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?"
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons
Healthy soul is only to be found in a healthy body
Man is the standard of all things
Persians never prayed for any particular blessing
The immortal gods have set sweat before virtue
Things you mean are only what they seem to us
Would want some one else to wear herself out for
Any woman can forgive any man for his audacity in loving her