"To the tavern, of course!"
"Worse than that. To the Temple of Dionysus! That temple, since the
days of holy Constantine, has been buried under rubbish; but
to-morrow, by the august order of the Emperor Julian, it will be all
shining again. And I've hired myself out to do the sweeping, although
I shall lose my soul and be packed off to hell for it. But I've
allowed myself to be tempted because I'm poor and hungry. My
granddaughter doesn't do anything to support me.... That's what I've
come to!"
"You let me be, Gnyphon. Here you are! Now go! And don't come again
when you're drunk!"
Krokala flung some pieces of silver to her grandfather, and then,
leaping on an Illyrian stallion, stood erect on his croup, touched him
with the whip, and set off at a gallop round the Hippodrome. Gnyphon
clacked his tongue, and said with pride--
"To think it was I who brought her up!"
The firm, bare body of the horsewoman shone in the morning sun, and
her floating red hair matched the colour of the stallion.
"Eh, Zotick," cried Gnyphon to an old slave who was raking horse-dung
into a basket, "come with me to clean the temple of Dionysus! You're a
master in these things! I'll pay you three obols for it."
"Of course I will," answered Zotick. "Just a moment to trim the lamp
for the goddess, and I'm at your service."
The goddess was Atalanta, patron of grooms, dunghills, and stables.
Coarsely carven in wood, and looking little more than a smoky log,
Atalanta figured in a damp corner. But Zotick, who had been bred
among horses, used to worship her, often praying with tears in his
eyes, arraying her coarse blockish feet with sweet violets, in the
belief that she healed all his ills, and would preserve him in life
and in death.
Gnyphon went out into the open space, the Forum of Constantine, which
was circular, and adorned with colonnades and triumphal arches. In the
midst a gigantic porphyry column rose from a massive pedestal, and
bore on its summit, at a height of a hundred and twenty cubits, a
bronze statue of Apollo by Phidias, which had been carried off from a
Phrygian city. The head of the Sun-god had been broken, and, with
barbaric taste, the head of the Christian Emperor, the apostolic
Constantine, had been fitted in its stead to the neck of the image.
His brow was surrounded by gilt rays. In his right hand Apollo
Constantine held the sceptre, and in his left the globe. At the foot
of the colossus was lodged a little Christian chapel, a kind of
palladium, in which worship was still offered in the time of
Constantine. The Christians defended the practice by the argument that
in the bronze body of Apollo, within the Sun-god's very breast, a
talisman was hidden--a piece of the Most Holy Cross brought from
Jerusalem. The Emperor Julian closed this chapel.
Gnyphon and Zotick proceeded along a narrow and lengthy street, which
led straight to the Chalcedonian stairs, not far from the fortress.
Many public edifices were being built, and others were rebuilding, for
so hastily had they been erected to please Constantius that they
already were crumbling away. Inquisitive gazers were wandering in this
street, stopping at merchants' shops; porters were passing by, slaves
following their masters. Overhead, hammers resounded; cranes were
creaking, and saws grinding the white stone. Labourers were heaving at
the end of ropes huge timbers, and blocks of marble glittered against
the blue. A smell of damp plaster came from the new houses, and a fine
white dust fell on the heads of passers-by. On this side and that,
between the dazzling white walls steeped in sunlight, the smiling blue
waves of the Propontic, trimmed with galley-sails like the wings of
sea-gulls, shone at the end of narrow alleys.
Gnyphon heard, as he went by, a conversation between two workmen who
were weighing mortar into a sack--
"Why did you become a Christian?" asked one of them.
"Just think, the Christians have six times as many feast days as
Hellenists! Nobody harms you.... I advise you to follow my example.
One is much freer among Christians."
Where four roads met, the pressure of a crowd pinned Gnyphon and
Zotick against the wall. In the middle of the street there was a block
in the traffic; the chariots could neither advance nor draw back;
shouts, oaths, blows of the whip, were exchanged. Forty oxen were
dragging, on an enormous stone-wheeled cart, a jasper column. The
earth shook under its weight.
"Whither are you dragging that?" asked Gnyphon.
"From the Basilica to the Temple of Hera. The Christians had carried
it off for their church. Now it is going back to its proper position."
Gnyphon glanced at the dirty wall against which he was leaning, on
which Pagan urchins had drawn the usual impious caricatures of the
Christians.
Gnyphon turned and spat with indignation.
On one side of the crowded market-place they observed the portrait of
Julian, arrayed in all the symbols of Imperial power. The winged god
Hermes was coming down from the clouds towards him. The portrait was
fresh and the colours not yet dry.
Now according to the Roman law every passer-by had to salute any
picture of Augustus.
The Agoranome, or inspector of the market, stopped a little old woman
carrying a large basket of cabbages.
"I never salute the gods," wept the old woman. "My father and mother
were Christians."
"You haven't got to salute the god, but the Emperor!"
"But the Emperor is alongside of the god! So how should I salute him?"
"No matter! You were told to salute and not to argue!"
Gnyphon dragged Zotick farther on as quickly as possible.
"Devilish trick," he grumbled, "either salute the accursed Hermes, or
be accused of insulting the sovereign! No way out!... Oh! oh! oh! the
day of Antichrist! In one way or another we're always sinning! When I
see you, Zotick, envy gnaws my very soul. You live with your dunghill
goddess, and have no cares."
They reached the Temple of Dionysus, hard by a Christian monastery,
the windows and doors of which were fast barred as against the
approach of an enemy. The Hellenists accused the monks of having
pillaged the temple.
When Gnyphon and Zotick went into the temple, carpenters and timberers
were already at work. The planks which had been used to close the
quadrilateral to the sky were dragged down, and the sun poured into
the gloomy building.
"Just look at the cobwebs, look, look!" Between the capitals of the
columns hung masses of grey webs, which were being hastily cleaned
away by means of rag-mops on immense poles. A bat, disturbed in his
lair, flew away from a dark crevice, rushing hither and thither to
hide himself from the light, striking himself against all the corners.
The rustling of his soft wings could be distinctly heard. Zotick began
sorting the rubbish and throwing it into baskets while the old man
mumbled, "Ah, these cursed fellows! what foulness they have heaped
up!"
A great bunch of rusty keys was brought up and the treasure-room
opened. The monks had carried off everything of value. Precious stones
encrusted on the sacrificial cups were gone, the gold and purple
adornments on the vestments had been torn off. When the splendid
sacrificial robe was displayed a brown cloud of moths escaped from its
folds. At the bottom of the hollow of a tripod, Gnyphon saw a handful
of ashes, the remains of myrrh burned before the triumph of the
Christians by the last priest during the last sacrifice.
From this heap of sacred rubbish, poor rags, and broken goblets, rose
a perfume of death and mildew, a sad and tender odour, as of incense
to gods profaned.
A gentle melancholy came over Gnyphon's heart. He smiled, remembering
something perhaps of his childhood; sweet cakes of barley and thyme,
field daisies and jessamine which he used to carry with his mother to
the altar of the village goddess; his childish prayers, not to the
distant God, but to the little gods polished by the frequent touch of
hands, carven in beechwood--the holy Penates. He pitied the vanished
gods, and sighed sadly, but suddenly returned to himself and
muttered--
"Suggestions of the Devil!"
The workmen were carrying up a heavy slab of marble, an antique
bas-relief, stolen many years before and discovered in the hovel of a
cobbler whose kitchen oven it had served to repair. Philomena, the old
wife of a neighbouring clothier, a devout Christian, hated the
cobbler's wife, who used to let her ass stray into Philomena's
cabbage-yard. War had been maintained between them for years, but the
Christian woman was in the end triumphant; for acting on her
information the workmen had penetrated into the cobbler's house, and
in order to carry off the bas-relief and slab had been obliged to
demolish the oven.
This was a terrible blow to the cobbler's wife. Brandishing her
shovel, she called down vengeance from all the gods on the impious;
pulled her hair out in handfuls, groaning over her scattered pots and
pans while her children squealed round her like the young birds of a
devastated nest. But the bas-relief was carried off, despite her
struggles, and Philomena set about the work of cleansing it. The
draper's wife zealously scrubbed the marble which had been blackened
by smoke and made greasy with spilt broth. Little by little the severe
lines of the divine sculpture became visible. The young Dionysus,
naked and proud, lay half-reclined, as if fatigued by Bacchic
feasting, letting his hand, which held a cup, fall idly. A leopardess
was licking up the last drops from the goblet, and the god, giver of
joy to all living things, was gazing with a benign smile at the
strength of the beast subdued by the grape. The bas-relief was hauled
into position. The jeweller, clambering up before the image of
Dionysus, inlaid the orbits of the god with two splendid sapphires, to
serve as eyes.
"What's he doing there?" asked Gnyphon.
"Can't you see? They are eyes."
"Yes, certainly, but where do the stones come from?"
"From the monastery."
"But why have the monks allowed it?"
"How could they prevent it? The divine Augustus Julian himself ordered
it. The god's blue eyes were used as an ornament on the robe of the
Crucified that's all.... They talk about charity and justice, and they
themselves are the worst of brigands! See how beautifully the stones
fit into their old setting!..."
The god fixed his sapphire eyes on Gnyphon. The old man recoiled and
crossed himself, seized with dread.
"Lord have mercy on us! It's horrible!"
Remorse filled his soul, and while sweeping he began, as was his wont,
to talk to himself--
"Gnyphon! Gnyphon! what a poor creature you are!... Just like a mangy
dog one might say.... You're ending your days in a nice way! Why have
you gone and damned yourself? The fiend has over-tempted you!... And
now you go into everlasting fire without a chance of salvation. You've
smirched soul and body, Gnyphon, by serving the abomination of the
heathen!... Better had it been for thee hadst thou never been born!"
"What are you groaning at, old man?" Philomena the draper's wife
enquired.
"My heart is heavy!... Oh, how heavy!"
"Are you a Christian?"
"Christian?--I am a betrayer of Christ!" answered Gnyphon, using his
broom vigorously.
"Would you like me to take away your sin so that not a trace of
heathen defilement shall stick to you? You see I'm a Christian too,
and yet afraid of nothing. Do you think I'd have undertaken work like
this, if I hadn't known how to purify myself after it?"
Gnyphon stared at her, incredulous.
But the draper's wife, having ascertained that nobody could hear them,
muttered mysteriously--
"Yes!... there is a means! I must tell you about it! A pilgrim made me
a present of a little bit of Egyptian wood, called persis, which grows
at Hermopolis, in the Thebaïd. When Jesus and His mother on their ass
were going through the gates of the town, the persis tree bowed down
before them to the earth; and ever since it has been a miraculous
healer. I've got a little splinter of it, and I'll break off a bit for
you. There's such a power in that wood, that if you put a bit into a
vat of water and leave it there for a night the water becomes holy.
You'll just wash yourself from head to foot in it, and the heathen
abomination will leave you like magic, and you'll feel yourself light
and pure. Isn't it written in the Bible, 'Thou shalt dip in the water
and shalt become as white as snow'?"
"Oh, my benefactress!" groaned Gnyphon, "save me! Give me a chip of
that wonderful wood!"
"Ah! you may well call it precious!... Just to do a good turn to a
neighbour I'll give it you for a drachma."[9]
"What's that you're saying, mother? Why, I never earned a drachma in
my life! Will you take three obols?"[10]
[9] Worth about 8_d._
[10] Six to the drachma.
"Miser!" cried the draper's wife indignantly. "You stick at a
drachma!... Isn't your immortal soul worth so much?"
"But after all do you think I shall be quite pure?" objected Gnyphon.
"Perhaps the sin has so soaked into me that nothing can...."
"I'll solemnly swear to it," insisted the draper's wife. "Try it and
you'll feel the miracle at once!... Your soul will shine like the
sun--as pure as a white dove...."