The old man had a coarse face, with high cheek-bones, bearded to the eyes. A patched piece of sacking served him as inner robe, and a hooded sheep's skin as cloak or chlamys. For twenty years, Pamva had never washed himself, considering cleanliness sinful, and believing that a special fiend presided over any acts of care for the body. He dwelt in a fearful desert, the Berean, round Chalybon, to the east of Antioch, where serpents and scorpions swarmed at the bottom of the arid water-courses. His lodging was the deep sandy hollow of a dried-up well, calledcoubbain Syriac, where he used to feed himself on five stalks a day of a sweet and flowery kind of reed. He had nearly died of starvation. His disciples descended to feed him by means of ropes. Then, during seven years, he lived on a half-measure of boiled lentils. His sight grew feeble; his skin became leprous and scurvy; he therefore added a little oil to his lentils, and accused himself of worship of the belly.
Pamva, learning from his disciples that the Emperor Julian, the fierce Anti-Christ, was persecuting the Christians, left his retreat and came to Antioch to strengthen weak-kneed believers—
"Listen! listen!... he's going to speak."
Pamva climbed the staircase of the baths and halted on a broad landing. His eyes glittered with condensed ire. He stretched out his arms, pointing out to the people palaces, pagan temples, baths, shops, courts of justice, all the monuments of Antioch.
"Not a stone of these shall remain! All shall crumble and disappear. The holy fire shall burn up the universe. The heavens, like a smouldering palace, shall sink away! That shall be the terrible judgment of Christ, the unimaginable spectacle. Whither shall I turn mine eyes, and what shall I wonder at, if it be not the groaning of kings, cast down into darkness? If it be not the terror of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, shivering in her nakedness before the Crucified? If it be not the flight of Jupiter, and all the Olympians, before the thunders of the Most High?... Triumph, ye martyrs, and rejoice, ye persecuted! See your judges, the Roman proconsuls, seized by more terrible flames than yours. Nor shall the syllogisms of Aristotle, nor the demonstrations of Plato save you, philosophers, hurled into hell! And, on that stage, their actors shall roar, as the heroes of Sophocles and Æschylus never roared before! And their rope-dancers, trust, me, shall dance a quicker step in that fire! And we, the poor and ignorant, shall rejoice and say to the strong, wise, and the haughty: Behold the Crucified, the son of the carpenter and the work-woman, the King of Judæa, crowned in purple and thorns! Behold the Sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan woman possessed of the devil! See Him, whom you led bound with cords into your prætorium, Him whose thirst you quenched with vinegar and hyssop! And we shall hear in answer weepings and gnashings of teeth. We shall laugh, our hearts overflowing with joy! Come, come, come, Lord Jesus!"
Gluturius, the cleanser of sewers, fell on his knees, and blinking his inflamed eyelids as if he saw Christ descending, stretched out his arms. The metal-founder clenched his fists, collected his forces like a bull readyto charge. And the livid-faced weaver, trembling in all his limbs, with an amazed smile was murmuring, "Lord, let me, too, suffer!"
The animal faces of beggars and sharpers expressed the mischievous triumph of the weak over the strong; of slaves over their masters. The She-wolf grinned in silence, and an insatiable thirst for vengeance twinkled in her drunken eyes.
Suddenly, the jingle of weapons and the heavy step of horses. The Roman legionaries of the night-watch wheeled round the corner of the road. At their head strode the prefect, Sallustius Secundus, a man with aquiline nose, open face, and a look of calmness and kindly intelligence. He wore the senatorial laticlave, and gave an impression of self-confidence and patrician nobleness. Above the distant Pantheon, erected by Antiochus Seleucus, slowly arose the great reddish moon, and its rays were glittering on shields and breastplates—
"Disperse, citizens!" said Sallustius, addressing the crowd. "By order of Augustus crowds are forbidden in the streets of Antioch by night."
The populace groaned and murmured. Street-boys whistled, and one audacious voice sang—
"Good-bye to the white cocks!Good-bye to the white ox!For Julian knocks them on the headTo feed his devils and the dead!"
"Good-bye to the white cocks!Good-bye to the white ox!For Julian knocks them on the headTo feed his devils and the dead!"
"Good-bye to the white cocks!Good-bye to the white ox!For Julian knocks them on the headTo feed his devils and the dead!"
"Good-bye to the white cocks!
Good-bye to the white ox!
For Julian knocks them on the head
To feed his devils and the dead!"
There was a threatening clash of arms. The legionaries unsheathed their swords and prepared to charge. Old Pamva struck the marble flags with his staff, and shouted—
"Hail, gallant army of Satan! Hail, wise Roman dignitary! You'll probably remember the time whenyou burned us, when you taught us philosophy, and we prayed God to save your lost souls! Welcome to you!"
The legionaries gripped their swords, but the prefect with a gesture stopped them. He saw that the crowd was in his power.
"What are you threatening us with, blockhead?" asked Pamva, addressing himself to Sallustius. "What can you do? All we want for vengeance is a black night and two or three torches. You fear the Alemanni and the Persians. We are more terrible than they. We are everywhere in the midst of you, inviolable, innumerable! We have no boundaries, no father-land; we recognise but one republic, the universal republic! Born but yesterday, already we are filling the world, filling your cities, your fortresses, your islands, city councils, camps, palaces, senates, forums! We leave you your temples!... And but for our humility, our fraternity, choosing rather to die than to slay, we should have blotted you out....
"We want neither sword nor fire! So many are we, that if we withdrew, you would perish. Your cities would become solitudes, you would be frightened at your own loneliness, at the silence of the universe! All life would stop, at that death-touch! Remember the Roman Empire exists only on sufferance, sustained by the mercy of us Christians!"
All eyes being fixed on Pamva no one perceived a man clothed in the old chlamys of a wandering philosopher, with a lean yellow face, curling hair, and long black beard, quickly coming through the lines of legionaries, who respectfully made way for him. He was followed by a few companions, and, leaning towards Sallustius, whispered—
"What are you waiting for?"
"They will perhaps disperse of themselves," responded Sallustius. "The Galileans have already too many martyrs for us to make any more of them. They fly towards death as bees to honey!"
But the man in the philosopher's robe advanced and cried out with a distinct voice, like a captain accustomed to command—
"Scatter the crowd. Seize the ringleaders!"
Everybody wheeled round, and in alarm shouted—
"Augustus! Augustus Julian!"
The soldiers charged with drawn swords. The old rag-picker was knocked down, struggling and shrieking under the feet of the legionaries. Many fled, and Strombix was the first to take advantage of the general confusion. Stones hurtled through the air. The metal-founder, defending old Pamva, hurled a large jagged flint at a legionary. It struck the She-wolf, who fell with a slight cry, covered with blood, and convinced that she was dying a martyr.
A legionary seized Gluturius; but the sewer-cleaner gave himself up so readily (the prospect of becoming an admired martyr appearing so enviable in comparison with his present occupation), and his rags gave off such a stink, that the disgusted soldier immediately released his prisoner.
In the midst of the crowd there was a market-gardener who had chanced by, leading an ass laden with cabbages. Mouth agape, he had listened to old Pamva from beginning to end. Noticing the danger, he now tried to flee, but his ass starkly refused. In vain was the beast belaboured. Buttressed against his forefeet, with ears lowered and tail lifted, it uttered a deafening series of brays, drowning in its triumphantstupidity the death-rattle of the dying, the oaths of the soldiery, and the prayers of Galileans.
Oribazius, who was among the companions of Julian, came up to the Emperor—
"Julian, what are you doing? Is it worthy of your wisdom?..."
The Emperor cast on him a stern look, and Oribazius was silent, not daring to finish his protest.
In the last few months Julian had not only changed but grown old. His worn face had the sad and terrible expression of those gnawed by some long and incurable malady, or absorbed in some fixed idea akin to madness. His powerful hands were unconsciously tearing to pieces a roll of papyrus. At last he said in a deep voice, with eyes kept steadily on Oribazius—
"Away! I know what I am doing.... With these scoundrels who have no faith in the gods, one cannot deal as with human beings. They must be destroyed like wild beasts. And for the matter of that, what harm would be done if a dozen Galileans were slain by the hand of the Hellenists?"
Oribazius mused—
"How like he is now, in his fury, to his cousin Constantius!"
Julian spoke to the crowd, and his voice appeared to himself even strange and terrible—
"By the grace of the gods I am still Emperor! Galileans, obey! You may mock at my beard and clothes, but not at the Roman law.... Remember, I am punishing you for rebellion and not for religion. Chain that rascal!"
With a shaking hand he pointed to Pamva, who was promptly seized by two fair-haired Batavians.
"Thou liest, atheist!" shouted Pamva triumphantly."You are punishing us for our faith. Why do you not pardon me, as you did Maris the blind Chalcedonian? Where is now your philosophy? Have the times changed? Have you overshot your mark? Brothers, fear not the Roman Cæsar, but the Almighty God!"
The crowd gave up all idea of flight. All were infected by the fever of martyrdom. The Batavians and the Celts were startled by the sight of a mob rushing joyfully on death. Even children threw themseves on the swords and lances. Julian wished to stop the massacre. He was too late; the bees were making for the honey. He could only exclaim, in scorn and despair—
"Unhappy people! If life weighs on you, is it so difficult for you to shorten it for yourselves?"
And Pamva in bonds, lifted by sinewy arms, retorted with joy—
"Exterminate us, Roman, we shall multiply the more! The dungeon is our liberty; weakness, our strength: death, our victory!"