Melissa, too, had a sense of freedom when she found herself walking by
the side of Andreas.
In the garden of Hermes, where her father’s house stood, there were
few signs of the excitement with which the citizens awaited Caesar’s
arrival. Most of those who were out and about were going in the opposite
direction; they meant to await the grand reception of Caracalla at the
eastern end of the city, on his way from the Kanopic Gate to the Gate
of the Sun. Still, a good many--men, women and children--were, like
themselves, walking westward, for it was known that Caesar would alight
at the Serapeum.
They had scarcely left the house when Andreas asked the girl whether
she had a kerchief or a veil in the basket the slave was carrying
behind her; and on her replying in the affirmative, he expressed
his satisfaction; for Caracalla’s soldiery, in consequence of the
sovereign’s weakened discipline and reckless liberality, were little
better than an unbridled rabble.
“Then let us keep out of their way,” urged Melissa.
“Certainly, as much as possible,” said her companion. “At any rate, let
us hurry, so as to get back to the lake before the crowd stops the way.
“You have passed an eventful and anxious night, my child, and are tired,
no doubt.”
“Oh, no!” said she, calmly; “I had some wine to refresh me, and some
food with the Christians.”
“Then they received you kindly?”
“The only woman there nursed Diodoros like a mother; and the men were
considerate and careful. My father does not know them; and yet--Well,
you know how much he dislikes them.”
“He follows the multitude,” returned Andreas, “the common herd, who hate
everything exceptional, everything that disturbs their round of life, or
startles them out of the quietude of their dull dreams. Woe to those who
call by its true name what those blind souls call pleasure and enjoyment
as serving to hasten the flight of time--not too long at the most; woe
to those who dare raise even a finger against it!”
The man’s deep, subdued tones were strongly expressive of the wrath
within him; and the girl, who kept close to his side, asked with eager
anxiety, “Then my father was right when he said that you are a member of
the Christian body?”
“Yes,” he replied, emphatically; and when Melissa curiously inquired
whether it were true that the followers of the crucified God had
renounced their love for home and country, which yet ought to be dear
to every true man, Andreas answered with a superior smile, that even the
founder of the Stoa had required not only of his fellow-Greeks but of
all human beings, that they should regulate their existence by the same
laws, since they were brethren in reason and sense.
“He was right,” added Andreas, more earnestly, “and I tell you, child,
the time is not far off when men shall no longer speak of Roman and
Greek, of Egyptian and Syrian, of free men and slaves; when there shall
be but one native land, but one class of life for all. Yea, the day is
beginning to dawn even now. The fullness of the time is come!”
Melissa looked up at him in amazement, exclaiming: “How strange! I have
heard those words once to-day already, and can not get them out of my
head. Nay, when you confirmed my father’s report, I made up my mind to
ask you to explain them.”
“What words?” asked Andreas, in surprise. “The fullness of the time is
come.”
“And where did you hear them?”
“In the house where Diodoros and I took refuge from Zminis.”
“A Christian meeting-house,” replied Andreas, and his expressive face
darkened. “But those who assemble there are aliens to me; they follow
evil heresies. But never mind--they also call themselves Christians, and
the words which led you to ponder, stand to me at the very gate of the
doctrine of our divine master, like the obelisks before the door of an
Egyptian temple. Paul, the great preacher of the faith, wrote them to
the Galatians. They are easy to understand; nay, any one who looks about
him with his eyes open, or searches his own soul, can scarcely fail to
see their meaning, if only the desire is roused in him for something
better than what these cursed times can give us who live in them.”
“Then it means that we are on the eve of great changes?”
“Yes!” cried Andreas, “only the word you use is too feeble. The old dull
sun must set, to rise again with greater glory.”
Ill at ease, and by no means convinced, Melissa looked her excited
companion in the face as she replied:
“Of course I know, Andreas, that you speak figuratively, for the sun
which lights the day seems to me bright enough; and is not everything
flourishing in this gay, busy city? Are not its citizens under the
protection of the law? Were the gods ever more zealously worshiped? Is
my father wrong when he says that it is a proud thing to belong to the
mightiest realm on earth, before whose power barbarians tremble; a great
thing to feel and call yourself a Roman citizen?”
So far Andreas had listened to her with composure, but he here
interrupted, in a tone of scorn “Oh, yes! Caesar has made your father,
and your neighbor Skopas, and every free man in the country a Roman
citizen; but it is a pity that, while he gave each man his patent of
citizenship, he should have filched the money out of his purse.”
“Apion, the dealer, was saying something to that effect the other
day, and I dare say it is true. But I can not be persuaded against
the evidence of my own eyes, and they light on many good and pleasant
things. If only you had been with us to the Nekropolis yesterday! Every
man was honoring the gods after his own manner. Some, indeed, were grave
enough; still, cheerfulness won the day among the people. Most of them
were full of the god. I myself, who generally live so quietly, was
infected as the mystics came back from Eleusis, and we joined their
ranks.”
“‘Till the spy Zminis spoiled your happiness and imperiled your
brother’s life for a careless speech.”
“Very true!”
“And what your brother heedlessly proclaimed,” Andreas went on, with
flashing eyes, “the very sparrows twitter on the house-tops. It is the
truth. The sovereign of the Roman Empire is a thousand times a murderer.
Some he sent to precede his own brother, and they were followed by
all--twenty thousand, it is said--who were attached to the hapless Geta,
or who even spoke his name. This is the lord and master to whom we owe
obedience whom God has set over us for our sins. And when this wretch in
the purple shall close his eyes, he, like the rest of the criminals
who have preceded him on the throne, will be proclaimed a god! A noble
company! When your beloved mother died I heard you, even you, revile the
gods for their cruelty; others call them kind. It is only a question of
how they accept the blood of the sacrificed beasts, their own creatures,
which you shed in their honor. If Serapis does not grant some fool the
thing he asks, then he turns to the altar of Isis, of Anubis, of Zeus,
of Demeter. At last he cries to Sabazios, or one of the new deities of
Olympus, who owe their existence to the decisions of the Roman Senate,
and who are for the most part scoundrels and villains. There certainly
never were more gods than there are now; and among those of whom the
myths tell us things strange enough to bring those who worship them into
contempt, or to the gallows, is the countless swarm of good and evil
daimons. Away with your Olympians! They ought to reward virtue and
punish vice; and they are no better than corruptible judges; for you
know beforehand just what and how much will avail to purchase their
favors.”
“You paint with dark colors,” the girl broke in. “I have learned from
Philip that the Pythagoreans teach that not the sacrifice, but the
spirit of the offering, is what really matters.”
“Quite right. He was thinking, no doubt, of the miracle-monger of Tyana,
Apollonius, who certainly had heard of the doctrine of the Redeemer. But
among the thousand nine hundred and ninety, who here bring beasts to the
altar, who ever remembers this? Quite lately I heard one of our garden
laborers ask how much a day he ought to sacrifice to the sun, his god.
I told him a keration--for that is what the poor creature earns for a
whole day’s work. He thought that too much, for he must live; so the god
must be content with a tithe, for the taxes to the State on his earnings
were hardly more.”
“The divinity ought no doubt to be above all else to us,” Melissa
observed. “But when your laborer worships the sun, and looks for its
benefits, what is the difference between him and you, or me, or any of
us, though we call the sun Helios or Serapis, or what not?”
“Yes, yes,” replied Andreas. “The sun is adored here under many
different names and forms, and your Serapis has swallowed up not only
Zeus and Pluto, but Phoebus Apollo and the Egyptian Osiris and Ammon,
and Ra, to swell his own importance. But to be serious, child, our
fathers made to themselves many gods indeed, of the sublime phenomena
and powers of Nature, and worshiped them admiringly; but to us only the
names remain, and those who offer to Apollo never think of the sun.
With my laborer, who is an Arab, it is different. He believes the
light-giving globe itself to be a god; and you, I perceive, do not
think him wholly wrong. But when you see a youth throw the discus with
splendid strength, do you praise the discus, or the thrower?”
“The thrower,” replied Melissa. “But Phoebus Apollo himself guides his
chariot with his divine hands.”
“And astronomers,” the Christian went on, “can calculate for years to
come exactly where his steeds will be at each minute of the time. So no
one can be more completely a slave than he to whom so many mortals pray
that he will, of his own free-will, guide circumstances to suit them.
I, therefore, regard the sun as a star, like any other star; and worship
should be given, not to those rolling spheres moving across the sky in
prescribed paths, but to Him who created them and guides them by fixed
laws. I really pity your Apollo and the whole host of the Olympian gods,
since the world has become possessed by the mad idea that the gods
and daimons may be moved, or even compelled, by forms of prayer and
sacrifices and magic arts, to grant to each worshiper the particular
thing on which he may have set his covetous and changeable fancy.”
“And yet,” exclaimed Melissa, “you yourself told me that you prayed
for my mother when the leech saw no further hope. Every one hopes for
a miracle from the immortals when his own power has come to an end!
Thousands think so. And in our city the people have never been more
religious than they are now. The singer of the Ialemos at the feast of
Adonis particularly praised us for it.”
“Because they have never been more fervently addicted to pleasure, and
therefore have never more deeply dreaded the terrors of hades. The great
and splendid Zeus of the Greeks has been transformed into Serapis here,
on the banks of the Nile, and has become a god of the nether world. Most
of the ceremonies and mysteries to which the people crowd are connected
with death. They hope that the folly over which they waste so many
hours will smooth their way to the fields of the blest, and yet they
themselves close the road by the pleasures they indulge in. But the
fullness of time is now come; the straight road lies open to all
mankind, called as they are to a higher life in a new world, and he who
follows it may await death as gladly as the bride awaits the bridegroom
on her marriage day. Yes, I prayed to my God for your dying mother, the
sweetest and best of women. But what I asked for her was not that her
life might be preserved, or that she might be permitted to linger longer
among us, but that the next world might be opened to her in all its
glory.”
At this point the speaker was interrupted by an armed troop which thrust
the crowd aside to make way for the steers which were to be slaughtered
in the Temple of Serapis at the approach of Caesar. There were several
hundred of them, each with a garland about its neck, and the handsomest
which led the train had its horns gilded.
When the road was clear again, Andreas pointed to the beasts, and
whispered to his companion “Their blood will be shed in honor of the
future god Caracalla. He once killed a hundred bears in the arena with
his own hand. But I tell you, child, when the fullness of time is come,
innocent blood shall no more be shed. You were speaking with enthusiasm
of the splendor of the Roman Empire. But, like certain fruit-trees in
our garden which we manure with blood, it has grown great on blood, on
the life-juice of its victims. The mightiest realm on earth owes its
power to murder and rapine; but now sudden destruction is coming on the
insatiate city, and visitation for her sins.”
“And if you are right--if the barbarians should indeed destroy the
armies of Caesar,” asked Melissa, looking up in some alarm at the
enthusiast, “what then?”
“Then we may thank those who help to demolish the crumbling house!”
cried Andreas, with flashing eyes.
“And if it should be so,” said the girl, with tremulous anxiety, “what
universal ruin! What is there on earth that could fill its place? If
the empire falls into the power of the barbarians, Rome will be made
desolate, and all the provinces laid waste which thrive under her
protection.”
“Then,” said Andreas, “will the kingdom of the Spirit arise, in which
peace and love shall reign instead of hatred and murder and wars. There
shall be one fold and one Shepherd, and the least shall be equal with
the greatest.”
“Then there will be no more slaves?” asked Melissa, in growing
amazement.
“Not one,” replied her companion, and a gleam of inspiration seemed to
light up his stern features. “All shall be free, and all united in love
by the grace of Him who hath redeemed us.”
But Melissa shook her head, and Andreas, understanding what was passing
in her mind, tried to catch her eye as he went on:
“You think that these are the impossible wishes of one who has himself
been a slave, or that it is the remembrance of past suffering and
unutterable wrong which speaks in me? For what right-minded man would
not desire to preserve others from the misery which once crushed him
to earth with its bitter burden?--But you are mistaken. Thousands of
free-born men and women think as I do, for to them, too, a higher Power
has revealed that the fullness of time is now come. He, the Greatest and
Best, who made all the woes of the world His own, has chosen the poor
rather than the rich, the suffering rather than the happy, the babes
rather than the wise and prudent; and in his kingdom the last shall be
first--yea, the least of the last, the poorest of the poor; and they,
child, are the slaves.”
He ended his diatribe with a deep sigh, but Melissa pressed the hand
which held hers as they walked along the raised pathway, and said: “Poor
Andreas! How much you must have gone through before Polybius set you
free!”
He only nodded, and they both remained silent till they found themselves
in a quiet side street. Then the girl looked up at him inquiringly, and
began again:
“And now you hope for a second Spartacus? Or will you yourself lead a
rebellion of the slaves? You are the man for it, and I can be secret.”
“If it has to be, why not?” he replied, and his eyes sparkled with a
strange fire. But seeing that she shrank from him, a smile passed over
his countenance, and he added in a soothing tone: “Do not be alarmed,
my child; what must come will come, without another Spartacus, or
bloodshed, or turmoil. And you, with your clear eyes and your kind
heart, would you find it difficult to distinguish right from wrong, and
to feel for the sorrows of others--? Yes, perhaps! For what will not
custom excuse and sanctify? You can pity the bird which is shut into a
cage too small for it, or the mule which breaks down under too heavy a
load, and the cruelty which hurts them rouses your indignation. But for
the man whom a terrible fate has robbed of his freedom, often through
the fault of another, whose soul endures even greater torments than his
despised body, you have no better comfort than the advice which might
indeed serve a philosopher, but which to him is bitter mockery: to
bear his woes with patience. He is only a slave, bought, or perhaps
inherited. Which of you ever thinks of asking who gave you, who are
free, the right to enslave half of all the inhabitants of the Roman
Empire, and to rob them of the highest prerogative of humanity? I know
that many philosophers have spoken of slavery as an injustice done
by the strong to the weak: but they shrugged their shoulders over it
nevertheless, and excused it as an inevitable evil; for, thought they,
who will serve me if my slave is regarded as my equal? You only smile
at this confusion of the meditative recluses, but you forget”--and a
sinister fire glowed in his eyes--“that the slave, too, has a soul, in
which the same feelings stir as in your own. You never think how a
proud man may feel whose arm you brand, and whose very breath of life is
indignity; or what a slave thinks who is spurned by his master’s foot,
though noble blood may run in his veins. All living things, even the
plants in the garden, have a right to happiness, and only develop fully
in freedom, and under loving care; and yet one half of mankind robs the
other half of this right. The sum total of suffering and sorrow to which
Fate had doomed the race is recklessly multiplied and increased by the
guilt of men themselves. But the cry of the poor and wretched has gone
up to heaven, and now that the fullness of time is come, ‘Thus far, and
no farther,’ is the word. No wild revolutionary has been endowed with
a giant’s strength to burst the bonds of the victims asunder. No, the
Creator and Preserver of the world sent his Son to redeem the poor in
spirit, and, above all, the brethren and the sisters who are weary and
heavy laden. The magical word which shall break the bars of the prisons
where the chains of the slaves are heard is Love.... But you, Melissa,
can but half comprehend all this,” he added, interrupting the ardent
flow of his enthusiastic speech. “You can not understand it all. For
you, too, child, the fullness of time is coming; for you, too, freeborn
though you are, are, I know, one of the heavy laden who patiently suffer
the burden laid upon you. You too--But keep close to me; we shall find
it difficult to get through this throng.”
It was, in fact, no easy matter to get across the crowd which was
pouring noisily down the street of Hermes, into which this narrow way
led. How ever, they achieved it, and when Melissa had recovered her
breath in a quiet lane in Rhakotis, she turned to her companion again
with the question, “And when do you suppose that your predictions will
be fulfilled?”
“As soon as the breeze blows which shall shake the overripe fruit
from the tree. It may be tomorrow, or not yet, according to the
long-suffering of the Most High. But the entire collapse of the world in
which we have been living is as certain to come as that you are walking
here with me!”
Melissa walked on with a quaking heart, as she heard her friend’s tone
of conviction; he, however, was aware that the inmost meaning of his
words was sealed to her. To his inquiry, whether she could not rejoice
in the coming of the glorious time in store for redeemed humanity, she
answered, tremulously:
“All you hope for is glorious, no doubt, but what shall lead to it must
be a terror to all. Were you told of the kingdom of which you speak by
an oracle, or is it only a picture drawn by your imagination, a vision,
and the offspring of your soul’s desire?”
“Neither,” said Andreas, decidedly; and he went on in a louder voice:
“I know it by revelation. Believe me, child, it is as certainly true as
that the sun will set this night. The gates of the heavenly Jerusalem
stand open, and if you, too, would fain be blessed--But more of this
later. Here we are at our journey’s end.”
They entered the Christian home, where they found Diodoros, on a
comfortable couch, in a spacious, shady room, and in the care of a
friendly matron.
But he was in an evil case. The surgeon thought his wound a serious one;
for the heavy stone which had hit him had injured the skull, and the
unhappy youth was trembling with fever. His head was burning, and it
was with difficulty that he spoke a few coherent words. But his eyes
betrayed that he recognized Melissa, and that it was a joy to him to
see her again; and when he was told that Alexander had so far escaped,
a bright look lighted up his countenance. It was evidently a comfort
to him to gaze on Melissa’s pretty face; her hand lay in his, and he
understood her when she greeted him from her father, and spoke to him of
various matters; but the lids ere long closed over his aching eyes.
Melissa felt that she must leave him to rest. She gently released his
hand from her grasp and laid it across his breast, and moved no more,
excepting to wipe the drops from his brow. Solemn stillness had reigned
for some time in the large, clean house, faintly smelling of lavender;
but, on a sudden, doors opened and shut; steps were heard in the
anteroom, seats were moved, and a loud confusion of men’s voices became
audible, among them that of Andreas.
Melissa listened anxiously to the heated discussion which had already
become a vehement quarrel. She longed to implore the excited wranglers
to moderate their tones, for she could see by her lover’s quivering lips
that the noise hurt him; but she could not leave him.
The dispute meanwhile grew louder and louder. The names of Montanus and
Tertullian, Clemens and Origen, fell on her ear, and at last she heard
Andreas exclaim in high wrath: “You are like the guests at a richly
furnished banquet who ask, after they have well eaten, when the meat
will be brought in. Paraclete is come, and yet you look for another.”
He was not allowed to proceed; fierce and scornful contradiction checked
his speech, till a voice of thunder was heard above the rest:
“The heavenly Jerusalem is at hand. He who denies and doubts the calling
of Montanus is worse than the heathen, and I, for one, cast him off as
neither a brother nor a Christian!”
This furious denunciation was drowned in uproar; the anxious girl heard
seats overturned, and the yells and shouts of furious combatants; the
suffering youth meanwhile moaned with anguish, and an expression of
acute pain was stamped on his handsome features. Melissa could bear it
no longer; she had risen to go and entreat the men to make less noise,
when suddenly all was still.
Diodoros immediately became calmer, and looked up at the girl as
gratefully as though the soothing silence were owing to her. She could
now hear the deep tones of the head of the Church of Alexandria,
and understood that the matter in hand was the readmission into this
congregation of a man who had been turned out by some other sect. Some
would have him rejected, and commended him to the mercy of God; others,
less rigid, were willing to receive him, since he was ready to submit to
any penance.
Then the quarrel began again. High above every other voice rose the
shrill tones of a man who had just arrived from Carthage, and who
boasted of personal friendship with the venerable Tertullian. The
listening girl could no longer follow the connection of the discussion,
but the same names again met her ear; and, though she understood nothing
of the matter, it annoyed her, because the turmoil disturbed her lover’s
rest.
It was not till the sick-nurse came back that the tumult was appeased;
for, as soon as she learned how seriously the loud disputes of her
fellow-believers were disturbing the sick man’s rest, she interfered so
effectually, that the house was as silent as before.
The deaconess Katharine was the name by which she was known, and in a
few minutes she returned to her patient’s bedside.
Andreas followed her, with the leech, a man of middle height, whose
shrewd and well-formed head, bald but for a little hair at the sides,
was set on a somewhat ungainly body. His sharp eyes looked hither and
thither, and there was something jerky in his quick movements; still,
their grave decisiveness made up for the lack of grace. He paid no heed
to the bystanders, but threw himself forward rather than bent over the
patient, felt him, and with a light hand renewed his bandages; and
then he looked round the room, examining it as curiously as though he
proposed to take up his abode there, ending by fixing his prominent,
round eyes on Melissa. There was something so ruthlessly inquisitive in
that look that it might, under other circumstances, have angered her.
However, as it was, she submitted to it, for she saw that it was shrewd,
and she would have called the wisest physician on earth to her lover’s
bedside if she had had the power.
When Ptolemaeus--for so he was called--had, in reply to the question,
“who is that?” learned who she was, he hastily murmured: “Then she can
do nothing but harm here. A man in a fever wants but one thing, and that
is perfect quiet.”
And he beckoned Andreas to the window, and asked him shortly, “Has the
girl any sense?”
“Plenty,” replied the freedman, decisively.
“As much, at any rate, as she can have at her age,” the other retorted.
“Then it is to be hoped that she will go without any leave-taking or
tears. That fine lad is in a bad way. I have known all along what might
do him good, but I dare not attempt it alone, and there is no one in
Alexandria.... But Galen has come to join Caesar. If he, old as
he is--But it is not for the likes of us to intrude into Caesar’s
quarters--Still--”
He paused, laying his hand on his brow, and rubbing it thoughtfully with
his short middle finger. Then he suddenly exclaimed: “The old man would
never come here. But the Serapeum, where the sick lie awaiting divine
or diabolical counsel in dreams--Galen will go there. If only we could
carry the boy thither.”
“His nurse here would hardly allow that,” said Andreas, doubtfully.
“He is a heathen.” replied the leech, hotly. “Besides, what has faith to
do with the injury to the body? How many Caesars have employed Egyptian
and Jewish physicians? The lad would get the treatment he needs, and,
Christian as I am, I would, if necessary, convey him to the Serapeum,
though it is of all heathen temples the most heathen. I will find out by
hook or by crook at what time Galen is to visit the cubicles. To-morrow,
or next day at latest; and to-night, or, better still, to-morrow morning
before sunrise, I will have the youth carried there. If the deaconess
refuses--”
“And she will,” Andreas put in.
“Very well.--Come here, maiden,” he beckoned to Melissa, and went on
loud enough for the deaconess to hear: “If we can get your betrothed
to the Serapeum early to-morrow, he may probably be cured; otherwise I
refuse to be responsible. Tell your friends and his that I will be here
before sunrise to-morrow, and that they must provide a covered litter
and good bearers.”
He then turned to the deaconess, who had followed him in silence, with
her hands clasped like a deserter, laid his broad, square hand on her
shoulder, and added:
“So it must be, Widow Katharine, Love endures and suffers all things,
and to save a neighbor’s life, it is well to suffer in silence even
things that displease us. I will explain it all to you afterwards.
Quiet, only perfect quiet--No melancholy leave-taking, child! The sooner
you are out of the house the better.”
He went back again to the bed, laid his hand for a moment on the sick
man’s forehead, and then left the room.
Diodoros lay still and indifferent on the couch. Melissa kissed him on
the brow, and withdrew without his observing it, her eyes full of tears.