, for Cypros, with Drumah at her feet, fashioned with her own hands Agrippa's wardrobe and prepared for his departure, while the prince idled about the alabarch's garden, apparently oblivious to the call of his need to go to Rome, in his enjoyment of Junia's fellowship. And Marsyas, daily more grave, gazed at him askance and furthered the plans for the trip, tirelessly.
His patience might have continued unworn, but for a single incident.
Late one night, when oppressed by the crowding of his unhappy thoughts, he arose from his bed to walk the streets in search of composure, and, descending into the darkness of the alabarch's house, he heard the doors swing in softly. Expecting robbers, or at least a servant returning by stealth from a night's revel, he stepped down into the gloom and waited till the intruder should pass.
Softly the unknown approached and laid hand on the stair-rail to ascend. At the second step the figure was between him and the window lighting the stairs. Against the lesser darkness and the stars without, he saw Lydia's outlines etched. Noiselessly, she passed up and out of hearing.
In his soul, he knew that she had been to the Nazarenes!
"To-morrow," he said grimly to himself, "I prepare the prince's ship! There passes a stiff-necked sacrifice to Saul of Tarsus, unless I can bring him low!"
The next morning, Justin Classicus received a letter, by a merchant ship from Syria. He retired into his chamber and read it:
"O Brother," it said, "that dwelleth among the heathen, this from thy friend who envieth thy banishment:
"I delayed opening thy letter three days, believing it to come from him who lined my threadbare purse while in Alexandria, asking usury, long since due, but at the end of that time, I received his letter of a surety. So I made haste to open thy slandered missive, and greater haste to answer it by way of propitiation.
"I read much of thy letter with astonishment, some of it with rancor, some with congratulation. By Abraham's beard, it is almost as good to be fortunate as it is to be single; wherefore in answer to thine only question, I say that I am neither. Thus, am I led up to comment on the facts thou offerest me.
"I remember the little Lysimachus, a bit of Ephesian ivory-work, that I augured would go unmarried, seeing that she was so hindered with brains. But naught so good as a dowry to offset the embarrassment of sense in a woman. Prosper, my Classicus! For if thou art the same elegant paganized son of Abraham thou wast in thine old days, thy debts are as many as thy usurers are scarce. Half a million drachmæ; demand no less a dowry than that, my Classicus!
"But here, below, thou writest that which hath cut my limbs from under me and set me heavily and helpless on the carpet! A manumitted slave, a cumbrous yokel of an Essene, hath given thee troublous nights, because the lady's eyes soften in his presence! Thou scented son of Daphne; Athene's darling; Venus' latest joy! To let a Phidian colossus, with a face high-colored like a comic mask, outstrip thee!
"Thou camest upon them once, the lady's hand in his! Again, she stammered under his look! And yet a third time, he wrapped a cloak about her, and lingered getting his arm away! And all these things thou didst suffer and didst take no more revenge than to write thy plaint to me, eight hundred miles away!
"By the philippics of Jeremiah, thou deservest a wife with a figure like a durra loaf, and dowered with nine sisters for thy support!
"Thou opinest in a lady-like way, that he is a Nazarene! Thou addest, with a flurry of spleen, that the proconsul of Egypt hateth him! Thou offerest a womanish suspicion that he fled from difficulty here in Judea! Now, any blind dolt could see substance in this for the overthrow of a rival. Lackest thou courage, Classicus, or hast thou money enough to last thee till thou findest another lady?
"Is it not a sufficient cause against him that he is a Nazarene? Or perchance thou dost not know of them, which astonishes me more, since Pharaoh in the plagues was not more cumbered with flies than the earth is of Nazarenes. But read herein hope, then, against thy suspected rival.
"These heretics are persistent offenders against law and order, rebellious and otherwise unruly. One Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, proceedeth against them, for the Sanhedrim. Whether he is an instrument of a political party or an immoderate zealot, is not for me to say; perchance he is both. At any rate he rages against the iniquity of the apostasy as a continuing whirlwind. He is not applying his methods locally, only. He reaches into neighboring provinces, and it is his oath to pursue the heresy unto the end of the world and bring back the last to judgment. Vitellius is assisting him in Judea, Herod Antipas in Galilee and Aretas in Syria. I expect hourly to hear that Cæsar hath lent him a strong arm, because the rebels are particularly rabid against Rome.
"Of course, the members of the congregation are divided, but thou knowest that even a small number of zealous defenders of the faith can set a whole Synagogue by the ears. Even so tepid a Jew as I should not care to rub shoulders with a Nazarene.
"Do I give thee life, O languid lover?
"Of thyself, I would hear more and oftener. Await not the rising of a new rival to write to me. Fear not; I shall not ask to borrow money of thee—until thou hast wedded the Lysimachus.
"All thy friends in Jerusalem greet thee. Be happy and be fortunate. Thy friend,
"PHILIP OF JERUSALEM."
At this point Classicus composedly doubled the parchment, broke it lengthwise and cross-wise and clapped his hands for a slave. A Hebrew bondman appeared.
"This for the ovens," said Classicus, handing it to him.
When the servant disappeared, the philosopher descended into his house and was dressed for a visit. An hour before the noon rest, he appeared in the garden of the alabarch.
There he found Lydia and Junia, Agrippa, Cypros, the alabarch and Flaccus, idly discussing the day's opening of the Feast of Flora. He had given and received greetings and merged his interests in the subject, when Marsyas appeared in the colonnade. He had taken off the kerchief usually worn about the head, and carried it on his arm. As he passed the spare old alabarch, the heavy purple proconsul and the exquisite Herod, not one of the guests there gathered but made successive comparisons between him and the others. Junia gazed at him steadily, under half-closed lids, but Lydia followed him with a look, half-sorrowful, half-happy, and wholly involuntary.
Cypros glanced at his flushed forehead and damp hair.
"Hast thou been into the city?" she asked with sweet solicitude.
"To the harbor-master," he answered, "I have been making ready thy lord's ship."
Agrippa overheard the low answer, and turned upon him irritably.
"I have said that I do not depart until after the Feast of Flora," he remarked.
"The men of the sea do not expect fair winds before three days," Marsyas replied, "wherefore we must abide until after the Feast."
"But my raiment is not prepared," Agrippa protested.
"Thou goest hence, my lord, to Rome, to be dressed by the masters of the science of raiment," Marsyas assured him.
Classicus raised his head and addressed to the Essene the first remark since the memorable night of Marsyas' arrival in Alexandria.
"What a game it is," he opined amiably, "to see thee managing this slippery Herod!"
Agrippa flushed angrily, but Marsyas did not await the retort.
"My brother's pardon," he said, "but the Herod has fine discrimination between cares becoming his exalted place, and the labors of a steward."
Agrippa's face relaxed, but Classicus broke off the swinging end of a vine that reached over his shoulder and slowly pulled it to pieces.
Junia sitting next to Marsyas turned to him.
"So thou wilt follow Flora?" she asked.
"No."
"Why?" she insisted, smiling. "Thou must go to Rome, where Flora runs every day. Wilt thou turn thy back upon Egypt's joy and see only Italy's?"
"Is Rome so much worse than Alexandria?"
"Not worse; only more pronounced. There is more of Rome; the world gets its impulse there. So much is done; so many are doing. And, by the caprice of the Destinies, thou art to see Rome more than commonly employed."
"How?" he asked. By this time, the others were talking and the two spoke unheard together.
"Hist! I tell it under my breath, because the noble proconsul is burdened with the great responsibility of declaring the emperor's deathlessness, and I would not contradict him aloud. But Tiberius is old, old—and Rome casts about for his successor. But chance hath it that interest hath uncoupled the two eyes so that the singleness of sight is divided. 'Look right,' saith one; 'look left,' saith the other, and each looking his own way reviles his fellow and creates disturbance in the head. But it behooves thee, gentle Jew, to bid thine eyes contemplate Tiberius, to do oriental obeisance and say as the Persians say; 'O King, live for ever!"
"But yesterday, thou didst cast a kindly light over the world's hardness. Tear it not away thus soon and frighten me with the fierce power against which I must shortly go and demand tribute," he protested lightly.
She took down her arms, clasped back of her head, to look at him.
"Light-hearted eremite!" she chid. "Never a Jew but believed that all the happenings in the world happen in Jerusalem—that there is nothing else to come to pass after Jerusalem's full catalogue of possibilities is exhausted. But I tell thee that, compared to Rome, Jerusalem is an unwatered spot in the desert where once in a century a loping jackal passes by to break its eventlessness."
"Lady," he said with his old gravity, "Judea is a Roman province. Is Rome harsher to her citizens than she is with her subjugated peoples?"
"Thou art nearer the executive seat; under the eye of Power itself. Icarus, on his waxen wings, was unsafe enough in the daylight; but he was undone by soaring too close to the sun!"
"What shall I do, then?" he asked.
"Attach thyself to a power; get behind the buckler of another's strength!"
"Power is not offering its protection for nothing; what have I to give in exchange for it?"
Almost inadvertently, she let her eyes run over him, and seemed impelled to say the words that leaped to her lips. But she recovered herself in time.
"It is a generous world," she said, "and such as thou shall not go friendless; depend upon it!"
When Marsyas glanced up, his eyes rested on Lydia's, and for a moment he was held in silence by the faint darkening of distress that he saw there. Something wild and sweet and painful struggled in his breast and fell quiet so quickly that he sat with his lips parted and his gaze fixed until the alabarch's daughter dropped her eyes.
"I heard thee speak of Rome," she said. "After thy labor is done, wilt thou remain there?"
"No," he answered slowly, "I return to En-Gadi."
"En-Gadi," Junia repeated. "Where is that and why shouldst thou go there?"
"It is the city of the Essenes, a city of retreat. It is in the Judean desert on the margin of the Dead Sea."
"After Rome, that!" Junia cried.
But Lydia said nothing and Marsyas, gazing at her in hope of discovering some little deprecation, some little invitation to remain in the world, forgot that the Roman woman had spoken.
Classicus, who had been a quiet observer of the few words spoken between the Essene and the alabarch's daughter, drew himself up from his lounging attitude.
"To En-Gadi?" he repeated, attracting the attention of the others, who had not failed to note his sudden interest in Marsyas. "Why?"
"I am an Essene fallen into misfortune; but once an Essene, an Essene always," Marsyas answered.
"An Essene?" the philosopher observed. Then after a little silence he began again.
"In Alexandria, we live less rigorously than in Judea, even too little so, we discover at times. Wherefore it is needful that we watch that no further lapse is made, which will carry us into lawlessness."
"Ye are lax, yet wary that ye be not more lax?" Marsyas commented perfunctorily.
"Even so. From Agrippa's lips, we learn that thou hast led a precarious life of late; an eventful, even adventurous life: that thou hast been accused and hast escaped arrest. Thou wilt pardon my familiarity with thine own affairs."
"Go on," said Marsyas.
"In Alexandria—even in Alexandria, of late, the Jews have resolved not to entertain heretics—"
"In Alexandria, the extreme ye will risk in hospitality is one simply accused."
"I commend thy discernment. But we separate ourselves from the convicted."
"So it is done in Judea. But continue."
Classicus waited for an expectant silence.
"Thou carryest about thee," he said, "an emblem which none but a Nazarene owns."
Marsyas contemplated Classicus very calmly. He had been accused of apostasy before, but by one whose every impulse had root in irrational fanaticism. He had not expected this Romanized Jew to become zealous for the faith; instead, he knew that Classicus would have pursued none other for suspicion, but himself. Why?
He glanced at Lydia. Alarm and protest were written on every feature. Classicus saw that she was prepared to defend Marsyas and his face hardened. Then the Essene understood!
A flush of warm color swept over his face.
Without a word he put his hand into his robes and drew forth and laid upon his palm the little cedar crucifix.
Cypros uttered a little sound of fright; Agrippa whirled upon Marsyas with frank amazement on his face. After a moment's intent contemplation of the Essene's face, Junia settled back into her easy attitude and smiled.
Lydia sprang up; yet before the rush of precipitate speech reached her lips, there came, imperative and distinct, Marsyas' telepathic demand on her attention. Tender but commanding, his dark eyes rested upon her.
"Thou shall not betray thyself for me!" they said. "Thou shalt not bring sorrow to thy father's heart and disaster upon thy head! Thou shalt keep silence, and permit me to defend thee! I command thee; thou canst do naught else but obey!"
She wavered, her cheeks suffused, and her eyes fell. When she lifted them again, they were flashing with tears. A moment, and she slipped past her guests into the house.
The alabarch broke the startled silence; he had turned almost wrathfully upon Classicus.
"It seems," he exclaimed, "that thou hast needlessly broadened thine interests into matters which once did not concern thee!"
"Good my father," Classicus responded, "thou hast lost two sons already to idolatry and false doctrines. And thy lovely daughter, thou seest, is no more secure from the seductions of an attractive apostasy than were they!"
"Well?" Marsyas asked quietly.
"It is not needful to point the man of discernment to his duty," Classicus returned.
"Methinks," said Marsyas, rising, "that the sharp point of a pretext urges me out of Alexandria, as it did in Judea. Thou hast had no scruples," he continued, turning to Agrippa, "thus far in accepting the companionship of an accused man, so I do not expect to be cast off now."
"But," Agrippa protested, stammering in his surprise and perplexity, "acquit thyself, Marsyas. Thou art no Nazarene!"
"No charge so light to lift as this, my lord," Marsyas answered. "Yet even for thy favor I will not do it!"
Agrippa looked doubtful, and the alabarch exclaimed with deep regret:
"What difficulty thou settest in the way of my debt to thee! Thou, to whom I owe my daughter's life!"
"Yet have a little faith in me," Marsyas said to him. "And for more than I am given lief to recount, I am thy debtor!"
He put the crucifix into the folds of his garments.
"I am prepared to go to Rome, even now," he added to Agrippa.
"But—I would stay until after the Feast of Flora," the prince objected stubbornly.
Cypros was breaking in, affrightedly, when Flaccus interrupted.
"Come! come!" he said, with a bluff assumption of good nature. "Thou art not banished from the city, young man! I am legate over Alexandria, and a conscienceless pagan, wherefore thou hast not offended my gods nor done aught to deserve my disfavor. Get thee down to Rhacotis among thy friends—or thine enemies—till the Herod hath diverted himself with Flora, and go thy way to Rome! What a tragedy thou makest of nothing tragic!"
"O son of Mars," Marsyas said to himself, "I do not build on finding asylum there. Never a pitfall but is baited with invitation!"
But Cypros turned to the proconsul, her face glowing with thankfulness under her tears.
"Is it pleasing to thee, lady?" the proconsul asked jovially.
"Twice, thrice thou hast been my friend!" she cried.
"I shall go," said Marsyas. "Remember, my lord prince, these many things which I and others suffer add to the certainty that thou shalt be called to pay my debt against Saul of Tarsus, one day! Three days hence, thou and I shall sail for Rome!"
He saluted the company and passed out of the garden.
"Perchance," said Flaccus dryly, with his peculiar aptitude for insinuation, "an officer should conduct him to this nest of apostates."
"He will go, never fear!" Cypros declared, brushing away tears.
"By Ate! the boy is spectacular," Agrippa vowed suddenly. "He is no Nazarene! I know how he came by that unholy amulet. It is a relic of that young heretic friend of his, whom they stoned in Jerusalem!"
But Junia found immense amusement in that surmise. Presently, she laughed outright.
"O Classicus, what a blunderer thou art! Right or wrong, thou hast brought down the ladies' wrath, not upon the comely Essene, but upon thine own head for abusing him!"
Marsyas passed up to his room to put his belongings together. The sound of his movements within reached Lydia in her refuge, and, when he came forth, she stood in the gloom of the hall without, awaiting him.
Moved with a little fear of her reproach, he went to her, with extended hands.
"What have I done?" she whispered.
"Thou hast done nothing," he said quickly. "I blame myself for keeping the amulet about me, when I should have destroyed it. But I could not—I have not yet; because—it is thine!"
"But I kept silence—I who owned the crucifix—"
"I made thee keep silence!"
"But what have they said to thee; what wilt thou do?" she insisted.
"I go without more obloquy than I brought hither with me; I was accused, before; I could stand further accusation, for thy sake! They have said nothing; done nothing—I go to Rhacotis, to await the departure of Agrippa, who goes to Rome at the end of three days—nay; peace!" he broke off, as a momentous resolution gathered in her pale face. "Thou wilt keep silence, else I do this thing in vain!"
"I will not slander myself!" she cried. "I am not afraid to confess my fault—"
"But thou shall not do it!" he declared. "The punishment for it would not be alone for thyself! Choose between the quiet of thy conscience and the peace and pride of thy father! Bethink thee, the inestimable harm thou canst do by this thing! Be not deceived that the story of thy lapse would be kept under thy father's roof. That ignoble pagan governor below has no care for thy sweet fame! He would tell it; thy maidens would hear of it and fear thee or follow thee! Thy father's government over his people would be weakened; the elders of the Synagogue would question him—Lydia, suffer the little hurt of conscience for thine own account, rather than afflict many for thy pride's sake!"
Her small hands, white in the darkness of the corridor, were twisted about each other in distress. Marsyas' pity was stirred to the deepest.
"How unhappy thou hast been!" he said, touching upon her apostasy. "Give over thy wavering and be the true daughter of God, once more! Let us destroy this evil amulet!"
He plucked the crucifix from his tunic and caught it between his hands to break it, when she sprang toward him and seized his wrists.
"Do not so!" she besought, her eyes large with fright.
He had forced her to defend it, and she had stood to the breach; he had proved the gravity of her disaffection for the faith of Abraham.
"Why wilt thou endanger thyself for this social drift?" he demanded passionately. "Lydia! How canst thou turn from the faith of thy fathers?"
"I—I am not worthy to be a Nazarene!" she answered. "They are forbidden to enact a falsehood!"
"Let be; I do not care for their philosophy; it is like the Law of Rome.—an empty armor that any knave can wear. But I urge thee to behold what misery thou invitest upon thyself! What will come of it? Immortal as thou art in soul, thou canst not keep alive the single spark of wisdom in the ashes of their folly; thou canst not save them against the combined vengeance of the whole world! But thou canst be disgraced with them, persecuted with them, and die with them! Unhallowed the day that ever Classicus spoke their name to thee! Cursed be his words! May the Lord treasure them up against him—!"
"Hush! hush!" she whispered.
He became calm with an effort.
"Lydia," he began after a pause, "it is a poor intelligence that can not foresee as ably as the augurs. One successful life gives opportunity, to all that spring from it, to be successful; a failure scatters the seed of misfortune through all its blood. Choose thou for thyself and thou choosest for a nation which comes after thee. I see thee radiant, crowned, worshiped; and if they who come up under thy guidance walk as thou dost walk, Lydia shall give queens unto principalities and rulers unto satrapies. These be days when women of virtue and women of remark; women of wisdom are remembered women. And thou, virtuous, wise and noble—the empresses of coming Cæsars will assume thy name to conceal their tarnishment under a badge of luster! This on one hand. On the other thou shalt flee from the stones of the rabble, come unto the humiliation of thy womanhood and the agony of thy body in the torture-cell, and die like a criminal!"
She shrank away with a quivering sound and flung her hands over her ears. He caught her and drew her close, until she all but rested on his breast.
"Lydia, naught but mine extremity could make me speak thus to thee," he said tremulously and in a passion of appeal. "If the words be hideous, let the actualities that they mean warn thee in time!"
"But—thou dost not understand," she faltered, drawing away from him.
"I do understand; through anguish and rancor and suffering, I have learned. Must I give all to the vengeance of God, who visiteth apostates for their iniquity? Lydia, depart not from the righteous religion, I implore thee. Behold its great age," he went on, speaking rapidly and with quickened breath, "behold its history, its monuments, its achievements, its great exponents, its infallibility! The rest of the world was an unimagined futurity when an able son of thy race was minister to Pharaoh and lord over the whole land of Egypt. The godly kings of thy people were poets and musicians when Pindar's and Homer's ancestors were still Peloponnesian fauns with horns in their hair. Before Isis and Osiris, before Bel and Astarte, thy God was molding universes and hanging stars in the sky. And lo! the sons of the Pharaohs are wasted weaklings, fit only for slaves; the Chaldees are dust in the dust of their cities; Babylonia is hunting-ground for jackals and the perch of bats; Rome—even Rome's greatness hath returned into the sinews of her hills, but there is no decadence in Israel, no weakness in her God! Aid not in the perversion of her ancient faith—thou who art the incarnation of her queens—"
He halted, but only for an instant, in which he seemed to throw off recurring restraint and drove on:
"David did not seek for one more lovely, nor Solomon for one more wise! Truth, even Truth demands dear tribute when it takes a life. For a mere scintillation of verity, wilt thou die?"
"I—I fear not," she answered painfully. "I—who could be affrighted out of telling a truth!"
Not his prayer, but the Nazarene's teaching had weight with her, at that moment!
"All thy hazard of life and fame for their vague philosophy," he cried, "and not one stir of pity for me!"
There was a moment of complete silence; then she lifted her face.
"Thou knowest better," she said, "thou, who labored in vain with Stephen, who loved thee!"
His heart contracted; for a moment he entertained as practicable a resolve to stay stubbornly under the alabarch's roof until he had broken the determination of this sweet erring girl to destroy herself. He drew in his breath to speak, but the futileness of his words occurred to him. Again, he had a thought of telling the alabarch privately of his daughter's peril, but instantly doubted that the good old Jew could move her. While he debated desperately with himself, she drew, nearer to him.
"Be not angry with me! If thou leavest Alexandria in three days, it may be that I—shall not see thee again—"
"So I am dismissed to know no rest until I have brought Saul of Tarsus low, for thy sake, as well as for Stephen's!"
He knew at the next breath that he had hurt her, and repented.
"I shall see thee once more," he said hurriedly, feeling that he dared not make retraction. He took up the pilgrim's wallet containing his belongings, and put out his hand to her. She took it, so wistfully, so sorrowfully, that a wave of compunction swept over him. Bending low, he pressed his lips to her palm, and hastened, full of agitation, out of the alabarch's house.
The preparations for the Feast of Flora had been brought to completeness. The funds for the lavish display had come out of the taxes upon provinces, the flamens managed it, the patricians and the rich patronized it and all Alexandria, whether rich or poor, free or enslaved, plunged into its celebration with recklessness and relish.
The dwellers of the Regio Judæorum took no part in the celebration, but Marsyas saw that a spirit of interest invaded the district, even to the doors of the great Synagogue. Mothers in Israel put aside the wimples over their faces when they met in the narrow passages or the market-places to talk of the recurring abomination in lowered voices and with sidelong glances to see if the velvet-eyed children, who clung to their garments, heard. Fathers in Israel, rabbis and constabularies were abroad to make preparation against the local characteristic which tended to turn every popular gathering into a demonstration against the Jews. The bloody uproar of the preceding year was fresh in the fear of the people, and though Lysimachus had spread abroad the promise of the proconsul, the Regio Judæorum had cause to be doubtful of the favor of a former persecutor.
But as the young man entered the Gentile portion of the city, he saw that, from the Lochias to the Gate of the Necropolis, Alexandria was no longer a city of normal life and labor but a play-ground for revel and lawlessness. The two main avenues which crossed the city toward the four cardinal points were cleared of traffic and the marks of wheel and hoof were stamped out by crowds that filled the roadways. The crowding glories of Alexandrian architecture which lined these noble highways—temples, palaces, theaters, baths, gymnasia, stadia and fora, high marks of both Greek and Roman society—were wreathed, pillar and plinth, with laurel and roses, lilies and myrtle, nelumbo and lotus.
Fountains gave up perfumed water; aromatic gums in bowls set upon staves fumed and burned and were filling the dead airs of the Alexandrian calm with oriental musks; everywhere were the reedy shrilling of pipe, the tinkle of castanet, the mellow notes of flutes and the muttering of drums. Wine was flowing like water; immense public feasts were in progress, at which droves of sheep and oxen were served to gathered multitudes, which were never full-fed except at Flora's bounty. Processions were streaming along the streets, meeting at intersections to romp, break up in revel and end in excess. Tens of thousands with one impulse, one law, frolicked, fought, drank, danced, sang, piped, wooed, forgot everything, grudges and all, except Flora and her license and bounty. The citizens were no longer the descendants of Quirites, remnant of the Pharaohs or the Macedonian kings, but satyrs, fauns, bacchantes, nymphs, mimes and harlequins.
Marsyas kept away from the crowds and went by deserted paths toward Rhacotis.
He knew without inquiry where to find the Nazarene quarter. It was marked by the strange, strained silence that hovers over houses where life is not secure, by poverty, by orderliness, by the patient faces of the humble dwellers, by the brotherly greeting that the few citizens gave him as he approached. He saw many of the garrison loitering about, but they permitted him to pass without notice.
The roar of the merrymaking without swept into the quiet passages like a titanic purr of satisfaction. The young man had grown away from his toleration of solitude. His Essenic training had suffered change; its usages, at variance with his nature, had become difficult as soon as the opportunity for more congenial habits had presented itself. Only a few weeks before, he could voyage the giant breadth of the Mediterranean, excluding himself from the contaminating Nazarenes, without effort. Now, he asked himself how he was to live among these people for three days.
He found the quarter absolutely packed with people, and realized then how many followers of Jesus of Nazareth there were in Alexandria, and how thoroughly Flaccus had weeded them out of the rest of the city.
He looked about him, grew impatient, and, with the ready invention of a man who has lived only by devices for the past many months, made up his mind to house himself elsewhere than in the crowded Nazarene quarter.
"I will go to the ship," he said to himself. "It is victualed and ready for the prince's arrival to weigh anchor. No one but my seamen need know that I am there, and they will be too intent on Flora to speak of me abroad in the city!"
He turned promptly and made his way down the quarter toward the harbor. Within sound of the waters lapping on the wharf piling, a soldier of the city garrison stepped into his way.
"Back!" he said harshly.
Marsyas stopped.
"Why may I not pass?" he demanded.
"None passes from this rebel's nest hereafter!"
There followed time for diverse and earnest meditation for Marsyas: He criticized himself sarcastically, for permitting himself to be so easily entrapped, and cast about him for means of escape. He found by successive trials that the siege was perfect. Half of Alexandria's garrison had been posted about the district. The more he considered his predicament, the more an atmosphere of impending danger weighted the air of the Nazarene community.
He did not seek the hospitality of the Nazarenes, because he had not come to the point of admitting that he was to remain among them. At nightfall, while the roar of the reveling city without swept over the community, he hoped to find some unguarded spot in the Roman lines, but his hope was vain. With his attention thus forced upon the people penned in with him, he began to wonder if there might not yet be some profit in counsel with his fellows, hemmed in for some purpose by Flaccus.
He found the inhabitants gathered in a broad space in one of the streets, where at one time a statue or a fountain might have stood, but after a few minutes' listening, he heard only prayers and words of submission to the unknown peril threatening them. Angry and disappointed he flung himself away from the gathering, to spend the night in the streets.
But after the first gust of his anger, it was brought home to him very strongly, that these people were gifted with a new courage, the courage of submission—to him the most mysterious and impossible of powers. Led from this idle conclusion into yet deeper contemplation of the Nazarene character, he found himself admitting astonishing evidences in their favor. He had known not a few of them. Stephen had been beatified, the most exalted, yet the sweetest character that he had ever known. Lydia, wavering and hesitating between Judaism and the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, struggled with fine points of conscience, and persisted, in the face of terror,—the most potent controlling agent, Marsyas had believed, over the spirit of womanhood. The Nazarene body at Ptolemais had displayed before him a humanness in subjection, that, in spite of his own resolute disposition, seemed triumphant, after all. They had preached peace, and had maintained it in the face of the most trying circumstances. On ship-board, he had been shown that they were long-suffering. About him now, while Alexandria rioted and reveled in excess, their order and decorum were highly attractive. These were excellences that he did not willingly see; circumstances and environment had forced their recognition upon him.
At a late hour, he was sought and found by their pastor, the tall old teacher, whom he had come to consider as a man whom, for his own spiritual welfare, he should shun.
"Young brother," the pastor said, "thou art without shelter here, and imprisoned among us. I respect thy wish to be left to thyself, yet we can not see thee unhoused. I have a cell in yonder ruined wall; it is solitary and secluded. Do thou take it, and I shall find shelter among my people."
Marsyas felt his cheeks grow hot, under the cover of the night.
"I thank thee," he responded, "but I am here only for a little time. I am young and hardy; I will not turn thee out of thy shelter."
"If thy time with us is stated, thou art fortunate. Alexandria hath not set her limit upon our imprisonment. Yet, I shall find a niche in the house of one of my people; be not ashamed to take my place."
Without waiting for the young man to protest, the Nazarene signed him to follow, and led on through the dark to the place indicated—the remnant of an ancient house—a single standing wall of earth, sufficiently thick to be excavated to form a shallow cave. There was room enough for a pallet of straw within, and a reed matting hung before the opening. The pastor bade the young man enter, blessed him and disappeared.
Marsyas sat down in the cramped burrow, and, resting his head on his hands and his elbows on his knees, said to himself, in discomfiture:
"Beshrew the enemy that permits you to find no fault in him!"
It was not the last time in the memorable three days of imprisonment that he frowned and deprecated the excellence of his hosts.
He accepted their simple hospitality in moody helplessness, and spent his time either hovering on the outskirts of their nightly meetings, or vainly searching for a plan to escape. He noted finally that they stinted themselves food, but gave him his usual share; water appeared less often and less plentiful. The pastor was not less confident, but more withdrawn within himself: the elders became more grave, the people, oppressed and prayerful. At times, when the gradual growth of distress became more apparent, Marsyas walked apart and chid himself for his resourcelessness.
"I am another mouth to feed, among these people," he declared. "And by the testimony of mine own instinct, I am not the least cause of that which hath thrown this siege about them! I will get out!"
He began at sunset the second day to discover the extent of the besieged quarter and sound every point for the strength of its particular blockade. He found that the Nazarene portion of Rhacotis stretched from the landings of the bay inland to a series of granaries where Rhacotis, in its smaller days, had built receptacles for the wheat which the rustics brought for shipping. To the west it ended against a stockade for cattle, upon which mounted sentries could overlook a great deal of the quarter. To the east, the limit was a compact row of well-built houses, remnants of the Egyptian aristocratic portion in Alexander's time. The streets intersecting the row and leading into pagan Rhacotis were each closed by a sentry. After his investigations, Marsyas felt that here was the weakest spot in the siege.
Central in the row was a tall structure, with ruined clay pylons, blank of wall and, except for supporting beams, roofless. It had been a temple, but was now a dwelling, a veritable warren since the Nazarenes were all driven to occupy a portion which could shelter only a fifth of the number comfortably.
Upon this structure, Marsyas' eye rested. Either it would be closely watched from without or not at all. It depended upon the features of the wall fronting on the street at the rear, in which the sentries were posted.
For once he blessed a Nazarene night-gathering, when he saw family after family emerge from the tunnel-like doors of the temple-house and proceed silently toward the meeting of their brethren in the street below.
A long time after the last emerged and disappeared into the dark, Marsyas crossed to the doors and knocked. For a moment after his first trial, he listened lest there be an answer. He knocked more loudly a second time, and, after the third, he opened the unlocked doors, and, putting in his head, called. The heated interior was totally dark and silent.
He stepped in and closed the doors behind him. When at last his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw that he was in a single immense chamber; the entire interior of the old temple was unbroken by partition of any kind. Above him, he saw the crossing of great palm-trunks, bracing the walls, and over them the blue arch of the night. At the rear, the starlight showed him the wall abutting the street of the sentries. It was absolutely blank and fully thirty feet in height.
Marsyas sighed and shook his head. Though he made the leap in safety, he could not alight without noise enough to attract the whole garrison to the spot. But, determined to make his investigation thorough before he surrendered the scheme as hopeless, he felt about the great chamber and stumbled on a rude ladder leaning against a side-wall. He climbed it, to find that it reached to a ledge, where the deeper lower half of the wall was surmounted by a clerestory just half its thickness. He found here rows of straw pallets where the overflow of Nazarenes took refuge by night. He pulled up his ladder, set it on the ledge and climbed again, finding himself at the uppermost rung within reach of one of the palm-trunks. He seized it, tried it for solidity and drew himself up on the top of the wall.
Fearing detection by the sentries more than the return of the householders, he crept with caution to the angle at the rear, and looked down into the street.
He located two sentries, but no nearer the back of the temple than the two streets opening into the other several yards away to the north and south. He lay still to note the direction of their post and found that, in truth, they turned just under him. At a point half-way between either end of their walk, they were more than two hundred paces apart. But Marsyas looked down the sheer wall. He could not possibly accomplish it without injury or discovery or both.
With a heavy heart he retraced his steps, descended into the old temple and made his way toward the doors. Before he reached them, he frightened himself by stumbling upon a huge light object that rolled away toward the entrance. He followed cautiously, and touched it again while fumbling for the latch. He felt of it, and finally, swinging the door open, saw by the starlight that it was a huge hamper of twisted palm-fiber, tall enough to contain a man and wide enough for two. He set the thing aside and went out into the night.
To-morrow was the last day of his confinement, but he did not expect liberty. He did not doubt that the city meditated the destruction of the Nazarenes, nor that Flaccus would permit him to be overlooked in the general slaughter. Not the least of his fears was that Lydia might be thrust among them at any moment, to share the fate he had striven so hard to avert from her.
He returned to his cave in the ruined wall, and lay down on his matting, not to sleep, nor even to plan intelligently, but to submit to his distress.
At high noon the third day, on the summit of the Serapeum in Egyptian Rhacotis, there appeared a slender figure in the burnoose of an Arab.
Five hundred feet distant, in the beleaguered Nazarene settlement, a woman stood in her doorway to pray, that the earthen roof might not be between her supplication and the Master in Heaven. She saw the microscopic figure on the pylon of the Temple, but daily a priest came there to worship the sun. She saw the figure lift and extend its arms, presently, but that was part of the idolatrous ritual, she thought. She dropped her eyes to the crucifix in her hands and her lips moved slowly.
At that instant, at her feet, as a thunderbolt strikes from the clouds, an arrow plunged half its length into the hard sand, and leaned, quivering strongly toward the tiny shape on the summit of the pylon.
The Nazarene woman dropped her crucifix and shrieked.
The slow fisher-husband appeared beside her, and, seeing the fallen cross, picked it up with fumbling fingers, muttering an exclamation of remonstrance.
"Look!" the Nazarene woman cried, pointing to the half-buried bolt, still quivering.
The fisherman gazed at it.
"Whence came it?" he asked.
The trembling woman shook her head and clasped and unclasped her hands.
"An affront from the heathen," the man said. "It was despatched to murder thee. The Lord's hand stayed it; blessed be His name!"
He plucked the arrow with an effort from the sand, and looked at it.
"It is a witness of the Master's care; let us take it to the pastor," he suggested.
The trembling woman followed her husband as he stepped into the street and raised her eyes to give thanks. She saw that the figure on the summit of the pylon was gone.
The two found the leader of their flock, sitting outside an overcrowded house, bending over a half-finished basket of reeds. Beside him was one complete; at the other hand were his working materials.
"Greeting, children, in Christ's name," he said.
"Greeting, lord; praise to God in the highest!"
The Nazarene woman dropped to her knees, and her husband, extending the arrow in agitation, stumbled through their story.
"May His name be glorified for ever," the woman murmured at the end.
But the pastor took the arrow and examined it. It was uncommon; the story was uncommon, and he believed that there was more than a wanton attempt at murder in its coming. The bolt was tipped with a pointed flint, and feathered with three long, delicate papyrus cases, one dark, two white. The pastor felt of one of the white feathers, and presently ripped it off the shaft. It opened in his hand. Within was lettering.
After a little puzzled study of it, he shook his head and put it down. He loosened the other from the transparent gum and opened it. Written in another hand were the following words in Greek: