IV

The Arian basilica of St. Maurice was built almost entirely of blocks

taken from the ruined temple of Apollo. The sacred court, the

_atrium_, was surrounded by colonnades. In the middle of this court

murmured a fountain, placed there for the ablutions of the faithful.

Under one of the side porticoes lay an ancient oaken tomb darkened

with age; and in this tomb were the wonder-working bones of St. Mamas,

for which Eutropius had obliged Julian and Gallus themselves to build

a stone-work shrine. The task of Gallus, who took to it as to a game,

went rapidly forward, while the wall of Julian frequently crumbled and

proved oddly unsatisfactory; a phenomenon which Eutropius explained by

remarking that St. Mamas refused the offering of children possessed by

the demon of pride.

The halt, the maimed, the sick, and the blind, expectant of miracle,

thronged near the tomb. Julian understood why they stationed

themselves here. One of the monks used to hold a pair of balances; the

pilgrims--some of them come from hamlets many leagues away--weighed

with scrupulous care pieces of linen, woollen stuff, or silk; and

having laid them on the tomb of St. Mamas, would fall to praying all

night. At daylight the stuff was weighed over again, and the weight

compared with the weight on the previous day. If the texture proved

heavier, it was declared that the prayer had been answered, that the

divine mercy, like dew, had soaked into the stuff and rendered it

capable of producing all manner of marvellous cures.

But frequently the prayer was in vain. The stuff weighed just what it

did before; and pilgrims would pass whole days, weeks, even months,

waiting at the sepulchre. Among the latter there was an old woman

named Theodula. Some called her demented; others counted her a saint.

For years she had not quitted the tomb of St. Mamas. The daughter for

whose restoration she had come to pray had now been a long while dead.

But Theodula continued kneeling ceaselessly before her faded and

ravelled fragment of cloth.

From the outer court three doors led into the basilica--one for women,

one for men, and the third, in the centre, for monks and the lower

clergy. With Eutropius and Gallus, Julian went in through this last

door, being _anagnost_ or reader of the lessons for the day. Clothed

in a long black robe with white sleeves, his hair anointed, and bound

back by a fillet that it might not fall into his eyes while reading

aloud, Julian passed through the midst of the faithful, his eyes fixed

humbly on the ground. His pale face assumed almost involuntarily the

inevitable and hypocritical expression of submissiveness. He ascended

the high rood-loft. The frescoes of the wall to the right depicted the

martyrdom of St. Euthymus, in which one executioner seized the

sufferer's head, while another, wrenching open his mouth with pincers,

brought the cup of molten lead to his lips. In another scene the

executioner with an instrument of torture was flaying the childish and

bleeding limbs of St. Euthymus, hanging from a tree by his hands.

Beneath these frescoes ran the inscription, "With the blood of the

martyrs, O Lord, Thy church is arrayed as in purple and fine linen."

On the opposite wall sinners were burning in the fire of the pit, and

above them rose Paradise and the saints. One of the saints was

plucking the fruits of the tree of Eden; another playing the psaltery;

and a third, couched on a cloud, contemplated with a beatific smile

the tortures of the damned. Beneath were written the words, "Behold!

there shall be tears and gnashing of teeth!" The adorers of St. Mamas

entered the church like a procession of all human maladies. The

bandy-legged, the blind, the armless, the anæmic, children tottering

along like old men, epileptics, idiots with pale faces and inflamed

eyelids--all bore the mark of a dull and desperate submission. When

the choir ceased, there could be heard the contrite sighings of the

"widows of the church," black-robed nuns of the order of St. Basil,

and the jingling of the chains of old Pamphilus, who for many a long

year had addressed no word to the living, muttering only, "Lord, Lord,

give me tears!--grant me mercy!--give me an end to remembrance!"

The atmosphere was that of a warm sepulchral chamber, thick, loaded

with incense and the smell of melting wax, hot oil, and the breath of

all these sick persons. Now it was Julian's lot on that day to read

aloud part of the Apocalypse.

The terrifying pictures of the Revelation were unfolded, the white

horse of Death soared through space above the peoples of the earth, as

they knelt weeping at the nearness of the world's end.

"_The sun becomes dark as pitch, and the moon red as blood. Men say to

the mountains, Fall on us and hide us from the throne of God and from

the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His anger is come, and who

can resist it?_"

Over and over again came the prophecy: "_Men shall seek death and

shall not find it; they shall desire death and it shall flee from

them._"

Lamentation arose: "_Thrice happy are the dead!_" and "_Then came the

bloody destruction of all peoples, and the angel cast his sickle into

the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth and cast it into the

great wine-press of the wrath of God, and the wine-press was trodden

without the city; and there came out blood from the wine-press even

unto the bridles of the horses, as far as a thousand and six hundred

furlongs_," and men cursed the God of heaven for their plagues, and

they did not repent them of their sins; and the angel sang: "_He Who

worships the Beast and his image shall drink of the wine of the wrath

of God, prepared in the cup of His anger, and shall be tormented in

fire and sulphur before the holy angels and the Lamb, and the smoke of

his torture shall rise in the night of ages. For he who shall adore

the Beast and his image shall rest no more._"

Julian ended. A profound hush succeeded in the church. Painful sighs

rose from the terrified crowd; and the noise of foreheads struck

against the earth and the clank of the fetters of Pamphilus,

accompanying his perpetual murmur: "Lord, Lord, give me tears!--grant

me mercy!--give me an end of remembrance!"

The child raised his eyes towards the spandril of mosaic between the

columns of the arcade, representing the Arian image of Christ; a

sombre, terrible figure, its wasted face aureoled in gold, and

diademed in the fashion of the Byzantine emperors. It was the face of

an old man, with a long thin nose and lips severely shut. With his

right hand he was blessing the world; in the left he held a book in

which was written, "Peace be with you; I am the Light of the World."

He was seated on a splendid throne, and a Roman emperor (Julian

imagined that it must be Constantius) was in the act of kissing his

feet.

In the penumbral shadow below this image, lighted by a single lamp,

could be discerned a bas-relief on a sarcophagus, dating from the

earliest Christian times. It displayed sea-nymphs, leopards, gay

tritons blowing their horns, and among them Moses, Jonah and his

whale, Orpheus charming the beasts with his lyre, an olive-branch, and

a dove; the whole sculpture a symbol of pure and childlike faith. In

the midst stood the Good Shepherd bearing on his shoulder the sheep

that had gone astray, the soul of the sinner. This barefooted youthful

figure, with beardless face, had the joyous and simple bearing of a

poor peasant, and his smile something of a heavenly sweetness.

Julian imagined that nobody nowadays knew or saw that Good Shepherd;

and this little picture of old times was somehow connected in his mind

with a dream of his childhood which he tried in vain to recover.

And, gazing at this youth, who seemed as if mysteriously reproaching

him, he murmured the name picked up from Mardonius, "Galilean!" At

that moment slanting rays of the sun through the windows trembled,

above, in a cloud of incense, which, aflame with reflections from the

gilded aureole, seemed to upheave the sombre and terrible image of the

Arian Christ. The choir chanted, "_Let all human flesh be dumb and bow

down, fearful and trembling, thinking no more of the things of the

earth; for the Emperor of emperors, the Lord of lords, has given

Himself afresh as a pledge and a food to His faithful; even He who is

surrounded by the hosts of angels, by all powers and dominions, by

cherubim with innumerable eyes, and by the six-winged seraphim,

veiling their faces and singing, 'Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!'_"

Like a tempest the psalm swept over the bowed heads of the pilgrims.

The figure of the Good Shepherd faded into the distance; but its

youthful gaze remained steadily fixed upon Julian, a gaze full of

reproach. The heart of the child was moved, not by a sense of worship,

but by an intolerable fear; a fear before that mystery which was for

him to remain for ever insoluble.

V

From the Arian basilica Julian returned to Macellum, and got out his

little galley which he had prepared for this special occasion; and

learning that Eutropius, after the Mass, had gone a journey of several

days, the boy slipped through the barred gates of the fortress, and

ran to the temple of Aphrodite, close to the church of St. Maurice.

The sacred wood of the goddess bordered the Christian cemetery.

Endless hostilities, debates, wranglings, and even lawsuits, were kept

up between these two temples. The Christians begged for the

destruction of the Pagan shrine; Olympiodorus, the sacrificing priest,

on the other hand, complained that the custodians of the basilica by

night would secretly cut down ancient cypresses in the sacred wood,

and dig graves for Christians in the soil belonging to Aphrodite.

Into the wood Julian wound his way; a warm breeze blew softly on his

cheek. In the afternoon heat the grey and fibrous bark of the

cypresses trickled with thick resinous tears. To Julian the dusk

seemed perfumed by the very breath of the goddess.

The white bodies of statues stood up in sharp relief against the rich

shadow of trees. An Eros there had been maimed by some custodian of

the basilica, who had rudely smashed off its marble bow. The weapon of

the little winged Love-god, together with his hands, lay in deep grass

at the foot of the pedestal. But although one-armed, the mischievous

boy continued to take aim, and a mad smile of malice still fluttered

on his lips.

Julian entered the house of the priest, Olympiodorus. Its rooms were

small but comfortable, and rather bare than luxurious. There was

neither carpet nor silver dish to be seen; the floors and furniture

were of wood, and the vessels of clay. But everything bore the stamp

of taste. The handle of the kitchen lamp was a marvellous little work

of art representing Neptune with his trident; the bold outlines of

earthen jars, full of olive oil, won the admiration of Julian; and

along the walls ran light frescoes, water nymphs mounted on

sea-unicorns; and dancing women, clothed in the long robe of votaries

of Pallas Athene, hovered along in graceful scroll-work.

The little house stood all smiling in its bath of sunshine. Nereids,

dancers, sea-unicorns, the Neptune on the lamp, and the inmates of the

house, all seemed folk cheerful by nature, guiltless of ugliness, of

malice or spleen. A couple of dozen olives, some white bread, a bunch

of grapes, some wine and water, these were enough to turn the little

meal into a feast, and Diophane, the wife of Olympiodorus, had in fact

tied a wreath of laurel to the door to mark that very day a feast-day.

Julian went into the little garden of the atrium. Under the blue sky a

jet of water pulsed into the air, and in the midst of narcissus,

acanthus-blossom, tulips, and myrrh, rose a bronze Hermes, winged and

smiling like the rest of the cottage, and poised in the act of taking

flight. Above the flowers, butterflies and bees playing in the

sunshine chased each other, and in the shade of the porch Olympiodorus

and his daughter Amaryllis, a pretty girl of some seventeen springs,

were playing the Greek game of _kottabos_. On a slender column fixed

in the earth, and oscillating like the scale of a balance, lay a

little beam, which bore, slung from each end, a cup; under each cup

stood an amphora full of water, crowned by a statuette in metal. The

game consisted in throwing from a certain distance a few drops of

wine, in as high a curve as possible, into one of the little cups,

which, thus suddenly weighted, would descend and strike the statuette.

"Play, play; it is your turn!" cried Amaryllis.

"One, two, three!" Olympiodorus threw the contents of his goblet, and

missed.

He burst out into a boyish laugh. It was strange to see the tall

grey-headed man so wholly absorbed in his game.

The young girl, with a charming movement of her bare arm, threw back

her mauve tunic and in her turn flung the liquid. The little cup of

the _kottabos_ rang upon the statuette. Amaryllis began laughing and

clapping her hands. Suddenly, on the threshold they saw Julian, and

both rushed to welcome him. Amaryllis cried--

"Diophane! where art thou? Come and see what guest we've got to-day.

Quick, quick!"

Diophane ran from the kitchen.

"Julian, my darling child!... Don't you think he is grown thinner? How

long it is since we have seen you!..."