In the neighbouring monastery, behind windows and doors closely sealed, solemn prayers of the religious were resounding above the distant noise of Bacchic chants. To drown them the monks joined their voices in shrill lamentation—
"Why, Lord, hast Thou abandoned us? Why has Thy anger fallen upon Thy sheep?
"Why hast Thou given us up in dishonour to the hand of the heathen?
"Why hast Thou let mankind do outrage unto Thee?"
The ancient words of the prophet Daniel took on an unwonted meaning—
"The Lord has delivered us to the evil king, the cunningest in all the earth!..."
Late in the night, when the sun had sunk upon the streets, the monks went back to their cells.
Brother Parphenas could not even think of sleeping. His face was pale and gentle, and in his great eyes, clear as a maiden's, perplexity was visible when he spoke about worldly matters.
He spoke rarely, indistinctly, and in a fashion so quaint, on topics so childish, that it was difficult to hear him without smiling. Sometimes he laughed without cause; and austere monks would say to him—
"What are you cackling at? Is it to please the Devil?"
Then he would timidly explain that he was laughingat his own thoughts, and thus convince everybody that Parphenas was mad.
One great art he possessed—that of illuminating manuscripts; and this art of Brother Parphenas brought to the monastery not only money, but renown in the most distant provinces. Of this he had no suspicion, and if he had been able to understand what reputation means, would rather have been dismayed than delighted.
His artistic occupations, which cost him vast pains (Brother Parphenas pushed perfection of detail to an exquisite finish), were not in his eyes a labour, but an amusement. He never said, "I'm going to work." But he always asked of the old Father Superior Pamphilus, who loved him tenderly, "Father, give me your blessing, I am going to play."
And when he had mastered some difficult combination of ornament, he would clap his hands in self-congratulation. Brother Parphenas so enjoyed the solitude and calm of night that he had learned to work by lamp-light. He used to say that the colours took on unexpected shades, and that the yellow light did no harm to drawings in the realm of pure fancy.
In his narrow cell Parphenas lighted the earthen lamp and placed it on a plank, among his little flasks, fine brushes, and colour-boxes of vermilion, silver, and liquid gold. He crossed himself cautiously, dipped his brush, and began to paint the outspread tails of two peacocks above a frontispiece. The golden peacocks, on a green field, were drinking at a streamlet of turquoise, with raised beaks and outstretched necks. Other rolls of parchment lay by him, unfinished. His world was a supernatural and charming world. Bordering the text of the page ran an embroidery offabulous creations; a faery architecture of fantastic trees and animals. Parphenas thought of nothing while he created these things, but a happy serenity transformed his face. Hellas, Assyria, Persia, the Indies, Byzantium idealised, and the troubled vision of future worlds, of all peoples, and of all ages; these mingled in the paradise of the monk, and shone, with a glitter as of jewels, round the initial letters of the holy books.
This one represented the Baptism. St. John was pouring water on the head of Christ, and at his elbow the Pagan god of rivers was amiably tilting a water-jar, while the former proprietor of the bank (that is to say, the Devil) held a towel in readiness to offer the Saviour after the ceremony.
Brother Parphenas in his innocence had no fear of the old gods. They used to amuse him. He regarded them as long ago converted to Christianity. He never failed to place the god of mountains, in the shape of a naked youth, on the summit of every hill. When he was drawing the passage of the Red Sea, a woman holding an oar symbolised the Sea, and a naked man, inscribed Bodos, stood for the Abyss engulfing Pharaoh, while on the bank sat a melancholy woman, in a tan-coloured tunic, denoting the Desert.
Here, there, and everywhere, in the curve of a horse's neck, the fold of a robe, the simple pose of a god lying on his elbow, were evidences of antique grace and simplicity.
But on this night his "play" interested the artist no more. His tireless fingers were shaky, and the smile had left his lips.
Listening awhile, he opened a cedar-wood box, took out an awl used in the binding of books, crossedhimself, and shielding the ruddy flame of the lamp with his hand, noiselessly issued from his cell. It was hot in the silent corridor. No sound was heard but the buzzing of a fly taken in a spider's web.
Parphenas went down to the church, which was lighted by a single lamp, placed before the old ivory-carved diptych. Two large sapphires in the aureole of Jesus, who was sitting on the Virgin's arm, had been carried off by the Pagans, and transferred to their original setting in the Temple of Dionysus. These black hollows in the yellow ivory were to Parphenas wounds in some living body.
"No, I cannot bear it," he murmured, kissing the hand of the Infant Jesus. "I cannot bear it; 'twould be better to die!"
These sacrilegious marks in the ivory tortured and angered him more than outrage on a human being.
In a corner of the church he discovered a rope-ladder, used in lighting chapel-lamps. Carrying this ladder he went forth into a narrow passage leading to the outer gate, in front of which the fat brother-cellarer, Chorys, was snoring on the straw. Parphenas glided past like a shadow. The lock of the door made a grinding noise. Chorys sat unblinking, and then rolled round on the straw.
Parphenas leapt over a low wall and found himself in the deserted street, into which the full moon was shining. There was a low roar of the sea. The young monk went along the Temple of Dionysus up to a point in which the wall was plunged in shadow. Thence he threw up the rope-ladder, so that it hooked itself to the metal pinnacle which decorated the corner. The ladder swung from the claw of a sphinx. The monk clambered by it to the roof.
Far off, cocks crew; a dog barked; and then again came silence, measured only by the slow sighings of the sea.
Parphenas threw the ladder down the inner wall of the temple, and descended.
The eyes of the god, two lengthy sapphires, shone with intense vividness in the moonlight, gazing down on the monk. Parphenas, thrilled by the silence, trembled and crossed himself. He clambered on to the altar where Julian had offered the sacrifice, and his heels felt the warmth of the half-extinguished embers.
The monk drew the awl from his pocket. The god's eyes sparkled close to his face, and the artist felt the careless smile of Dionysus, and the lovely pose of the body. Even while digging out the sapphires, his admiring hand involuntarily spared the body of the marble tempter.
Finally the deed was done. The blinded Dionysus stared horribly on the monk from his hollow orbits. Terror fairly seized Parphenas. It seemed that he was watched. He leapt down from the altar, ran to the rope-ladder, climbed, threw it down the other side of the wall, without taking time to fix it properly. This cost him a fall during the latter part of the descent.
With crimson face, and clothes ragged and disordered, but griping the precious sapphires, he slunk furtively across the street, and ran to the monastery.
The porter did not wake, and Parphenas furtively entered the chapel. At the sight of the diptych, his mind grew calm again. He tried the sapphire eyes of Dionysus into the holes. They fitted admirably, and soon were glittering anew in the aureole of the Infant Jesus. He returned to his cell, lit the lamp, and went to bed. Huddling himself up, and hiding his face inhis hands, he burst into a fit of muffled laughter, like a child delighted at some piece of mischief and afraid of discovery. He then straightway fell sound asleep.
When he awoke, the morning waves of the Propontic were shining through the small barred window, and the pigeons cooing and shaking their wings.
The laughter of the previous night was still in the heart of Parphenas. He ran to the painting-table and contentedly looked at his unfinished arabesque of the Earthly Paradise. Adam and Eve were seated in a meadow, glittering in the sunlight; it was a vellum tapestry of purple, blue, and gold. And so the little monk worked on, innocently investing the body of Adam with the proud antique beauty of young Dionysus.