The old man had a coarse face, with high cheek-bones, bearded to the
eyes. A patched piece of sacking served him as inner robe, and a
hooded sheep's skin as cloak or chlamys. For twenty years, Pamva had
never washed himself, considering cleanliness sinful, and believing
that a special fiend presided over any acts of care for the body. He
dwelt in a fearful desert, the Berean, round Chalybon, to the east of
Antioch, where serpents and scorpions swarmed at the bottom of the
arid water-courses. His lodging was the deep sandy hollow of a
dried-up well, called _coubba_ in Syriac, where he used to feed
himself on five stalks a day of a sweet and flowery kind of reed. He
had nearly died of starvation. His disciples descended to feed him by
means of ropes. Then, during seven years, he lived on a half-measure
of boiled lentils. His sight grew feeble; his skin became leprous and
scurvy; he therefore added a little oil to his lentils, and accused
himself of worship of the belly.
Pamva, learning from his disciples that the Emperor Julian, the fierce
Anti-Christ, was persecuting the Christians, left his retreat and came
to Antioch to strengthen weak-kneed believers--
"Listen! listen!... he's going to speak."
Pamva climbed the staircase of the baths and halted on a broad
landing. His eyes glittered with condensed ire. He stretched out his
arms, pointing out to the people palaces, pagan temples, baths, shops,
courts of justice, all the monuments of Antioch.
"Not a stone of these shall remain! All shall crumble and disappear.
The holy fire shall burn up the universe. The heavens, like a
smouldering palace, shall sink away! That shall be the terrible
judgment of Christ, the unimaginable spectacle. Whither shall I turn
mine eyes, and what shall I wonder at, if it be not the groaning of
kings, cast down into darkness? If it be not the terror of Aphrodite,
the goddess of love, shivering in her nakedness before the Crucified?
If it be not the flight of Jupiter, and all the Olympians, before the
thunders of the Most High?... Triumph, ye martyrs, and rejoice, ye
persecuted! See your judges, the Roman proconsuls, seized by more
terrible flames than yours. Nor shall the syllogisms of Aristotle, nor
the demonstrations of Plato save you, philosophers, hurled into hell!
And, on that stage, their actors shall roar, as the heroes of
Sophocles and Æschylus never roared before! And their rope-dancers,
trust, me, shall dance a quicker step in that fire! And we, the poor
and ignorant, shall rejoice and say to the strong, wise, and the
haughty: Behold the Crucified, the son of the carpenter and the
work-woman, the King of Judæa, crowned in purple and thorns! Behold
the Sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan woman possessed of the devil! See
Him, whom you led bound with cords into your prætorium, Him whose
thirst you quenched with vinegar and hyssop! And we shall hear in
answer weepings and gnashings of teeth. We shall laugh, our hearts
overflowing with joy! Come, come, come, Lord Jesus!"
Gluturius, the cleanser of sewers, fell on his knees, and blinking his
inflamed eyelids as if he saw Christ descending, stretched out his
arms. The metal-founder clenched his fists, collected his forces like
a bull ready to charge. And the livid-faced weaver, trembling in all
his limbs, with an amazed smile was murmuring, "Lord, let me, too,
suffer!"
The animal faces of beggars and sharpers expressed the mischievous
triumph of the weak over the strong; of slaves over their masters. The
She-wolf grinned in silence, and an insatiable thirst for vengeance
twinkled in her drunken eyes.
Suddenly, the jingle of weapons and the heavy step of horses. The
Roman legionaries of the night-watch wheeled round the corner of the
road. At their head strode the prefect, Sallustius Secundus, a man
with aquiline nose, open face, and a look of calmness and kindly
intelligence. He wore the senatorial laticlave, and gave an impression
of self-confidence and patrician nobleness. Above the distant
Pantheon, erected by Antiochus Seleucus, slowly arose the great
reddish moon, and its rays were glittering on shields and
breastplates--
"Disperse, citizens!" said Sallustius, addressing the crowd. "By order
of Augustus crowds are forbidden in the streets of Antioch by night."
The populace groaned and murmured. Street-boys whistled, and one
audacious voice sang--
"Good-bye to the white cocks!
Good-bye to the white ox!
For Julian knocks them on the head
To feed his devils and the dead!"
There was a threatening clash of arms. The legionaries unsheathed
their swords and prepared to charge. Old Pamva struck the marble flags
with his staff, and shouted--
"Hail, gallant army of Satan! Hail, wise Roman dignitary! You'll
probably remember the time when you burned us, when you taught us
philosophy, and we prayed God to save your lost souls! Welcome to
you!"
The legionaries gripped their swords, but the prefect with a gesture
stopped them. He saw that the crowd was in his power.
"What are you threatening us with, blockhead?" asked Pamva, addressing
himself to Sallustius. "What can you do? All we want for vengeance is
a black night and two or three torches. You fear the Alemanni and the
Persians. We are more terrible than they. We are everywhere in the
midst of you, inviolable, innumerable! We have no boundaries, no
father-land; we recognise but one republic, the universal republic!
Born but yesterday, already we are filling the world, filling your
cities, your fortresses, your islands, city councils, camps, palaces,
senates, forums! We leave you your temples!... And but for our
humility, our fraternity, choosing rather to die than to slay, we
should have blotted you out....
"We want neither sword nor fire! So many are we, that if we withdrew,
you would perish. Your cities would become solitudes, you would be
frightened at your own loneliness, at the silence of the universe! All
life would stop, at that death-touch! Remember the Roman Empire exists
only on sufferance, sustained by the mercy of us Christians!"
All eyes being fixed on Pamva no one perceived a man clothed in the
old chlamys of a wandering philosopher, with a lean yellow face,
curling hair, and long black beard, quickly coming through the lines
of legionaries, who respectfully made way for him. He was followed by
a few companions, and, leaning towards Sallustius, whispered--
"What are you waiting for?"
"They will perhaps disperse of themselves," responded Sallustius. "The
Galileans have already too many martyrs for us to make any more of
them. They fly towards death as bees to honey!"
But the man in the philosopher's robe advanced and cried out with a
distinct voice, like a captain accustomed to command--
"Scatter the crowd. Seize the ringleaders!"