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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Serapis, by Georg Ebers, Volume 5.
+#66 in our series by Georg Ebers
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
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+
+Title: Serapis, Volume 5.
+
+Author: Georg Ebers
+
+Release Date: April, 2004  [EBook #5505]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 5, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERAPIS, BY GEORG EBERS, V5 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+SERAPIS
+
+By Georg Ebers
+
+Volume 5.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Gorgo, when she had left her grandmother, could not rest.  Her lofty
+calmness of demeanor had given way to a restless mood such as she had
+always contemned severely in others, since she had ceased to be a
+vehement child and grown to be a woman.  She tried to beguile the alarm
+that made her pulses beat so quickly, and the heart-sickness that ached
+like a wound, by music and singing; but this only added to her torment.
+The means by which she could usually recover her equanimity of mind had
+lost their efficacy, and Sappho's longing hymn, which she began to sing,
+had only served to bring the fervid longing of her own heart to light--
+to set it, as it were, in the full glare of the sun.  She had become
+aware that every fibre, every nerve of her being yearned for the man she
+loved; she would have thrown away her life like a hollow nut for one
+single hour of perfect joy with him and in him.  The faith in the old
+gods, the heathen world which contained the ideal of her young soul, her
+detestation of Christianity, her beautiful art--everything, in short,
+that had filled the spiritual side of her life, was cast into the shade
+by the one absorbing passion that possessed her soul.  Every feeling,
+every instinct, urged her to abandon herself entirely to her lover, and
+yet she never for one instant doubted which side she would take in the
+approaching conflict of the great powers that ruled the world.  The last
+few hours had only confirmed her conviction that the end of all things
+was at hand.  The world was on the eve of destruction; she foresaw that
+she must perish--perish with Constantine, and that, in her eyes, was a
+grace from the gods.
+
+While Damia was vainly struggling to liberate her soul from the bondage
+of the flesh, Gorgo had been wandering uneasily about the house; now
+going to the slaves, encouraging them with brave words, and giving them
+employment to keep them from utter desperation, and then stealing up to
+see whether her grandmother might not by this time be in need of her.
+As it grew dark she observed that several of the women, and even some of
+the men, had made their escape.  These were such as had already shown a
+leaning towards the new faith, and who now made off to join their fellow-
+Christians, or to seek refuge in the churches under the protection of the
+crucified God whose supreme power might, perhaps, even yet, avert the
+impending catastrophe.
+
+Twice had Porphyrius sent a messenger to assure his mother and daughter
+that all was well with him, that a powerful party was prepared to defend
+the Serapeum, and that he should pass the night in the temple.  The
+Romans were evidently hesitating to attack it, and if, next morning, the
+heathen should succeed in repelling the first onset, reinforcements might
+yet be brought up in time.  Gorgo could not share these hopes; a client
+of her father's had brought in a rumor that the Biamites, after advancing
+as far as Naucratis, had been dispersed by a few of the Imperial
+maniples.  Fate was stalking on its way, and no one could give it pause.
+
+The evening brought no coolness, and when it was already quite dark,
+as her grandmother had not yet called her, Gorgo could no longer control
+her increasing anxiety, so, after knocking in vain at the door of the
+observatory, she went in.  Her old nurse preceded her with a lamp, and
+the two women stood dumb with consternation, for the old lady lay
+senseless on the ground.  Her head was thrown back against the seat of
+the chair off which she had slipped, and her pale face was lifeless and
+horrible to look at, with its half-closed eyes and dropped jaw.  Wine,
+water, and strong essences were all at hand, and they laid the
+unconscious woman on a couch intended for the occasional use of the
+wearied observer.  In a few minutes they had succeeded in reviving the
+old lady; but her eyes rested without recognition on the girl who knelt
+by her side, and she murmured to herself: "The ravens--where are they
+gone?  Ravens!"
+
+Her glance wandered round the room, to the tablets and rolls which had
+been tossed off the couch and the table to make room for her, and for the
+lamps and medicaments.  They lay in disorder on the floor, and the sight
+of this confusion produced a favorable excitement and reaction; she
+succeeded in expressing herself in husky accents and broken, hardly
+intelligible sentences, so far as to scold them sharply for their
+irreverence for the precious documents, and for the disorder they had
+created.  The waiting-woman proceeded to pick them up: but Damia again
+became unconscious.  Gorgo bathed her brow and tried to pour some wine
+between her teeth, but she clenched them too firmly, till the slave-woman
+came to her assistance and they succeeded in making Damia swallow a few
+drops.  The old woman opened her eyes, smacking her tongue feebly; but
+she took the cup into her own hand to hold it to her lips; and though she
+trembled so that half the contents were spilt, she drank eagerly till it
+was quite empty.  "More," she gasped with the eagerness of intense
+thirst, "more--I want drink !"
+
+Gorgo gave her a second and a third draught which Damia drank with equal
+eagerness; then, with a deep breath, she looked up fully conscious, at
+her granddaughter.
+
+"Thank you, child," she said.  "Now I shall do very well for a little
+while.  The material world and all that belongs to it weighs us down and
+clings to us like iron fetters.  We may long and strive to be free, but
+it pursues us and holds us fast.  Only those who are content with their
+miserable humanity can enjoy it.  They laugh, as you know, at Praxilla,
+the poetess, because she makes the dying Adonis lament, when face to face
+with death, that he is forced to leave the apples and pears behind him.
+But is not that subtly true?  Yes, yes; Praxilla is right!  We fast, we
+mortify ourselves--I have felt it all myself--to partake of divinity.  We
+almost perish of hunger and thirst, when we might be so happy if only we
+would be satisfied with apples and pears!  No man has ever yet succeeded
+in the great effort; those who would be truly happy must be content with
+small things.  That is what makes children so happy.  Apples and pears!
+Well, everything will be at an end for me ere long--even those.  But if
+the great First Cause spares himself in the universal crash, there is
+still the grand idea of Apples and Pears; and who knows but that it may
+please Him, when this world is destroyed, to frame another to come after
+it.  Will He then once more embody the ideas of Man--and Apples and
+Pears?  It would be plagiarism from himself.  Nay, if He is merciful, He
+will never again give substance to that hybrid idea called Man; or, if He
+does, He will let the poor wretch be happy with apples and pears--I mean
+trivial joys; for all higher joys, be they what they may, are vanity and
+vexation....  Give me another draught.  Ah, that is good!  And to-morrow
+is the end.  I could find it in my heart to regret the good gifts of
+Dionysus myself; it is better than apples and pears; next to that comes
+the joy that Eros bestows on mortals, and there must be an end to all
+that, too.  That, however, is above the level of apples and pears.  It is
+great, very great happiness, and mingled therefor with bitter sorrow.
+Rapture and anguish--who can lay down the border line that divides them?
+Smiles and tears alike belong to both.  And you are weeping?  Aye, aye--
+poor child!  Come here and kiss me."  Damia drew the head of the kneeling
+girl close to her bosom and pressed her lips to Gorge's brow.  Presently,
+however, she relaxed her embrace and, looking about the room, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"How you have mixed and upset the book-rolls!  If only I could show you
+how clearly everything agrees and coincides.  We know now exactly how it
+will all happen.  By the day after to-morrow there will be no more earth,
+no more sky; and I will tell you this, child: If, when Serapis falls, the
+universe does not crumble to pieces like a ruinous hovel, then the wisdom
+of the Magians is a lie, the course of the stars has nothing to do with
+the destinies of the earth and its inhabitants, the planets are mere
+lamps, the sun is no more than a luminous furnace, the old gods are
+marsh-fires, emanations from the dark bog of men's minds--and the great
+Serapis...  But why be angry with him?  There is no doubt--no if nor but
+....Give me the diptychon and I will show you our doom.  There--just
+here--my sight is so dazzled, I cannot make it out.--And if I could, what
+matter?  Who can alter here below what has been decided above?  Leave me
+to sleep now, and I will explain it all to you to-morrow if there is
+still time.  Poor child, when I think how we have tormented you to learn
+what you know, and how industrious you have been!  And now--to what end?
+I ask you, to what end?  The great gulf will swallow up one and all."
+
+"So be it, so be it !"  cried Gorgo interrupting her.  "Then, at any
+rate, nothing that I love on earth will be lost to me before I die!"
+
+"And the enemy will perish in the same ruin!"  continued Damia, her eyes
+sparkling with revived fire.  "But where shall  we  go to--where?  The
+soul is divine by nature and cannot be destroyed.  It must return--say,
+am I right or wrong?--It will return to its first fount and cause; for
+like attracts and absorbs like, and thus our deification, our union with
+the god will be accomplished."
+
+"I believe it--I am sure of it!"  replied Gorgo with conviction.
+
+"You are sure of it?"  retorted the old woman.  "But I am not.  For our
+clearest knowledge is but guesswork when it is not based on numbers.
+Nothing is proved or provable but by numbers, but they are surer than the
+rocks in the sea; that is why I believe in our coming doom, for, on those
+tablets, we have calculated it to a certainty.  But who can calculate
+evidence of the future fate of the soul?  If, indeed, the old order
+should not pass away--if the depths should remain below and the empyrean
+still keep its place above--then, to be sure, your studies would not be
+in vain; for then your soul, which is fixed on spiritual, supernatural
+and sublime conceptions, would be drawn upwards to the great Intelligence
+of which it is the offspring, to the very god, and become one with him--
+absorbed into him, as the rain-drop fallen from a cloud rises again
+and is reunited to its parent vapor.  Then--for there may be a
+metempsychosis--your songful spirit might revive to inform
+a nightingale, then . . ."
+
+Damia paused; and gazed upwards as if in ecstasy, and it was not till a
+few minutes later that she went on, with a changed expression in her
+face: "Then my son's widow, Mary, would be hatched out of a serpent's egg
+and would creep a writhing asp...  Great gods! the ravens!  What can they
+mean?  They come again.  Air, air!  Wine!  I cannot--I am choking--take
+it away!--To-morrow--to-day...  Everything is going; do you see--do you
+feel?  It is all black--no, red; and now black again.  Everything is
+sinking; hold me, save me; the floor is going from under me.--Where is
+Porphyrius?  Where is my son?--My feet are so cold; rub them.  It is the
+water! rising--it is up to my knees.  I am sinking--help! save me!
+help!"  The dying woman fought with her arms as if she were drowning; her
+cries for help grew fainter, her head drooped on her laboring chest, and
+in a few minutes she had breathed her last in her grandchild's arms, and
+her restless, suffering soul was free.
+
+Never before had Gorgo seen death.  She could not persuade herself that
+the heart which had been so cold for others, but had throbbed so warmly
+and tenderly for her, was now stilled for ever; that the spirit which,
+even in sleep, had never been at rest, had now found eternal peace.  The
+slave-woman had hastily taken her place, had closed the dead woman's eyes
+and mouth, and done all she could to diminish the horror of the scene,
+and the terrible aspect of the dead in the sight of the girl who had been
+her one darling.  But Gorgo had remained by her side, and, while she did
+everything in her power to revive the stiffening body, the overwhelming
+might of Death had come home to her with appalling clearness.  She felt
+the limbs of one she had loved growing cold and rigid under her hands,
+and her spirit rose in obstinate rebellion against the idea that
+annihilation stood between her and the woman who had so amply filled
+a mother's place.  She insisted on having every  method of resuscitation
+tried that had ever been heard of, and made her nurse send for
+physicians, though the woman solemnly assured her that human help was of
+no avail: then she sent for the priest of Saturn who--as the dead woman
+herself had told her--knew mighty spells which had called back many a
+departed spirit to the body it had quitted.
+
+When, at last, she was alone and gazed on the hard, set features of the
+dead, though she shuddered with horror, she so far controlled herself as
+to press her lips in sorrow and gratitude to the thin hand whose caresses
+she had been wont to accept as a mere matter of course.  How cold and
+heavy it was!  She shivered and dropped it, and the large rings on the
+fingers rattled on the wooden frame of the couch.  There was no hope; she
+understood that her friend and mother was indeed dead and silent forever.
+
+Deep and bitter grief overwhelmed her completely, with the sense of
+abandoned loneliness, the humiliating feeling of helplessness against a
+brutal power that marches on, scorning humanity, as a warrior treads down
+the grass and flowers in his path.  She fell on her knees by the corpse,
+sobbing passionately, and crying like an indignant child when a stronger
+companion has robbed it of some precious possession.  She wept with rage
+at her own impotence; and her tears flowed faster and faster as she more
+fully realized how lonely she was, and what a blow this must be to her
+father.  In this hour no pleasant reminiscences of past family happiness
+came to infuse a drop of sweetness into the bitterness of her grief.
+Only one reflection brought her any comfort, and that was the thought
+that the grave which had yawned already for her grandmother would soon,
+very soon, open for herself and all living souls.  On the table, close at
+hand, lay the evidence of their impending doom, and a longing for that
+end gradually took complete possession of her, excluding every other
+feeling.  Thinking of this she rose from her knees and ceased to weep.
+
+When, presently, her waiting-woman should return, she was resolved to
+leave the house at once; she could not bear to stay; her feelings and
+duty alike indicated the place where she might find the last hour's
+happiness that she expected or desired of life.  Her father must learn
+from herself, and not from a stranger, of the loss that had befallen
+them, and she knew that he was in the Serapeum--on the very spot where
+she might hope next morning to meet Constantine.  It would be her lover's
+duty to open the gate to destruction, and she would be there to pass
+through it at his side.
+
+She waited a long, long time, but at last there was a noise on the
+stairs.  That was her nurse's step, but she was not alone.  Had she
+brought the leech and the exorciser?  The door opened and the old steward
+came in, carrying a three-branched lamp; then followed the slave-woman,
+and then--her heart stood still then came Constantine and his mother.
+
+Gorgo, pale and speechless, received her unexpected visitors.  The nurse
+had failed to find the physician, whose aid would, at any rate, have come
+too late; and as the housekeeper had taken herself off with others of the
+Christian slaves, the faithful soul had said to herself that "her child"
+would want some womanly help and comfort in her trouble, and had gone to
+the house of their neighbor Clemens, to entreat his wife to come with her
+to see the dead, and visit her forlorn young mistress.  Constantine, who
+had come home a short time previously, had said nothing, but had
+accompanied the two women.
+
+While Constantine gazed with no unkindly feelings at the still face of
+Damia--to whom, after all, he owed many a little debt of kindness--and
+then turned to look at Gorgo who stood downcast, pale, and struggling
+to breathe calmly, Dame Marianne tried to proffer a few words of
+consolation.  She warmly praised everything in the dead woman which
+was not in her estimation absolutely reprobate and godless, and brought
+forward all the comforting arguments which a pious Christian can command
+for the edification and encouragement of those who mourn a beloved
+friend; but to Gorgo all this well-meant discourse was as the babble of
+an unknown tongue; and it was only when, at length, Marianne went up to
+her and drew her to her motherly bosom, to kiss her, and bid her be
+welcome under Clelnens' roof till Porphyrius should be at home again,
+that she understood that the good woman meant kindly, and honestly
+desired to help and comfort her.
+
+But the allusion to her father reminded her of the first duty in her
+path; she roused her energies, thanked Marianne warmly, and begged her
+only to assist her in carrying the corpse into the thalamos, and then to
+take charge of the keys.  She herself, she explained, meant at once to
+seek her father, since he ought to learn from no one but herself of his
+mother's death.  Nor would she listen for a moment to her friend's
+pressing entreaties that she would put off this task, and pass the night,
+at any rate, under her roof.
+
+Constantine had kept in the background; it was not till Gorgo approached
+the dead and gave the order to carry the body down into the house that he
+came forward, and with simple feeling offered her his hand.  The girl
+looked frankly in his face, and, as she put her hand in his, she said in
+a low voice: "I was unjust to you, Constantine.  I insulted and hurt you;
+but I repented sincerely, even before you had left the house.  And you
+owe me no grudge, I know, for you understood how forlorn I must be and
+came to see me.  There is no ill-feeling, is there, nothing to come
+between us?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing!" he eagerly exclaimed, seizing her other hand with
+passionate fervor.
+
+She felt as if all the blood in her body had rushed in a full tide to her
+heart--as if he were some part of her very being, that had been torn out,
+snatched from her, and that she must have back again, even if it cost
+them both their life and happiness.  The impulse was irresistible; she
+drew away her hands from his grasp and flung them round his neck,
+clinging to him as a weary child clings to its mother.  She did not know
+how it had come about--how such a thing was possible, but it was done;
+and without paying any heed to Marianne, who looked on in dismay while
+her son's lips were pressed to the brow and lips of the lovely
+idolatress, she wept upon her lover's shoulders, feeling a thousand
+roses blossoming in her soul and a thousand thorns piercing and
+tearing her heart.
+
+It had to be, that she felt; it was at once their union and their
+parting.  Their common destiny was but for a moment, and that moment had
+come and gone.  All that now retrained for them was death--destruction,
+with all things living; and she looked forward to this, as a man watches
+for the dawn after a sleepless night.  Marianne stood aside; she dimly
+perceived that something vital was going on, that something inevitable
+had happened which would admit of no interference.  Gorgo, as she freed
+herself from Constantine's embrace, stood strangely solemn and
+unapproachable.  To the simple matron she was an inscrutable riddle to
+which she could find no clue; but she was pleased, nevertheless, when
+Gorgo came up to her and kissed her hand.  She could not utter a word,
+for she felt that whatever she might say, it would not be the right
+thing; and it was a real relief to her to busy herself over the removal
+of the body, in which she could be helpful.
+
+Gorgo had covered the dead face; and when old Damia had been carried down
+to the thalamos and laid in state on the bridal bed, she strewed the
+couch with flowers.
+
+Meanwhile, the priest of Saturn had been found, and he declared in all
+confidence that no power on earth could have recalled this departed soul.
+Damia's sudden end and the girl's great grief went to his faithful heart,
+and he gladly acceded to Gorgo's request that he would wait for her by
+the garden-gate and escort her to the Serapeum.  When he had left them
+she gave the keys of her grandmother's chests and cupboards into
+Marianne's keeping; then she went into the adjoining room, where
+Constantine had been waiting while she decked the bed of death, and bid
+him a solemn, but apparently calm, farewell.  He put out his arm to clasp
+her to his heart, but this she would not permit; and when he besought her
+to go home with them she answered sadly, "No, my dearest...  I must not;
+I have other duties to fulfil."
+
+"Yes," he replied emphatically, "and I, too--I have mine.  But you have
+given yourself to me.  You are my very own; you belong to me only, and
+not to yourself; and I desire, I command you to yield to my first
+request.  Go with my mother, or stay here, if you will, with the dead.
+Wherever your father may be, it is not, cannot be, the right place for
+you--my betrothed bride.  I can guess where be is.  Oh!  Gorgo, be
+warned.
+
+"The fate of the old gods is sealed.  We are the stronger and to-morrow,
+yes to-morrow--by your own head, by all I hold dear and sacred!--Serapis
+will fall!"
+
+"I know it," she said firmly.  "And you are charged to lay hands on the
+god?"
+
+"I am, and I shall do it."
+
+She nodded approbation and then said submissively and sweetly: "It is
+your duty, and you cannot do otherwise.  And come what may we are one,
+Constantine, forever one.  Nothing can part us.  Whatever the future may
+bring, we belong to each other, to stand or fall together.  I with you,
+you with me, till the end of time."  She gave him her hand and looked
+lovingly into his eyes; then she threw herself into his mother's arms and
+kissed her fondly.
+
+"Come, come with me, my child," said Marianne; but Gorgo freed herself,
+exclaiming: "Go, go; if you love me leave me; go and let me be alone."
+
+She went back into the thalamos where the dead lay at peace, and before
+the others could follow her she had opened a door hidden behind some
+tapestry near the bed, and fled into the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The night was hot and gloomy.  Heavy clouds gathered in the north, and
+wreaths of mist, like a hot vapor-bath, swayed over the crisply-foaming
+wavelets that curled the lustreless waters of the Mareotis Lake.  The
+moon peeped, pale and shrouded, out of a russet halo, and ghostly
+twilight reigned in the streets, still heated by the baked walls of the
+houses.
+
+To the west, over the desert, a dull sulphurous yellow streaked the black
+clouds, and from time to time the sultry air was rent by a blinding flash
+sent across the firmament from the north.  There was a hot, sluggish wind
+blowing from the southwest, which drove the sand across the lake into the
+streets; the fine grit stung: and burnt the face of the wanderer who
+hurried on with half-closed eyes and tightly-shut lips.  A deep
+oppression seemed to have fallen on nature and on man; the sudden gusts
+of the heated breeze, the arrow-like shafts of lightning, the weird
+shapes and colors of the clouds, all combined to give a sinister, baleful
+and portentous aspect to this night, as though skies and waters, earth
+and air were brooding over some tremendous catastrophe.
+
+Gorgo had thrown a veil and handkerchief round her head and followed the
+priest with an aching brow and throbbing heart.  When she heard a step
+behind her she started-for it might be Constantine following her up; when
+a gust of wind flung the stinging sand in her face, or the storm-flash
+threw a lurid light on the sky, her heart stood still, for was not this
+the prelude to the final crash.
+
+She was familiar with the way they were going, but its length seemed to
+have stretched tenfold.  At last, however, they reached their
+destination.  She gave the pass-word at the gate of her father's timber-
+yard and exchanged the signs agreed upon; in a few minutes she had made
+her way through the piles of beams and planks that screened the entrance
+to the aqueduct--a slave who knew her leading the way with a light--and
+she and her companion entered the underground passage.
+
+It was hot and close; bats, scared by the flare of the torch, fluttered
+round her with a ghostly rustle, startling and disgusting her; still,
+she felt less alarm here than outside; and when, as she went forward she
+thought of the great temple she was coming to, of its wonderful beauty
+and solemn majesty, she only cared to press onward to that refuge of
+ineffable splendor where all would be peace.  To die there, to perish
+there with her lover, did not seem hard; nay, she felt proud to think
+that she might await death in the noblest edifice ever raised to a god by
+mortal hands.  Here Fate might have its way; she had known the highest
+joy she had ever dreamed of, and where on earth was there a sublimer tomb
+than this sanctuary of the sovereign of the universe, whose supremacy
+even the other gods acknowledged with trembling!
+
+She had known the sacred halls of the temple from her childhood, and she
+pictured them as filled with thousands of lofty souls, united in this
+supreme hour by one feeling and one purpose.  She even fancied she could
+hear the inspired and heartfelt strains of the enthusiasts who were
+prepared to give their lives for the god of their fathers, that she
+breathed the odor of incense and burnt sacrifices, that she saw the
+chorus of youths and maidens, led by priests and dancing with solemn
+grace in mazy circles round the flower-decked altars.  There among the
+elders who had gathered round Olympius to meditate devoutly on the coming
+doom and on the inmost meaning of the mysteries--among the adepts who
+were anxiously noting, in the observatories of the Serapeum, the fateful
+courses of the stars, the swirling of the clouds and the flight of birds,
+she would doubtless find her father; and the fresh wound bled anew as she
+remembered that she was the bearer of news which must deeply shock and
+grieve him.  Still, no doubt, she would find him wrapped in dignified
+readiness for the worst, sorrowing serenely for the doomed world, and so
+her melancholy message would come to a prepared and resigned heart.
+
+She had no fear of the crowd of men she would find in the Serapeum.
+Her father and Olympius were there to protect her, and Dame Herse, too,
+would be a support and comfort; but even without those three, on such a
+night as this--the last perhaps that they might ever see--she would have
+ventured without hesitation among thousands, for she firmly believed that
+every votary of the gods was awaiting his own end and the crash of
+falling skies with devout expectancy, and perhaps with not less terror
+than herself.
+
+These were her thoughts as she and her guide stopped at a strong door.
+This was presently opened and they found themselves in an underground
+chamber, devoted to the mysteries of the worship of Serapis, in which the
+adepts were required to go through certain severe ordeals before they
+were esteemed worthy to be received into the highest order of the
+initiated--the Esoterics.  The halls and corridors which she now went
+through, and which she had never before seen, were meagrely lighted with
+lamps and torches, and all that met her eye filled her with reverent awe
+while it excited her imagination.  Everything, in fact--every room and
+every image--was as unlike nature, and as far removed from ordinary types
+as possible, in arrangement and appearance.  After passing through a
+pyramidal room, with triangular sides that sloped to a point, she came to
+one in the shape of a polygonal prism.  In a long, broad corridor she had
+to walk on a narrow path, bordered by sphinxes; and there she clung
+tightly to her guide, for on one side of the foot-way yawned a gulf of
+great depth.  In another place she heard, above her head, the sound of
+rushing waters, which then fell into the abyss beneath with a loud roar.
+After this she came upon a large grotto, hewn in the living rock and
+defended by a row of staring crocodiles' heads, plated with gold; the
+heavy smell of stale incense and acrid resins choked her, and her way now
+lay over iron gratings and past strangely contrived furnaces.  The walls
+were decorated with colored reliefs: Tantalus, Ixion, and Sisyphus
+toiling at his stone, looked down on her in hideous realism as she went.
+Rock chambers, fast closed with iron doors, as though they enclosed
+inestimable treasures or inscrutable secrets, lay on either hand, and her
+dress swept against numerous images and vessels closely shrouded in
+hangings.
+
+When she ventured to look round, her eye fell on monstrous forms and
+mystical signs and figures; if she glanced upwards, she saw human and
+animal forms, and mixed with these the various constellations, sailing in
+boats--the Egyptian notion of their motions--along the back of a woman
+stretched out to an enormous length; or, again, figures by some Greek
+artist: the Pleiades, Castor and Pollux as horsemen with stars on their
+heads, and Berenice's star-gemmed hair.
+
+The effect on the girl was bewildering, overpowering, as she made her way
+through this underground world.  The things she had glimpses of were very
+sparely illuminated, nay scarcely discernible, and yet appallingly real;
+what mysteries, what spells might not he hidden in all she did not see!
+She felt as if the end of life, which she was looking for, had already
+begun, as if she had already gone down, alive, into Hades.
+
+The path gradually sloped upwards and at last she ascended, by a spiral
+staircase, to the ground-floor of the temple.  Once or twice she had met
+a few men, but solemn silence reigned in those subterranean chambers.
+
+The sound of their approaching and receding steps had only served to make
+her aware of the complete stillness.  This was just as it should be--just
+as she would have it.  This peace reminded her of the profound silence of
+nature before a tempest bursts and rages.
+
+Gorgo took off her veil as she went up the stairs, shook out the folds of
+her dress, and assumed the dignified and reverent demeanor which became a
+young girl of rank and position when approaching the altars of the
+divinity.  But as she reached the top a loud medley of noises and voices
+met her ear-flutes, drums?--The sacred dance, she supposed, must be going
+on.
+
+She came out into a room on one side of the hypostyle; her companion
+opened a high door, plated with gilt bronze and silver, and Gorgo
+followed him, walking gravely with her head held high and her eyes fixed
+on the ground, into the magnificent hall where the sacred image sat
+enthroned in veiled majesty.  They crossed the colonnade at the side of
+the hypostyle and went down two steps into the vast nave of the temple.
+
+The wild tumult that she had heard on first opening the door had
+surprised and puzzled her; but now, as she timidly looked up and around
+her, she felt a shock of horror and revulsion such as might come over a
+man who, walking by night and believing that he is treading on flowers,
+suddenly finds that the slimy slope of a bottomless bog is leading him to
+perdition.  She tottered and clutched at a statue, gazing about her,
+listening to the uproar, and wondering whether she were awake or
+dreaming.
+
+She tried not to see and hear what was going on there; it was revolting,
+loathsome, horrible; but it was too manifest to be overlooked or ignored;
+its vulgarity and horror forced it on her attention.  For some time she
+stood spell-bound, paralyzed; but then she covered her face with her
+hands; maidenly shame, bitter disillusion, and pious indignation at the
+gross desecration of all that she deemed most sacred and inviolable
+surged up in her stricken soul, and she burst into tears, weeping as she
+had never wept in all her life before.  Sobbing bitterly, she wrapped her
+face in her veil, as though to protect herself from storm and chill.
+
+No one heeded her; her companion had left her to seek her father.  She
+could only await his return, and she looked round for a hiding place.
+Then she observed a woman in mourning garb sitting huddled at the foot of
+the statue of justice; she recognized her as the widow of Asclepiodorus
+and breathed more freely as she went up to her and said, between her sobs
+"Let me sit by you; we can mourn together."
+
+"Yes, yes, come," said the other; and without enquiring what Gorgo's
+trouble might be, moved only by the mysterious charm of finding another
+in like sorrow with herself, she drew the girl to her and bending over
+her, at length found relief in tears.
+
+The two weeping women sat in silence, side by side, while in front of
+them the orgy went on its frantic course.  A party of men and women were
+dancing down the hall, singing and shouting.  Flutes yelled, cymbals
+clanged, drums rattled and droned, without either time or tune.  Drunken
+pastophori had flung open the rooms where the vestments and sacred
+vessels were kept, and from these treasuries the ribald mob had dragged
+forth panther-skins such as the priests wore when performing the sacred
+functions, brass cars for carrying sacrifices, wooden biers on which the
+images of the gods were borne in solemn processions, and other precious
+objects.  In a large room adjoining, a party of students and girls were
+concocting some grand scheme for which they needed much time and large
+supplies of wine; but most of those who had possessed themselves of the
+plunder had taken it into the hypostyle and were vying with each other in
+extravagant travesties.
+
+A burly wine-grower was elected to represent Dionysus and was seated with
+nothing but some wreaths of flowers to cover his naked limbs, in a four-
+wheeled sacrificial car of beaten brass.  An alabaster wine-jar stood
+between his fat knees, and his heavy body rolled with laughter as he was
+drawn in triumph through the sacred arcades by a shouting rabble, as fast
+as they could run.  Numbers of the intoxicated crew, mad with excitement
+and wine, had cast off their clothes which lay in heaps between the
+pillars, soaking in puddles of spilt wine.  In their wild dance the
+girls' hair had fallen about their heated faces, tangled with withered
+leaves and faded flowers, and the men, young and old alike, leaped and
+waltzed like possessed creatures, flourishing thyrsus-staves and the
+emblems of the lusty wine-god.
+
+A small band of priests and philosophers ventured into the chaos in the
+hope of quelling the riot, but a tipsy flute-player placed himself in
+front of them and throwing back his head blew a furious blast to heaven
+on his double pipe, shrill enough to wake the dead, while a girl seconded
+him by flinging her tambourine in the face of the intruding pacificators.
+It bounced against the shaft of a column, and then fell on the shaven
+head of a priestling, who seized it and tossed it back.  The game was
+soon taken up, and before long, one tambourine after another was flying
+over the heads of the frenzied crew.  Every one was eager to have one,
+and sprung to catch them, scuffling and struggling and making the
+parchment sound on his neighbor's head.
+
+Some of the women had jumped on to the processional biers and were being
+carried round the hall by staggering youths, screaming with alarm and
+laughter; if one of them lost her balance and fell she was captured with
+shrieks of merriment and forced to mount her insecure eminence again.
+Presently the car of Dionysus came to wreck over the body of an
+unconscious toper, but no one stopped to set it right; and though the
+hapless representative of the god howled loudly to them to stop while he
+extricated himself from the machine, in which he had stuck, it was in
+vain; the score or so of youths who were dragging it tore on, passing
+close by Gorgo, who noted with indignation, that the brasswork of the
+axles was cutting deeply into the splendid mosaic of the pavement.  At
+last the burly god fell out by his sheer weight, and his followers
+restored him to consciousness by taking him by the heels and dipping his
+towzled and bleeding head into a huge jar of wine and water.  Then some
+hundreds of his drunken votaries danced madly round the rescued god; and
+as all the tambourines were split and the flute-players had no breath
+left, time was kept by beating with thyrsus-staves against the pillars,
+while three men, who had found the brazen tubas among the temple vessels,
+blew with all their might and main.
+
+Strong opposition, however, was roused by this mad uproar.  A party of
+worshippers, in the first place, rebelled against it; these had been
+standing with veiled heads, near the statue of Serapis, muttering
+exorcisms after a Magian and howling lamentably at intervals; then a
+preacher, who had succeeded in collecting a little knot of listeners, bid
+the trumpeters cease; and finally, a party of actors and singers, who had
+assembled in the outer hall to perform a satira play, tried to stop them,
+though they themselves were making such a noise that the trumpet-blast
+could have affected them but little.  When the players found that
+remonstrance had no effect they rushed into the hypostyle and tried to
+reduce the musicians to silence by force.
+
+Then a frenzied contest began; but the combatants were soon separated;
+the actors and their antagonists fell on each other's necks, and a
+Homeric poet, who had compiled an elegy for the evening on the "Gods
+coerced by the hosts of the new superstition," made up simply of lines
+culled from the Iliad and Odyssey, seized this favorable opportunity.  He
+had begun to read it at the top of his voice, screaming down the general
+din, when everything was forgotten in the excitement caused by the
+entrance of a procession which was the successful result of many raids on
+the temple-treasuries and lumber-rooms.
+
+A storm of applause greeted its appearance; the tipsiest stammered out
+his approval, and the picture presented to drunken eyes was indeed a
+beautiful and gorgeous one.  On a high platform-intended for the display
+of a small image of Serapis and certain symbols of the god, at great
+festivals--Glycera, the loveliest hetaira of the town, was drawn in
+triumph through the temple.  She reclined in a sort of bowl representing
+a shell, placed at the top of the platform, and on the lower stages sat
+groups of fair girls, swaying gently with luxurious grace, and flinging
+flowers down to the crowd who, with jealous rivalry, strove to catch
+them.  Everyone recognized the beautiful hetaira as Aphrodite, and she
+was hailed, as with one voice, the Queen of the World.  The men rushed
+forward to pour libations in her honor, and to join hands and dance in a
+giddy maze round her car.
+
+"Take her to Serapis!"  shouted a drunken student.  "Marry her to the
+god.  Heavenly Love should be his bride!"
+
+"Yes--take her to Serapis," yelled another.  "It is the wedding of
+Serapis and Glycera."
+
+The crazy rabble pushed the machine towards the curtain, with the
+beautiful, laughing woman on the top, and her bevy of languishing
+attendants.
+
+Until this instant the vivid lightning outside, and the growling of
+distant thunder had not been heeded by the revellers, but now a blinding
+flash lighted up the hall and, at the same instant, a tremendous peal
+crashed and rattled just above them, and shook the desecrated shrine.  A
+sulphurous vapor came rolling in at the openings just below the roof, and
+this first flash was immediately followed by another which seemed to have
+rent the vault of heaven, for it was accompanied by a deafening and
+stunning roar and a terrific rumbling and creaking, as though the metal
+walls of the firmament had burst asunder and fallen in on the earth--on
+Alexandria--on the Serapeum.
+
+The whole awful force of an African tempest came crashing down upon them;
+the wild revel was stilled; the trembling topers dropped their cups,
+fevered checks turned pale, the dancers parted and threw up their hands
+in agonized supplication, words of lust and blasphemy died on their lips
+and turned to prayers and muttered charms.  The terrified nymphs that
+surrounded Venus sprang from the car, and the foam-born goddess in the
+shell tried to free herself from the garlands and gauzes in which she was
+involved, shrieking aloud when she perceived that she could not descend
+unaided from her elevated position.  Other voices mingled with hers--
+lamenting, cursing, and entreating; for now the rainclouds burst, and
+through the window-openings poured a cold flood, chilling and wetting the
+drunken mob within.
+
+The storm raved through the halls and corridors; lightning and thunder
+raged fiercely overhead; and the terrified wretches, suddenly sobered,
+rushed about or huddled together, like ants whose nest has been upturned.
+And into the midst of this dismayed throng rushed Orpheus, the son of
+Karnis, who had been till now on guard on the roof, crying out: "The
+world is coming to an end, the heavens are opening!  Father--where is my
+father?"
+
+And everyone believed him; they snatched off their garlands, tore their
+hair and gave themselves up to the utmost despair.  Wailing, sobbing,
+howling-furious, but impotent, they appealed to each other; and though
+they had no hope of living to see another morning, or perhaps another
+hour, each one thought only of himself, of his garments, and of how he
+might best cover his limbs that shivered with terror and cold.  From the
+Scuffling mob round the heaps of cast-off clothes came deep groans,
+piteous weeping, the shrieks of women, and the despairing moans of the
+panic-stricken wretches.
+
+It was a fearful scene, at once heart-rending and revolting; Gorgo looked
+on, gnashing her teeth with rage and disgust, and only wishing for the
+end of the world and of her own life as a respite from it all.  These
+crazed and miserable wretches, cowardly fools, these beasts in the guise
+of human beings, deserved no better than to perish; but was it
+conceivable that the supreme being should destroy the whole of the
+beautiful and wisely-planned world for the sake of this base and
+loathsome rabble.
+
+It thundered, it lightened, the foundations of the temple shook--but she
+no longer looked for the final crash; she had ceased to believe in the
+majesty, the power and the purity of the divinity behind the veil.  Her
+cheeks burnt with shame, she felt it a disgrace ever to have been
+numbered among his adherents; and, as the howling of the terrified crowd
+grew every moment louder and wilder, the memory of Constantine's grave
+and fearless manliness rose before her, in all its strength and beauty.
+She was his, his wholly and forever; and for the future all that was his
+should be hers: his love, his home, his noble purpose--and his God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+The doubtful light of dawn was beginning to break through the storm-
+clouds as they exhausted their fury on the Serapeum, but the terrified
+heathen did not notice it.  No captain, no prophet, no comforter had come
+to revive their courage and hopes; for Olympius and his guests, the
+leaders of the intellectual life of Alexandria--and among them the chief
+priests of the sanctuary--were tardy in making their appearance.
+
+The lightning-flash which had fallen on the brassplated cupola, and then
+discharged its force along a flagstaff, had alarmed even the sages and
+philosophers; and the Symposium had come to an abrupt end but little more
+dignified than the orgy in the temple-halls.  Few, to be sure, of the
+high-priest's friends had allowed themselves to be so far scared as to
+betray their terrors frankly; on the contrary, when the crack of doom
+really seemed to have sounded, rhetoric and argument grew even more eager
+than before round Olympius' table; and Gorgo's opinion of her fellow-
+heathen might not have been much raised if she could have heard
+Helladius, the famous philologist and biographer, reciting verses from
+"Prometheus bound," his knees quaking and lips quivering as he heard the
+thunder; or seen Ammonius, another grammarian who had written a
+celebrated work on "The Differences of Synonyms," rending his robe and
+presenting his bared breast as a target to the lightning, with a glance
+round at the company to challenge their admiration.  His heroic display
+was, unfortunately, observed by few; for most of them, including
+Eunapius, a neo-platonic philosopher distinguished as a historian and an
+implacable foe of the Christians, had wrapped their heads in their robes
+and were awaiting the end in sullen resignation.  Some had dropped on
+their knees and were praying with uplifted hands, or murmuring
+incantations; and a poet, who had been crowned for a poem entitled:
+"Man the Lord and Master of the Gods," had fainted with fear, and his
+laurel-wreath had fallen into a dish of oysters.
+
+Olympius had risen from his place as Symposiarch and was leaning against
+a door-post awaiting death with manly composure.  Father Karnis, who had
+made rather too free with the wine-cup, but had been completely sobered
+by the sudden fury of the storm, had sprung up and hastened past the
+high-priest to seek his wife and son; he knew they could not be far off,
+and desired to perish with them.
+
+Porphyrius and his next neighbor, Apuleius, the great physician, were
+among those who had covered their faces.  Porphyrius could look forward
+more calmly than many to the approaching crisis; for, as a cautious man
+and far-seeing merchant, he had made provision for every contingency.
+If, in spite of a Christian victory, the world should still roll on, and
+if the law which declared invalid the will of an apostate should be
+enforced against him, a princely fortune, out of the reach of Church or
+State, lay safe in the hands of a wealthy and trustworthy friend for his
+daughter's use; if, on the other hand, heaven and earth met in a common
+doom, he had by him an infallible remedy against a lingering and
+agonizing death.
+
+The whole party had sat during some long and anxious minutes, listening
+to the appalling thunder-claps, when Orpheus rushed into the banqueting-
+room, with the same frenzied and terror-stricken haste as before, among
+the revellers, crying: "It is the end-all is over!  The world is falling
+asunder!  Fire is come down from heaven!  The earth is in flames already
+--I saw it with my own eyes!  I have come down from the roof. . . .
+
+"Father!  Where is my father?"
+
+At this news the company started up in fresh alarm, Pappus, the
+mathematician, cried out: "The conflagration has begun!  Flame and fire
+are falling from the skies!"
+
+"Lost-lost!"  wailed Eunapius; while Porphyrius hastily felt in the folds
+of his purple garment, took out a small crystal phial and went, pale but
+calm, up to the high-priest.  He laid his hand on the arm of the friend
+whom he had looked up to all his life with affectionate admiration, and
+said with an expression of tender regret:
+
+"Farewell.  We have often disputed over the death of Cato--you
+disapproving and I approving it.  Now I follow his example.  Look--there
+is enough for us both."
+
+He hastily put the phial to his mouth, and part of the liquid had passed
+his lips before Olympius understood the situation and seized his arm.
+The effect of the deadly fluid was instantly manifest; but Porphyrius had
+hardly lost consciousness when Apuleius had rushed to his side.  The
+physician had succumbed to the universal panic and resigned himself
+doggedly to Fate; but as soon as an appeal was made to his medical skill
+and he heard a cry for help, he had thrown off the wrapper from his head
+and hastened to the merchant's side to combat the effects of the poison,
+as clear-headed and decisive as in his best hours by the bed of sickness
+or in the lecture-room.
+
+When the very backbone of the soul seems to be broken, a sense of duty is
+the one and last thing that holds it together and keeps it upright; and
+nature has implanted in us such a strong and instinctive regard for life
+--which we are so apt to contemn--that even within a few paces of the
+grave we cherish and foster it as carefully as in its prime, when the end
+seems still remote.
+
+The merchant's desperate deed had been done under the very eyes of
+Orpheus, and the newer horror so completely overshadowed the older, that
+he hastened unbidden to help the physician lay the unconscious man on the
+nearest couch; but then he went off again in search of his parents.
+Olympius, however, who at the sight of his friend's weakness had suddenly
+comprehended how much depended, in these last hours, on his own resolute
+demeanor, detained the youth, and sternly desired him to give an exact
+and clear account of what had happened on the roof.  The young musician
+obeyed; and his report was certainly far from reassuring.
+
+A ball of fire had fallen with a terrific noise on the cupola, mingling
+with flames that seemed to rise like streams of fire from the earth.
+Then, again the heavens had opened with a blinding flash and Orpheus had
+seen--with his own eyes seen--a gigantic monster--an uprooted mountain
+perhaps--which had slowly moved towards the back-wall of the Serapeum
+with an appalling clatter; and not rain, but rivers, rushing torrents of
+water, had poured down on the men on guard.
+
+"It is Poseidon," cried the lad, "bringing up the ocean against the
+temple, and I heard the neighing of his horses.  It was not an illusion,
+I heard it with my own ears...."
+
+"The horses of Poseidon!"  interrupted Olympius.  "The horses of the
+Imperial cavalry were what you heard!"
+
+He ran to the window with the activity of a younger man and, lifting the
+curtain, looked out to the eastward.  The storm had vanished as rapidly
+as it had come up and it was day.  Over the rosy skirts of Eos hung a
+full and heavy robe of swelling grey and black clouds, edged with a
+fringe of sheeny gold.  To the north a sullen flash now and then
+zigzagged across the dark sky, and the roll of the thunder was faint
+and distant; but the horses whose neighing had affrighted Orpheus were
+already near; they were standing close to the southern or back-wall of
+the temple, in which there was no gate or entrance of any kind.  What
+object could the Imperial cavalry have in placing themselves by that
+strong and impenetrable spot?
+
+But there was no time for much consideration, for at this instant the
+gong, which was sounded to call the defenders of the Serapeum together,
+rang through the precincts.
+
+Olympius needed no spur or encouragement.  He turned to his guests with
+the passion and fire of a fanatical leader, of the champion of a great
+but imperilled cause, and bid them be men and stand by him to resist the
+foe till death.  His voice was husky with excitement as he spoke his
+brief but vehement call to arms, and the effect was immense, precisely
+because the speaker, carried away by the tide of feeling, had not tried
+to impress the learned and eloquent men whom he addressed by any tricks
+of elocution or choice of words.  They, too, were fired by the spark of
+the old man's enthusiasm; they gathered round him, and followed him at
+once to the rooms where the weapons had been deposited for use.
+
+Breastplates girt on to their bodies, and swords wielded in their hands
+made soldiers of the sages at once, and inspired them with martial ardor.
+Little was spoken among these heroes of "the mighty word."  They were
+bent on action.  Olympius Had desired Apuleius to go into his private
+room adjoining the hypostyle with Porphyrius, on whose senseless and
+rigid state no treatment had as yet had any effect.  Some of the temple-
+servants carried the merchant down a back staircase, while Olympius
+hastily and silently led his comrades in arms up the main steps into the
+great halls of the temple.
+
+Here the chivalrous host were doomed to surprise and disappointment
+greater than the most hopeless of them was prepared to meet.  Olympius
+himself for a moment despaired; for his ecstatic adherents had during the
+night turned to poltroons and tipplers, and the sacred precincts of the
+sanctuary looked as if a battle had been fought and lost there.  Broken
+and bruised furniture, smashed instruments, garments torn and wet,
+draggled wreaths, and faded flowers were strewn in every direction.  The
+red wine lay in pools like blood on the scarred beauties of the inlaid
+pavement; here and there, at the foot of a column, lay an inert body--
+whether dead or merely senseless who could guess?--and the sickening reek
+of hundreds of dying lamps filled the air, for in the confusion they had
+been left to burn or die as they might.
+
+And how wretched was the aspect of the sobered, terror-stricken, worn-out
+men and women.  An obscure consciousness of having insulted the god and
+incurred his wrath lurked in every soul.  To many a one prompt death
+would have seemed most welcome, and one man--a promising pupil of
+Helladius, had actually taken the leap from existence into the non-
+existence which, as he believed, he should find beyond the grave; he had
+run his had violently against a pillar, and lay at the foot of it with a
+broken skull.
+
+With reeling brains, aching brows, and dejected hearts, the unhappy
+creatures had got so far as to curse the present; and those who dared to
+contemplate the future thought of it only as a bottomless abyss, towards
+which the flying hours were dragging them with unfelt but irresistible
+force.  Time was passing--each could feel and see that; night was gone,
+it would soon be day; the storm had passed over, but instead of the
+inexorable powers of nature a new terror now hung over them: the no less
+inexorable power of Caesar.  To the struggle of man against the gods
+there was but one possible end: Annihilation.  In the conflict of man
+against man there might yet be, if not victory, at least escape.  The
+veteran Memnon, with his one arm, had kept watch on the temple-roof
+during that night's orgy, planning measures for repulsing the enemy's
+attack, till the storm had burst on him and his adherents with the
+"artillery of heaven."  Then the greater portion of the garrison had
+taken refuge in the lower galleries of the Serapeum, and the old general
+was left alone at his post, in the blinding and deafening tempest.  He
+threw his remaining arm round a statue that graced the parapet of the
+roof to save himself from being swept or washed away; and he would still
+have shouted his orders, but that the hurricane drowned his voice, and
+none of his few remaining adherents could have heard him speak.  He, too,
+had heard the champing of horses and had seen the moving mountain which
+Orpheus had described.  It was in fact a Roman engine of war; and,
+faithful though he was to the cause he had undertaken, something like a
+feeling of joy stirred his warrior's soul, as he looked down on the fine
+and well-drilled men who followed the Imperial standards under which he
+had, ere now, shed his best blood.  His old comrades in arms had not
+forgotten how to defy the tempest, and their captains had been well
+advised in preparing to attack first what seemed the securest side of the
+temple.  The struggle, he foresaw, would be against tried soldiers, and
+it was with a deep curse and a smile of bitter scorn that he thought of
+the inexperienced novices under his command.  It was only yesterday that
+he had tried to moderate Olympius' sanguine dreams, and had said to him:
+"It is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe!"
+
+The skill and experience he had to contend with were in no respect
+inferior to his own; and he would know, only too soon, what the practical
+worth might be of the daring and enthusiastic youths whom he had
+undertaken to command, and of whom he still had secret hopes for the
+best.
+
+The one thing to do was to prevent the Christians from effecting the
+breach which they evidently intended to make in the back-wall, before the
+Libyan army of relief should arrive; and, at the same time, to defend the
+front of the temple from the roof.  There was a use for every one who
+could heave a stone or flourish a sword; and when he thought over the
+number of his troops he believed he might succeed in holding the building
+for some considerable time.  But he was counting on false premises, for
+he did not know how attractive the races had proved to his "enthusiastic
+youth" and how great a change had come over most of them.
+
+As soon as the wind had so far subsided that he could stand alone, he
+went to collect those that still remained, and to have the brass gong
+sounded which was to summon the combatants to their posts.  Its metallic
+clang rang loud and far through the dim dawn; a deaf man might have heard
+it in the deepest recess of the sanctuary--and yet the minutes slipped
+by--a quarter of an hour--and no one had come at its call.  The old
+captain's impatience turned to surprise, his surprise became wrath.  The
+messengers he sent down did not return and the great moving shed of the
+Romans was brought nearer and nearer to the southern side of the temple,
+screening the miners from the rare missiles which the few men remaining
+with him cast clown by his orders.
+
+The enemy were evidently making a suitable foundation on which to place
+the storming engine--a beam with a ram's head of iron-to make a breach in
+the temple-wall.  Every minute's delay on the part of the besieged was an
+advantage to the enemy.  A hundred-two hundred more hands on the roof,
+and their tactics might yet be defeated.
+
+Tears of rage, of the bitter sense of impotence, started to the old
+soldier's eyes; and when, at length, one of his messengers came back and
+told him that the men and women alike seemed quite demented, and all and
+each refused to come up on the roof, he uttered a wrathful curse and
+rushed down-stairs himself.
+
+He stormed in on the trembling wretches; and when he beheld with his own
+eyes all that his volunteers had done dining that fateful night, he raved
+and thundered; asked them, rather confusedly perhaps, if they knew what
+it was to be expected to command and find no obedience; scolded the
+refractory, driving some on in front of him; and then, as he perceived
+that some of them were making off with the girls through the door leading
+to the secret passage, he placed himself on guard with his sword drawn,
+and threatened to cut down any who attempted to escape.
+
+In the midst of all this Olympius and his party had come into the ball
+and seeing the commander struggling, sword in hand, with the recalcitrant
+fugitives, where the noise was loudest, he and his guests hastened to the
+rescue and defended the door against the hundreds who were crowding to
+fly.  The old man was grieved to turn the weapons they had seized in
+their sacred ardor, against the seceders from their own cause; but it had
+to be.  While the loyal party--among them Karnis and Orpheus--guarded the
+passage to the underground rooms with shield and lance, Olympius took
+council of the veteran captain, and they rapidly decided to allow all the
+women to depart at once and to divide the men into two parties-one to be
+sent to fight on the roof, and the other to defend the wall where the
+Roman battering-ram was by this time almost ready to attack.
+
+The high-priest took his stand boldly between his adherents and the
+would-be runaways and appealed to them in loud and emphatic tones to do
+their duty.  They listened to him silently and respectfully; but when he
+ended by stating that the women were commanded to withdraw, a terrific
+outcry was raised, some of the girls clung to their lovers, while others
+urged the men to fight their way out.
+
+Several, however, and among them the fair Glycera who a few hours since
+had smiled down triumphantly on her worshippers as Aphrodite, availed
+themselves at once of the permission to quit this scene of horrors, and
+made their way without delay to the subterranean passages.  They had
+adorers in plenty in the city.  But they did not get far; they were met
+by a temple-servant flying towards the great hall, who warned them to
+return thither at once: the Imperial soldiers had discovered the entrance
+to the aqueduct and posted sentries in the timber-yard.  They turned and
+followed him with loud lamentations, and hardly had they got back into
+the temple when a new terror came upon them: the iron battering-ram came
+with a first heavy shock, thundering against the southern wall.
+
+The Imperial troops were in fact masters of the secret passage; and they
+had begun the attack on the Serapeum in earnest.  It was serious--but all
+was not yet lost; and in this fateful hour Olympius and Memnon proved
+their mettle.  The high-priest commanded that the great stone trap-doors
+should be dropped into their places, and that the bridges across the
+gulfs, in the underground rooms reserved for the initiated, should be
+destroyed; and this there was yet time to do, for the soldiers had not
+yet ventured into those mysterious corridors, where there could not fail
+to be traps and men in ambush.  Memnon meanwhile had hurried to the spot
+where the battering-ram had by this time dealt a second blow, shouting as
+he went to every man who was not a coward to follow him.
+
+Karnis, Orpheus and the rest of the high-priest's guests obeyed his call
+and gathered round him; he commanded that everything portable should be
+brought out of the temple to be built into a barricade behind the point
+of attack, and that neither the most precious and beautiful statues, nor
+the brass and marble stelae and altar-slabs should be spared.  Screened
+by this barricade, and armed with lances and bows--of which there were
+plenty at hand--he proposed, when the breach was made, to check the
+further advance of the foe.
+
+He was not ill-pleased that the only way of escape was cut off; and as
+soon as he had seen the statues dragged from their pedestals, the altar-
+stones removed from the sacred places they had filled for half a century,
+benches and jars piled together and a stone barricade thus fairly
+advanced towards completion, he drafted off a small force for the
+defences on the roof.  There was no escape now; and many a one who, to
+the very last, had hoped to find himself free, mounted the stairs
+reluctantly, because he would there be more immediately in the face of
+the foe than when defending the breach.
+
+Olympius distributed weapons, and went from one to another, speaking
+words of encouragement; presently he found Gorgo who, with the bereaved
+widow, was still sitting at the foot of the statue of justice.  He told
+her that her father was ill, and desired a servant to show her the way to
+his private room, that she might help the leech in attending on him.
+Berenice could not be induced to stir; she longed only for the end and
+was persuaded that it could not be far off.  She listened eagerly to the
+blows of the battering-engine; each one sounded to her like a shock to
+the very structure of the universe.  Another--and another--and at last
+the ancient masonry must give way and the grave that had already opened
+for her husband and her son would yawn to swallow her up with her
+sorrows.  She shuddered and drew her hood over her face to screen it from
+the sun which now began to shine in.  Its light was a grievance to her;
+she had hoped never to see another day.
+
+The women, and with them a few helpless weaklings, had withdrawn to the
+rotunda, and before long they were laughing as saucily as ever.
+
+From the roof blocks of stone and broken statues were hailing down on the
+besiegers, and in the halls below, the toiler who paused to wipe the
+sweat from his brow would brook no idleness in his comrade; the most
+recalcitrant were forced to bestir themselves, and the barricade inside
+the southern wall soon rose to a goodly height.  No rampart was ever
+built of nobler materials; each stone was a work of art and had been
+reverenced for centuries as something sacred, or bore in an elegant
+inscription the memorial of noble deeds.  This wall was to protect the
+highest of the gods, and among the detachment told off to defend it, were
+Karnis, his son, and his wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Gorgo sat by the bed of her apparently lifeless father, gazing fondly at
+the worn and wax-like features, and listening to his breathing, now soft
+and easy and again painful and convulsive, as it fluttered through his
+nostrils.  She held his cold damp hand tightly clasped, or stroked it
+gently, or now and then, when his closed eyelids quivered, raised it
+tenderly to her lips.
+
+The room in which they were lay on one side of the hypostyle and behind
+the right-hand--or western--colonnade; more forward, therefore, than the
+veiled statue and to its left hand.  The noise of the toilers at the
+barricade and the crash of the blows of the battering-ram came up from
+just below, and at each thud of the engine the senseless man started
+convulsively and a look of intense pain crossed his face.  But, though it
+was indeed grievous to Gorgo to see her father suffering, though she told
+herself again and again that, ere long, the sanctuary must fall into the
+hands of the Christians, she felt safe, thankful and sheltered up here,
+in her old friend's half-lighted and barely-furnished room, shut off, at
+any rate, from the frenzied wretches of whom she thought only with
+loathing and fear.
+
+She was wearied out with her night of unrest, but the agitation and
+excitement she had gone through were still vividly present to her mind,
+and even on the comfortable couch in her own snug room at home her
+perturbed spirit would have prevented her sleeping.  Her brain was still
+in a ferment, and here, in comparative peace, she had time to think over
+all she had gone through during the last few hours, and the catastrophes
+that had befallen her grandmother and her father.  She had exchanged but
+few words with the physician, who was still unceasingly busy in trying to
+restore his patient to consciousness, and who had assured her that he had
+every hope of her father's recovery.
+
+But at length the girl looked up with an eager gaze and said, sadly
+enough: "You said something about an antidote to poison, Apuleius?  Then
+my father tried to escape the final destruction by attempting to kill
+himself.--Is it so?"
+
+The leech looked at her keenly, and after confirming her suspicion and
+explaining to her exactly how the fateful deed had been accomplished, he
+went on:
+
+"The storm had completely unnerved him--it unmanned us all--and yet that
+was only the prelude to the tremendous doom which is hanging over the
+universe.  It is at hand; we can hear its approach;  the stones are
+yielding! the Christian's engines are opening the way for it to enter!"
+
+Apuleius spoke in a tone of sinister foreboding, and the falling stones
+dislodged by the battering-ram thundered a solemn accompaniment to his
+prophecy.  Gorgo, turned pale; but it was not the physician's ominous
+speech that alarmed her, but the quaking of the walls of the room.
+Still, the Serapeum was built for eternity; the ram might bring down a
+wall, but it could not destroy or even shake the building itself.
+
+Outside, the hubbub of fighting men grew louder and louder every minute,
+and Apuleius, increasingly anxious, went to the door to listen.  Gorgo
+could see that his hands trembled!  he--a man--was frightened, while she
+felt no anxiety but for her suffering father!  Through that breach
+Constantine would enter--and where he commanded she was safe.  As to the
+destruction of the universe--she no longer believed in it.  When the
+physician turned round and saw her calmly and quietly wiping the cold
+drops from the sick man's brow, he said gloomily: "Of what use is it to
+shut our eyes like the ostrich.  They are fighting down there for life or
+death--we had better prepare for the end.  If they venture--and they
+will--to lay a sacrilegious hand on the god, besiegers and besieged
+alike--the whole world together, must perish."
+
+But Gorgo shook her head.  "No, no," she cried, with zealous confidence.
+"No, Apuleius, Serapis is not what you believe him to be; for, if he
+were, would he suffer his enemies to overthrow his temple and his image?
+Why does he not, at this supreme moment, inspire his worshippers with
+courage?  I have seen the men--mere boys--and the women who have
+assembled here to fight for him.  They are nothing but drivellers and
+triflers.  If the master is like his men it serves him right if he is
+overthrown; to weep for him would be waste of woe!"
+
+"And can the daughter of Porphyrius say this?"  exclaimed the leech.
+
+"Yes, Apuleius, yes.  After what I have seen, and heard, and endured this
+night, I cannot speak otherwise.  It was shameful, horrible, sickening;
+I could rage at the mere thought of being supposed to be one of that
+debased crew.  It is disgrace and ignominy even to be named in the same
+breath!  A god who is served as this god has been is no god of mine!  And
+you--you are learned--a sage and a philosopher--how can you believe that
+the God of the Christians when he has conquered and crippled yours, will
+ever permit Serapis to destroy His world and the men He created?"
+
+Apuleius drew himself up.  "Are you then a Christian?"  he asked swiftly
+and sternly.
+
+But Gorgo could not reply; she colored deeply and Apuleius vehemently
+repeated his question: "Then you really are a Christian?"
+
+She looked frankly in his face: "No," she said, "I am not; but I wish I
+were."
+
+The physician turned away with a shrug; but Gorgo drew a breath of
+relief, feeling that her avowal had lifted a heavy burthen from her soul.
+She hardly knew how the bold and momentous confession had got itself
+spoken, but she felt that it was the only veracious answer to the
+physician's question.
+
+They spoke no more; she was better pleased to remain silent, for her own
+utterance had opened out to her a new land of promise--of feeling and of
+thought.
+
+Her lover henceforth was no longer her enemy; and as the tumult of the
+struggle by the breach fell on her ear, she could think with joy of his
+victorious arms.  She felt that this was the purer, the nobler, the
+better cause; and she rejoiced in the love of which he had spoken as the
+support and the stay of their future life together--as sheltering them
+like a tower of strength and a mighty refuge.  Compared with that love
+all that she had hitherto held dear or indispensable as gracing life, now
+seemed vain and worthless; and as she looked at her father's still face,
+and remembered how he had lived and what he had suffered, she applied
+those words of Paul which Constantine had spoken at their meeting after
+his return, to him, too; and her heart overflowed with affection towards
+her hapless parent.  She knew full well the meaning of the deep lines
+that marked his lips and brow; for Porphyrius had never made any secret
+of his distress and vexation whenever he found himself compelled to
+confess a creed in which he did not honestly believe.  This great
+falsehood and constant duplicity, this divided allegiance to two masters,
+had poisoned the existence of a man by nature truthful; and Gorgo knew
+for whose sake and for what reasons he had subjected himself to this
+moral martyrdom.  It was a lesson to her to see him lying there, and his
+look of anguish warned her to become, heart and soul, a Christian as she
+felt prompted.  She would confess Christ for love's sake-aye, for love's
+sake; for in this hour the thing she saw most clearly in the faith which
+she purposed to adopt, and of which Constantine had so often spoken to
+her with affectionate enthusiasm, was Everlasting Love.
+
+Never in her life had she felt so much at peace, so open to all that was
+good and beautiful; and yet, outside, the strife grew louder and more
+furious; the Imperial tuba sounded above the battle-cry of the heathen,
+and the uproar of the struggle came nearer and nearer.
+
+The battering-ram had made a large breach in the southern wall, and,
+protected by their shed, the heavy-armed infantry of the twenty-second
+legion had forced their way up; but many a veteran had paid for his
+rashness with his life, for the storming party had been met by a perfect
+shower of arrows and javelins.  Still, the great shield had turned many a
+spear, and many an arrow had glanced harmless from the brazen armor and
+helmets; the men that had escaped pressed onwards, while fresh ranks of
+soldiers made their way in, over the bodies of the fallen.  The well-
+drilled foe came creeping up to the barricade on their knees, and
+protected by bronze bucklers, while others, in the rear, flung lances and
+arrows over their heads at the besieged.  A few of the heathen fell, and
+the sight of their blood had a wonderful effect on their comrades.  Rage
+surged up in the breasts of the most timid, and fear vanished before the
+passion for revenge; cowardice turned to martial ardor, and philosophers
+and artists thirsted for blood.  The red glare of strife danced before
+the eyes of the veriest book-worm; fired by the terrible impulse to kill,
+to subdue, to destroy the foe, they fought desperately and blindly,
+staking their lives on the issue.
+
+Karnis, that zealous votary of the Muses, stood with Orpheus, on the very
+top of the barricade throwing lance after lance, while he sang at the top
+of his voice snatches of the verses of Tyrtaeus, in the teeth, as it
+were, of the foe who were crowding through the breach; the sweat streamed
+from his bald head and his eye flashed fire.  By his side stood his son,
+sending swift arrows from an enormous bow.  The heavy curls of his hair
+had come unbound and fell over his flushed face.  When he hit one of the
+Imperial soldiers his father applauded him eagerly; then, collecting all
+his strength, flung another lance, chanting a hexameter or a verse of an
+ode.  Herse crouched half hidden behind a sacrificial stone which lay at
+the top of the hastily-constructed rampart, and handed weapons to the
+combatants as they needed them.  Her dress was torn and blood-stained,
+her grey hair had come loose from the ribbands and crescent that should
+have confined it; the worthy matron had become a Megaera and shrieked to
+the men: "Kill the dogs!  Stand steady!  Spare never a Christian!"
+
+But the little garrison needed no incitement; the fevered zeal which
+possessed them wholly, seconded their thirst for blood and doubled their
+strength.
+
+An arrow, shot by Orpheus, had just glanced over the breastplate and into
+the throat of a centurion who had already set foot on the lowest step,
+when Karnis suddenly dropped the spear he was preparing to fling and fell
+without a cry.  A Roman lance had hit him, and he lay transfixed by the
+side of a living purple fount, like a rock in the surf from which a
+sapling has sprung.  Orpheus saw his father's life-blood flowing and fell
+on his knees by his side; but the old man pointed to the bow that his son
+had cast aside and murmured eagerly: "Leave me--let me be.  What does it
+matter about me?  Fight--for the gods--I say.  For the gods!  Go on, aim
+truly!"
+
+But the lad would not leave the dying man, and seeing how deeply the
+spear had struck to the old man's heart he groaned aloud, throwing up his
+arms in despair.  Then an arrow hit his shoulder, another pierced his
+neck, and he, too, fell gasping for breath.  Karnis saw him drop, and
+painfully raised himself a little to help him; but it was too much for
+him; he could only clench his fist in helpless fury and chant, half-
+singing, half-speaking, as loud he was able, Electra's curse:
+
+         "This my last prayer, ye gods, do not disdain!
+          For them turn day to night and joy to pain!"
+
+But the heavy infantry, who by this time were crowding through the
+breach, neither heard nor heeded his curse.  He lost consciousness and
+did not recover it till Herse, after lifting up her son and propping him
+against a plinth, pressed a cloth against the stump of the lance still
+remaining in the wound to staunch the swiftly flowing blood, and
+sprinkled his brow with wine.  He felt her warm tears on his face, and as
+he looked up into her kind, faithful eyes, brimming over with tears of
+sympathy and regret, his heart melted to tenderness.  All the happiest
+hours of the life they had spent together crowded on his memory; he
+answered her glance with a loving and grateful gaze and painfully held
+out his hand.  Herse pressed it to her lips, weeping bitterly; but he
+smiled up at her, nodding his head and repeating again and again the line
+from Lucian: "Be comforted: you, too, must soon follow."
+
+"Yes, yes--I shall follow soon," she repeated with sobs.  "Without you,
+without either of you, without the gods--what would become of me here."
+
+And she turned to her son who, fully conscious, had followed every word
+and every gesture of his parents and tried himself to say something.  But
+the arrow in his neck choked his breath, and it was such agony to speak
+that he could only say hoarsely: "Father mother!"  But these poor words
+were full of deep love and gratitude, and Karnis and Herse understood all
+he longed to express.
+
+Tears choked the poor woman's utterance so that neither of the three
+could say another word, but they were at any rate close together, and
+could look lovingly in each other's eyes.  Thus passed some few minutes
+of peace for them, in spite of the blare of trumpets, and shrieks and
+butchery; but Herse's kerchief was dyed and soaked with her husband's
+blood, and the old man's eyes were glazed and staring as they wandered
+feebly on the scene, as though to get a last general picture of the world
+in which they had always sought to see only what was fair.  Suddenly they
+remained fixed on the face of a statue of Apollo, which had been flung on
+to the barricade; and the longer they dwelt on the beautiful countenance
+of the god the more they sparkled with a clear transfigured gleam.  Once
+more, with a final effort, he raised his heavy hand and pointed to the
+sun-crowned head of the immortal youth while he softly murmured:
+
+"He--he--all that was fair in existence--Orpheus, Herse--we owe it all to
+him.  He dies with us.--They--the enemy--in conquering us conquer thee!
+They dream of a Paradise beyond death; but where thou reignest, O
+Phoebus, there is bliss even on earth!  They boast that they love death
+and hate life; and when they are the victors they will destroy lute and
+pipe, nay, if they could, would exterminate beauty and extinguish the
+sun.  This beautiful happy world they would have dark, gloomy,
+melancholy, hideous; thy kingdom, great Phoebus, is sunny, joyful and
+bright...!"  Here his strength failed him; but presently he rallied once
+more and went on, with eager eyes: "We crave for light, for music, lutes
+and pipes--for perfumed flowers on careless brows--we--hold me up Herse--
+and thou, heal me, O Phoebus Apollo!--Hail, all hail!  I thank thee--thou
+hast accepted much from me and hast given me all!  Come, thou joy of my
+soul!  Come in thy glorious chariot, attended by Muses and Hours!  See,
+Orpheus, Herse--do you see Him coming?"
+
+He pointed with a confident gesture to the distance; and his anxious eyes
+followed the indication of his hand; he raised himself a little by a last
+supreme effort; but instantly fell back; his head sank on the bosom of
+his faithful partner and a stream of blood flowed from his quivering
+lips.  The votary of the Muses was dead; and a few minutes after Orpheus,
+too, fell senseless.
+
+War-cries and trumpet-calls rang and echoed through the Serapeum.  The
+battle was now a hand-to-hand fight; the besiegers had surmounted the
+barricade and stood face to face with the heathen.  Herse saw them
+coming; she snatched the dart from her husband's wound, and fired by
+hatred and a wild thirst for vengeance, she rushed upon the besiegers
+with frantic and helpless fury, cursing them loudly.  She met the death
+she craved; a javelin struck her and she fell close to her husband and
+son.  Her death struggle was a short one; she had only time and strength
+to extend a hand to lay on each before she herself was a corpse.
+
+The battle raged round the heap of dead; the Imperial troops drove the
+garrison backwards into the temple-halls, and the plan of attack which
+had been agreed upon at a council of war held in the palace of the Comes,
+was carried out, point by point, with cool courage and irresistible
+force.  A few maniples pursued the fugitives into the main entrance hall,
+helped them to force the gates open, and then drove them down the slope
+and steps, over the stones that had been heaped up for protection, and
+into the very arms of the division placed in front of the temple.  These
+at once surrounded them and took them prisoners, as the hunter traps the
+game that rushes down upon him when driven by the dogs and beaters.
+Foremost to fly were the women from the rotunda, who were welcomed with
+acclamations by the soldiers.
+
+But those who now tried to defend themselves found no quarter.  Berenice
+had picked up a sword that was lying on the ground and had opened a vein
+with the point of it; her body, bathed in blood, was found at the foot of
+the statue of justice.
+
+No sooner had the Christians mastered the barricade than a few maniples
+had been sent up to the roof, and the defenders had been compelled to
+surrender or to throw themselves from the parapet.  Old Memnon, who had
+been fighting against his Imperial master and could hope for no mercy,
+sprang at once into the gulf below, and others followed his example; for
+the end of all things was now close at hand, and to the nobler souls to
+die voluntarily in battle for great Serapis seemed finer and worthier
+than to languish in the enemy's chains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The terrific storm of the preceding night had thrown the whole city into
+dismay.  Everyone knew the danger that threatened Serapis, and what must
+ensue if he were overthrown; and everyone had thought that the end of the
+world had indeed come.  But the tempest died away; the sun's bright glow
+dispersed the clouds and mist; sea and sky smiled radiantly blue, and the
+trees and herbage glistened in revived freshness.
+
+Not yet had the Romans dared to lay hands on the chief of the gods,
+the patron and protector of the city.  Serapis had perhaps sent the
+lightning, thunder and rain as a message to warn his foes.  If only
+they might abstain from the last, worst crime of desecrating his image!
+
+Nor was this the hope of the heathen only; on the contrary: Jews and
+Christians no less dreaded the fall of the god and of his temple.  He was
+the pride, the monumental glory of the city of Alexander; the centre of
+foundations and schools which benefited thousands.  The learning which
+was the boast of Alexandria dwelt under his protection; to the Serapeum
+was attached a medical Faculty which enjoyed the reputation of being the
+first in the world; from its observatory the course of the year was
+forecast and the calendar was promulgated.  An hour's slumber in its
+halls brought prophetic dreams, and the future must remain undivined if
+Serapis were to fall, for the god revealed it to his priests, not merely
+by the courses and positions of the stars, but by many other signs; and
+it was a delight and a privilege to look forward from the certain,
+tangible present to the mysteries of the morrow.
+
+Even Christian seers answered the questionings of their followers in a
+way which portended the worst, and it was a grief to many of the baptized
+to think of their native city without Serapis and the Serapeum, just as
+we cannot bear to cut down a tree planted by the hand of an ancestor,
+even though it may darken our home.  The temple ought to be closed,
+bloody sacrifices to the god should be prohibited--but his image--the
+noblest work of Bryaxis--to mutilate, or even to touch that would be a
+rash, a fateful deed, treason to the city and an outrage on the world.
+
+Thus thought the citizens; thus, too, thought the soldiers, who were
+required by military discipline to draw the sword against the god in whom
+many of them believed.
+
+As the news spread that the troops were to attack the Serapeum early next
+morning, thousands of spectators collected, and filled the temple itself
+in breathless anxiety to watch the issue of the struggle.
+
+The sky was as clear and blue as on any other fine day; but over the sea
+to the north lay a light stratum of clouds--the harbingers perhaps of the
+appalling blackness which the god would presently bring up against his
+enemies.
+
+The men who had defended the Serapeum were led away; it had been
+determined in a council of war that they should be treated with clemency,
+and Cynegius had proclaimed free and full pardon to every prisoner who
+would swear never, for the future, to sacrifice to the god or worship in
+his temple.
+
+Not one of the hundreds who had fallen into the hands of the Romans had
+refused to take the oath; they dispersed at once, though with suppressed
+fury, many of them joining the crowd who stood waiting and watching for
+the next step to be taken by the Romans--for the final crash of the
+universe, perhaps.
+
+The doors of the temple were thrown wide open; the temple-servants and
+hundreds of soldiers were busied in clearing the steps and approaches of
+the stones and fragments of statuary with which the heathen had
+encumbered them.  As soon as this task was finished the dead and wounded
+were removed; among those who still breathed was Orpheus, the son of
+Karnis.  Those who had been so happy as to escape in the defence of the
+sanctuary and had mingled with the crowd were besieged with questions,
+and all agreed that the statue of the god was as yet inviolate.
+
+The citizens were relieved, but ere long were startled by a new alarm; an
+Ala of heavy cavalry came upon the scene, opening a way for an immensely
+long procession whose chanted psalms rang out from afar, loud above the
+cries and murmurs of the mob, the clatter of harness, and stamping of
+horses.  It was clear now where the monks had been.  They were not
+usually absent when there was a skirmish with the heathen; but, till this
+moment, they had been seen only in twos or threes about the Serapeum.
+Now they came forward shouting a psalm of triumph, their eyes glaring,
+wilder and more ruthless than ever.
+
+The Bishop marched at their head, in his vestments, under a magnificent
+canopy; his lofty stature was drawn to its full height and his lips were
+firmly closed.
+
+He looked like a stern judge about to mount the tribunal to pronounce
+sentence with inexorable severity on some execrable crime.
+
+The crowd quailed.
+
+The Bishop and the monks in the Serapeum, meant the overthrow of the
+statue of the sovereign god--death and destruction.  The boldest turned
+pale; many who had left wife and children at home stole away to await the
+end of the world with those they loved; others remained to watch the
+menaced sanctuary, cursing or praying; but the greater number, men and
+women alike, crowded into the temple, risking their lives to be present
+at the stupendous events about to be enacted there and which promised to
+be a drama of unequalled interest.
+
+At the bottom of the ascent the Comes rode forth to meet the Bishop,
+leaped from his saddle and greeted him with reverence.  The Imperial
+legate had not made his appearance; he had preferred to remain for the
+present at the prefect's house, intending to preside, later in the day,
+at the races as the Emperor's representative, side by side with the
+Prefect Evagrius--who also kept aloof during the attack on the Serapeum.
+After a brief colloquy, Romanus signed to Constantine, the captain of the
+cavalry; the troop dismounted, and, led by their officer, marched up the
+slope that led to the great gate of the Serapeum.  They were followed by
+the Comes with his staff; next to him pale and somewhat tremulous came
+some of the city officials and a few Christian members of the senate; and
+then the Bishop--who had preferred to come last--with all the Christian
+priesthood and a crowd of chanting monks.  The train was closed by a
+division of heavy-armed infantry; and after them the populace rushed in,
+unchecked by the soldiers who stood outside the temple.
+
+The great halls of the Serapeum had been put in order as well as possible
+in so short a time.  Of all those who, the day before, had crowded in to
+defend the god and his house, none were left but Porphyrius and those who
+were nursing him.  After a long and agonizing period of silence heavy
+fists came thundering at the door.  Gorgo started up to unbolt it, but
+Apuleius held her back; so it was forced off its hinges and thing into
+the temple-aisle on which the room opened.  At the same instant a party
+of soldiers entered the room and glanced round it enquiringly.
+
+The physician turned as pale as death, and sank incapable of speech on a
+seat by his patient's couch; but Gorgo turned with calm dignity to the
+centurion who led the intruders, and explained to him who she was, and
+that she was here under the protection of the leech to tend her suffering
+father.  She concluded by asking to speak with Constantine the prefect of
+cavalry, or with the Comes Romanus, to whom she and her father were well
+known.
+
+There was nothing unusual in a sick man being brought into the Serapeum
+for treatment, and the calm, undoubting superiority of Gorgo's tone as
+well as the high rank of the men whose protection she appealed to,
+commanded the centurion's respectful consideration; however, his orders
+were to send every one out of the temple who was not a Roman soldier, so
+he begged her to wait a few minutes, and soon returned with the legate
+Volcatius, the captain of his legion.  This knightly patrician well knew
+--as did every lover of horses--the owner of the finest stable in
+Alexandria, and was quite willing to allow Gorgo and Apuleius to remain
+with their patient; at the same time he warned them that a great
+catastrophe was imminent.  Gorgo, however, persisted in her wish to be by
+her father's side, so he left her a guard to protect them.
+
+The soldiers were too busy to linger; instead of replacing the door they
+had torn down, they pushed it out of their way; and Gorgo, seeing that
+her father remained in precisely the same condition, drew back the
+curtain which was all that now divided them from the hypostyle, and
+looked out over the heads of a double row of soldiers.  They were posted
+close round the lower step of the platform that raised the hypostyle
+above the nave and the colonnades on each side of it.
+
+In the distance Gorgo could see a vast body of men slowly approaching in
+detachments, and with long pauses at intervals.  They stopped for some
+time in the outer hall, and before they entered the basilica twenty
+Christian priests came in with strange gestures and a still stranger
+chant; these were exorcists, come to bann the evil spirits and daemons
+that must surely haunt this high place of idolatry and abominations.
+They carried crosses which they flourished like weapons against an unseen
+foe, and touched the columns with them, the pavement and the few
+remaining statues; they fell on their knees, making the sign of the cross
+with the left hand; and, finally, they ranged themselves like soldiers in
+three ranks in front of the niche containing the statue, pointed their
+crosses at the god, and recited in loud, angry, and commanding tones the
+potent anathemas and mysterious formulas which they thought calculated to
+expel the most reprobate and obdurate of all the heathen devils.  A host
+of acolytes, following at their heels, swung their censers about the
+plague-spot--the shrine of the king of idols; while the exorcists dipped
+wands into a cauldron carried by their attendants, and sprinkled the
+mystical figures on the hanging and on the mosaic pavement.
+
+All this occupied several minutes.  Then--and Gorgo's heart beat high--
+then Constantine came in, armed and equipped, and behind him an Ala of
+picked men, the elite of his troop; bearded men with tanned and scarred
+faces.  Instead of swords they carried axes, and they were followed by
+sappers bearing tall ladders which, by Constantine's orders, they leaned
+up against the niche.  The infantry ranged under the colonnades at the
+sides were evidently startled at the sight of these ladders, and Gorgo
+could perceive by the trembling of the curtain near which she and
+Apuleius were standing, how deeply the physician was agitated.  It was as
+though the axe had been displayed with which a king was about to be
+decapitated.
+
+Now the Bishop came in with the municipal dignitaries; priests and monks,
+chanting as they walked, filled the broad hall, incessantly making the
+sign of the cross; and the crowd that poured into the hypostyle pressed
+as far forward as they were allowed by the chain which the soldiers held
+outstretched between them and their superiors.
+
+The populace-heathen and Christian of every sect and degree-filled the
+aisles, too; but the chain also kept them off the upper end, on to which
+the room opened in which Porphyrius lay; so that Gorgo's view of the
+curtain and apse remained unhindered.
+
+The psalm rang loudly through the temple-courts above the murmur and
+grumble of the angry, terrified and expectant mob.  They were prepared
+for the worst; each one knew the crime which was to be perpetrated, and
+yet few, perhaps, really believed that any one would dare to commit it.
+Whichever way she looked Gorgo saw only white faces, stamped with
+passion, dismay, and dread.  The very priests and soldiers themselves had
+turned pale, and stood with bloodless cheeks and set teeth, staring at
+the ground; some, to disguise their alarm, cast wrathful and defiant
+glances at the rebellious mob, who tried to drown the psalm-singing in
+loud menaces and curses, and the echoes of the great building doubled
+their thousand voices.
+
+A strange unrest seethed in this dense mass of humanity.  The heathen
+were trembling with rage, clutching their amulets and charms, or shaking
+angry fists; the Christians thrilled with anxiety and pious zeal, and
+used their hands to lift the cross or to ward off the evil one with
+outstretched fingers.  Every face and every gesture, the muttered curses
+and pious hymns--all showed that some terrible and fateful event was
+impending over all.  Gorgo herself felt as though she were standing on
+the brink of a crater, while air and earth heaved around her; she felt
+and saw the eruption of the volcano threatening, every instant, to burst
+at her feet, and to choke and ruin every living thing.
+
+The uproar among the heathen grew louder and louder; fragments of stone
+and wood came flying towards the spot where the Bishop and officials were
+standing; but, suddenly, the tumult ceased, and, as if by a miracle,
+there was silence--perfect silence--in the temple.  It was as though at a
+sign from the Omnipotent Ruler the storm-lashed ocean had turned to the
+calm of a land-locked lake.  At a nod from the Bishop some acolytes had
+stepped up to the niche where the statue of the god was shrouded and the
+curtain, which till now had hidden it, slowly began to fall.
+
+There sat Serapis, looking down in majestic indifference, as cold and
+unapproachable as if his sublime dignity was far removed above the petty
+doings of the crawling humanity at his feet; and the effect was as
+impressive now as it had been the evening before.  How beautiful--how
+marvellously grand and lofty was this work of human hands!  Even the
+Christians could not repress a low, long-drawn murmur of surprise,
+admiration, and astonishment.  The heathen were at first silent, overcome
+by pious awe and ecstasy; but then they broke out in a loud and
+triumphant shout, and their cries of "Hail to Serapis!"  "Serapis, reign
+forever!"  rang from pillar to pillar and echoed from the stony vault of
+the apse and ceiling.
+
+Gorgo crossed her hands over her bosom as she saw the god revealed in his
+glorious beauty.  Spotlessly pure, complete and perfect, the noble statue
+stood before her; an idol indeed, and perishable--but still divine as a
+matchless work, wrought by the loving hands of a votary of the god,
+inspired by the immortals.  She gazed spell-bound on the form which,
+though human, transcended humanity as eternity transcends time, as the
+light of the sun transcended the blazing beacon on Pharos; and she said
+to herself that it was impossible that an irreverent hand should be laid
+on this supremely lovely statue, crowned with the might of undying
+beauty.
+
+She saw that even the Bishop drew back a step when the curtain had
+fallen, and his lips parted involuntarily to utter a cry of admiration
+like the others; but she saw, too, that he closed them again and pressed
+them more firmly together; that his eye sparkled with a fiercer light as
+the shout of the heathen rose to heaven, that the knotted veins on his
+high forehead swelled with rage as he heard the cry of "Serapis, Hail,
+all hail!"  Then she noted the Comes, as he whispered soothing words in
+the prelate's ear, praying him perhaps to spare the statue--not as an
+idol, but as a work of art; as he turned from Theophilus with a shrug;
+and then--her heart stood still, and she had to cling to the curtain--he
+pointed to the statue, with a nod of intelligence to Constantine.  The
+young officer bowed with military formality and gave a word of command to
+his men, which was drowned by the wild cries of the heathen as soon as
+they apprehended with dismay what its import was.
+
+The veterans were stirred.  A subaltern officer, putting the standard he
+bore into the hands of the man next to him and taking his axe from him
+instead, rushed towards the statue, gazed up at it--and then, letting the
+axe sink, withdrew slowly to rejoin the others who still stood
+hesitating, looking at each other with doubting and defiant eyes.
+
+Once more Constantine shouted his order, louder and more positively than
+before; but the men did not move.  The subaltern flung his axe on the
+ground and the rest followed his example, pointing eagerly to the god,
+and vehemently adjuring their prefect--refusing apparently to obey his
+commands--for he went to the recalcitrant standard-bearer, a grey-haired
+veteran, and laying his hand on the man's shoulder shook him angrily,
+evidently threatening him and his comrades.
+
+In these brave souls a struggle was going on, between their sense of
+discipline and devotion to their fine young leader, and their awe of the
+god; it was visible in their puzzled faces, in their hands raised in
+supplication.  Constantine, however, relentlessly repeated his order;
+and, when they still refused to obey, he turned his back on their ranks
+with a gesture of bitter contempt, and shouted his commands to the
+infantry posted by the colonnade behind which Gorgo was watching all
+these proceedings.
+
+But these also were refractory.  The heathen were triumphant, and
+encouraged the soldiers with loud cries to persist.
+
+Constantine turned once more to his own men, and finding them obstinate
+in their disobedience, he went forward himself to where the ladders were
+standing, moved one of them from the wall and leaned it up against the
+body of the statue, seized the axe that lay nearest, and mounted from
+rung to rung.  The murmurs of the heathen were suddenly silenced; the
+multitude were so still that the least sound of one plate of armor
+against another was audible, that each man could hear his neighbor
+breathe, and that Gorgo fancied she could hear her own heart throb.
+
+The man and the god stood face to face, and the man who was about to lay
+hands on the god was her lover.  She watched his movements with
+breathless interest; she longed to call out to him, to follow him as he
+mounted the ladder, to fall on his neck and keep him from committing such
+sacrilege--not out of fear of the ruin he might bring upon the world, but
+only because she felt that the first blow he should deal to this
+beautiful and unique work of art might wreck her love for him, as his
+axe would wreck the ivory.  She was not afraid for him; he seemed to her
+inviolable and invulnerable; but her whole soul shuddered at the deed
+which he was steeling himself to perpetrate.  She remembered their happy
+childhood together, his own artistic attempts, the admiration with which
+he had gazed at the great works of the ancient sculptors--and it seemed
+impossible that he, of all men he, should lay hands on that masterpiece,
+that he, of all men, should be the one to insult, mutilate and ruin it.
+It was not--could not be true!
+
+But there he was, at the top of the ladder; he passed the axe from his
+left hand to his right, and leaning back a little, looked at the head of
+the god from one side.  She could see his face plainly, and note every
+movement and look; she watched him keenly, and saw the loving and
+compassionate expression with which he fixed his gaze on the noble
+features of Serapis, saw him clutch his left hand to his heart as if in
+pain.  The crowd below might fancy that he lacked courage, that he was
+absorbed in prayer, or that his soul shrank from dealing the fateful blow
+to the great divinity; but she could see that he was bidding a silent
+farewell, as it were, to the sublime work of an inspired artist, which it
+pained and shocked him to destroy.  And this comforted her; it gave her
+views of the situation a new direction, and suggested the question
+whether he, a soldier and a Christian, when commanded by his superior to
+do this deed ought to shrink or hesitate, if he were indeed, heart and
+soul, what, after all, he was.  Her eyes clung to him, as a frightened
+child clings to its mother's neck; and the expectant thousands, in an
+agony of suspense, like her, saw nothing but him.
+
+Stillness more profound never reigned in the heart of the desert than now
+in this vast and densely-crowded hall.  Of all man's five senses only one
+was active: that of sight; and that was concentrated on a single object a
+man's hand holding an axe.  The hearts of thousands stood still, their
+breath was suspended, there was a singing in their ears, a dazzling light
+in their eyes--eyes that longed to see, that must see--and that could
+not; thousands stood there like condemned criminals, whose heads are on
+the block, who hear the executioner behind them, and who still, on the
+very threshold of death, hope for respite and release.
+
+Gorgo found no answer to her own questionings; but she, too, wanted to
+see--must see.  And she saw Constantine close his eyes, as though he
+dared not contemplate the deed that Fate had condemned him to do; she saw
+him lay his left hand on the god's sacred beard, saw him raise his right
+for the fatal blow--saw, heard, felt the axe crash again and again on the
+cheek of Serapis--saw the polished ivory fall in chips and shavings,
+large and small, on the stone floor, and leap up with an elastic rebound
+or shiver into splinters.  She covered her face with her hands and hid
+her head in the curtain, weeping aloud.  She could only moan and sob, and
+feel nothing, think nothing but that a momentous and sinister act had
+been perpetrated.  An appalling uproar like the noise of thunder and the
+beating of surf rose up on every side, but she heeded it not; and when at
+length the physician called her by her name, when she turned from the
+curtain and once more looked out, instead of the sublime image of the god
+she saw in the niche a shapeless log of wood, a hideous mass against
+which several ladders were propped, while the ground was heaped and
+strewed with scraps of ivory, fragments of gold-plate, and chips of
+marble.  Constantine had disappeared; the ladders and the plinth of the
+statue were covered with a swarm of soldiers and monks who were finishing
+the work of destruction.  As soon as the young officer had struck the
+first blow, and the god had submitted in abject impotence, they had
+rushed upon him and saved their captain the trouble of ending the task he
+had begun.
+
+The great idol was desecrated.  Serapis was no more--the heaven of the
+heathen had lost its king.  The worshippers of the deposed god, sullen,
+furious, and bitterly disabused, made their way out of the temple and
+looked up at the serene blue sky, the unclouded sunshine, for some
+symptoms of an avenging tempest; but in vain.
+
+Theophilus had also quitted the scene with the Comes, leaving the work of
+devastation in the competent hands of the monks.  He knew his skin-clad
+adherents well; and he knew that within a very few days not an idol, not
+a picture, not a token would remain intact to preserve the memory of the
+old gods; a thousand slaves charged to sweep the Serapeum from the face
+of the earth would have given his impatience twenty times as long to
+wait.  The Comes went off at once to the Hippodrome, preceded by hundreds
+who had hurried off to tell the assembled multitude that Alexandria had
+lost her god.
+
+Constantine, however, had not left the temple; he had withdrawn into one
+of the aisles and seated himself on the steps, where he remained, sunk in
+thought and gazing at the ground.  He was a soldier and took service and
+discipline in earnest.  What he had done he had been forced to do; but no
+one could guess how hard it had been to him to fulfil this terrible duty.
+His own act was abominable in his eyes, and yet he would have done it
+again to-morrow, if it had again been required of him under similar
+circumstances.  He bewailed the beautiful statue as a lost treasure of
+art; but he felt that it was indispensable that it should perish out of
+the world.  And at the same time he thought of Gorgo, wondering how she
+--who had only the day before pledged herself to him, whom he loved with
+fervent passion, to whom, as he well knew, his faith was something
+monstrous in its contempt for beauty--would bear to learn that he, her
+lover, was the man who, like some coarse barbarian, had defaced this
+noble work and ruined this vision of beauty, no less dear to him than it
+was to her.  Still, as he sat brooding and searching the very depths of
+his soul, he could not help feeling that he had certainly acted rightly
+and would do the same again, even at the risk of losing her.  To him
+Gorgo, was the noblest of God's creatures, and how could he have borne to
+go through life at her side with a stain on his honor?  But he did not
+conceal from himself the fact that his deed had opened a wide gulf
+between them; and it was with deep pathos that his thoughts recurred to
+the antique conception of tragedy--of fate which pursues its innocent
+victims as though they were guilty.  This day perhaps would witness the
+sunset of his life's joy, would drive him forth once more to war--to
+fight, and do nothing but fight, till death should meet him on the
+battle-field.  And as he sat there his eyes grew dim and heavy and his
+head fell on his heaving breast.
+
+Suddenly he felt a light touch on his shoulder, and turning round, he saw
+Gorgo standing with her hand outstretched; he started to his feet, seized
+it with eager passion and looking sadly into the young girl's eyes said,
+with deep emotion:
+
+"I would I might hold this hand forever--but you will leave me, you will
+turn from me when I tell you of the deed that mine has done."
+
+"I know it," she said firmly.  "And it was a hard task even for you--a
+painful duty--was it not?"
+
+"Terrible!  horrible!"  he exclaimed with a shudder, as he recalled the
+feelings of that momentous instant.  She looked sympathetically into his
+eyes.
+
+"And you did it," she cried, "because you felt that you must and will be
+wholly what you profess to be?  It is right--the only right; I feel it
+so.  I will try to imitate you, and rise above the half-heartedness which
+is the bane of existence, and which makes the firm path of life a
+trembling, swaying bridge.  I am yours, wholly yours; I have none other
+gods but yours, and for love of you I will learn to love your God--for
+you have often and often called him a God of Love."
+
+"And He is a God of Love!" cried Constantine, "and you will know him and
+confess him even without teaching; for our Saviour lives in every heart
+that is filled with love.  Oh! Gorgo, I have destroyed that beautiful
+idol, but I will let you see that even a Christian can duly value and
+cherish beauty in his home and in his heart."
+
+"I am sure of it," she exclaimed joyfully.  "The world goes on its way
+and does not quake, in spite of the fall of Serapis; but I feel as though
+in my inmost soul a world had perished and a new one was created, nobler
+and purer, and perhaps even more lovely than the old one!"
+
+He pressed her hand to his lips; she signed to him to follow her and led
+the way to her father's couch.  Porphyrius was sitting up, supported in
+the physician's arms; his eyes were open, and as they entered he greeted
+them with a faint smile.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Great happiness, and mingled therefor with bitter sorrow
+It is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe
+Rapture and anguish--who can lay down the border line
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERAPIS, BY GEORG EBERS, V5 ***
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