Hard by the stables, in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, there was a room which served as a sort of common den for grooms, women-riders, actors, and charioteers. Even in daytime lamps were kept burning in this stifling resort, where the air smelt strongly of dung-heap and stable. When the curtain at the door was lifted a dazzling flood of light invaded this den; and in the sunny distance could be seen empty tiers of seats, and the magnificent staircase joining the Imperial box to the apartments of Constantine's palace. Egyptian obelisks also were seen in the arena and in the centre, on the yellow sand, a gigantic sacrificial altar of marvellous workmanship, wrought of three entwined serpents of bronze, bearing on their flat heads a Delphian tripod.
Crackings of whips, shouts of riders, snortings of horses, came from the arena, and the muffled sound of wheels on the soft sand went by like a rushing of wings. No races were going on, but merely the preparatory exercise for the races which were to take place a few days later. In one corner of the stable a naked athlete, rubbed over with oil and covered with dust, a girdle of leather round his hips, was raising and lowering dumb-bells. Throwing back his shaggy head, he arched his back till the joints cracked, and at every effort his face grew crimson and the veins of his neck swelled.
Preceded by slaves, a young Byzantine woman ofpatrician rank approached the athlete. She was dressed in a morning robe of delicate hues; and a veil thrown over her head covered her aristocratic and slightly-faded features.
She was a zealous Christian, widow of a Roman senator; beloved of monks for her generous donations to monasteries, and abounding charity. At first she concealed her escapades, but soon perceived that to combine the love of the church with the love of the circus was quite the fashion.
Everybody knew that Stratonice detested the coxcombs of Constantinople, curled and painted, nervous and capricious as she was herself; it was her temperament and fancy to mingle the most costly perfumes of Arabia with the enervating heat of circus and stable. Hot tears of repentance, fervent confessions to tactful confessors, were of no avail; and this little woman, frail and delicate as some ivory trinket, cared for nothing but the coarse caresses of a certain famous circus-rider.
Stratonice was watching the exercises of the gymnast with a practised eye, while he, preserving a stupid expression on his beefy face, paid her not the slightest attention. She muttered something to her slave, with simple wonder admiring the powerful back and the terrible Herculean muscles rolling under the red skin of the shoulders, when, bending with deep inhalations, like the wind of a forge, he raised the iron weights above his handsome tawny head.
The curtain was lifted. The crowd of spectators recoiled, and two Cappadocian mares, a white and a black, pushed into the stables, ridden by a young horsewoman, who, with a guttural cry, adroitly leapt from one beast to another, and thence to the ground.
She was solidly-built, hale and sprightly as her mares, and upon her bare body shone fine drops of sweat.
Zephirinus, the elegant sub-deacon of the Basilica of the Holy Apostles, smilingly hastened towards her. A great lover of the circus, a frequenter of races and racing-stables, this young man would wager heavy sums for the blue (veneta) against the green (prasina). With his red-heeled morocco boots, his painted eyes, and curled hair, Zephirinus had much more the appearance of a young girl than of a servant of the church. Behind him stood a slave, burdened with packets of pretty stuffs and boxes, purchases of every kind from famous shops.
"Krokala, here are the perfumes you asked for the day before yesterday."
The sub-deacon offered the equestrienne a flask sealed with blue wax.
"I've been hunting in shops all the morning, and have only found it in one. It is pure nard, and arrived yesterday from Apamea!"
"And what purchases are these?" demanded Krokala.
"Oh, the silks in fashion!... ornaments—sets of jewels!"
"All of them for your——?"
"Yes, all for my most noble sister, the devout matron Bezilla; onemusthelp one's near relatives! She trusts nobody's taste but mine for choosing stuffs. From early morning I am under her orders. My head goes round, but I don't complain. No!... No!... Bezilla is so good ... such a holy woman!"
"Unfortunately old," laughed Krokala. "Here, boy, wipe the sweat off the black mare with fresh fig leaves."
"Old age also has its virtues," replied the sub-deacon, gently rubbing together his white hands; they were loaded with rings.
Then he whispered in Krokala's ear: "This evening?"
"I'm not sure ... perhaps. Are you going to bring me something?"
"You needn't be afraid, Krokala, I won't come empty-handed! There's a piece of stuff ... a quite marvellous pattern."
He kissed two of his fingers, adding: "Something perfectly dazzling!"
"Where did you pick it up?"
"Oh, at Pyrmix's of course, near the baths. For what do you take me? You might make a longtarantinidionout of it. You can't imagine what embroidery there is on it! Guess the subject!"
"I don't know!... Flowers—animals?"
"In gold and silk—the whole story of Diogenes, the Cynic."
"Ah, that must be pretty!" cried the girl. "Come, by all means, I shall expect you."
Zephirinus glanced at theclepsydra, a water-clock placed in a niche in the wall.
"I am late—quite late! I must go on to a money-lender, a jeweller, then the patriarch, and then to the church. Till then, good-bye."
"Don't forget," Krokala cried to him, with a mischievous gesture.
The sub-deacon disappeared, followed by his slave.
A crowd of grooms, dancing girls, gymnasts, and tamers of wild beasts invaded the stables. With his face protected by a mask, the gladiator, Mermillion, was heating a bar of iron red-hot; he was taming a lionnewly received from Africa, and which could be heard roaring through the stable-wall.
"You'll be the death of me, granddaughter, and you'll go to hell yourself! Oh, oh, how my back hurts! I'm done for!"
"Is that you, grandfather Gnyphon? What do you want?" asked Krokala in a vexed voice.
Gnyphon was a little old man with cunning tearful eyes, which shone under eyebrows active as two white mice. He had the violet nose of a drunkard, wore Libyan breeches, patched and botched here and there, and on his head a Phrygian cap.
"You've come again for money," grumbled Krokala, "and you've been drinking again."
"It's a sin to use such language. You'll have to answer for my soul to God. Just think what you've brought me to. I am living now in the Smokatian quarter; I hire a little cellar from an image-carver, and every day I have to see him making his horrible idols in marble. There's a nice occupation for a Christian! I scarcely open my eyes in the morning, when tap, tap, tap,—my landlord's hammering his marble—bringing white devils into the world; damnable gods that stand laughing at me. How am I to keep out of the wine-shop? O Lord, have mercy on us! I'm simply weltering in Pagan horrors, like a pig in a sty, and it'll be reckoned against us ... and who'll be responsible, I'd like to know? Why, you! You're rolling in money, and yet you leave a poor miserable old man——"
"You lie, Gnyphon! You're not poor; you're a miser; you've got a money-box under the bed!"
Gnyphon made a despairing gesture: "Hush—hush!"
To change the subject he said: "Do you know where I'm going?"
"To the tavern, of course!"
"Worse than that. To the Temple of Dionysus! That temple, since the days of holy Constantine, has been buried under rubbish; but to-morrow, by the august order of the Emperor Julian, it will be all shining again. And I've hired myself out to do the sweeping, although I shall lose my soul and be packed off to hell for it. But I've allowed myself to be tempted because I'm poor and hungry. My granddaughter doesn't do anything to support me.... That's what I've come to!"
"You let me be, Gnyphon. Here you are! Now go! And don't come again when you're drunk!"
Krokala flung some pieces of silver to her grandfather, and then, leaping on an Illyrian stallion, stood erect on his croup, touched him with the whip, and set off at a gallop round the Hippodrome. Gnyphon clacked his tongue, and said with pride—
"To think it was I who brought her up!"
The firm, bare body of the horsewoman shone in the morning sun, and her floating red hair matched the colour of the stallion.
"Eh, Zotick," cried Gnyphon to an old slave who was raking horse-dung into a basket, "come with me to clean the temple of Dionysus! You're a master in these things! I'll pay you three obols for it."
"Of course I will," answered Zotick. "Just a moment to trim the lamp for the goddess, and I'm at your service."
The goddess was Atalanta, patron of grooms, dunghills, and stables. Coarsely carven in wood, and looking little more than a smoky log, Atalanta figured in adamp corner. But Zotick, who had been bred among horses, used to worship her, often praying with tears in his eyes, arraying her coarse blockish feet with sweet violets, in the belief that she healed all his ills, and would preserve him in life and in death.
Gnyphon went out into the open space, the Forum of Constantine, which was circular, and adorned with colonnades and triumphal arches. In the midst a gigantic porphyry column rose from a massive pedestal, and bore on its summit, at a height of a hundred and twenty cubits, a bronze statue of Apollo by Phidias, which had been carried off from a Phrygian city. The head of the Sun-god had been broken, and, with barbaric taste, the head of the Christian Emperor, the apostolic Constantine, had been fitted in its stead to the neck of the image.
His brow was surrounded by gilt rays. In his right hand Apollo Constantine held the sceptre, and in his left the globe. At the foot of the colossus was lodged a little Christian chapel, a kind of palladium, in which worship was still offered in the time of Constantine. The Christians defended the practice by the argument that in the bronze body of Apollo, within the Sun-god's very breast, a talisman was hidden—a piece of the Most Holy Cross brought from Jerusalem. The Emperor Julian closed this chapel.
Gnyphon and Zotick proceeded along a narrow and lengthy street, which led straight to the Chalcedonian stairs, not far from the fortress. Many public edifices were being built, and others were rebuilding, for so hastily had they been erected to please Constantius that they already were crumbling away. Inquisitive gazers were wandering in this street, stopping at merchants' shops; porters were passing by, slaves following theirmasters. Overhead, hammers resounded; cranes were creaking, and saws grinding the white stone. Labourers were heaving at the end of ropes huge timbers, and blocks of marble glittered against the blue. A smell of damp plaster came from the new houses, and a fine white dust fell on the heads of passers-by. On this side and that, between the dazzling white walls steeped in sunlight, the smiling blue waves of the Propontic, trimmed with galley-sails like the wings of sea-gulls, shone at the end of narrow alleys.
Gnyphon heard, as he went by, a conversation between two workmen who were weighing mortar into a sack—
"Why did you become a Christian?" asked one of them.
"Just think, the Christians have six times as many feast days as Hellenists! Nobody harms you.... I advise you to follow my example. One is much freer among Christians."
Where four roads met, the pressure of a crowd pinned Gnyphon and Zotick against the wall. In the middle of the street there was a block in the traffic; the chariots could neither advance nor draw back; shouts, oaths, blows of the whip, were exchanged. Forty oxen were dragging, on an enormous stone-wheeled cart, a jasper column. The earth shook under its weight.
"Whither are you dragging that?" asked Gnyphon.
"From the Basilica to the Temple of Hera. The Christians had carried it off for their church. Now it is going back to its proper position."
Gnyphon glanced at the dirty wall against which he was leaning, on which Pagan urchins had drawn the usual impious caricatures of the Christians.
Gnyphon turned and spat with indignation.
On one side of the crowded market-place they observed the portrait of Julian, arrayed in all the symbols of Imperial power. The winged god Hermes was coming down from the clouds towards him. The portrait was fresh and the colours not yet dry.
Now according to the Roman law every passer-by had to salute any picture of Augustus.
The Agoranome, or inspector of the market, stopped a little old woman carrying a large basket of cabbages.
"I never salute the gods," wept the old woman. "My father and mother were Christians."
"You haven't got to salute the god, but the Emperor!"
"But the Emperor is alongside of the god! So how should I salute him?"
"No matter! You were told to salute and not to argue!"
Gnyphon dragged Zotick farther on as quickly as possible.
"Devilish trick," he grumbled, "either salute the accursed Hermes, or be accused of insulting the sovereign! No way out!... Oh! oh! oh! the day of Antichrist! In one way or another we're always sinning! When I see you, Zotick, envy gnaws my very soul. You live with your dunghill goddess, and have no cares."
They reached the Temple of Dionysus, hard by a Christian monastery, the windows and doors of which were fast barred as against the approach of an enemy. The Hellenists accused the monks of having pillaged the temple.
When Gnyphon and Zotick went into the temple, carpenters and timberers were already at work. The planks which had been used to close the quadrilateralto the sky were dragged down, and the sun poured into the gloomy building.
"Just look at the cobwebs, look, look!" Between the capitals of the columns hung masses of grey webs, which were being hastily cleaned away by means of rag-mops on immense poles. A bat, disturbed in his lair, flew away from a dark crevice, rushing hither and thither to hide himself from the light, striking himself against all the corners. The rustling of his soft wings could be distinctly heard. Zotick began sorting the rubbish and throwing it into baskets while the old man mumbled, "Ah, these cursed fellows! what foulness they have heaped up!"
A great bunch of rusty keys was brought up and the treasure-room opened. The monks had carried off everything of value. Precious stones encrusted on the sacrificial cups were gone, the gold and purple adornments on the vestments had been torn off. When the splendid sacrificial robe was displayed a brown cloud of moths escaped from its folds. At the bottom of the hollow of a tripod, Gnyphon saw a handful of ashes, the remains of myrrh burned before the triumph of the Christians by the last priest during the last sacrifice.
From this heap of sacred rubbish, poor rags, and broken goblets, rose a perfume of death and mildew, a sad and tender odour, as of incense to gods profaned.
A gentle melancholy came over Gnyphon's heart. He smiled, remembering something perhaps of his childhood; sweet cakes of barley and thyme, field daisies and jessamine which he used to carry with his mother to the altar of the village goddess; his childish prayers, not to the distant God, but to the little gods polished by the frequent touch of hands, carven in beechwood—the holy Penates. He pitied the vanishedgods, and sighed sadly, but suddenly returned to himself and muttered—
"Suggestions of the Devil!"
The workmen were carrying up a heavy slab of marble, an antique bas-relief, stolen many years before and discovered in the hovel of a cobbler whose kitchen oven it had served to repair. Philomena, the old wife of a neighbouring clothier, a devout Christian, hated the cobbler's wife, who used to let her ass stray into Philomena's cabbage-yard. War had been maintained between them for years, but the Christian woman was in the end triumphant; for acting on her information the workmen had penetrated into the cobbler's house, and in order to carry off the bas-relief and slab had been obliged to demolish the oven.
This was a terrible blow to the cobbler's wife. Brandishing her shovel, she called down vengeance from all the gods on the impious; pulled her hair out in handfuls, groaning over her scattered pots and pans while her children squealed round her like the young birds of a devastated nest. But the bas-relief was carried off, despite her struggles, and Philomena set about the work of cleansing it. The draper's wife zealously scrubbed the marble which had been blackened by smoke and made greasy with spilt broth. Little by little the severe lines of the divine sculpture became visible. The young Dionysus, naked and proud, lay half-reclined, as if fatigued by Bacchic feasting, letting his hand, which held a cup, fall idly. A leopardess was licking up the last drops from the goblet, and the god, giver of joy to all living things, was gazing with a benign smile at the strength of the beast subdued by the grape. The bas-relief was hauled into position. The jeweller, clambering up before the image ofDionysus, inlaid the orbits of the god with two splendid sapphires, to serve as eyes.
"What's he doing there?" asked Gnyphon.
"Can't you see? They are eyes."
"Yes, certainly, but where do the stones come from?"
"From the monastery."
"But why have the monks allowed it?"
"How could they prevent it? The divine Augustus Julian himself ordered it. The god's blue eyes were used as an ornament on the robe of the Crucified that's all.... They talk about charity and justice, and they themselves are the worst of brigands! See how beautifully the stones fit into their old setting!..."
The god fixed his sapphire eyes on Gnyphon. The old man recoiled and crossed himself, seized with dread.
"Lord have mercy on us! It's horrible!"
Remorse filled his soul, and while sweeping he began, as was his wont, to talk to himself—
"Gnyphon! Gnyphon! what a poor creature you are!... Just like a mangy dog one might say.... You're ending your days in a nice way! Why have you gone and damned yourself? The fiend has over-tempted you!... And now you go into everlasting fire without a chance of salvation. You've smirched soul and body, Gnyphon, by serving the abomination of the heathen!... Better had it been for thee hadst thou never been born!"
"What are you groaning at, old man?" Philomena the draper's wife enquired.
"My heart is heavy!... Oh, how heavy!"
"Are you a Christian?"
"Christian?—I am a betrayer of Christ!" answered Gnyphon, using his broom vigorously.
"Would you like me to take away your sin so that not a trace of heathen defilement shall stick to you? You see I'm a Christian too, and yet afraid of nothing. Do you think I'd have undertaken work like this, if I hadn't known how to purify myself after it?"
Gnyphon stared at her, incredulous.
But the draper's wife, having ascertained that nobody could hear them, muttered mysteriously—
"Yes!... there is a means! I must tell you about it! A pilgrim made me a present of a little bit of Egyptian wood, called persis, which grows at Hermopolis, in the Thebaïd. When Jesus and His mother on their ass were going through the gates of the town, the persis tree bowed down before them to the earth; and ever since it has been a miraculous healer. I've got a little splinter of it, and I'll break off a bit for you. There's such a power in that wood, that if you put a bit into a vat of water and leave it there for a night the water becomes holy. You'll just wash yourself from head to foot in it, and the heathen abomination will leave you like magic, and you'll feel yourself light and pure. Isn't it written in the Bible, 'Thou shalt dip in the water and shalt become as white as snow'?"
"Oh, my benefactress!" groaned Gnyphon, "save me! Give me a chip of that wonderful wood!"
"Ah! you may well call it precious!... Just to do a good turn to a neighbour I'll give it you for a drachma."9
"What's that you're saying, mother? Why, I never earned a drachma in my life! Will you take three obols?"10
"Miser!" cried the draper's wife indignantly.
"You stick at a drachma!... Isn't your immortal soul worth so much?"
"But after all do you think I shall be quite pure?" objected Gnyphon. "Perhaps the sin has so soaked into me that nothing can...."
"I'll solemnly swear to it," insisted the draper's wife. "Try it and you'll feel the miracle at once!... Your soul will shine like the sun—as pure as a white dove...."