"_The Lord has delivered us to the evil king, the cunningest in all
the earth!..._"
Late in the night, when the sun had sunk upon the streets, the monks
went back to their cells.
Brother Parphenas could not even think of sleeping. His face was pale
and gentle, and in his great eyes, clear as a maiden's, perplexity was
visible when he spoke about worldly matters.
He spoke rarely, indistinctly, and in a fashion so quaint, on topics
so childish, that it was difficult to hear him without smiling.
Sometimes he laughed without cause; and austere monks would say to
him--
"What are you cackling at? Is it to please the Devil?"
Then he would timidly explain that he was laughing at his own
thoughts, and thus convince everybody that Parphenas was mad.
One great art he possessed--that of illuminating manuscripts; and this
art of Brother Parphenas brought to the monastery not only money, but
renown in the most distant provinces. Of this he had no suspicion, and
if he had been able to understand what reputation means, would rather
have been dismayed than delighted.
His artistic occupations, which cost him vast pains (Brother Parphenas
pushed perfection of detail to an exquisite finish), were not in his
eyes a labour, but an amusement. He never said, "I'm going to work."
But he always asked of the old Father Superior Pamphilus, who loved
him tenderly, "Father, give me your blessing, I am going to play."
And when he had mastered some difficult combination of ornament, he
would clap his hands in self-congratulation. Brother Parphenas so
enjoyed the solitude and calm of night that he had learned to work by
lamp-light. He used to say that the colours took on unexpected shades,
and that the yellow light did no harm to drawings in the realm of pure
fancy.
In his narrow cell Parphenas lighted the earthen lamp and placed it on
a plank, among his little flasks, fine brushes, and colour-boxes of
vermilion, silver, and liquid gold. He crossed himself cautiously,
dipped his brush, and began to paint the outspread tails of two
peacocks above a frontispiece. The golden peacocks, on a green field,
were drinking at a streamlet of turquoise, with raised beaks and
outstretched necks. Other rolls of parchment lay by him, unfinished.
His world was a supernatural and charming world. Bordering the text of
the page ran an embroidery of fabulous creations; a faery
architecture of fantastic trees and animals. Parphenas thought of
nothing while he created these things, but a happy serenity
transformed his face. Hellas, Assyria, Persia, the Indies, Byzantium
idealised, and the troubled vision of future worlds, of all peoples,
and of all ages; these mingled in the paradise of the monk, and shone,
with a glitter as of jewels, round the initial letters of the holy
books.
This one represented the Baptism. St. John was pouring water on the
head of Christ, and at his elbow the Pagan god of rivers was amiably
tilting a water-jar, while the former proprietor of the bank (that is
to say, the Devil) held a towel in readiness to offer the Saviour
after the ceremony.
Brother Parphenas in his innocence had no fear of the old gods. They
used to amuse him. He regarded them as long ago converted to
Christianity. He never failed to place the god of mountains, in the
shape of a naked youth, on the summit of every hill. When he was
drawing the passage of the Red Sea, a woman holding an oar symbolised
the Sea, and a naked man, inscribed Bodos, stood for the Abyss
engulfing Pharaoh, while on the bank sat a melancholy woman, in a
tan-coloured tunic, denoting the Desert.
Here, there, and everywhere, in the curve of a horse's neck, the fold
of a robe, the simple pose of a god lying on his elbow, were evidences
of antique grace and simplicity.
But on this night his "play" interested the artist no more. His
tireless fingers were shaky, and the smile had left his lips.
Listening awhile, he opened a cedar-wood box, took out an awl used in
the binding of books, crossed himself, and shielding the ruddy flame
of the lamp with his hand, noiselessly issued from his cell. It was
hot in the silent corridor. No sound was heard but the buzzing of a
fly taken in a spider's web.
Parphenas went down to the church, which was lighted by a single lamp,
placed before the old ivory-carved diptych. Two large sapphires in the
aureole of Jesus, who was sitting on the Virgin's arm, had been
carried off by the Pagans, and transferred to their original setting
in the Temple of Dionysus. These black hollows in the yellow ivory
were to Parphenas wounds in some living body.
"No, I cannot bear it," he murmured, kissing the hand of the Infant
Jesus. "I cannot bear it; 'twould be better to die!"
These sacrilegious marks in the ivory tortured and angered him more
than outrage on a human being.
In a corner of the church he discovered a rope-ladder, used in
lighting chapel-lamps. Carrying this ladder he went forth into a
narrow passage leading to the outer gate, in front of which the fat
brother-cellarer, Chorys, was snoring on the straw. Parphenas glided
past like a shadow. The lock of the door made a grinding noise. Chorys
sat unblinking, and then rolled round on the straw.
Parphenas leapt over a low wall and found himself in the deserted
street, into which the full moon was shining. There was a low roar of
the sea. The young monk went along the Temple of Dionysus up to a
point in which the wall was plunged in shadow. Thence he threw up the
rope-ladder, so that it hooked itself to the metal pinnacle which
decorated the corner. The ladder swung from the claw of a sphinx. The
monk clambered by it to the roof.
Far off, cocks crew; a dog barked; and then again came silence,
measured only by the slow sighings of the sea.
Parphenas threw the ladder down the inner wall of the temple, and
descended.
The eyes of the god, two lengthy sapphires, shone with intense
vividness in the moonlight, gazing down on the monk. Parphenas,
thrilled by the silence, trembled and crossed himself. He clambered on
to the altar where Julian had offered the sacrifice, and his heels
felt the warmth of the half-extinguished embers.
The monk drew the awl from his pocket. The god's eyes sparkled close
to his face, and the artist felt the careless smile of Dionysus, and
the lovely pose of the body. Even while digging out the sapphires, his
admiring hand involuntarily spared the body of the marble tempter.
Finally the deed was done. The blinded Dionysus stared horribly on the
monk from his hollow orbits. Terror fairly seized Parphenas. It seemed
that he was watched. He leapt down from the altar, ran to the
rope-ladder, climbed, threw it down the other side of the wall,
without taking time to fix it properly. This cost him a fall during
the latter part of the descent.
With crimson face, and clothes ragged and disordered, but griping the
precious sapphires, he slunk furtively across the street, and ran to
the monastery.
The porter did not wake, and Parphenas furtively entered the chapel.
At the sight of the diptych, his mind grew calm again. He tried the
sapphire eyes of Dionysus into the holes. They fitted admirably, and
soon were glittering anew in the aureole of the Infant Jesus. He
returned to his cell, lit the lamp, and went to bed. Huddling himself
up, and hiding his face in his hands, he burst into a fit of muffled
laughter, like a child delighted at some piece of mischief and afraid
of discovery. He then straightway fell sound asleep.
When he awoke, the morning waves of the Propontic were shining through
the small barred window, and the pigeons cooing and shaking their
wings.
The laughter of the previous night was still in the heart of
Parphenas. He ran to the painting-table and contentedly looked at his
unfinished arabesque of the Earthly Paradise. Adam and Eve were seated
in a meadow, glittering in the sunlight; it was a vellum tapestry of
purple, blue, and gold. And so the little monk worked on, innocently
investing the body of Adam with the proud antique beauty of young
Dionysus.