That evening Rufinus was sitting in the garden with his wife and
daughter and their friend Philippus. Paula, too, was there, and from
time to time she stroked Pulcheria’s silky golden hair, for the girl had
seated herself at her feet, leaning her head against Paula’s knee.
The moon was full, and it was so light out of doors that they could see
each other plainly, so Rufinus’ proposition that they should remain to
watch an eclipse which was to take place an hour before midnight found
all the more ready acceptance because the air was pleasant. The men
had been discussing the expected phenomenon, lamenting that the Church
should still lend itself to the superstitions of the populace by
regarding it as of evil omen, and organizing a penitential procession
for the occasion to implore God to avert all ill. Rufinus declared that
it was blasphemy against the Almighty to interpret events happening in
the course of eternal law and calculable beforehand, as a threatening
sign from Him; as though man’s deserts had any connection with the
courses of the sun and moon. The Bishop and all the priests of the
province were to head the procession, and thus a simple natural
phenomenon was forced in the minds of the people into a significance it
did not possess.
“And if the little comet which my old foster father discovered last week
continues to increase,” added the physician, “so that its tail spreads
over a portion of the sky, the panic will reach its highest pitch; I can
see already that they will behave like mad creatures.”
“But a comet really does portend war, drought, plague, and famine,” said
Pulcheria, with full conviction; and Paula added:
“So I have always believed.”
“But very wrongly,” replied the leech. “There are a thousand reasons
to the contrary; and it is a crime to confirm the mob in such a
superstition. It fills them with grief and alarms; and, would you
believe it--such anguish of mind, especially when the Nile is so low
and there is more sickness than usual, gives rise to numberless forms of
disease? We shall have our hands full, Rufinus.”
“I am yours to command,” replied the old man. “But at the same time,
if the tailed wanderer must do some mischief, I would rather it should
break folks’ arms and legs than turn their brains.”
“What a wish!” exclaimed Paula. “But you often say things--and I see
things about you too--which seem to me extraordinary. Yesterday you
promised....”
“To explain to you why I gather about me so many of God’s creatures who
have to struggle under the burden of life as cripples, or with injured
limbs.”
“Just so,” replied Paula. “Nothing can be more truly merciful than to
render life bearable to such hapless beings....”
“But still, you think,” interrupted the eager old man, “that this noble
motive alone would hardly account for the old oddity’s riding his hobby
so hard.--Well, you are right. From my earliest youth the structure of
the bones in man and beast has captivated me exceedingly; and just as
collectors of horns, when once they have a complete series of every
variety of stag, roe, and gazelle, set to work with fresh zeal to find
deformed or monstrous growths, so I have found pleasure in studying
every kind of malformation and injury in the bones of men and beasts.”
“And to remedy them,” added Philippus. “It has been his passion from
childhood.
“And the passion has grown upon me since I broke my own hip bone
and know what it means,” the old man went on. “With the help of my
fellow-student there, from a mere dilettante I became a practised
surgeon; and, what is more, I am one of those who serve Esculapius at
my own expense. However, there are accessory reasons for which I have
chosen such strange companions: deformed slaves are cheap and besides
that, certain investigations afford me inestimable and peculiar
satisfaction. But this cannot interest a young girl.”
“Indeed it does!” cried Paula. “So far as I have understood Philippus
when he explains some details of natural history....”
“Stay,” laughed Rufinus, “our friend will take good care not to explain
this. He regards it as folly, and all he will admit is that no surgeon
or student could wish for better, more willing, or more amusing
house-mates than my cripples.”
“They are grateful to you,” cried Paula.
“Grateful?” asked the old man. “That is true sometimes, no doubt; still,
gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons. Now I have
told you enough; for the sake of Philippus we will let the rest pass.”
“No, no,” said Paula putting up entreating hands, and Rufinus answered
gaily:
“Who can refuse you anything? I will cut it short, but you must pay good
heed.--Well then Man is the standard of all things. Do you understand
that?”
“Yes, I often hear you say so. Things you mean are only what they seem
to us.”
“To us, you say, because we--you and I and the rest of us here--are
sound in body and mind. And we must regard all things--being God’s
handiwork--as by nature sound and normal. Thus we are justified in
requiring that man, who gives the standard for them shall, first and
foremost, himself be sound and normal. Can a carpenter measure straight
planks properly with a crooked or sloping rod?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then you will understand how I came to ask myself: ‘Do sickly,
crippled, and deformed men measure things by a different standard to
that of sound men? And might it not be a useful task to investigate how
their estimates differ from ours?’”
“And have your researches among your cripples led to any results?”
“To many important ones,” the old man declared; but Philippus
interrupted him with a loud: “Oho!” adding that his friend was in
too great a hurry to deduce laws from individual cases. Many of his
observations were, no doubt, of considerable interest.... Here Rufinus
broke in with some vehemence, and the discussion would have become a
dispute if Paula had not intervened by requesting her zealous host to
give her the results, at any rate, of his studies.
“I find,” said Rufinus very confidently, as he stroked down his long
beard, “that they are not merely shrewd because their faculties are
early sharpened to make up by mental qualifications for what they lack
in physical advantages; they are also witty, like AEesop the fabulist
and Besa the Egyptian god, who, as I have been told by our old friend
Horus, from whom we derive all our Egyptian lore, presided among those
heathen over festivity, jesting, and wit, and also over the toilet
of women. This shows the subtle observation of the ancients; for the
hunchback whose body is bent, applies a crooked standard to things
in general. His keen insight often enables him to measure life as
the majority of men do, that is by a straight rule; but in some happy
moments when he yields to natural impulse he makes the straight crooked
and the crooked straight; and this gives rise to wit, which only
consists in looking at things obliquely and--setting them askew as it
were. You have only to talk to my hump-backed gardener Gibbus, or listen
to what he says. When he is sitting with the rest of our people in an
evening, they all laugh as soon as he opens his mouth.--And why? Because
his conformation makes him utter nothing but paradoxes.--You know what
they are?”
“Certainly.”
“And you, Pul?”
“No, Father.”
“You are too straight-nay, and so is your simple soul, to know what the
thing is! Well, listen then: It would be a paradox, for instance, if
I were to say to the Bishop as he marches past in procession: ‘You are
godless out of sheer piety;’ or if I were to say to Paula, by way of
excuse for all the flattery which I and your mother offered her just
now: ‘Our incense was nauseous for very sweetness.’--These paradoxes,
when examined, are truths in a crooked form, and so they best suit the
deformed. Do you understand?”
“Certainly,” said Paula.
“And you, Pul?”
“I am not quite sure. I should be better pleased to be simply told: ‘We
ought not to have made such flattering speeches; they may vex a young
girl.’”
“Very good, my straightforward child,” laughed her father. “But look,
there is the man! Here, good Gibbus--come here!--Now, just consider:
supposing you had flattered some one so grossly that you had offended
him instead of pleasing him: How would you explain the state of affairs
in telling me of it?”
The gardener, a short, square man, with a huge hump but a clever face
and good features, reflected a minute and then replied: “I wanted to
make an ass smell at some roses and I put thistles under his nose.”
“Capital!” cried Paula; and as Gibbus turned away, laughing to himself,
the physician said:
“One might almost envy the man his hump. But yet, fair Paula, I think
we have some straight-limbed folks who can make use of such crooked
phrases, too, when occasion serves.”
But Rufinus spoke before Paula could reply, referring her to his Essay
on the deformed in soul and body; and then he went on vehemently:
“I call you all to witness, does not Baste, the lame woman, restrict her
views to the lower aspect of things, to the surface of the earth indeed?
She has one leg much shorter than the other, and it is only with much
pains that we have contrived that it should carry her. To limp along
at all she is forced always to look down at the ground, and what is the
consequence? She can never tell you what is hanging to a tree, and
about three weeks since I asked her under a clear sky and a waning moon
whether the moon had been shining the evening before and she could not
tell me, though she had been sitting out of doors with the others
till quite late, evening after evening. I have noticed, too, that she
scarcely recognizes men who are rather tall, though she may have seen
them three or four times. Her standard has fallen short-like her leg.
Now, am I right or wrong?”
“In this instance you are right,” replied Philippus, “still, I know some
lame people...”
And again words ran high between the friends; Pulcheria, however, put an
end to the discussion this time, by exclaiming enthusiastically:
“Baste is the best and most good-natured soul in the whole house!”
“Because she looks into her own heart,” replied Rufinus. “She knows
herself; and, because she knows how painful pain is, she treats others
tenderly. Do you remember, Philippus, how we disputed after that
anatomical lecture we heard together at Caesarea?”
“Perfectly well,” said the leech, “and later life has but confirmed the
opinion I then held. There is no less true or less just saying than the
Latin motto: ‘Mens sana in corpore sano,’ as it is generally interpreted
to mean that a healthy soul is only to be found in a healthy body. As
the expression of a wish it may pass, but I have often felt inclined to
doubt even that. It has been my lot to meet with a strength of mind,
a hopefulness, and a thankfulness for the smallest mercies in the
sickliest bodies, and at the same time a delicacy of feeling, a wise
reserve, and an undeviating devotion to lofty things such as I have
never seen in a healthy frame. The body is but the tenement of the soul,
and just as we find righteous men and sinners, wise men and fools, alike
in the palace and the hovel--nay, and often see truer worth in a cottage
than in the splendid mansions of the great--so we may discover noble
souls both in the ugly and the fair, in the healthy and the infirm, and
most frequently, perhaps, in the least vigorous. We should be careful
how we go about repeating such false axioms, for they can only do harm
to those who have a heavy burthen to bear through life as it is. In my
opinion a hunchback’s thoughts are as straightforward as an athlete’s;
or do you imagine that if a mother were to place her new-born children
in a spiral chamber and let them grow up in it, they could not tend
upwards as all men do by nature?”
“Your comparison limps,” cried Rufinus, “and needs setting to rights. If
we are not to find ourselves in open antagonism....”
“You must keep the peace,” Joanna put in addressing her husband; and
before Rufinus could retort, Paula had asked him with frank simplicity:
“How old are you, my worthy host?”
“Your arrival at my house blessed the second day of my seventieth year,”
replied Rufinus with a courteous bow. His wife shook her finger at him,
exclaiming:
“I wonder whether you have not a secret hump? Such fine phrases...”
“He is catching the style from his cripples,” said Paula laughing at
him. “But now it is your turn, friend Philippus. Your exposition was
worthy of an antique sage, and it struck me--for the sake of Rufinus
here I will not say convinced me. I respect you--and yet I should like
to know how old....”
“I shall soon be thirty-one,” said Philippus, anticipating her question.
“That is an honest answer,” observed Dame Joanna. “At your age many a
man clings to his twenties.”
“Why?” asked Pulcheria.
“Well,” said her mother, “only because there are some girls who think a
man of thirty too old to be attractive.”
“Stupid creatures,” answered Pulcheria. “Let them find me a young
man who is more lovable than my father; and if Philippus--yes you,
Philippus--were ten or twenty years over nine and twenty, would that
make you less clever or kind?”
“Not less ugly, at any rate,” said the physician. Pulcheria laughed, but
with some annoyance, as though she had herself been the object of the
remark. “You are not a bit ugly!” she exclaimed. “Any one who says so
has no eyes. And you will hear nothing said of you but that you are a
tall, fine man!”
As the warm-hearted girl thus spoke, defending her friend against
himself, Paula stroked her golden hair and added to the physician:
“Pulcheria’s father is so far right that she, at any rate, measures men
by a true and straight standard. Note that, Philippus!--But do not take
my questioning ill.--I cannot help wondering how a man of one and thirty
and one of seventy should have been studying in the high schools at the
same time? The moon will not be eclipsed for a long time yet--how bright
and clear it is!--So you, Rufinus, who have wandered so far through the
wide world, if you would do me a great pleasure, will tell us something
of your past life and how you came to settle in Memphis.”
“His history?” cried Joanna. “If he were to tell it, in all its details
from beginning to end, the night would wane and breakfast would get
cold. He has had as many adventures as travelled Odysseus. But tell us
something husband; you know there is nothing we should like better.”
“I must be off to my duties,” said the leech, and when he had taken
a friendly leave of the others and bidden farewell to Paula with less
effusiveness than of late, Rufinus began his story.
“I was born in Alexandria, where, at that time, commerce and industry
still flourished. My father was an armorer; above two hundred slaves and
free laborers were employed in his work-shops. He required the finest
metal, and commonly procured it by way of Massilia from Britain. On one
occasion he himself went to that remote island in a friend’s ship, and
he there met my mother. Her ruddy gold hair, which Pul has inherited,
seems to have bewitched him and, as the handsome foreigner pleased her
well--for men like my father are hard to match nowadays--she turned
Christian for his sake and came home with him. They neither of them ever
regretted it; for though she was a quiet woman, and to her dying day
spoke Greek like a foreigner, the old man often said she was his best
counsellor. At the same time she was so soft-hearted, that she could
not bear that any living creature should suffer, and though she looked
keenly after everything at the hearth and loom, she could never see
a fowl, a goose, or a pig slaughtered. And I have inherited her
weakness--shall I say ‘alas!’ or ‘thank God?’
“I had two elder brothers who both had to help my father, and who
were to carry on the business. When I was ten years old my calling was
decided on. My mother would have liked to make a priest of me and at
that time I should have consented joyfully; but my father would not
agree, and as we had an uncle who was making a great deal of money as
a Rhetor, my father accepted a proposal from him that I should devote
myself to that career. So I went from one teacher to another and made
good progress in the schools.
“Till my twentieth year I continued to live with my parents, and during
my many hours of leisure I was free to do or leave undone whatever I had
a fancy for; and this was always something medical, if that is not too
big a word. I was but a lad of twelve when this fancy first took me, and
that through pure accident. Of course I was fond of wandering about the
workshops, and there they kept a magpie, a quaint little bird, which my
mother had fed out of compassion. It could say ‘Blockhead,’ and call
my name and a few other words, and it seemed to like the noise, for it
always would fly off to where the smiths were hammering and filing their
loudest, and whenever it perched close to one of the anvils there were
sure to be mirthful faces over the shaping and scraping and polishing.
For many years its sociable ways made it a favorite; but one day it got
caught in a vice and its left leg was broken. Poor little creature!”
The old man stooped to wipe his eyes unseen, but he went on without
pausing:
“It fell on its back and looked at me so pathetically that I snatched
the tongs out of the bellows-man’s hand--for he was going to put an end
to its sufferings in all kindness--and, picking it up gently, I made up
my mind I would cure it. Then I carried the bird into my own room, and
to keep it quiet that it might not hurt itself, I tied it down to a
frame that I contrived, straightened its little leg, warmed the injured
bone by sucking it, and strapped it to little wooden splints. And behold
it really set: the bird got quite well and fluttered about the workshops
again as sound as before, and whenever it saw me it would perch upon my
shoulder and peck very gently at my hair with its sharp beak.
“From that moment I could have found it in me to break the legs of every
hen in the yard, that I might set them again; but I thought of something
better. I went to the barbers and told them that if any one had a bird,
a dog, or a cat, with a broken limb, he might bring it to me, and that
I was prepared to cure all these injuries gratis; they might tell all
their customers. The very next day I had a patient brought me: a black
hound, with tan spots over his eyes, whose leg had been smashed by a
badly-aimed spear: I can see him now! Others followed; feathered or
four-footed sufferers; and this was the beginning of my surgical career.
The invalid birds on the trees I still owe to my old allies the barbers.
I only occasionally take beasts in hand. The lame children, whom you
saw in the garden, come to me from poor parents who cannot afford a
surgeon’s aid. The merry, curly-headed boy who brought you a rose just
now is to go home again in a few days.--But to return to the story of my
youth.
“The more serious events which gave my life this particular bias
occurred in my twentieth year, when I had already left even the high
school behind me; nor was I fully carried away by their influence till
after my uncle had procured me several opportunities of proving my
proficiency in my calling. I may say without vanity that my speeches won
approval; but I was revolted by the pompous, flowery bombast, without
which I should have been hissed down, and though my parents rejoiced
when I went home from Niku, Arsmoe, or some other little provincial
town, with laurel-wreaths and gold pieces, to myself I always seemed
an impostor. Still, for my father’s sake, I dared not give up my
profession, although I hated more and more the task of praising people
to the skies whom I neither loved nor respected, and of shedding tears
of pathos while all the time I was minded to laugh.
“I had plenty of time to myself, and as I did not lack courage and held
stoutly to our Greek confession, I was always to be found where there
was any stir or contention between the various sects. They generally
passed off with nothing worse than bruises and scratches, but now and
then swords were drawn. On one occasion thousands came forth to meet
thousands, and the Prefect called out the troops--all Greeks--to restore
order by force. A massacre ensued in which thousands were killed. I
could not describe it! Such scenes were not rare, and the fury and greed
of the mob were often directed against the Jews by the machinations of
the creatures of the archbishop and the government. The things I saw
there were so horrible, so shocking, that the tongue refuses to tell
them; but one poor Jewess, whose husband the wretches--our fellow
Christians--killed, and then pillaged the house, I have never forgotten!
A soldier dragged her down by her hair, while a ruffian snatched the
child from her breast and, holding it by its feet, dashed its skull
against the wall before her eyes--as you might slash a wet cloth against
a pillar to dry it--I shall never forget that handsome young mother and
her child; they come before me in my dreams at night even now.
“All these things I saw; and I shuddered to behold God’s creatures,
beings endowed with reason, persecuting their fellows, plunging them
into misery, tearing them limb from limb--and why? Merciful Saviour,
why? For sheer hatred--as sure as man is the standard for all
things--merely carried away by a hideous impulse to spite their neighbor
for not thinking as they do--nay, simply for not being themselves--to
hurt him, insult him, work him woe. And these fanatics, these armies
who raised the standard of ruthlessness, of extermination, of
bloodthirstiness, were Christians, were baptized in the name of Him who
bids us forgive our enemies, who enlarged the borders of love from the
home and the city and the state to include all mankind; who raised the
adulteress from the dust, who took children into his arms, and would
have more joy over a sinner who repents than over ninety and nine just
persons!--Blood, blood, was what they craved; and did not the doctrine
of Him whose followers they boastfully called themselves grow out of the
blood of Him who shed it for all men alike,--just as that lotos flower
grows out of the clear water in the marble tank? And it was the highest
guardians and keepers of this teaching of mercy, who goaded on the
fury of the mob: Patriarchs, bishops, priests and deacons--instead of
pointing to the picture of the Shepherd who tenderly carries the lost
sheep and brings it home to the fold.
“My own times seemed to me the worst that had ever been; aye, and--as
surely as man is the standard of all things--so they are! for love is
turned to hatred, mercy to implacable hardheartedness. The thrones not
only of the temporal but of the spiritual rulers, are dripping with
the blood of their fellow-men. Emperors and bishops set the example;
subjects and churchmen follow it. The great, the leading men of the
struggle are copied by the small, by the peaceful candidates for
spiritual benefices. All that I saw as a man, in the open streets, I had
already seen as a boy both in the low and high schools. Every doctrine
has its adherents; the man who casts in his lot with Cneius is hated by
Caius, who forthwith speaks and writes to no other end than to vex and
put down Cneius, and give him pain. Each for his part strives his
utmost to find out faults in his neighbor and to put him in the pillory,
particularly if his antagonist is held the greater man, or is likely
to overtop him. Listen to the girls at the well, to the women at the
spindle; no one is sure of applause who cannot tell some evil of the
other men or women. Who cares to listen to his neighbor’s praises? The
man who hears that his brother is happy at once envies him! Hatred,
hatred everywhere! Everywhere the will, the desire, the passion for
bringing grief and ruin on others rather than to help them, raise them
and heal them!
“That is the spirit of my time; and everything within me revolted
against it with sacred wrath. I vowed in my heart that I would live and
act differently; that my sole aim should be to succor the unfortunate,
to help the wretched, to open my arms to those who had fallen into
unmerited contumely, to set the crooked straight for my neighbor, to
mend what was broken, to pour in balm, to heal and to save!
“And, thank God! it has been vouchsafed to me in some degree to keep
this vow; and though, later, some whims and a passionate curiosity got
mixed up with my zeal, still, never have I lost sight of the great task
of which I have spoken, since my father’s death and since my uncle also
left me his large fortune. Then I had done with the Rhetor’s art, and
travelled east and west to seek the land where love unites men’s hearts
and where hatred is only a disease; but as sure as man is the standard
of all things, to this day all my endeavors to find it have been in
vain. Meanwhile I have kept my own house on such a footing that it has
become a stronghold of love; in its atmosphere hatred cannot grow, but
is nipped in the germ.
“In spite of this I am no saint. I have committed many a folly, many an
injustice; and much of my goods and gold, which I should perhaps have
done better to save for my family, has slipped through my fingers,
though in the execution, no doubt, of what I deemed the highest duties.
Would you believe it, Paula?--Forgive an old man for such fatherly
familiarity with the daughter of Thomas;--hardly five years after my
marriage with this good wife, not long after we had lost our only son, I
left her and our little daughter, Pul there, for more than two years, to
follow the Emperor Heraclius of my own free will to the war against the
Persians who had done me no harm--not, indeed, as a soldier, but as a
surgeon eager for experience. To confess the truth I was quite as eager
to see and treat fractures and wounds and injuries in great numbers,
as I was to exercise benevolence. I came home with a broken hip-bone,
tolerably patched up, and again, a few years later, I could not keep
still in one place. The bird of passage must need drag wife and child
from the peace of hearth and homestead, and take them to where he could
go to the high school. A husband, a father, and already grey-headed,
I was a singular exception among the youths who sat listening to the
lectures and explanations of their teachers; but as sure as man is the
standard of all things, they none of them outdid me in diligence and
zeal, though many a one was greatly my superior in gifts and intellect,
and among them the foremost was our friend Philippus. Thus it came
about, noble Paula, that the old man and the youth in his prime were
fellow-students; but to this day the senior gladly bows down to his
young brother in learning and feeling. To straighten, to comfort, and
to heal: this is the aim of his life too. And even I, an old man, who
started long before Philippus on the same career, often long to call
myself his disciple.”
Here Rufinus paused and rose; Paula, too, got up, grasped his hand
warmly, and said:
“If I were a man, I would join you! But Philippus has told me that even
a woman may be allowed to work with the same purpose.--And now let me
beg of you never to call me anything but Paula--you will not refuse me
this favor. I never thought I could be so happy again as I am with you;
here my heart is free and whole. Dame Joanna, do you be my mother! I
have lost the best of fathers, and till I find him again, you, Rufinus,
must fill his place!”
“Gladly, gladly!” cried the old man; he clasped both her hands and went
on vivaciously: “And in return I ask you to be an elder sister to Pul.
Make that timid little thing such a maiden as you are yourself.--But
look, children, look up quickly; it is beginning!--Typhon, in the form
of a boar, is swallowing the eye of Horns: so the heathen of old in this
country used to believe when the moon suffered an eclipse. See how the
shadow is covering the bright disk. When the ancients saw this happening
they used to make a noise, shaking the sistrum with its metal rings,
drumming and trumpeting, shouting and yelling, to scare off the evil one
and drive him away. It may be about four hundred years since that last
took place, but to this day--draw your kerchiefs more closely round
your heads and come with me to the river--to this day Christians degrade
themselves by similar rites. Wherever I have been in Christian lands, I
have always witnessed the same scenes: our holy faith has, to be sure,
demolished the religions of the heathen; but their superstitions have
survived, and have forced their way through rifts and chinks into our
ceremonial. They are marching round now, with the bishop at their head,
and you can hear the loud wailing of the women, and the cries of
the men, drowning the chant of the priests. Only listen! They are as
passionate and agonized in their entreaty as though old Typhon were even
now about to swallow the moon, and the greatest catastrophe was hanging
over the world. Aye, as surely as man is the standard of all things,
those terrified beings are diseased in mind; and how are we to forgive
those who dare to scare Christians; yes, Christian souls, with the
traditions of heathen folly, and to blind their inward vision?”