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           Title: Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom
      Creator(s): Farrar, Frederic William (1831-1903)
     Print Basis: New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895
          Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All; Biography; Biotarget=chrysostom; History
      LC Call no: PZ3.F243 G
     LC Subjects:

                  Fiction and juvenile belles lettres

                  Fiction in English
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GATHERING CLOUDS

  A TALE OF THE DAYS OF ST. CHRYSOSTOM

      BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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   DARKNESS AND DAWN;

      Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero.

      AN HISTORIC TALE.

      8vo. $2.00.
        __________________________________________________________________

      LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

      NEW YORK AND LONDON.

GATHERING CLOUDS

A TALE OF THE DAYS OF ST. CHRYSOSTOM

BY

FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D.D.

DEAN OF CANTERBURY

AUTHOR OF DARKNESS AND DAWN,' ETC.

   NEW YORK

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

   AND LONDON

1895

   Copyright, 1895,

   By F. W. FARRAR.
     __________________________________________________________________

   All rights reserved.

   TROW DIRECTORY
   PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
   NEW YORK

FILIIS CARISSIMIS

R. A. F.   E. M. F.   F. P. F.   I. G. F.

HANC CORRUPTÆ QUIDEM ECCLESIÆ

FIDEI TAMEN INCOLUMIS ADUMBRATIONEM

D. D.

PATER AMANTISSIMUS
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  PREFACE
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   In Darkness and Dawn' I endeavoured to illustrate in the form of a
   story an epoch of surpassing historical and moral interest--the
   struggle in the first century between a nascent Christianity armed only
   with the irresistible might of weakness,' and a decadent Paganism
   supported by the wit, the genius, the religion, the philosophy, the
   imperial power, and all the armies of the world. I showed that the
   victory of Christianity was won by virtue of the purity and integrity
   which it inspired; and that nothing was able to resist a faith which
   placed the attainment of the ideal of holiness within the reach of the
   humblest of mankind. I tried to show some glimpse--so far as it was
   possible--of the frightful spiritual debasement for which a heathendom
   which had become more than half atheistical was responsible; and of the
   noble characters which Christianity developed into a beauty till then
   not only unattained, but unimagined, alike in the high and in the low.
   So far as the historic outline was concerned the picture was not an
   imaginative landscape, but an absolute photograph. Every circumstance,
   every particular, even of costume and custom, was derived directly from
   the history, poetry, satires, and romances of classic writers, or from
   the literature and remains of the early days of Christianity. If I had
   not followed this method I should not have been faithful to the main
   object which I set before me.

   I acknowledge with gratitude the kind reception which was accorded to
   Darkness and Dawn' by a large number of readers; and, from many
   communications which have reached me, I trust that I did not wholly
   fail in making my aim understood and appreciated. I did not appeal to
   the ordinary novel-reader. I wished to create an interest far deeper
   and higher than that of passing amusement.

   I dwell on this because my plan in the following pages is closely
   analogous to that which I endeavoured to follow in Darkness and Dawn,'
   though the truths which I desire to illustrate and the characteristics
   of the age with which I have to deal are altogether different.

   I there showed the influences which enabled the Church to triumph over
   the world: it is now my far sadder task to show how the world
   reinvaded, and partly even triumphed over, the nominal Church. I there
   showed how the Darkness had been scattered by the Dawn: I have here to
   picture how the Sun of Righteousness, which had risen with healing in
   his wings, was overshadowed by many ominous and lurid clouds. Of the
   Byzantine Empire,' says Mr. Lecky, the universal verdict of history is
   that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly
   base and despicable form that civilisation has yet assumed.... The
   Byzantine Empire was pre-eminently the age of treachery.... The Asiatic
   Churches had already perished. The Christian faith, planted in the
   dissolute cities of Asia Minor, had produced many fanatical ascetics,
   and a few illustrious theologians, but it had no renovating effect upon
   the people at large. It introduced among them a principle of
   interminable and implacable dissensions, but it scarcely tempered in
   any appreciable degree their luxury or their sensuality.'

   The apparent triumph of Christianity was in some sense, and for a time,
   its real defeat, the corruption of its simplicity, the defacement of
   its purest and loftiest beauty.

   Yet, however much the Divine ideal might be obscured, it was never
   wholly lost. The sun was often clouded; but behind that veil of earthly
   mists, on the days which seemed most dark, it was there always, flaming
   in the zenith, and it could make the darkest clouds palpitate with
   light. No age since Christ died was so utterly corrupt as not to
   produce some prophets and saints of God. These saints, these prophets,
   in age after age, were persecuted, were sawn asunder, were slain with
   the sword by kings and priests; but the next generation, which built
   their sepulchres, had, in part at least, profited by their lessons.

   The Church,' said St. Chrysostom, cannot be shaken. The more the world
   takes counsel against it, the more it increases; the waves are
   dissipated, the rock remains immovable.'

   In reading this story, then, the reader will be presented with an
   historic picture in which fiction has been allowed free play as regards
   matters which do not affect the important facts, but of which every
   circumstance bearing on my main design is rigidly accurate, or, at any
   rate, is derived from the authentic testimony of contemporary Pagans,
   and of the Saints and Fathers of the Church of God.

   F. W. Farrar.
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BOOK I
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ANTIOCH
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  CHAPTER I

  THE GATHERING STORM


   Phoebeæ lauri domus, Antiochia

   Turbida...et amentis populi male sana tumultu.

   Ausonius, Ord. Nob. Urbium.

   February 26, a.d. 387, was a memorable day in the fortunes of Antioch,
   the loveliest and one of the most famous capitals of the Eastern
   Empire.

   On that morning a herald had proclaimed to the people that, owing to
   the necessities of the imperial exchequer, the great Emperor Theodosius
   had decided to levy a subsidy on the most opulent cities of his
   dominion; and that Antioch, renowned all over the world for her
   luxurious prosperity, would be required loyally to pay her share.

   The ignorant impatience of taxation' is inherent in human nature, and
   there is no monopoly of it either in modern times or in the British
   nation. If it was necessary that cities should be taxed in proportion
   to their wealth, the contribution of Antioch would form a large quota
   of the sum which had to be raised. She had Phoenicia to the south, and
   Asia Minor to the north. The rich beauty of the vegetation which
   clothed her plain testified to the unwonted fertility of her soil.
   Nowhere were more blooming vineyards than those which clothed the
   slopes of her Mount Silpius. The deep and rapid waters of her
   river--the legendary Orontes--not only clothed the banks with flowering
   masses of pink oleander and delicately scented jasmine, but also
   refreshed her groves of laurel and myrtle and irrigated her gardens
   full of every delicious fruit. Caravans from Mesopotamia and Arabia
   brought to her all the riches of the East through the passes of
   Lebanon. Her fresh lake and her rushing rivulets supplied her with fish
   and ample stores of food. Ships from every port of the Mediterranean
   poured the abundance of many lands into her harbour of Seleuceia.
   Wealthy proprietors--Greeks, Romans, Jews, Syrians--had thronged to her
   suburbs, to fix their voluptuous homes in scenes where they could enjoy
   the soft western winds which, even in winter, tempered her climate.
   There, in courts and villas lustrous with marble and enriched with the
   finest works of ancient art, they would loll on soft couches beside
   fountains which cooled the summer heat. No wonder that Antioch on the
   Orontes was one of the favourite residences of all who loved the
   delights of effeminate indolence, diversified by wild dissipations of
   thrilling excitement. And was not the delightful grove of Daphne only
   five miles distant--enchanting Daphne, with its rose-gardens and
   perennial fountains and abounding shades? Who could be dull if he went
   there to watch the Pagan pilgrimages which at one time had made it 'a
   perpetual festival of vice'? The self-restraint of Christianity had,
   indeed, controlled the Daphnic morals' which had once filled the
   sanctuary of Apollo with gayest revelries. Constantine's statue to his
   mother, St. Helena, had usurped the reverence once given to the marble
   colossus of the god of song. But the road to Daphne still passed
   through gardens and palaces, and in the ten-mile circuit of the old
   Paradise of Heathendom the possibilities of pleasure and amusement were
   not yet utterly extinct.

   But if the delightfulness of Antioch had made it the chosen home of so
   many hereditary millionaires, successful merchants, and gorgeous
   criminals,' what was more reasonable than the demand that the city
   should contribute its fair share to the urgent needs of the Empire?
   Theodosius was compelled to gratify his hungry soldiery by some sort of
   donative, and that was impossible without fresh taxation. It was not a
   question of choice, or of display and luxury, but of dire necessity, if
   the army, on which depended the defence of the whole Empire, was to be
   kept in allegiance and good humour.

   The soft Antiochenes did not see the matter in this light. The
   proclamation of the imperial requisition had been received in the most
   indignant spirit by the multitude assembled in the great Forum.
   Usually, all public business was accompanied by shouts, acclamations,
   and intense excitement, and not infrequently by the jests and
   witticisms for which the quick and volatile multitude of Antioch was
   celebrated. But on the present occasion there had been neither
   applause, nor shouts, nor jokes. The grim silence struck chill into
   men's hearts, like the hush before the outburst of a storm.

   The governor of the city, who rejoiced in the sounding title of 'Count
   of the East,' had been accompanied to the scene by all his high
   officials, and by his side sat the most celebrated literary man of the
   day, the Pagan sophist Libanius, the chief instructor of all the
   intellectual youths who aimed at oratorical distinction. Libanius was a
   native of Antioch, and, struck by the ominous stillness, the Count
   turned to him with uplifted eyebrows, as though to ask for an
   explanation of the strange phenomenon.

   This is something quite new to me,' said Libanius. 'When a multitude is
   too sullen even to roar or hiss there is room for anxiety. "I fear lest
   from this silence calamity should burst forth."'

   Tush!' said the angry Governor. It is only another phase of the foolery
   of this mongrel population of Syrians, Greeks, and Jews. I beg pardon
   of your patriotism, Libanius, but you are too cosmopolitan not to
   recognise that the ordinary Antiochene is an amalgam of frivolity and
   prejudice.'

   This subsidy will heavily tax their resources,' said the orator.

   Nonsense!' said the Governor. A little hæmorrhage will do all the good
   in the world to their plethora. Do the fools think they can have all
   the privileges of government for nothing? To what do they owe their
   wealth, if not to the decade of peace and economy which the great
   Theodosius has secured for them? And yet they murmur at this very
   modest proposal. They treated your friend, the Emperor Julian, in just
   the same way. He asked for necessary funds, and they yelled at him in
   the Circus, "Plenty of everything; everything dear!" What would happen
   to the Empire but for our strong Emperor? It would break into
   fragments, like the vertebræ of a serpent which an eagle has dropped
   out of its talons, and each vertebra would turn into a new serpent to
   sting all the rest. Here are the Goths and the Isaurians and the
   Vandals, and I know not how many nameless barbarians, hanging on all
   our frontiers and threatening to merge us in floods of ignorance and
   rapine. After the defeat of Adrianople there seemed to be nothing
   between us and destruction. Theodosius has given us peace, unity,
   fiscal reform, and wise administration. But for him Antioch would have
   been more surely laid in ruin long ago than by the worst of her
   earthquakes.'

   He might economise,' said Libanius.

   Nay,' said the Count, you are not fair to him, Libanius. You are a
   Pagan, and he has done more to suppress the worship of the old gods
   than anyone since Constantine. This requisition is in reality a signal
   proof of his economy. This is the ninth year of his reign, and,
   nominally, the fifth year of the boy Arcadius. You know that on such
   anniversaries every soldier in the army expects to receive five gold
   pieces. The sum required would drag a Croesus into the mire. It cost
   the young Valentinian sixteen hundred pounds of gold. It was to avoid
   the necessity for two ruinous donatives that Theodosius determined to
   antedate by a year his own decennalia, and unite them with the
   quinquennalia of his son. The poor are already overtaxed. What could he
   do but turn to the rich?'

   Let us get back to the Prætorium,' said Libanius hurriedly. 'I don't
   like the look of the mob and their sinister silence.'

   Oh! it is nothing,' said the Governor. Half an hour hence they will be
   roaring for the Green or the Blue factions of charioteers in the
   Circus, or crowding round a sword-juggler in the street of Tiberius.'

   Nevertheless, let us hurry back,' said Libanius. There have been riots
   in Alexandria, and it required strong measures to put them down.'

   The party of officials, surrounded by their small but glittering
   escort, made its way to the Prætorium, which was at no great distance.
   Libanius was in bad spirits.

   Look,' he said, at yonder grim, gigantic head on the slope of Mount
   Silpius.' He pointed to the Charonium which stood out in the sunshine,
   but cast a dark shadow on the mountain behind. The huge features seem
   to frown terribly on this lovely city.'

   Sheer imagination!' said the Governor; but--what is that?'

   One of the imperial archers, who had been posted at the omphalos in the
   centre of the Colonnade of Antiochus Epiphanes, came running up to the
   Governor's escort at full speed and in obvious alarm.

   What means this rudeness, you white-faced coward?' said the captain of
   the escort to him in a stern voice. 'Where are your manners? Do you
   want to know the feel of the rhinoceros-hide round your shoulders?'

   No more coward than you, sir captain,' said the archer; 'but this is no
   time to bandy words.'

   What is the matter?' asked the Governor, who had overheard the brief
   altercation. Bring the archer here.'

   The city is in an uproar, my lord,' said the man, stepping forward.
   Listen!'

   They listened, and there came to their ears a dull roar like the sound
   of many waters. It was the angry hum of voices, broken every now and
   then by cries for vengeance. The Count of the East looked uneasy; the
   fine features of Libanius had settled into the deepest pallor.

   Is the crowd dangerous?' asked the Governor.

   Most dangerous,' answered the soldier. This is no mere faction fight of
   the amphitheatre. I was standing by the statue of Apollo, in the
   Tetrapylon, when fierce groups came surging from Singon Street in one
   direction and Herod's Colonnade in another, in mad rage. I never heard
   so many hot curses in my life, and I have heard a good many. A yelling
   mob was gathered round the statue of the "Fortune of Antioch," calling
   down the vengeance of the gods with uplifted hands. Only one man tried
   to allay the excitement. It was John the Preacher; and though all the
   Christians love him, and even the Jews and Pagans respect him, his
   words were of no avail. If some of the Church-people had not forced him
   away he would have been half torn to pieces by the mob. Hark, my lord!
   I see them in the distance, I hear the trampling of their feet. In ten
   minutes more they will be upon you. Take refuge in the palace.'

   Is it the riff-raff of the Forum?'

   No, your Excellency,' said the archer. I saw some of the chief men of
   the city among them, even senators and old officers of the army. The
   whole city is in wild fury.'

   Make your way home with all speed by back streets,' said the Count to
   Libanius. Captain, take a dozen of my escort, ride under the wall to
   the Golden Gate, and make your way to Daphne. To the palace, soldiers!'

   He drew the sword with which he was girded in sign of his office, and
   the escort rode at a gallop, across the bridge which spanned the
   Orontes, into the gorgeous palace of the old Seleucid kings, which was
   used as the residence of the governor. They were not a moment too soon.
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  CHAPTER II

  THE RIOT


   Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello

   Corda licet longe præsciscere.

   Verg. Georg. iv. 69.

   The gates were closed, and some twenty resolute soldiers stood on guard
   outside. With spears and drawn swords they kept the threatening mob at
   bay. The foreign athletes and adventurers who formed the mass of the
   crowd, though bent on mischief, were worthless cowards, and did not
   like the look of bare steel.

   Let us away to the Baths of Caligula,' shouted one of the rioters; and
   the multitude, with an answering shout, rushed off towards the valley
   of the torrent Parthenius, near which the Baths were built. Rushing in
   tumultuously, they swept the attendants before them, smashed the
   benches, broke the taps, daubed the frescoes with mud, tore down the
   candelabra, broke off the heads and noses of the statues, hacked at the
   trees in the grounds with axes, and in ten minutes committed ravages
   which it took years to repair.

   When they had wrecked the Baths the furious mob streamed back to the
   palace. The little band of soldiers still stood before the gates. The
   captain kept a brave mien, though he saw that it would be hopeless for
   his handful of comrades to hold out against the rush of thousands.

   What do you want?' he called in stentorian tones to the foremost
   rebels.

   The Governor! the Governor!' they shouted.

   He is no longer here,' said the captain, And this was true, for, as he
   had no troops at hand, the Governor had availed himself of the brief
   respite to escape by a back way, and ride off to summon a detachment of
   guards, who were encamped near the grove of Daphne to prevent the
   disorders which frequently arose from the contending jealousies of
   Christians and Pagans.

   Then look out for yourselves,' yelled the mob, for we mean to burst
   in!'

   Open the doors, men!' said the captain. I will enter last. When we are
   in, close them, and escape.'

   The soldiers with swift discipline executed the manoeuvre; and no
   sooner had the captain stepped inside than the sound was heard of the
   heavy bolts and bars being shot into their places.

   But the mob was not so to be baffled. They rained blows upon the gates
   with axes and hammers, and at last improvised a battering-ram from the
   top of a marble bench, until the oaken valves were shattered and fell
   inwards with a crash. Through the courtyard the people rushed into the
   great Hall of Judgment. It was empty, but the awe of the place, where
   they had heard so many sentences of death passed upon offenders, fell
   for a few moments on their minds. Round the chair of state at the back
   of the apse, in which the Count of the East often sat with his
   assessors, rose the bronze and marble statues of the imperial family.
   Highest of all, with the diadem round his brow, the arm outstretched as
   though to give command, clad in the cuirass with the Gorgon head at its
   centre, towered the figure of Theodosius. Beside the statue of the
   Emperor stood that of Flaccilla, the beloved consort whom he had so
   recently lost, whose gentle nature had always exercised a beneficent
   sway over his tempestuous impulses. On either side of them were the
   smaller statues of their two sons--Arcadius, a boy of nine, and
   Honorius, a child of five. [1] A little on one side was the statue of
   Count Theodosius, the brave father of the Emperor. After saving the
   East from imminent peril, he had fallen a victim to the jealous
   ingratitude of the Emperor Valens, and deserved the remorseful homage
   of every loyal subject, whether in the East or West.

   The divinity which doth hedge a king' surrounded with tenfold
   protection the majesty of a Roman emperor. He was the one bulwark
   between civilisation and chaos. It is true that since the days of
   Constantine, as before them, the reigns of these Cæsars and Augusti had
   been brief, and their fate for the most part terrible. In the three
   centuries which had elapsed between Julius Cæsar and Constantine there
   had been sixty-two emperors, so that their average reigns had scarcely
   exceeded five years. Of these sixty-two, no less than forty-seven had
   died violent deaths. Forty-two had been murdered, three had committed
   suicide, one had perished in a rebellion, two had abdicated, one had
   been drowned, one had mysteriously disappeared. Eleven only of the
   entire number had died in the ordinary course of nature. Nor had the
   state of things been much better in the eighty-seven years which had
   elapsed since the death of the first Christian emperor. Their
   superhuman exaltation continued to be nothing but a dizzy precipice. A
   glance at their fates reveals a perfect Iliad of disasters.
   Constantine, indeed, had died in his bed, but not until he had imbrued
   his hands in the blood of his eldest son, Crispus. Of Constantine's
   three sons, Constantius inaugurated his reign by a massacre of the
   seed-royal; Constantine II. perished in attempting to invade the realm
   of his brother Constans; Constans was murdered by his own soldiers;
   Gallus was beheaded by Constantius; Constantius died while hurrying to
   suppress the revolt of Julian; Julian, at thirty-seven, fell, perhaps
   by the arrow of one of his own soldiers; Jovian, at thirty-two, was
   suffocated by the fumes of a brasier in a half-finished house;
   Valentinian I. died in a burst of fury at an imaginary insult; his
   brother Valens was burnt to death in the terrific rout at Adrianople;
   both his sons were murdered--Gratian at twenty-four, Valentinian II. at
   twenty. Of his successors, two only in the entire century had died by
   natural and untroubled deaths; and of their widows and families, not a
   few perished by poison, despair, or broken hearts. As the prophet
   Hoshea says in describing a similar epoch, '

   blood touched blood' on the crimson footsteps of the throne.

   Such had been the sad stories of the deaths of kings'; yet the awful
   sacro-sanctitude of the imperial person was ideally unimpaired, and the
   spirit of the old Lex Majestatis still haunted the minds of men. Was
   not the emperor the lord of the universe?

   What would have happened next no one can tell. Perhaps the mere emblems
   of imperial power might have been sufficient to restore the people to
   their senses, and to convince them of the futility of a riot for which
   it was as certain as destiny itself that they would be called to give a
   heavy account. But now an incident occurred which swept to the winds
   all remorse and all moderation; for suddenly a stone flew over the
   heads of the mob, and, with a sharp ring, struck the cheek of the
   statue of Theodosius.

   A boy had flung it in mere gaiety of heart. To the boys of Antioch the
   riot had only been a wild and more than usually exciting holiday. They
   had not the smallest sense of the seriousness of that day's
   proceedings. Were not their fathers, and even their schoolmasters--yes,
   and even some of the senators, amid the throng? Surely they must know
   what they were about, and it was not for the boys to spoil the fun.
   They could shy stones if they could do nothing else; and was not that
   lordly bronze statue a quite irresistible cockshot?

   A shout of laughter followed the ring of the bronze when the stone so
   effectually struck its mark; but it was drowned by savage cries of Down
   with the Spaniard! Down with the tyrant! Down with the usurer!' as the
   mob now swarmed on to the judgment seat, and began to strike the
   imperial statues with every implement which they could improvise. The
   effigies of the two young princes being the smallest, were naturally
   the first to be dashed off their pedestals, and were soon battered into
   shapeless masses.

   I have got the nose of His Majesty Arcadius,' boasted one man. And I
   have got a curl of his Supreme Babydom Honorius,' said another. I beat
   you both,' said a third, for I have got one of the Spaniard's hands
   entire, and shall keep it as a relic. I warrant you no crown gold shall
   be put in it for his favourite Goths.'

   The statue of Flaccilla was the next to fall, and neither the piety,
   the purity, nor the unassuming good temper of the dead Empress, nor the
   keen recent sorrow of the Emperor for his bereavement, were sufficient
   to protect her image from the brutal insults of the mob. But the worst
   indignities were reserved for the statue of the Emperor himself. They
   tore off the bronze diadem, and smashed it to pieces. They beat off the
   arms. They drove the eyes in with the sharp end of hammers: The
   equestrian statue of the Count his father was treated with equal
   contumely. They pelted, and battered, and tore it down, amid shouts of
   Defend thyself, great cavalier!' After they had trampled and
   tripudiated on all five statues to their hearts' content, they tied
   ropes round the shattered hulks, and dragged them in triumph along the
   red granite flags of the main street and the white slabs of Herod's
   Colonnade, finally flinging them in undistinguishable fragments at the
   base of the statue of the tutelary genius of their city.

   Encouraged by impunity, the fiercest spirits of the multitude meditated
   still more irreparable misdeeds. It was a common thing in Alexandria to
   add terror to a sedition by a fire. Why should they not try the same at
   Antioch?

   How shall we answer for it to the Emperor?' asked a timid voice.

   May all the gods and goddesses confound him!' shouted a Pagan rioter in
   the crowd named Hermas.

   Why cannot we revolt to Maximus, as Berytus has threatened to do?'
   called a voice.

   The burgher Aretas has counselled submission, the coward! Let us burn
   his house!' shouted Hermas, who was in a state of wild excitement.

   The counsel was adopted. Lighted torches began to appear, as though by
   magic, in many hands, and some began to fling them into the windows of
   the public buildings, and to do their best to kindle a conflagration in
   which the glorious city might have been irretrievably damaged. But,
   happily, at this moment a cry arose of The archers! the archers!' and
   the steady march of armed men was heard approaching from the Golden
   Gate. The Governor had galloped full speed to the camp at Daphne, and
   was returning at the head of an entire company. The news spread like
   lightning, and the crowd slank off in every direction. Most of them did
   not offer the faintest show of resistance, but fled the moment they
   caught sight of the glittering uniforms and the bent bows. A few only
   of the more resolute, who had seized swords or clubs, held their ground
   in the Tetrapylon, half sheltered by the pillars of the intersecting
   colonnades and by the pedestals of the numerous statues. Headed by
   Hermas, they made a sudden rush on the troop, and struck a dozen men
   bleeding to the ground. But the indignant archers let fly a shower of
   arrows among them, and when the crowd saw some fifty rioters fall to
   the earth, pierced through and through, they raised a yell of terror,
   and fled with wild precipitation. In the course of half an hour not a
   man of them was visible anywhere. They had taken refuge in their houses
   and barred the doors and lattices. The archers paraded the empty
   streets. The riot had only lasted three hours. By noon all was over,
   and Antioch lay like a city of the dead.
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   [1] Considerable uncertainty hangs over the exact dates of the births
   of Arcadius and Honorius.
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  CHAPTER III

  THE AGONY, AND THE CONSOLER

     Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days?

     Isaiah xxiii. 7.

   It is difficult to describe the agony of terror which fell on the
   wretched inhabitants of the gayest city of the East when they awoke to
   a sense of the folly into which they had been driven. These soft
   Syrians had no real leaders and no settled purpose of rebellion. They
   had simply yielded to a childish impulse of vexation. They had rebelled
   against an increase of taxation which might be burdensome, but was by
   no means intolerable. Indeed, multitudes now pressed forward, anxious
   to pay the tax at once. How infinitely wiser would it have been for the
   people of Antioch to submit to the inevitable! In the dark hours of the
   night, and the dreary silence of a city reduced to torpor by paralysing
   fear, they cursed their insane folly, and gnawed their tongues for very
   anguish.

   For now, what had they to expect? They had exposed themselves, a
   defenceless prey, to the fury of him whom they might contemptuously
   call the Spaniard,' but who was a just and lenient emperor, to whom the
   whole of the East and the West owed the deepest debt of gratitude.
   Theodosius was the sole barrier between them and the flood of
   barbarians which was already beating with the first restless waves of
   an overwhelming tide against the confines of the Empire. Nay, not only
   against its confines; for the mingled pusillanimity and infatuation of
   Valens had admitted a multitude of Goths across the Danube, and the
   result of the infamous manner in which they had been starved and
   oppressed was that massacre of Adrianople, which was a more
   overwhelming catastrophe to the Empire than the old disaster of Cannæ.
   The Emperor might be but a mortal, and the purple was no protection
   against the dagger-thrust; but the power of the Empire, which for the
   time being he represented, was invincible, and what was to prevent him
   from obliterating Antioch from the face of the earth, and sowing with
   salt the furrows which would be driven over her mounds of ruin?

   There was something awful in the contrast between the city in its
   normal condition and under the black cloud of depression which now
   settled on her inhabitants. Usually, the busy hum of life did not cease
   till the scent of the lilies and jasmines breathed through the starry
   twilight. Through the colonnades bright with innumerable lamps the
   light-hearted crowd of many nationalities, and in bright costumes, used
   to roam about, far on into the night, laughing, chatting, love-making,
   buying, selling, and feasting their eyes on the splendour of the
   bazaars. But now the streets were deserted, and, if any were seen
   abroad, they hurried along with timid and stealthy tread, like ghosts,
   casting furtive glances to the right or left. And if in some byway one
   or two chanced to meet, they only stopped for a moment to ask if there
   were any news, or to speculate on the nature of the punishment which
   awaited the city, and might bring on many an individual some frightful
   death at the hands of the executioner. Even these hurried
   communications were rare; for many were implicated in the common guilt,
   and no one knew how to trust a neighbour, who might turn out to be an
   informer. Wild stories of portent were passed from lip to lip. Men had
   seen a spectral woman, tall and horrible, passing through all the
   streets with a whip, which she cracked in the air with terrific noise.
   Surely they must have been the victims of a demoniacal possession?

   And on the third day after the riot the spell of terror began to be
   broken by the anguish of retribution. The Count of the East, knowing
   that he would be held responsible for the deadly insult which had been
   inflicted on the Emperor, determined to show his indignation by
   ruthless vengeance. Men told each other in terrified whispers that
   either there had been spies of the Government among the rioters, or
   that some were turning informers to save their own lives. Decurions of
   archers, each with his little band of ten, were not only patrolling the
   streets, but were seen to stop every now and then at different houses,
   and to lead away with them some prisoner in chains. Even boys were
   arrested and dragged to the Justice Hall, and the street would be
   startled by the wild shriek of a mother who saw her bright lad led away
   to a trial which was nearly certain to end in death. Next day the
   trials began. No advocates appeared. The evidence was quickly taken
   down; the sentences were summary and frightful. The commonest doom was
   decapitation, but some, and even boys among them, were sentenced to
   still more appalling forms of death. The very first to be condemned was
   Hermas, who had been one of the most passionate and determined leaders
   of the entire riot. After a trial of less than five minutes he was
   sentenced to be flung to tigers in the amphitheatre.

   Except the Count and his assessors, scarcely anyone dared to be even a
   listener in the vast Prætorium, where the battered fragments of statues
   and the signs of violent damage bore silent but eloquent testimony to
   the ferocity of the insurgents. Only outside the door stood groups of
   women, like spectres, clad in the garments of woe. Their cheeks hollow
   and bathed in tears, and their long, dishevelled tresses defiled with
   dust, might have melted the iciest heart.

   The agony of two women was long remembered. Their sons were boys of
   fourteen, and some abject sycophant had sworn that he saw them pelting
   the sacred statues with showers of stones. They, on the other hand,
   swore that they were going to the class of their teacher when the rush
   of the crowd swept them away before it, and that they simply stood in
   the hall watching the scene, and had not flung a single stone at the
   statues; though, being Christians, they had for fun tried to hit the
   Gorgon head on a statue of Athene in a recess behind the judge's chair.
   But the Governor had not recovered from the wrath he felt at having
   been driven to escape out of the back door of his own palace, and he
   condemned both boys to death.

   One of them was led out first, and his mother cried eagerly to the
   archer who held his fettered hands: He is innocent; has he been set
   free?'

   He will be, soon enough,' said the archer brutally; for the men had
   been rendered callous by the fate of some of their comrades who during
   the riot had been beaten or stoned to death by the mob.

   How is he to die?' she faintly asked.

   By wild beasts in the amphitheatre,' said the archer. 'There will be a
   fine sight for some of you, and it will teach you a lesson.'

   With a shriek the mother sprang forward and flung her arms round the
   boy's neck; but she was repulsed by the archers, and during the little
   struggle which ensued the second boy was led out.

   Is he to die, too?' asked his mother, with a face pale as ashes.

   Yes.'

   By the lions?'

   No, he is to be burnt in the amphitheatre. Antioch will not be in such
   a hurry to revolt again,' said the archer.

   But the poor woman did not hear the taunt. The shock of horror had
   killed her. She had fallen dead into the arms of her friends.

   Those frightful sentences were carried out, and many more. Even the
   innocent were burnt with torches and beaten with leaded whips to make
   them give evidence. Few witnessed the horrid scenes except the
   executioner. The chill had struck so deep into the hearts of the
   Antiochenes that they were too dejected to haunt the Circus or the
   Amphitheatre, which ordinarily were their chief resorts. Yet, if they
   looked out from their houses by night they saw the gruesome spectacle
   of prisoners, often among the wealthy and noble, led away by torchlight
   between two lines of soldiers, loaded with chains, and scarcely able to
   drag themselves along from the effects of torture. They were sometimes
   followed by wives or daughters, who wrung their hands in speechless
   agony. All who were able fled from the city. The brigands who infested
   the neighbourhood took advantage of this, and the Orontes daily swept
   along its waters the corpses of men who had fled from uncertain dangers
   to certain death.

   Six days after the riot it was announced that John, the great Christian
   preacher, who in later years was to be known by posterity as St.
   Chrysostom, [2] or the Golden-mouthed, intended to address the people
   in the Church of St. Babylas; and knowing that they would be safe from
   immediate molestation in that sanctuary, and longing for courage and
   consolation in the sick agony of their fear, the people thronged there
   in thousands.

   It was a church built in the shape of an octagon and roofed with wood
   from the grove of Daphne. The audience stood, and the building was
   crowded to the doors. Many were unable to enter, and there was not a
   vacant square foot in the church, except within the rails of the
   presbytery. After a brief and mournful Litany, John came forward, and a
   deep hush fell over the congregation.

   He was short of stature, and therefore did not address them from the
   pulpit, but from the ambo; yet the impression left by his appearance
   was one of great dignity. Let us look at him, as he pauses for a moment
   and glances round on the upturned faces of the multitude, whose hearts
   he was about to bend and sway as the breeze bends and sways the river
   reeds, or makes the yellow corn ripple before its breath into waves of
   light and shadow.

   He was at this time about forty years old, and his voice was yet fresh,
   for he had only been ordained presbyter the year before. For six years
   he had been deacon; but the duties of a deacon were not to preach, but
   to attend to the affairs of the Church, and look after the poor. On the
   other hand, he was already well known as a man of distinction by his
   writings, and as a man of sanctity by his ascetic life.

   He began in a low and unimpassioned tone, but from the first his voice,
   clear and resonant, and reaching to the farthest corner of the
   building, arrested eager attention. It was an eminently sympathetic
   voice, of which the accents were thrilled through and through with the
   emotions of the speaker. He never shrank from a quaint phrase or a
   humorous illustration if it came into his mind; nor were smiles, and
   even laughter, deemed derogatory in those days to the sacredness of the
   House of God, provided only that they were not caused by vulgar
   buffoonery or triviality. But if he could, as often as he chose, make
   the faces of a thousand listeners flash with smiles, he could within a
   few moments make them white again with tears. At one moment his
   sarcastic banter would make them blush for their own hypocrisy; now
   some winged arrow of conviction would pierce their hearts, and now he
   would break into plain thunderings and lightnings, and the boldest
   would cower before his fulminant denunciations. Two things instantly
   struck those who heard him: one was the utter fearlessness of the man,
   the other his absolute sincerity.

   As to his courage, it was impossible to hear him long without the
   conviction that he feared man so little because he feared God so much.'
   It was evident that here was no silken Pharisee absorbed in ceremonial
   functions, no self-seeking opportunist euphuistically steering through
   the channel of no-meaning between the Scylla and Charybdis of Yes and
   No.' If he thought it right and needful to say a thing, no ulterior
   consideration would ever prevent him from saying it. He left intrigue,
   and soft manipulations of the truth, and sounding utterances which said
   nothing, to multitudes of sleek arid popularity-mongering priests, who
   were always ready to answer men according to their idols. The one
   thing--the only thing which John cared for--was truth. The one thing
   which he despised was compromise; the one thing which he dreaded was to
   go before the God of the Amen, the God of eternal and essential
   verities, with the unclean sacrifice of a lie in his right hand; the
   one thing which he desired was to see the things that are, and to see
   them as they are. A firm believer in the great truths of Christianity,
   to which he had been converted either from heathendom or from
   indifferentism, he yet held that theology was valueless unless it were
   made the stepping-stone to godly living. That which most overwhelmed
   him with its inherent majesty was the grandeur of the moral law, and he
   regarded dogmas and observances as altogether lighter than vanity
   itself, unless they produced the fruits of a holy life.

   The sense of his sincerity was deepened in the minds of his hearers by
   his entire disdain for the allurements of the world. He did not shrink
   from the world's power, for he was indifferent to its smile. What could
   the world give him? Did not every man in Antioch know that he was of
   noble birth on both sides, and that when he had begun a public career
   he had dazzled all by his wit and eloquence to such an extent that
   Libanius said he would have named him his successor if the Christians
   had not stolen him? But though he then had the world at his feet, he
   had yielded to the impulse of a soul to which earth had become as
   nothing because God had become all in all, and had adopted the life of
   a recluse. The influence of his mother, Anthusa, who, though left a
   widow at an early age, had devoted the whole remainder of her life to
   his service, had barely prevented him from at once becoming a hermit.
   She had taken him by the hand, and led him into the room in which he
   first saw the light, and by her tears and entreaties had persuaded him
   to live at home with her, though he practised at home all the
   austerities of the severest anchorite. His modesty, and his tremendous
   sense of the dignity of the priesthood, led him to avoid the perilous
   honours of the episcopate when they were thrust upon him. This showed
   his superiority to the temptations of earthly honour; and when Anthusa,
   unwilling any longer to resist the bent of his desires, had withdrawn
   her opposition, he had gone to the mountains, and there, with no other
   home than a cave, had devoted himself to such severe studies and such
   stern discipline as to have subdued and annihilated the desires of the
   flesh. He had, indeed, brought on such perilous indisposition that he
   was compelled to return to the city, lest he should become guilty of
   throwing his life away. The saintly Bishop Meletius--'the honey-named
   and honey-natured,' as his friend Gregory of Nazianzus called him, who
   was so beloved that his portrait was still in every house--had ordained
   him a reader in 381; and a year before the riot he had been admitted to
   the priesthood by Bishop Flavian, who had succeeded Meletius in the
   disputed patriarchate.

   Such was the man who now stood up in the ambo to reprove, to exhort,
   and to console the miserable people. It was useless to speak to them on
   other subjects till he had calmed the tumult of their minds; but from
   the first sentence he uttered he had cast his spell upon them, and as
   his voice now swelled into hurricane, and now sank to a whisper, no
   other sound was audible, except an occasional storm of sobs from the
   listening multitude. It was customary to applaud in the churches, but
   on this and subsequent occasions the attention of the audience was
   riveted, and they would not run the chance of missing a word. In his
   later homilies during this crisis there were a few timid outbursts of
   acclamation; but they were instantly discountenanced by the preacher.
   They paid him that spellbound attention which speaks a thousandfold
   more for the power of the orator than the superficial signs of outward
   popularity.

   What shall I speak?' he said. It is a time for tears, not for talk; for
   wailings, not for words; for supplications, not for harangues, such is
   the greatness of the daring crimes which have been committed, so
   incurable the sore, so deep the wound. It is too great for earthly
   medicament; it needs assistance from above. We should sit on our
   dunghill like Job, and other cities should come to us to lament our
   calamity. Then the devil danced over all the substance of the saint,
   now he has rioted over our whole community. I have waited, but I must
   speak at last. How terrible is our case! Even were the Emperor not to
   punish us, how should we bear the infamy of our misdeeds? I can
   scarcely speak for grief. Once nothing was more blessed than our city;
   now nothing is less delightsome. Once we filled the Forum as bees buzz
   round their honeycombs; now it is desolate. As the leaves droop and
   drop in an unwatered garden, so it is with us. We must say, as the
   prophet said of Jerusalem, "

   Our city has become like a terebinth which has shed its leaves, and as
   a garden that has no water." Our citizens are fleeing from the land
   they loved as from a home wrapped in conflagration.

   Yet it is not for these things that I blush and am confounded. Last
   year our houses were shaken with earthquake; now it is the very souls
   of their inhabitants which shake and tremble. Must we not cry, "

   Send for the wailing women, and let them come"? Ay, weep, and let your
   eyelids stream with tears. We have wronged him who has no equal among
   men; we can only fly for protection to the King of Heaven. Unless we
   gain His mercy there is no consolation left for our recent misdoing.

   Oh, let us awake, then, to a sense of our sins. Repress and punish the
   oaths and blasphemies, which are so common among you. You would not
   listen to my exhortations before; act upon them now. Nay, applaud me
   not. I care not for such praise. The only glory I desire is to see you
   following my counsels. I would rather see the eyes of one among you wet
   with the tears of penitence than that this church should reverberate
   with the hollow echoes of fugitive popularity.'

   And then, with perfect faithfulness and fearlessness, he seized his
   opportunity, and urged upon them the duty of making this an occasion
   for signal penitence. He warned them of the vanity and uncertainty of
   riches, and urged them to the duty of almsgiving. He set before them
   that their great calamity might be turned into a precious boon of
   Heaven if it wrought in them a deeper sincerity and holier aims. He
   pointed them to God as their hope and strength, a very present help in
   trouble; and so he ended his first great discourse, On the Statues,'
   with wishing to them all the blessing of the Eternal Peace.

   With bowed heads and faces bathed in tears the people left the great
   basilica, too much moved to join in the frivolous discussion of this
   and that phrase in the sermon, or this and that peculiarity of the
   orator, which formed the staple of their Sunday chatter at other times.
   They still whispered to each other of their fears, though the manly
   courage of the orator had tinged their dark prospects with a gleam of
   hope. But there was hardly one among them who did not rejoice that when
   the hearts of all other citizens had become as water there was at least
   one man whose high dauntlessness could look calamity--yes, and even
   death--boldly in the face, and who, fearing to do wrong, feared nothing
   else.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [2] We find the name Chrysostom,' or Golden-mouth,' first given him by
   St. Isidore of Hispala before a.d. 636; but Theodosius II. is said to
   have applied the term to him before the middle of the fifth century.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER IV

  TWO VISITORS BY NIGHT

     Accipiam hospitio, si nox advenis.--Plaut. Rudent, ii. 4.

   John would have been more than mortal if he had not felt some of the
   gratification which the orator derives from the sense of his own power.
   Nor could he be otherwise than conscious that among the hungers,
   fevers, appetites, and malignities around him he was wielding the power
   of a true man. But he resisted all tendency to pride; and mere vanity
   could have no place in a soul so noble as his.

   He lived in Singon Street, in which, as he delighted to narrate, Paul
   and Barnabas had also lived when they first began to preach to the
   Gentiles, and had won so many converts that the brethren were first
   called Christians' at Antioch. Those who had fixed on that hybrid
   nickname, half Greek and half Latin in form, and expressive of a Jewish
   conception, had little dreamed that a title which was then synonymous
   with stupid fanatic and semi-malefactor was to become the most glorious
   in the world.

   As the great preacher walked home in the gathering dusk his eyes sought
   the ground, his lips moved in silent prayer. For though he had spoken
   in terms of lofty encouragement, he had not concealed from his hearers
   the awfulness of the crisis, and his hope was placed far less in man
   than in the living God.

   He was somewhat weary after his effort, and looked forward to one of
   those evenings of quiet study which he dearly loved. His mother,
   Anthusa, met him on the threshold, and strained him to her heart. She
   had prepared for him one of those frugal meals of fruit and vegetables
   which alone he would take, and she had placed the lamp on the table of
   his little room. The house was furnished with extreme simplicity, but
   the taste and the beauty of many of the objects in the court and hall
   and tablinum showed that it had belonged to a person of distinction.
   For John's father, Secundus, was an officer who had risen to the high
   rank of an illustris, and had bequeathed an ample provision to his
   widow. If the undisputed control of this patrimony had been in the
   hands of Chrysostom, very little would have been left undevoted to
   works of beneficence. He had reduced his own wants to the simplest
   necessities of life.

   He had scarcely ended his slight supper when he was surprised by a low
   summons at the door. Phlegon, the slave, who opened it--a slave in name
   only, but treated like a brother beloved--hesitated to interrupt his
   master's studies, and told the stately stranger that unless it was a
   case of sickness or spiritual urgency John did not see visitors at so
   late an hour.

   He will see me,' was the answer. Tell him that Libanius desires an
   interview.'

   John arose immediately on hearing the name, and hastened to salute his
   former teacher. What brings the world-famous orator and worshipper of
   the gods to the house of the Christian presbyter?' he asked.

   I come, John,' he said, to talk to you about the truly deplorable state
   of the city. Can nothing be done for this miserable people?'

   If anyone can do anything for them it should be Libanius,' answered
   Chrysostom. You are not like us poor Christians. You are known to all
   the noble and the mighty. The Count of the East is your personal
   friend. Further, men know that you sympathise with the miserable, for
   they have read the admirable letter, which does you so much credit, on
   behalf of a poor man oppressed by a cruel governor. Why not go to
   Constantinople, and plead the cause of Antioch before the Emperor?'

   I?' answered Libanius. It is eight hundred miles off. The mountains of
   Taurus lie deep in snow. My life has not suited me for such sacrifices.
   And the effort would be useless. Theodosius is a rough Spanish soldier
   with no literary culture. My polished periods would be wasted on him.
   Besides, he is a Christian, and detests us who do not believe in the
   Nazarene.'

   It is idolatry and Pagan sins that have brought down his retribution on
   our city,' said Chrysostom.

   Libanius waved his hand with a gesture of deprecation. We will not
   enter into that discussion now,' he said. If Zeus hurled his lightnings
   every time men sinned, he would soon be weaponless. But have you
   nothing to suggest?'

   I have,' said Chrysostom. There are a hundred thousand Pagans in
   Antioch, and none of them will help. Even their advocates will not
   plead for the accused in these cruel days. There are thousands of Jews
   in Antioch, but neither they nor their Archon will lift a finger; for
   though Herod beautified the city, they still see the great Cherubim of
   their Temple where the hated Titus fixed them over our city gate. But
   Flavian, our bishop, will plead for us all. He is old. The journey is
   long and painful. The weather is wintry. His sister is dying, and Lent,
   with all its extra burdens, is close at hand. But the brave old Bishop
   will face every toil and every peril, and will leave his dying sister,
   and has yielded to the entreaty which I and others have urged upon him.
   He has already started. I hope much from his intercession.'

   I rejoice to hear it,' said Libanius. It will immensely promote the
   cause of you Christians. And, though I believe not in your creed, this
   I will say for you, that you have hearts of pity. Julian himself, my
   great and friendly Emperor, the last defender of the gods, reproached
   us with our indifference to the sufferings of our fellow-men. And,
   heavens! what women you Christians have! What beautiful Pagan widow of
   twenty would have remained a widow all her days, as your mother,
   Anthusa, has done, to serve her only son? You can never persuade me to
   accept your worship of the Crucified, but when I see your good works I
   feel within a little of being a Christian.'

   So King Agrippa said to our Paul long ago,' answered Chrysostom; and
   Paul, whose name is the true glory of Antioch--not your grove of
   Daphne, nor your crowned Charonium--Paul answered, uplifting his
   fettered hands,

   "Would to God that not thou only, but all these who hear me, were
   altogether such as I am, except these bonds." Yours, Libanius, is, as
   our Tertullian said, "The testimony of a mind naturally Christian."'

   Libanius shook his hand. It is your compassion which I admire,' he
   said, not your creed; your good deeds, not your Christianity.'

   Our good deeds are our Christianity,' answered Chrysostom; that is,
   they are its test, its issue. They are the golden fruits which grow on
   the Tree of Life. Love is the fulfilling of our law, and we hold that
   he who doeth righteousness is born of God.'

   Your words sound to me like the echo of far-off dreams,' said the
   sophist; but I wish I could share your good hopes of the clemency of
   Theodosius. I know him. He is frightfully choleric. You remember how
   philosophical your great Constantine was when the mob inflicted that
   atrocious insult at Edessa? They took down his brazen statue, and
   actually whipped it, exactly as boys are whipped in schools, to show
   that he was more fit to be a schoolboy than an emperor! Yet he showed
   no rage, sought no revenge, and did not punish the city at all. But
   Theodosius is not like that. He might forgive the insult to himself,
   for he is not without magnanimity; but he will not forgive the insults
   to his beloved Flaccilla, to his two boys, to his honoured father.
   Already all the rich are flying from this doomed city, and carrying
   their treasures with them. I feel half inclined to follow them. Many a
   city would welcome me.'

   Despise such selfishness,' said Chrysostom; choose the nobler part.
   Stay here, and throw the shield of your eloquence and your influence
   over the trembling populace.'

   Libanius mused for a few moments with bowed head. 'I will,' he said; I
   will. After all, what matters it? Man, as Pindar sang, is but the dream
   of a shadow. Farewell, John. You are a braver man than I, my old pupil;
   but we will work together.'

   As Libanius stepped into the deserted street, and muffled his face in
   his flowing robe, he muttered to himself: A noble fellow is John, in
   spite of his creed! His heart is better than his head. Yet he is a
   deeper thinker and a greater orator than I. It is strange!'

   And Chrysostom thought to himself: He is a man of good impulses, but
   they are poisoned by timidity and self-interest. The god of this world
   has blinded his heart.'

   He composed himself once more to his studies, but he was not destined
   to be undisturbed that evening. He had not read for many moments when
   he again heard at the outer door a low but peculiarly wild and agitated
   knocking.

   He lifted his head to listen, and when Phlegon opened the door he heard
   a boy's voice crying, I must see John the Presbyter! I must see John
   the Presbyter!'

   Who are you?' asked the old porter, with a roughness unusual to him. It
   is not for every street-boy of Antioch to come rushing here at all
   hours, disturbing the studies of the Presbyter.'

   Oh, let me see him! let me see him!' pleaded the boy.

   It is dark, and late, and most of the household have gone to bed. You
   must come to-morrow.'

   Oh! I must, I must see him!' said the boy; and brushing past the
   astonished slave, he sprang to the partly opened door of Chrysostom's
   study, through which there was a gleam of lamplight. Pushing the
   curtain aside, he stood dazed for a moment by the sudden glow after the
   darkness of the street, and, shading his eyes, caught sight of the
   Presbyter seated with a manuscript before him. Chrysostom saw at once
   from his style of dress that he was a young boy, probably the son of
   one of the wealthier traders of Antioch, while the golden bulla which
   hung down over his tunic showed that his father was a Pagan. He saw,
   too, that he did not belong to the lower class of the Antiochene
   gamins, the noisy and mischievous hangers-on of the dregs of the Forum.
   His neat dress, the bright eyes, the ingenuous features on which there
   was none of the furtive look of vice, the dark curls which it was
   evident had known a mother's tendance, won for him a kindly feeling
   before he spoke.

   But Chrysostom had barely time to glance at him when the boy flung
   himself down on the floor, and, grasping the hem of the Presbyter's
   toga, kissed it, and began to implore his pity and protection.

   What is it?' said John kindly. You are a Pagan. Why do you not go to
   one of your own temples?'

   The boy was sobbing so wildly that it was some time before he could
   find voice to speak; but Chrysostom laid a kind hand upon his head, and
   bade him take courage, for he would help him in any way he could.

   Oh, sir!' he cried, it is true that I am not a Christian. My father
   used to sell the little silver shrines of Apollo which the visitors to
   Antioch buy; but oh, sir! I have no father now. His name was Hermas,
   and he was one of the leaders in the riot. They flung him yesterday to
   the beasts in the amphitheatre--'

   Again he stopped, and sobbed as if his heart would break.

   --'He hated the Christian emperor, who has ruined his trade. And I know
   that my mother will die of fear and anguish, for the archers are on my
   track too.'

   On yours, my poor lad? Why, what can you have done?'

   The boy turned pale as death, and glanced round the room with terror.

   There is no one to hear you,' said John; speak to me without fear.'

   Oh, sir!' said the boy, you will not betray me?'

   Chrysostom could scarcely forbear a smile. 'Betray you?' he said. Ah! I
   see you have never lived among Christians. No, you are quite safe, my
   son; and we Christians are taught to do good unto all men.'

   Sir,' said the boy in a low voice, and trembling in every limb, it was
   I who threw that first stone which hit the statue of the Emperor in the
   Prætorium.'

   Chrysostom looked very grave. What frightful consequences had issued
   from that thoughtless act! The boy caught the expression of the
   Presbyter's face, and cried, 'Oh, father, forgive me! I meant nothing.
   I was not thinking of the Emperor, or of the taxes. I was only amused
   and excited by the doings of the crowd.'

   Did anyone see you?'

   Yes, the two boys who were with me saw me. And, oh, sir!----' Here he
   broke into such a paroxysm of weeping that he could not proceed.
   Chrysostom suffered his anguish to find its natural relief, and then
   asked:

   Have they informed against you?'

   No, sir,' sobbed the boy. Alas! alas! they are dead. When I had thrown
   the stone they began to throw stones, too, at the other pictures and
   statues, but not at the Emperor's. And some spy saw them, and the
   archers dragged them from their homes, and yesterday----'

   Again it was long before he could speak.

   Yesterday,' he said, after a deep shudder, they cast Achillas to the
   lions, and--oh, horrible! horrible!--they burned Eros, who was my
   dearest friend, in the amphitheatre. I crept there. I hid myself behind
   a statue of the Quoit-thrower. The shriek of Eros when the flames
   reached him will ring in my ears until I die. For the first time in my
   life I fainted away, and----'

   But the two boys did not tell of you?'

   No; they loved me too dearly, as I loved them. But I had been seen with
   them, and as my father was a ringleader in the riot---- Alas!
   alas!--oh, that shriek! those flames!'

   The boy hid his pale face in Chrysostom's robe, and gave way to
   unrestrained grief, during which John could only stroke his dark curls
   in pity.

   But,' he asked, why have you come here? What can I do for you, my son?'

   Oh! hide me, father. Hide me for the sake of the immortal gods. Oh! I
   forgot--yet hide me from the avengers, for the love of Heaven. Let me
   not be flung to the lions or burnt as Eros was!'

   Hide you?' said John; how can I hide you in this small house, which
   many visit? Who bade you come here?'

   My mother, sir,' he said. She is ill--I fear she is dying; but friends
   will tend her, and she bade me fly in the darkness to your house, for
   she said the Christians are kinder and braver than our people. But,
   sir, if you cannot hide me I will return. The archers are certain to
   come for me to-morrow. I can but die. But oh, my mother! my mother!'

   He rose from the floor and prepared to go out; but Chrysostom bade him
   stay while he considered what to do, and at the same moment Anthusa
   entered.

   John,' she said, who is this boy? I heard sobs and cries, and I have
   come to see if I can be of any use.'

   The boy hid his face with his hands, through which the tears streamed,
   while Chrysostom briefly told her the story.

   And you would have suffered him to go, John?' she asked in surprise.
   That would have been utterly unlike you. My boy, we will save you.'

   He seized her hand with transport, and kneeled and kissed it.

   Nay, mother,' said Chrysostom, I never dreamed of leaving him unhelped.
   I was only perplexed what to do.'

   Let my woman's wit help you,' said Anthusa with a smile. He shall sleep
   here to-night; early in the dawn a few touches--even a veil over his
   eyes and a pallium--will suffice to disguise him as though he were one
   of my girls, and I will go with him up the ravine to the cavern of the
   hermit Macedonius. Christian women and others sometimes go to consult
   him, so that even if we are seen on that lonely track it will excite no
   surprise; but at early dawn, and in the present deserted state of the
   streets, it is unlikely that we shall meet a single human being.'

   Macedonius the barley-eater!' said Chrysostom with a smile. Imagine
   this bright Pagan lad, accustomed to the streets of Antioch, and the
   Circus, and the Amphitheatre, and the games, and all the gladness of
   life in youth, shut up in the damp, dark cavern with the old man who
   eats nothing but barley, who spends his life in scourgings and fastings
   and vigils! Why, mother, before a week was over he would almost wish to
   come back and face the archers. Remember, mother, I have tried the
   life, and know what it is.'

   Macedonius is very wise, as well as very good,' answered the lady. I
   did not mean to leave the lad---- What is your name, my boy?'

   Philip, lady; but they named me after the great Macedonian, not after
   your apostle.'

   Well, I did not mean to leave you with Macedonius in the cave of Mount
   Silpius, Philip, but only to ask his advice about you.'

   I have heard of him, lady, and would fain see him. The horrors of these
   few days, and the death of my friends, have entered deep into my heart.
   In my agony I found no Pagan who would help me. I would know more of
   the religion which makes men brave and kind.'

   God bless you, my poor Philip,' said Chrysostom. I leave you in my
   mother's hands. With her you will be more than safe.'

   Anthusa with her own hands prepared a little cubicle for Philip that
   night. Not one of the slaves was admitted into the secret, except her
   nurse Damaris and old Phlegon. The lad slept the deep sleep of sorrow
   and weariness, and by dawn Anthusa, accompanied by her two trusted
   servants, was on her way with him to the cave of Macedonius.

   They met no one; but near the track which climbed to the cave one of
   the vilest beggars of Antioch, half-beggar, half-brigand, saw them, and
   recognised Philip, whom he had often noticed in the streets as one of
   the brightest boys in Antioch, as he passed down Herod's Colonnade on
   his way to school. The boy, from habit, had put on his golden bulla--an
   ornament unusual in his rank of life, but his father had seen better
   days--and the mendicant, seeing it gleam through the front of the
   pallium, had looked at him more attentively, and had penetrated his too
   slight disguise.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER V

  THE HERMIT AND THE BOY


   And heard an answer, Wake,

   Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life

   Of self-suppression, not of selfless love!'

   Tennyson, St. Telemachus.

   Macedonius the hermit, the barley-eater, was seated at the entrance of
   his cavern, and enjoying--so far as he thought it not sinful to
   enjoy--the cool air of the dawn and the glorious pageant of sunrise. He
   allowed himself but little sleep at any time, and long before the dawn
   he had been watching the stars, which hung like the cressets of angels
   in the purple night, and shed on the world their almost spiritual
   lustre. The unintelligible mystery of the universe, which often lay so
   heavily on his soul, seemed to be lightened as he felt himself alone
   with God, amid the strength of the hills, under those vast and silent
   constellations. Then, across the dark and silent valley he saw the
   first beam of morning smite into vivid crimson the topmost summit of
   the range of Taurus, and the mountainsides began to shine as though the
   angels were pouring river after river of pure gold over their snowy
   cliffs. Then the Orontes, far beneath his feet, began to gleam out here
   and there in streaks of silver under the rich foliage of its banks, and
   he saw the grove of Daphne, with its lightning-scathed shrine of the
   dethroned sun god, and in the far distance Mount Casius flung its huge
   dark shadow over the glimmering sea.

   Accustomed to long hours of unbroken solitude, he was surprised to see
   three figures approaching him so early up the steep mountain track. It
   was evident that they were seeking his cavern home, for the rocky and
   scarcely distinguishable path led to no other spot, and had, in fact,
   been mainly worn by his own feet as he descended the cliff to fill his
   maple dish with water, or to find his winter fuel and supply his daily
   needs. As the figures approached him he recognised Anthusa, whom he had
   sometimes seen after she had waived her opposition to her son's wish to
   lead the solitary life, and who visited John once or twice in the year
   when he, too, lived with the hermit Syrus in a mountain cave.

   She knelt for his priestly blessing, for Flavian had constrained him to
   accept the priesthood. He addressed her in few words. To be talking to
   a woman was to the hermit, as to the Pharisees of old, a perilous
   condescension, and he involuntarily drew back his robe of skin as she
   bowed before him. Anthusa knew the prejudices of his Order, though her
   son did not share them, and she briefly told him that she had come to
   confide to his protection a boy from Antioch who was in danger of his
   life.

   The hermit was startled by her request. He shrank from the invasion of
   his solitude. His one luxury was to feel himself far away from the
   world, and alone with God. How could he provide for a boy from the gay,
   guilty city whose temples and palaces gleamed far below? He felt
   inclined to refuse the responsibility, and Anthusa read his hesitation
   in his eyes.

   Is the boy a Pagan?' he asked.

   He is.'

   How can I be responsible for one of those servants of the demons?'

   If God can bear with them, and love them,' she said, 'cannot
   Macedonius? Had not Christ compassion on the ignorant and on those that
   are out of the way?'

   But Macedonius was still troubled. How can he live on barley, as I do,'
   he asked, and endure life in this oppressive silence, where no sound is
   heard but the roar of the mountain cataracts, or the fall of crags
   which the earthquake has set loose?'

   Father,' she said, rising from her knees, I know that you dare not
   refuse the charge. It is God who says to thee, "Take this boy; and save
   him for Me." He will tell you all. Farewell, or I shall be missed at
   home. Philip, may God be with thee! We shall meet again.'

   She turned to go, and Damaris followed her. She had already taken off
   from Philip the veil and pallium, and the boy stood before the solitary
   in his everyday dress. He modestly awaited what the old man would say,
   but fixed his frank and fearless eyes on the gaunt face and emaciated
   form.

   Macedonius was but fifty-seven years old; but age is not told by years
   only. His eyes had grown dim with many tears, his cheeks were sunken,
   his hair was thin and grey. He sat down on a ledge of rock and leaned
   his trembling hands on a staff, for at that moment he was faint with
   continued abstinence. The long years seemed to separate him from this
   lad like wastes of the salt, unplumbed, estranging sea.' Yet as he
   looked at him he recalled his own happy, unforgotten youth. He, too,
   had once been as bright, as active, as well-knit as the boy who stood
   before him. Youth, which dances like a bubble, nimble and gay, and
   shines like a dove's neck or the colours of the rainbow,' had once been
   his. He, too, had heard the siren songs singing enchantment to him
   across the smiling summer waves. To him, too, Circe, the daughter of
   the sun, had offered her charmed cup. He had plunged into the follies
   and dissipations and delirious dreams of youth, and known the fatal
   glamour of Satan's bewitchment. Then God had broken in succession all
   his idols. He had gambled away his patrimony; he had been abandoned by
   his love, and by his friends; he had been smitten with terrible
   illness. And as he sat like the Prodigal, friendless, forsaken,
   penniless, in rags, and amid the swine, a star had looked through the
   midnight. For Meletius, the good bishop, had visited him in his
   illness, and through his gentle, gracious ministrations the snare of
   the fowler had been broken and he had been delivered.

   But when he rose from the bed of sickness, utterly changed in heart, he
   felt driven to fly from the world. Even the Church could not satisfy
   him, for it was tainted with worldliness and rent with partisanship. As
   a youth he had been accustomed to the trimming attitude of mind which
   made the old Bishop Leontius mumble the Gloria in such a way that no
   party could claim him for its own shibboleth; and he had heard the old
   man say, as he touched his white hairs, When this snow melts there will
   be plenty of mud.' Plenty of mud there was! Not even the blameless
   life, the sweet, calm look, the radiant smile, the kind hand seconding
   the kind voice' [3] of the much-loved Meletius, could exorcise the
   intruding world from the schism-troubled Church. Macedonius not only
   saw the sad spectacle of at least three Christian bishops of
   Antioch--an Arian and two orthodox bishops--but he saw the heated
   votaries of two such good men as Paulinus and Meletius railing at each
   other in the assemblies, and even assaulting each other in the streets.
   In vain had Meletius said to his rival, We hold the same doctrines; let
   us be friends. If the episcopal chair be a source of rivalry between
   us, let us place the Holy Gospel upon it, the symbol of Christ Himself,
   and let us sit on either side of it till one of us dies, and then the
   other shall become sole bishop.' But ecclesiasticism, theological
   pettiness, sacerdotal arrogance, and the fatal force and fascination of
   opinionated orthodoxy, were too strong for Divine charity; and the
   thoughts of Macedonius were not of these things. He cared but little
   for nice dogmatic definitions and curiously articulated formulæ; what
   he longed to do was to save his soul and keep himself unspotted from
   the world. He loathed the petty baseness of partisan wranglings, with
   their accompaniment of subterranean intrigues and bitter personalities.
   As though amid the spiteful flash of petty runnels turbid with shallow
   mud, he heard the far-off voices of the great sea of eternity. He
   determined to retire from the world. The ideal of contemplative
   coenobitic communities living apart from the world under strictest
   discipline had dazzled the age in which he lived. False and
   unscriptural as the ideal was, entirely alien as it was from the
   example of Christ and His Apostles, yet in these seething and troubled
   times the life of the sainted eremite' exercised a maddening
   fascination over countless men of high faculties, until this unsocial
   passion' leavened a great part of the Christian community, filling many
   a household with anxious forebodings and needless suffering. When
   hermits were looked upon as representing the perfection of Divine
   philosophy, it was hardly strange that the ambition to reach these
   imagined altitudes haunted many a youthful mind.

   So Macedonius had joined a little community of monks near Antioch, of
   which the famous Diodorus of Tarsus was the abbot. He sought always the
   most menial offices. But he soon found that the world could intrude
   even into a monastery. He could not escape from disputes about the
   episcopal claims of Meletius and Paulinus, and about the nice questions
   respecting the hypostatic union. Macedonius found no comfort in such
   matters. What he was aiming at in the great warfare which has no
   discharge was to subdue the flesh to the spirit, to secure a tranquil
   empire over himself. He left the coenobium, and began to live as a
   hermit on the hills.

   But any empire over himself which he had gained was infinitely far from
   tranquil. As he had found that the monastic life did not involve any
   exception from trials, but only a substitution of meaner and smaller
   ones for those which had of old assailed him, so it was his bitter
   experience that by flying to the mountain cave he had not escaped
   either from the devil or the flesh. He carried himself with him as all
   men do, and it was contrary to the law of life that he should find any
   condition which temptation left unassailed.

   The conquest was granted to his sincerity, but the same reward would
   have been given to him, with less frightful struggles and more complete
   blessedness, if he had lived as Christ lived, among his kind, and not
   done violence to the laws of Nature and the ordinances of God. How
   constantly had he to wrestle with the instigations of spiritual pride!
   How often did the secret devil of his loneliness whisper into his soul
   high flatteries of his spiritual supremacy, telling him that his name
   and fame had spread through all Syria and Asia--yes, and even to the
   great western and southern realms of Italy and Spain and Africa! Thus
   did Satan strive to puff him up with vain self-exaltation in that inner
   world of the soul which remains untouched by outward ordinances. How
   often, in spite of his austerities--nay, not only in spite of, but (had
   he only known it) because of them--did evil and carnal thoughts come
   over him like a flood! The enfeebled body was too weakened to fight
   against the rebellious soul. His bones, as he sank back and writhed on
   the rocky floor of his cave, clashed like those of a skeleton, yet all
   the while his imagination was still rioting, in spite of himself, amid
   the sinful scenes of his youth in Antioch.

   As these thoughts passed through his mind, writing all his past history
   as on flashes of lightning, the hermit kept a long and embarrassed
   silence; but rousing himself at last, he said:

   Boy, the mother of John the Presbyter told me that you would explain
   why she has brought thee hither.'

   My name, sir,' he said, is Philip, and the Lady Anthusa led me here in
   disguise because I am in imminent peril of death for having flung a
   stone at the statue of the Emperor.'

   You should not have done it, Philip,' said the hermit. '"

   The powers that be are ordained of God."' But when he saw that Philip
   hung his head, he added gently; Tell me the whole story, lad.'

   Then, often interrupted by the barley-eater's eager interrogations,
   Philip told him of the imperial proclamation, of the outbreak of the
   populace, of the wrecking of the Baths, of the bursting into the
   Judgment Hall, of the destruction of the statues, of the fear and
   silence which had afterwards fallen on the city, of his father's
   execution, of the cruel deaths of his young companions--of one of which
   he had been the horrified spectator.

   Macedonius listened with an interest all the more intense because news
   from the world rarely reached his cave. As he heard the story he seemed
   himself to be passing through the whole scene, and, catching the
   contagion of the boy's anguish, he was carried away by a storm of pity
   and indignation. Philip was amazed to see how his whole form seemed to
   dilate and his eye to flash with its old fire as he strode up and down
   the cavern when the tale was ended. Then, raising his hands to heaven,
   he said, Antioch shall not be destroyed, shall not be decimated!
   Theodosius shall listen to God's voice through me. Useless, I fear, and
   evil has been my life, but its sacrifices shall not have been all in
   vain. They have given me a right to speak. I will gather all the
   hermits of the hills around me. We will go down to Antioch. We will in
   the name of God forbid all earthly vengeance. Yes, I will at least
   render this one service to my country before I die!'

   He spoke more to himself than to his solitary listener, but again
   realising the lad's presence, and glancing up at the sun, which was now
   high in heaven, he said, Forgive me, boy; you must be hungry, and I
   have nothing for you but my sole food, which is barley; and I drink
   only the pure diamond of God which sparkles in yonder rill.'

   Hunger is the best sauce, father,' said Philip smiling.

   Yes, but I cannot bid thee share my privations. Not far away is another
   hermit, whose fare is not so meagre. I will go and ask him for
   something for thee. Canst thou kindle a fire? Canst thou bake a
   barley-cake in the embers? Yes? Then, by the time it is ready I will be
   back.'

   Philip deftly kindled a fire, and kneaded the barley-meal into two
   cakes, and the hermit soon returned. He had brought with him some dates
   and dry grapes and figs, and the boy enjoyed them with a very healthy
   appetite, while the hermit watched him with large eyes. When the meal
   was over Macedonius said:

   Boy, it is impossible for thee to stay in this my wretched abode; but
   four miles distant is the monastery of Diodore, and at this moment the
   great Bishop is in his old house. There are a few young novices there
   of thine own age, and if he will receive thee, thou wilt there find
   work, and safety, and holy companionship. I will go and intercede with
   him.'

   He took his staff and set forth over the steep mountain tracks. When he
   reached the monastery he was warmly welcomed by Diodore and the
   brethren, who promised to shelter Philip till the peril was over. His
   soul had been much troubled all the day; it was troubled still more by
   an incident of his return.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [3] Gregory of Nyssa.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VI

  THE DEMONIAC


   Opfer fällen hier

   Weder Lamm noch Stier,

   Aber Menschenopfer unerhört.--Goethe.

   The mountain-range of Amanus was full of fissures and ravines, and as
   he crossed one of the deepest and darkest of these a strange and almost
   naked figure, as of one of the demoniacs of Gadara, sprang out before
   his path.

   Away! away, Macedonius!' it cried, with wild gesticulations. 'I know
   thee, Crithophagus. Hast thou come to torment me? Am I not wretched
   enough, lost enough? Away, away!'

   Macedonius at once recognised him, though in his dark hour he was but
   rarely seen by human eyes. It was the miserable Stagirius, before whom
   the pillar of life had once moved in golden fire, with its dark side
   undreamed of. The favourite son of a father of wealth and noble birth,
   everything seemed to smile upon his early years. His parents were
   Christians. He might have served God honourably in Church and State.
   But a vein of pride in his disposition, urging him to something
   exceptional, combined with an extraordinary veneration for the life of
   the desert solitaries, had led him to defy the wishes of his father,
   and to leave his rich home at Antioch for the grim life of the hills. A
   very short experience made it intolerable to him. He hated the nightly
   vigils, he grew utterly weary of the long studies and meditations. He
   felt no better, but rather, and in all senses, worse than he had done
   in the daily life of the city. His miserable soul was torn by
   struggling self-conceit and self-disgust, but false pride kept him from
   acknowledging what he felt to have been a fatal error. Thinking that
   other employment might help him, his brother-monks set him to tend a
   garden and an orchard; and, feeling the uselessness of his misdirected
   life, he would sometimes ask them in fierce petulance whether his noble
   hands were thus meant to load dung-carts and dig at roots. Then,
   perhaps, the penances and discipline would subdue him for a time to
   humblest self-prostration. The severity of the inward tempest was too
   much for an ill-balanced temperament and a frame delicately nurtured.
   He had become liable to convulsions and fits of epilepsy, which all men
   mistook, and which the wretched youth himself mistook, for demoniac
   possession. In vain he travelled to the most esteemed saints and the
   most celebrated martyries. He had his lucid intervals, but he never got
   over the effects of his disordered body and haunted imagination. In
   vain Chrysostom, whose own health had been for ever shattered by the
   unnatural privations of his hermitage, had written to warn him against
   this satiety of penitence, this wantonness of despairing misery.
   Stagirius continued to be the frequent victim of fits of frenzy and
   fierce impulses to blasphemy and suicide.

   At this moment Stagirius was in one of his wildest paroxysms. How he
   lived no one knew. He had not even the garment of skin-and-hair over a
   linen tunic which most of the solitaries wore. He only had a coarse
   cincture of goatskin round his loins. His eyes glared with the light of
   madness through the dirty and matted locks which streamed over his
   shoulders. The sun smote him by day and the moon by night, and the dews
   dropped on his nakedness. Like Nebuchadnezzar, he ate grass, his hair
   grew like birds' feathers, and his nails like wild beasts' claws, and
   he tore up roots for his sustenance. He looked scarcely human, and the
   terrified hermits sometimes heard his screams reverberated by the
   mountain rocks, as he fancied himself to be wrestling with troops of
   demons. His nights were haunted by frightful visions, and many a time
   he had attempted self-destruction. And this was the gay Stagirius, once
   the favourite of fortune, the envy of the youths of Antioch for his
   beauty and his wealth!

   Macedonius paused irresolutely, for he was unnerved by privations, and
   he had a horror of the madness which he attributed to the presence of
   malignant devils. As Stagirius approached him with yells and
   threatening gestures, he drew back, made the sign of the cross, and
   muttered the formulæ of exorcism. They produced no effect. Stagirius
   seized him by the arm, and cried, I know thee! Away! away! lest the
   demon who has possession of me tear thee limb from limb!'

   Lord Jesus, save me!' cried Macedonius. At the name a convulsive spasm
   passed through the frame of the unhappy maniac; his face became purple,
   his eyes were distorted, he foamed at the mouth, and fell writhing on
   the stones of the ravine, where he lay as dead.

   Macedonius was lost in pity and horror. He knelt by the unconscious
   sufferer, sprinkled water over him, and supported his head upon his
   breast. After a short time Stagirius opened his eyes. Macedonius gently
   spoke to him by his name, and pressed him to eat some of the
   barley-cake which he had carried with him. Then the hermit prayed for
   the trembling maniac, and left him sane and comforted, though terribly
   shaken. He offered to take Stagirius back to his own cavern, though he
   was loth that Philip should see so deplorable a spectacle. But
   Stagirius refused. Leave me to my misery,' he feebly moaned. 'The sun
   has set. To-morrow I will go to Diodore. After a short time I will make
   my way to Egypt, and see the saintly Nilus. It may be that he will be
   able to drive out these demons that have seized the temple of my soul.'

   Weeping and deeply troubled, Macedonius blessed him. It was night
   before he reached his own cave, inexpressibly wearied with the
   exertions and emotions of the day.

   As he entered, the flickering embers of the wood-fire showed him that
   Philip had gathered himself a bed of dry leaves, and lay there in the
   peaceful slumbers of his youth.

   Moving very gently, he took his little earthenware lamp, and, lighting
   it at the feeble flames, shaded the light with his hand as he gazed at
   the sleeping boy. There he lay carelessly outstretched on the leaves,
   his head with its dark curls resting on his arm, while his breast rose
   and fell with the regular breathing of deep and placid slumber. He was
   the picture of ruddy health and strength and life, and the hermit
   involuntarily made the sign of blessing over him. Usually he scourged
   himself before his nightly orisons, but he world not do so now lest the
   whistling cords should waken the sleeping boy. But his prayer that
   night was full of doubt and agony. Had he, after all, done right in the
   adoption of a life so far removed from the ordinary conditions of
   humanity? Was there this unbridged abyss between the secular and the
   religious? Was selfishness the less selfish by being expanded to
   infinitude? Had not God, who placed us in the world, intended us to
   work in it, and, being in it without being of it, to use it without
   abusing it? Why should not the boy who lay so sweetly slumbering there
   grow up to be a useful, happy, Christian man, with all the innocent joy
   of home about him, meeting the heavy trials which would come to him as
   they come to all, but not increasing them by self-invented tortures?

   Then the wild vision of Stagirius came before his mind. What a
   deplorable shipwreck of high hopes! What a triumph of the impure demons
   was there! And he himself--Macedonius--what had he really gained by his
   will-worship and voluntary humility? Had his severity to the body been
   of any real value against the indulgence of the flesh? It seemed to him
   too late to alter his career. This, however, he determined to do--to
   make his life more useful to others. That vow he offered to God in his
   long prayers that night.

   Next morning he went with Philip over the mountains, and entrusted him
   to the care of the abbot who had succeeded Diodore. There the boy was
   happy. They employed him in rustic occupations, and gave him all such
   innocent gladness as was in their power. For the teachings of Diodore
   had made them a large-hearted community, and the young novices were
   under gentle and loving training. Mingling with these youths, seeing
   their quiet dutifulness, sharing in their lessons, Philip gradually
   learnt something of the essential truths of Christianity. Almost
   without knowing it, the grace of God took gradual hold of his heart.

   But he became in nowise enamoured of the monastic, and still less of
   the eremitic, ideal; and this was chiefly due to the dislike, almost
   the repulsion, forced upon his mind by one of the youngest of the
   novices. His name was Simeon, and he afterwards grew up to be the
   celebrated pillar-saint. Simeon was a short, strong, good-looking boy,
   entirely uneducated, who had spent most of his life as a shepherd
   tending the flocks of his parents. His head was full of fantastic
   perversions as to the nature of duty, largely mingled with the signs of
   degeneracy, which in these days would be called egomania and
   megalomania. He had been in a monastery in which the Abbot Heliodorus
   had lived from earliest childhood, and Simeon thought it was an almost
   miraculous merit that the Abbot 'had never once in his life seen either
   a pig or a cock!' Philip did not feel at all edified by the merit, and
   made Simeon positively morose with the way in which he ridiculed his
   vain anecdotes about himself. Simeon told the novices how he once
   wanted to buy some fish, and when the fish-girl said falsely that she
   had none, the fish leapt out and began to jump about Simeon's feet,
   till he quieted them by a word! The story caused an involuntary burst
   of laughter--the first laugh which Philip enjoyed since his recent
   troubles. Simeon's pride was severely hurt by this way of receiving his
   supernatural narratives. He was still more displeased when Philip
   expostulated with him about the dirtiness of his person, asking him
   what religion there could be in that, and reminding him of a verse
   which he had heard one of the monks read: '

   Having our minds sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies
   washed with pure water.' As for the visions which this strange
   shepherd-boy constantly narrated, Philip called them mere indigestion.
   He disliked Simeon's way of wearing a cord tied round his naked waist
   till it grew into his flesh, and his habit of keeping himself awake by
   leaning on a round piece of wood, which slipped under him if he gave
   way to drowsiness. When the Abbot heard of these extravagances he
   forbade them. He warned Simeon that such meaningless austerities might
   only be a sign of overweening pride. Simeon was so much offended that
   he ran away and hid himself. After long search and anxiety he was found
   in an empty cistern full of all sorts of objectionable reptiles. The
   Abbot could do nothing with the stubborn, opinionated, maniacally
   excited boy, and dismissed him to the career of verminiferous glory
   which he afterwards attained as the first of the Stylites. But the
   effect he produced on the mind of Philip was that of disgust: he
   determined that no morbid impulses should ever make him join the
   half-demented band, in which many who had been mere mendicants and
   criminals surrounded themselves with the same halo of sham sanctity
   which is to this day enjoyed in the East by many a semi-idiotic yogi or
   repulsive fakir.

   He never met Simeon again, but in after-years he heard, with a somewhat
   disdainful smile, of the Stylite's performances in the barely human
   life which he spent in numberless genuflexions on the filthy summit of
   his pillar. 'I once watched him,' said an admiring observer long
   afterwards, and during his prayer he prostrated himself one thousand
   two hundred and forty-four times; and after that I left off counting.'

   Philip was a Christian in those days, and his only reply was, I find
   nothing in the Scriptures as to the advantage of bowing the head like a
   bulrush, or wasting inhuman lives in an atmosphere of dirt.'

   The notion of living on the top of a pillar had not occurred to Simeon
   spontaneously. He had borrowed it from an Eastern hermit named
   Nicander. The practice was so revolting to the good sense of the West,
   that when a certain Wulfil did attempt in the sixth century to
   introduce it at Trèves, the bishop demolished his pillar; but even in
   the East, Nicander had been indignantly reproved by the good sense of
   St. Nilus, who, besides accusing him of levity, warns him that his
   extravagance was due to pride, and that he who exalted himself should
   be abased. [4]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [4] St. Nilus, Epp. 114, 115.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VII

  THE JUDGMENT ON THE CITY


   Sæva Necessitas,

   Clavos trabales et cuneos manu

   Gestans ahena.--Horace.

   Twenty-two days had now passed since the riot, and such a Lent had
   never been kept in Antioch. In ordinary times it was an unholy city.
   Even the Emperor Julian, Pagan as he was, had taunted its inhabitants
   with their vices, their violence, drunkenness, incontinence, impiety,
   avarice, and rashness. But this Lent, when the people felt that the
   sword of Damocles hung over their necks by a single hair, the
   amphitheatre was empty, and whenever it was known that Chrysostom would
   preach, which he did frequently, the church was densely crowded.
   Usually even the Christians paid but little attention to sermons. Many
   only came to church on feast days, if then; and, when they came, many
   stayed at the back of the church among the heathen and the unbaptised,
   while the men busied themselves with secular gossip, and the women
   almost drowned the voice of the preacher with their chatter about their
   children, their woolwork, and their domestic concerns. John's splendid
   oratory did, indeed, command their attention, and they listened to him
   so intently that the pickpockets and cutpurses were able to ply their
   busy trade among them undisturbed. But what they cared for was the
   rhetoric, not the spiritual truths; the grand sentences, not their
   practical application. When the sermon was over they broke into a
   cackle of conceited criticism, systematically turned their backs on the
   Holy Communion, and those that remained, then as now, were but as
   planks and broken pieces from the shipwreck of the congregation. But
   now all was different. The orator played on their emotions as on the
   strings of a harp, now elevating them to fortitude and resignation, now
   awakening the heavenly aspirations in which alone their souls could
   find repose.

   But on the twenty-second day arrived the two Imperial Commissioners,
   Hellebichus and Cæsarius. They entered the city at the head of their
   troops. The selection of such men was a hopeful sign, for they were
   Christians, and were known to be men of kindly temperament. Their lofty
   rank showed the importance which the Emperor attached to their mission,
   for Hellebichus was Master of the Forces, and Cæsarius was Count of the
   Offices. But they bore sealed despatches, and no one knew what doom
   might hang over the rebellious city. On their way the Commissioners had
   met Bishop Flavian, hastening to intercede with Theodosius; but not
   even to him had they been allowed to intimate the judgment which the
   Emperor had pronounced. It was morning when they made their entrance
   into Antioch, and the dejected populace lined their route in thousands.
   Ordinarily they would have ridden through festal and rejoicing ranks,
   they would have been welcomed with laughter, applause, gay
   interpellations, and garlands strewn in their path. Now they were
   received in silence by a multitude robed in garments of woe, who held
   out to them their appealing hands. They were glad when the dismal ride
   ended at the Forum. There they ascended the rostra, and read out to the
   breathless audience the sentence of the Emperor.

   It declared:

   First, that Antioch was to be stripped of its rank as the capital of
   Syria, and that the distinction was to be transferred to the rival city
   of Laodicea.

   Secondly, that until further notice all the baths, circuses, theatres,
   amphitheatres, and places of amusement in the city were to be closed.

   Thirdly--and this came on them as the crushing climax of misery--the
   trials which had been already held by the Count of the East were to be
   revived, and all who were proved guilty of complicity in the riot were
   to be severely punished.

   Fourthly, the Imperial dole of bread to the poor, which was distributed
   at Antioch, as at Rome and Constantinople, was henceforth to be
   stopped.

   Such was the decree, and no one could deny that it was just and
   moderate; but if it removed the agony of dread, it substituted for it
   the reality of depression. To the proud patriotism of the Antiochenes
   it seemed an insufferable humiliation that the paltry Laodicea should
   be crowned with the privileges of which they were deprived. The closing
   of the places of amusement, and, above all, of the public baths, not
   only eclipsed their gaiety, but involved a loss of health and comfort.
   Worst of all, a terrible trial for life or death, torture or
   confiscation, hung over numbers of the citizens, and especially those
   who stood highest in rank and wealth.

   They listened in mute despair, and then the Commissioners adjourned to
   the Hall of Justice. There a long list of names was read out of those
   who had been accused, and among them was the name of the boy Philip.
   Archers were despatched on all sides for their arrest, and the mean
   wretch who had seen Philip on his way to the cave of Macedonius gave
   eager information where he might probably be found. That night he was
   seized at the monastery of Diodore. The brothers would doubtless have
   claimed for him the rights of sanctuary; but the archers caught him in
   the orchard outside, and took him with them to Antioch, with a cord
   drawn round his wrists so tightly as to cause him great pain. That
   night he was thrown with masses of the humbler offenders into the
   common prison. All that the brethren could do was to send to Macedonius
   and tell him the fate of his young charge. It made his soul burn with
   still hotter indignation, and he spent the next twenty-four hours in
   summoning the hermits of the hills from every side to meet him on the
   following morning at the point where the road down the ravine of
   Parthenius led to the city. Chrysostom also was informed of the boy's
   fate, and that very night, regardless of danger, he visited him,
   comforted him, soothed his terrors, and promised to use every effort in
   his power to procure his acquittal from the capital sentence. He could
   not promise that he could save him from the horrible scourge, which in
   the case of a boy often caused death, and seemed almost worse than
   death. It was the suspense, the uncertainty, which gnawed so deeply
   into Philip's heart, and it was amid this anguish that, encouraged and
   comforted by Chrysostom, he offered his first timid prayer to the Son
   of God. That prayer was heard.

   The Commissioners, who numbered many friends among the society of
   Antioch, felt profoundly saddened by the task which they were ordered
   to fulfil. What a difference this city presents to its aspect the last
   time I visited it,' said Cæsarius as he sat at supper that evening.
   Then the waves of life flashed like the Orontes in the sunshine. Now
   there is nothing around us but lamentations and mourning and woe.'

   Yes,' answered Hellebichus, but if it was a joyous city, it was also a
   tumultuous city, and full of stirs. It has set to the Empire the worst
   possible example, and justice demands punishment, though I wish the
   infliction of it had fallen to other hands than ours. At least we can
   do our best to temper justice with mercy.'

   Next morning they made their reluctant way to the Court of Justice, in
   which many of the accused, and Philip among them, were already ranged
   in fetters under the guard of the archers. In the city reigned a
   silence as of death. Many of the inhabitants had fled as far even as
   the barren heights of Mount Casius. Only two or three men were seen
   creeping here and there about the Forum like living corpses. Some
   Christian priests, indeed, clung to the robes of the envoys as they
   entered the hall, and, embracing their feet and knees, implored them to
   promise compassion. In the hall itself, not one Pagan advocate had the
   courage to come forward. Chrysostom was there, indeed, for he had to
   watch the case of Philip and others whom he knew, and though, as being
   a Christian presbyter, he could no longer plead at the bar, he was
   ready to come forward and give evidence. Outside the door stood groups
   of agitated mourners. They reminded him of watchers upon the shore who
   see ships tossing in the storm, for whose imperilled mariners they can
   only pray. The spectacle inside was still more heartrending, for there
   were many soldiers armed with swords and clubs, coercing all present
   into deep stillness. Even outside the doors the women--mothers and
   wives and sisters--were compelled to keep at a distance, lest their
   wailing should disturb the proceedings within. The saddest sight of all
   was to see them lying prostrate in the dust, with veiled faces, in
   squalid robes, their long hair sprinkled with ashes, without friend, or
   neighbour, or even handmaiden to solace or protect them, while with
   lacerated hearts they listened to the sounds of blows within, and heard
   the cries of those who were suffering under the rods. What could these
   poor women do but look heavenwards, and entreat God to give fortitude
   to the sufferers?

   So there were tortures within the hall and tortures outside of it, and
   the hearts even of the judges were almost paralysed with woe.
   Chrysostom never forgot that dreary and miserable day. It made him
   think of that great assize when each soul must stand alone, with
   neither father, nor son, nor friend to help, before the judgment-seat
   of Christ.

   Things grew worse and worse as the dreary hours went on; for some were
   doomed to death, and others were laden with heavy chains and led away
   to prison, and the wives and children of others, whose goods were
   confiscated, were turned loose into the streets, penniless after all
   their wealth.

   As Chrysostom expected, the case of Philip came on that day. He had
   been seen in the midst of the rioters with the two poor boys, his
   friends Achillas and Eros, who had already expiated their boyish
   thoughtlessness by cruel deaths. Moreover, he was the son of Hermas,
   who had been executed as a ringleader in the riot. But the only voices
   which could have testified that he had flung the first stone were
   hushed in death. That secret, which would have inevitably doomed him to
   the same fate, was buried in the breast of Chrysostom. Straining
   prerogative to the utmost, and with no small danger to himself, the
   Presbyter with passionate eloquence had pleaded Philip's youth, the
   absence of proof against him, the absence of any proof of malicious
   forethought, the sacred claims of compassion to one so young. It was
   all in vain, and he was dreading to hear the terrible fiat of death
   pronounced, when a slight interruption diverted for a moment the
   attention of the Commissioners. It was by this time late in the
   evening, and Libanius had at last summoned up sufficient courage to
   creep timidly and almost surreptitiously into the Court. But the quick
   eye of Cæsarius caught sight of him, and recognising his face and his
   position as the intimate friend of the late Emperor Julian he beckoned
   him to come and sit by his side on the tribunal. Libanius was so cowed
   and dejected that Cæsarius even ventured to whisper into his ear that
   they were earnestly desirous to exercise their summary jurisdiction as
   leniently as the stringent orders of the Emperor rendered possible.

   Do, by the immortal gods!' murmured Libanius. Nay, I forgot that you
   were Christians. Then be merciful for the sake of Him who you say was
   merciful. And if you will spare the trembling city, I will immortalise
   you in one of my orations, the finest I can write. It shall be a stream
   of gold, it shall be like the girdle of Hera, woven of gems and
   purple.'

   While this whispered conversation was going on, Hellebichus had been
   looking at Philip, and was deeply touched by his innocent face and
   helpless boyhood. It is clear,' he said to Cæsarius, that this boy was
   at least as guilty as some who have already been put to death, but do
   you not think that it would be enough to order him a scourging, and
   postpone till to-morrow the question of further evidence?'

   So the doom was passed. Chrysostom stood by the boy's side, pressed his
   hand, bade him be brave, and said he would entreat God to enable him to
   bear his pain. Then the sentence was carried out. Though even the
   executioner, moved with pity, mitigated his ferocity, and would not
   strike with his full force, yet at the first blow of the rods the boy
   grew pale as death; the second wrung from him a deep moan; at the third
   he uttered a heartrending cry and fainted. After that he felt no more,
   and a few minutes later he was carried back to the prison, bleeding and
   half-dead.

   It was called a prison, but the number of accused and suspects was so
   great that they were really shut up in a great circle of walls, exposed
   to the open air, in masses of hopeless and helpless wretchedness. And
   in that circle of misery Chrysostom also spent the night, doing all
   that he could do by consolation and tenderness for many of the
   sufferers, and sitting for hours by a heap of straw on which Philip
   lay, holding him by the hand, and gently attending to all his needs.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE THUNDERBOLT AVERTED


   Thou art a king, a sovereign o'er frail men;

   I am a Druid, servant of the gods;

   Such service is above such sovereignty.

   Mason, Caractacus.

   Next morning the Commissioners, with sad hearts, mounted the horses
   which stood for them at the palace gate in splendid caparisons, and
   rode towards the Court in solemn state, accompanied by their bodyguard
   with drawn swords. Again they rode through a mourning and praying
   populace, but at one part of the main street they were struck with an
   unwonted spectacle.

   For there a group of men who looked hardly human had taken their stand.
   Some of them were clad in leather, some in rough skins, some with
   little more than rags, the remains of robes which had long nearly
   fallen to pieces. Over their shoulders streamed their unkempt locks.
   Many of them had not washed far years. Their features were gaunt and
   grim, their gestures uncouth, repellent, yet commanding. Their faces
   were for the most part entirely unknown, and many of them had not
   trodden for many a long year the streets of Antioch or any other city.
   Yet in the bearing of these wild-looking men there was no timidity or
   reverence. They did not bow, or kneel, or weep, or supplicate, but
   stood upright in an attitude almost of menace. They were the hermits
   whom Macedonius had assembled from all the clefts and dens and booths
   of Mount Silpius and Mount Amanus and Mount Casius to come to intercede
   for the guilty city. Among them even Stagirius had come, no longer,
   indeed, in paroxysms of violence, but with the light of madness still
   gleaming in his restless eyes.

   While the Commissioners were wondering at this strange assemblage
   Macedonius strode out, and Cæsarius, to his amazement, saw his bridle
   and his robe seized by a gaunt old man whose goatskin was grimy and
   tattered, but who, speaking in Syriac--the only language he
   knew--imperiously ordered both Commissioners to dismount.

   Who is this madman?' he exclaimed indignantly, turning to his guard,
   and raising his hand to strike him away with the flat of his sword.

   It is Macedonius the barley-eater,' exclaimed several voices in
   awestruck tones.

   The name filled both the Commissioners with an almost overpowering
   sense of dread. This, then, was the saint with whose fame the world
   rang. Here was a man who had given up all for Christ--the Elijah of his
   age. Surely his mandates must be messages from God? Without a moment's
   delay the two great nobles sprang from their horses and knelt on the
   ground before him, while Cæsarius entreated his pardon for his rude
   exclamation and intended blow. Of all this Macedonius took no notice.

   He was neither impressed nor terrified by the long array of steeds and
   armed soldiers, and grooms besmeared with gold,' nor with the supreme
   jurisdiction of the legates. While all the nobles and rulers of Antioch
   trembled with the trembling population, he felt his soul dilated with
   the flame of inspiration.

   Go, my friends,' he said, and say to the Emperor "Thou, too, art but a
   man, ruling over men. Darest thou destroy the image of God? Statues are
   easily replaced, as thine have already been, but canst thou restore to
   life the image of God which once thou hast defaced? Canst thou make one
   hair grow again of the men whom thou hast doomed?"'

   Yea,' said the other hermits, and we are all ready to lay down our
   lives for this city. We will die for those whom you condemn. Some of us
   will go on an embassy to the Emperor in the name of all the rest, nor
   will we leave this city till it is pardoned.'

   The Commissioners felt that they were powerless to disregard what they
   accepted as a supernatural intervention. They knew the reverence with
   which the pious Emperor regarded men whom the current opinion enshrined
   on the summit of human holiness. They rode on to the gates of the
   Prætorium to consult together. There all the bishops who were in the
   city met them, and said that unless they would promise to be merciful
   they should only pass into the hall over their bodies. They promised,
   and then the bishops kissed their hands. A poor mother had been holding
   the bridle of Hellebichus all the way, as the two judges passed through
   the crowd. Seeing her son among the fettered prisoners, she flew to
   him, flung her arms round him, covered him with her long, dishevelled
   locks, and, drawing the youth to Hellebichus, bathed the feet of the
   Commissioner with her tears, imploring him with cries and sobs not to
   rob her of the support of her old age, but rather to kill her there and
   then. The hearts of the two judges were overwhelmed. They could not
   proceed with their business.

   After consultation they decided to check any crude and ill-advised
   embassy of the hermits to the Emperor, and to postpone all further
   action until Cæsarius had returned to Constantinople for the further
   commands of Theodosius, while Hellebichus remained at his post. The
   decision was announced to the people, and though the accused were left
   in chains, and the families of those whose property had been
   confiscated were homeless, yet the respite caused such joy and hope
   that they broke into acclamations and benedictions. Cæsarius started by
   night with only two servants. The hermits wished to accompany him, but
   he declined. The journey,' he said, is long and difficult; the fatigues
   will exhaust your age; and its expenses would be beyond your power. But
   I will gladly be the bearer of your written intercession.'

   Few of the hermits could write; most of them could only speak Syriac.
   But Macedonius drew up a brief epistle, boldly reminding the Emperor of
   his last day, and of the judgment of God which awaited him, and to this
   the hermits who could write appended their names and the others their
   marks. Then Cæsarius set forth. He travelled night and day. He did not
   once descend from his chariot, either to take food, or to rest, or to
   change his clothes; and thus he traversed in six days the three hundred
   leagues which separated Antioch from Constantinople. He reached the
   palace gate of Theodosius at noon on the Tuesday in the fourth week of
   Lent. But he found that his task was already accomplished. Eight days
   before Bishop Flavian had moved the heart of the Emperor to pity, and
   Antioch had been forgiven.

   When the aged Patriarch of Antioch was admitted into the Emperor's
   presence he was overwhelmed by the sense of his position. Theodosius
   did not affect the superficial splendours of Byzantinism, but stood on
   a dais at the end of the hall, a strong, handsome Spaniard, surrounded
   by the noble-looking Gothic guard in whom he delighted--white-skinned,
   majestic Amali and Balts, wearing their golden collars, and with their
   long fair hair streaming over their shoulders. The shadow of the Empire
   clung about him in a certain magnificent stateliness of demeanour,
   showing him to be conscious that the rule of all things' was in his
   hands. Weary with age and with hasty travel, and burdened with the
   responsibilities which he had left behind him and the thought of the
   dear dying sister who had so long been the companion of his loneliness,
   and whose eyes he feared would now be closed by a stranger's hands,
   Flavian was far more overwhelmed by the thought that he represented in
   his own person a city which had been guilty of crimes against the
   imperial majesty such as might well be deemed unpardonable. He could
   not approach, but stood far off at the end of the hall, his look fixed
   on the ground, his white head bent, his aged eyes bathed in tears. He
   could not speak. The heart of Theodosius had been fiercely exacerbated,
   but he could not brook that spectacle. He descended from his throne,
   came forward, and taking the old man by the hand, gently pleaded with
   him, as though he himself were on his defence.

   Did I,' he asked, deserve such treatment at the hands of Antioch? Had I
   not always been generous to the city, and was it not my intention to
   visit it in person? Or, if they had any cause of offence against me,
   why did they insult my noble father, the defender of the Empire? Why
   did they insult my young and harmless boys? Above all, why did they
   heap their outrages on the sweet Empress whom I loved so tenderly, and
   have so recently lost? Was she not gentleness and goodness itself? Were
   not the poor and the sick her peculiar charge? Did she not go, Empress
   as she was, alone and unattended to the sick and the poor? Was not her
   voice raised to me day by day in favour of all that was gentle and
   kind? It is too much, father, it is too much! How can I forgive the
   brutal multitude who would hack to pieces the image of my Flaccilla,
   and drag it with foul insults through the streets?'

   We have sinned, we have sinned,' said the weeping bishop when at last
   he found words to speak. We acknowledge all your generosity; we owe you
   nothing but love; we do not deserve your compassion or your
   forgiveness. It was a fraud and malice of the devil which led the
   multitude astray. But oh! forgive, forgive them! Thus can you best
   frustrate the malignity of those evil demons. When the devil had robbed
   man of Paradise, did not God open heaven to the ruined race? Oh! be
   thou like God. The eyes of all, Jews and Pagans, Greeks and barbarians,
   in Antioch are on you. If they see mercy prevailing over judgment, and
   forgiveness dispelling wrath, will they not exclaim with one voice,
   "Heavens! how great is the power of Christianity!" And oh, Emperor!
   bethink thee of the magnanimity of the wise Constantine when his
   statues were pelted, and he only smiled, and, raising his hand to his
   cheek, said that he felt no hurt. Bethink thee too of thine own
   gentleness, and thine exclamation in setting the captives free in the
   great pardon: "Would that I could also recall the dead!" Worse to us
   than our earthquakes, worse than our conflagrations, has been our crime
   and thy anger. Oh! bethink thee of the day when thou too shall stand
   before the bar of Him who said, "

   If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father which
   is in heaven forgive you your trespasses." Forgive the insults
   inflicted on thee, as Eternal God daily forgives the insults which men
   heap on Him, and, in spite of them, still

   causes His sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and His rain to
   fall on the just and on the unjust. Thou art kind and gentle: prove
   thyself nobler than our ill-deserts. Otherwise, I myself will never
   return to my native city, but will hide my shame in some far place of
   exile.'

   Theodosius was so deeply moved by these words that, like Joseph before
   his brethren, he could scarcely refrain from giving way in the presence
   of his courtiers, and he had to turn aside to hide his tears. He had
   been struck most of all by the plea that he stood to men in the place
   of God, and must forgive even as God forgives.

   Oh!' he exclaimed, was not Christ crucified by the very men whom He
   came to save? Yet He forgave them! And must not I forgive my
   fellow-men?' When once his wrath was calmed he gave free scope to his
   emotion. 'Return,' he said to Flavian; return with all speed. Say that
   I forgive. I rescind the decrees which I sent by Cæsarius and
   Hellebichus. Antioch shall not be degraded; the accused shall be
   amnestied.'

   On hearing the words the revulsion of unlooked-for joy in the heart of
   Flavian was so strong that he sank back fainting into the arms of the
   attendants. When he recovered he hid his face in his hands, and could
   only murmur in broken words his gratitude to God and to the Emperor. As
   a last favour he begged that he might take back with him the
   boy-Emperor Arcadius, as a pledge of mercy and love to the rejoicing
   city.

   Nay,' said Theodosius, I cannot send him, but offer up all your prayers
   for me, that my war with Maximus may be successful, and after that I
   will visit Antioch in person. Speed! speed! and deliver the people from
   the agony of their suspense.'

   But the weariness and infirmities of age prevented Flavian from
   travelling back without rest as he had come, and a swift courier was
   despatched with the entrancing news. Nay, more, Theodosius even sent
   with him an autograph letter, brief, but full of kindness and dignity,
   in which, less in the tone of a wrathful emperor, or even of an
   offended father, than of a friend who wishes to be reconciled, he
   gently reproached them only for having forgotten what they owed and
   what the world owed to his beloved Flaccilla.

   Meanwhile, before this news could reach Antioch, Chrysostom had not
   been idle. He continued to pour forth his impassioned harangues in the
   Cathedral. Might he not justifiably glory in the fact that the only
   gleam of hope, the only intervention on behalf of pity, had come to
   Antioch from Christians? No Pagan magnate or orator had gone to
   intercede, but Flavian, ready like a good shepherd to lay down his life
   for the sheep. It was not the long-bearded, large-cloaked,
   self-exalting Pagan cynics who had bestirred themselves for the city.
   They had hurried away, anxious only to save their goods and to save
   themselves; but the monks, descending like angels from their mountain
   solitudes, had overawed the majesty of the sword and sceptre with the
   glory of holiness. And now, why,' he asked, are you so ungrateful and
   so womanish as to plunge into pusillanimous murmurs about your
   punishment, though it is so far less severe than what you dreaded?
   Ought you not rather to burst with praises, and to sing,

   "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, Who hath visited and redeemed His
   people"? Like children you are crying, Oh, unhappy Antioch! how art
   thou dishonoured?" Dishonoured! What dishonours a city? Its vice, its
   squalor, its greed, its cruelty, its drunkenness, not the forfeiture of
   a nominal prerogative. "But Antioch has lost her glory!" Children that
   you are! What is her glory? Not her palaces, not her statues and marble
   streets and bright colonnades, not her Grove of Daphne, nor her
   fountains, and cypresses, and soft air, and multitudinous population;
   nay, but such virtues as Christianity has brought forth in her, and the
   glory which not even Rome can equal, that here the disciples were first
   called Christians.'

   Nor did John's labours end with his sermon. The words rang in his ears,
   '

   I was in prison, and ye visited me,' and he made his way to the crowded
   city jail to console the captives, and above all to tend the hapless
   boy over whom his heart yearned in pity. He was conducted into the
   place where Philip lay. It was crowded with other victims, chiefly of
   the poorest rank. The air was poisonously foul; the misery and anguish
   were intense; there was a total lack of all decency, or tendance, or
   wholesome food. Here in a corner the poor lad lay like an image moulded
   in wax, faint and sore, scarcely able to speak, and seemingly almost at
   the point to die. The soul of Chrysostom was moved by mingled pity and
   indignation as he witnessed his condition.

   Murmuring in his ear a few words of prayer and comfort, he went
   straight to Hellebichus, and, promising to become surety for Philip,
   entreated the Commissioner to allow the boy to be removed. The heart of
   Hellebichus had been greatly softened by all that he had witnessed, and
   he wrote the requisite order. The sick lad was gently placed in a soft
   litter and carried to the house of Chrysostom. There Anthusa tended him
   with womanly solicitude as lovingly as if he had been her own son; and
   under her gentle nursing the young life began to take colour and
   fragrance again, like a flower which has been beaten by storm, and
   revives in the dew and sunlight.

   During the fifth week of Lent the express courier from Constantinople
   arrived. He was wreathed with olive and myrtle, and carried a branch of
   olive in his hand, and the people knew that he must be the bearer of
   good news. When Hellebichus without delay announced the free
   forgiveness of the Emperor, not even the rules of Lent could check the
   outburst of general joy. Tables were spread in the public ways, and all
   feasted at the lectisternia. Hellebichus himself, with a garland on his
   brow, promenaded the principal streets, amid the acclamations of the
   multitude. Libanius was by his side, pausing now and then to deliver
   some florid euphuistic passage from one or other of his orations,
   written to move or to thank Theodosius, or in praise of Hellebichus and
   Cæsarius. Antioch, with a great rebound, felt that she was herself
   again. The people even begged Hellebichus to stop and partake in their
   festivity. They made him sit down, and were delighted to see him
   graciously eat a little fish at one of their tables.

   On Easter eve Flavian himself arrived. He was followed, he was borne
   along by great floods of the populace, who broke into shouts of
   gratitude and welcome. The public baths were opened. Banquets were
   spread in the open air, and every house was gay with garlands and
   festoons. That night the streets of the city were bright as day with
   universal illumination; and the tender heart of the old bishop was
   further gladdened because he found his sister still alive.

   Never did Easter morn rise more brightly over Antioch. It seemed to
   many of the people as though that day they too had risen with Christ
   from the dead. The church was wholly unable to accommodate the
   thousands who thronged to it. The sun shone in on a mass of garlands
   and myrtle boughs. It was on this occasion that Chrysostom delivered
   the famous harangue in which he described the mission of Flavian. In
   speaking of the demonstrations of joy--the Forum hung with wreaths, the
   many lamps, the couches strewn in the streets for banquet--he bade them
   join with these another and a purer festival--to crown themselves with
   the roses of virtue, to kindle in pure souls the lamps of wisdom and
   holiness. Then Flavian himself stood before the holy table, and stepped
   forth with the consecrated elements in his hands. The choir broke out
   into thunders of glad psalmody; sons flung their arms round the necks
   of fathers whose lives were saved, and happy mothers clasped their
   laughing children to their breasts.

   And when Chrysostom returned and broke the glad news to Philip a wan
   smile for the first time flickered over the boy's pale features. He
   grasped the hand of the Presbyter in a pressure of speechless gratitude
   when he was told that the peril was passed for ever, and that
   henceforth the house of Chrysostom and Anthusa should be his home.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER IX

  PHILIP IS BAPTISED


   In every church a fountain springs,

   O'er which the Holy Dove

   Hovers with softest wings.--Keble.

   The exertions of Chrysostom during this memorable Lent produced their
   natural reaction. His bodily frame, weakened by years of asceticism,
   was incapable of sustaining the tremendous tension of soul and spirit
   necessitated by the events of the last two months, and he fell ill. It
   was not strange, for while he lived the life of a solitary for two
   whole years, and devoted himself to the study of the New Testament, he
   never lay down to sleep. The consequences had been a permanent
   weakness, and after his severe labours he completely broke down.
   Extreme languor confined him to his chamber and his bed.

   And now he reaped the fruits of his kindness to Philip. The boy had
   completely recovered the effects of his cruel flagellation, and the
   amnesty accorded to the city had secured his safety; but meanwhile he
   had been left an orphan by the death of his mother, who died of a
   broken heart during the troubles which followed the execution of her
   husband. She had, indeed, left him a small patrimony, but he had no
   home. Chrysostom and Anthusa therefore decided to make Philip an inmate
   of their household, and, while he was nominally an attendant,
   Chrysostom really regarded him as an adopted son. His father, Hermas,
   had given the boy a good training, and he had meant him to follow the
   profession of a rhetorician. He had even aspired some day to make him a
   pupil of the much-admired Libanius. It was the ruin of all his
   prospects, and the consequent blighting of his ambition for the son of
   whom he was so proud, which had kindled the fierce wrath of Hermas
   against the Emperor. This bitterness of heart had driven him headlong
   into the riot, which had caused the forfeit of his life.

   Philip felt a passionate love for his protector, and Anthusa supplied
   to him the place of his lost mother. While Chrysostom lay weak and ill
   Philip was tenderly assiduous in every ministration. He would read or
   talk to him, or when the Presbyter was too weary for even this he would
   sit silently by his bedside, anticipating every want. He was still
   ostensibly a Pagan; but he read the Gospels and the Acts to his
   protector, asked him eager questions, and shared in the simple
   devotions of the family. Of course his life was very different from
   what it had been in the old days, when he might have been seen singing
   with his schoolfellows in the colonnades, or shouting in the circus, or
   looking on with laughter at the shows in the streets. But a life of gay
   excitement was no longer needful to him. The terrible loss of his
   father, the sad death of his mother, his own imminent peril, his talk
   with Macedonius amid the strength and silence of the hills, his
   re-arrest, the frightful experiences of the flagellation and prison,
   had exercised a sobering influence over the natural brightness of his
   temperament. Meanwhile he had caught something of the most attractive
   side of the new faith. The chaste dignity of its continence, and its
   serene gaiety, so free from all dissoluteness, allured him to grasp, as
   it were, the holy hands extended to him. One thing only held him
   back--the memory of his father's love. He did not see in the home of
   Chrysostom the unspeakable weariness which so often overshadowed the
   lives of the Pagans. Disenchanted of the old, won by the happy
   freshness of the new, he was drawn to Christianity day after day, by
   almost insensible gradations, like the happy catechumens with whom he
   had spent too brief a time in the monastery of Diodore. Chrysostom
   would not force the workings of the grace of God in the lad's heart. He
   waited for some new sign from Heaven.

   The sign came quite naturally, yet in a way which they regarded as a
   Divine interposition. Philip had been reading the story how the young
   Christ had been found among the doctors in the Temple; and at night he
   dreamed that the boy Christ had appeared to him, bright and smiling as
   the Christians love to imagine Him in the days of the catacombs, and
   said to him, Hail, beloved one!' And he, wondering, but not recognising
   Him, said, 'Who art thou? for I know thee not.' How is it that thou
   knowest me not?' said the Vision, since I sit so often by thy side, and
   go with thee wherever thou art? Look in my face, and see what is
   written there.' And Philip looked, and saw written there, 'Jesus of
   Nazareth.' 'This is my name,' said the Vision; write it on thy
   forehead, and it shall be thy safeguard.' [5]

   He felt too shy to tell that dream to Chrysostom, lest it should seem
   presumptuous; but it left his heart full of sweetness. A few nights
   later he had been reading in the Gospel of St. John those last
   discourses of Christ, 'so rarely mixed of sadness and joy, and studded
   with mysteries as with emeralds.' The words, '

   Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me,
   Philip?' haunted his memory, because he bore the same name as the
   Apostle of Galilee. That night he dreamed again that Jesus Christ
   appeared to him in the dignity and gentleness of His manhood, and said
   to him the words, '

   Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me,
   Philip?' And, won by the ineffable tenderness of His voice and look,
   Philip had answered in his dream, Lord, if Thou wilt take me, I am
   Thine, and will be Thine henceforth for ever.'

   This dream he told to Chrysostom with great modesty, and offered
   himself as a catechumen. Chrysostom embraced him in a transport of
   thankfulness, and his recovery was hastened by joy at the youth's
   conversion. From that day Philip was carefully instructed, and in due
   time he descended in white robes into the baptismal font in the Church
   of St. Babylas, while Anthusa and Chrysostom stood beside him; and even
   Macedonius came down from his mountain cave, and wept for gladness as
   he stood sponsor for the young fugitive to whom he had hardly been
   persuaded to give refuge. Many besides Philip had been won to the faith
   by the love and self-sacrifice recently shown by its adherents.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [5] Some readers will recall a story of the boyhood of St. Edmund of
   Canterbury.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER X

  PASSING YEARS

     Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.--Hor.

   Happy years of fruitful and blessed work flowed over Chrysostom after
   the memorable events of 387. They were the most peaceful and untroubled
   years of his life. He used them in the highest duties of his sacred
   office as a writer and a preacher. Two hundred homilies are still
   extant as a proof of his industry. As a preacher he did not merely
   thrill his audience with witching oratory, but built them up in Christ,
   fearlessly exposing every form of fashionable vice. He made some
   enemies by the plainness of his speaking and the uncompromising
   loftiness of his denunciations. He would have been utterly ashamed of
   himself had he not done so. He knew that friendship with the world was
   enmity with God, and the tumultuous applause which accompanied his
   grander outbursts troubled more than it pleased him. It made him fear
   that the moral lesson would be lost in the intellectual excitement, and
   that his arrows of lightnings had but played before the imagination
   instead of blazing in the conscience. But if he made some bitter foes,
   there were many who loved him, both in the Church and in the world,
   and, happy in the comparative obscurity of his rank, he was less
   obnoxious to the hatred of the bad.

   His one intense desire was to change nominal Christians into real
   Christians. To the heathen he was gentle and generous, understanding
   their difficulties, and trying to win them by the force of his
   arguments and the beauty of his ideal. He did his utmost to turn
   Christians from the Pagan corruptions which had begun to invade the
   Church on every side. Hence his energetic warnings against the
   drunkenness and luxury of wedding and funeral feasts, the superstitious
   use of amulets, and the orgies of immorality which strangely disgraced
   the nightly celebration of saints' days and festivals.

   Nor was his preaching only moral. Antioch was full of error and
   heresies, and he endeavoured to refute them, not by virulence and
   venom, not by misrepresentations and anathemas, but by fair,
   honourable, and kindly reasoning.

   During these years, too, he added to his already vast stores of
   Biblical knowledge, and enriched Christian literature with commentaries
   which, like those of his friend Theodore of Mopsuestia, were framed on
   principles of true criticism, and, if less learned than those of St.
   Jerome, were saner and more beneficial than any which were written for
   a thousand years.

   Of course the happy years were chequered with the natural sorrows of
   life which happen to us all. His heaviest loss was the death of his
   mother, Anthusa, whose unbroken love and care he repaid with the
   deepest filial affection. Her death, though in many respects an
   irreparable calamity, yet did not alter his domestic circumstances. She
   left him surrounded by faithful and attached servants, and Philip, now
   a fine youth, full of vigour, shrewd sense, and practical capacity,
   attended his steps, lightened his burdens, relieved him of all worrying
   details, acted as his amanuensis, and amused his leisure hours with the
   flow of his natural gaiety. Philip would not allow himself to be
   ordained a reader. Chrysostom represented to him the best ideal of
   manhood he ever hoped to see, and the youth knew that in helping him
   and brightening his life he was rendering higher services to the world
   than any which could come from his independent action. Old friends of
   Chrysostom died as the years flowed on. His Christian teacher, Diodore
   of Tarsus, died in 394, and his Pagan teacher, Libanius, in 395; but
   Philip's companionship saved him from being lonely, and Philip's
   younger friends, who all looked up to and loved the great Presbyter,
   surrounded him with a garland of their young enthusiasm.

   Meanwhile Chrysostom was ever watching with the deepest interest, and
   often with profoundest apprehension, the menacing horizon of the
   future, both in the Church and in the world.. The year after the riot
   he had rejoiced in the victory of Theodosius over the usurper Maximus.
   That bad adventurer had been an accomplice in the murder of the young
   Emperor Gratian; and at the instigation of Spanish bishops, but to the
   disgust of St. Ambrose and St. Martin of Tours, he was the first who
   allowed Christians to be murdered by their fellow-Christians because of
   their opinions. Theodosius defeated the usurper in two great battles,
   and drove him to Aquileia. There Maximus was seized by his own
   soldiers, the purple robe was torn off his back, the purple sandals
   from his feet, the purple and jewelled diadem from his brow, and, bound
   hand and foot, he was dragged into the presence of Theodosius. It was
   August 25, 388, five years almost to a day since the murdered Gratian
   had suffered the same fate. Theodosius looked at the defeated usurper
   with a mixture of pity and contempt, and after a few disdainful
   questions dismissed him without deciding his fate. His captors took the
   law into their own hands, and struck off his head outside the imperial
   tent. Andragathius, the admiral of Maximus, and the actual murderer of
   Gratian, hearing of his master's defeat, drowned himself in the
   Adriatic; and Ambrose, of whose deeds Chrysostom always heard with the
   profoundest admiration, secured the mercy of Theodosius for the common
   herd of the vanquished.

   But heart-shaking news came fast and thick. The year 390 was marked by
   terrible events. The people of Thessalonica were passionately devoted
   to chariot-races. They rose in fury against Botheric, their governor,
   because, on the complaint of his cupbearer, he had righteously punished
   a charioteer, who was their favourite, for one of those enormities
   which were the plague-spot of Pagan antiquity. Refusing to release the
   man from prison, Botheric fell a victim to the rage of the mob, who
   murdered him and many of his chief officials, and dragged their bodies
   with insults through the streets. There was every circumstance in this
   heinous crime to awaken the uttermost indignation of Theodosius. He
   loved Thessalonica. There he had long resided; there he had been
   baptised; and he had been to the city a conspicuous benefactor. And now
   the lewd factions of the multitude had brutally murdered his personal
   friend and his responsible officials. The news transported him into one
   of those paroxysms of fury to which his Spanish temperament was liable.

   At last, mad with rage, Theodosius committed the one crime which most
   deeply stained his life. There was to be another great race in the
   circus at Thessalonica, and he knew that the people would assemble in
   thousands to witness it. He issued an edict worthy of a Caligula or a
   Nero, that when the multitude was assembled the doors of the circus
   should be closed, and the soldiers should enter and massacre
   indiscriminately the innocent and the guilty. The moment that his
   insane wrath had thus found expression he repented, and, like the
   Athenians after their atrocious mandate to massacre the people of
   Mitylene, he sent messengers of mercy to overtake the avengers of
   blood.

   But our words and deeds are often made retributively irrevocable that
   they may transform themselves into their own avenging furies. The
   repentance came too late to prevent the consequences of the crime. The
   frightful command arrived before the news that it was already
   rescinded. There was no Flavian, no Chrysostom at Thessalonica; and if
   there were any hermits to interpose, the horrid deed was not known till
   it had been accomplished.

   The scene which ensued was one of the most horrible recorded in
   history. With drawn swords the soldiers entered the crowded circus, and
   slew and slew, alike the innocent and the guilty, alike strangers and
   citizens, alike young and old, till their swords were blunt, and their
   hearts sick, and their arms weary, and their eyes dim with the mist of
   blood, and themselves intoxicated with its sickening fumes. They struck
   to the ground, they stabbed, they murdered even children on the bosoms
   of their mothers, till they left only bleeding and ghastly heaps, where
   the living writhed among the wounded and the slain, and a horrid
   silence buried the wild shrieks of agony and fear. For three hours of
   inconceivable and brutalising horror the work of hell went on. One
   historian says that 15,000 fell; but even if we accept the lowest
   computation, and place the number of victims at 7,000, such guilt must
   have made the remorseful heart of the Christian Emperor exclaim with
   the midnight murderer:


   Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood

   Clean from my hand? No! this my hand will rather

   The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

   Making the green one red!

   The dreadful news reached the Antiochenes. That fate they too might
   have suffered if the voice of the Church had not mollified the swelling
   anger of the Emperor. But Chrysostom heard with proud thankfulness how
   the dauntless Ambrose, overwhelmed as he was with shame and anguish,
   had maintained the violated rights of humanity; how he had towered
   above the repentant Emperor like his embodied moral sense; how he had
   written for his private eye a letter full, indeed, of manly tact, yet
   stern and uncompromising as that of a Hebrew prophet; how he had
   refused to him the Holy Communion; how he had declined to admit him
   into the Church without a public penance; how he had repulsed from the
   door of the Basilica of Milan the foremost man in all the world.

   The conscience of the Emperor sided with the rebukes of the great
   bishop. The hands which were red with innocent blood were impotent to
   strike his judge. Theodosius could be transported out of himself by the
   evil genius of his anger, but he could not act like a deliberate
   tyrant. He accepted the penance imposed on him. After long exclusion
   from the Church Ambrose required him to renew the admirable law of
   Gratian, which enacted that a period of thirty days must always
   intervene between judgment and punishment. Then the Emperor laid aside
   all the insignia of royalty, and, prostrate on the ground, bewept the
   sin into which he had been misled, and cried, '

   My soul cleaveth to the dust; quicken Thou me according to Thy word.'

   Fortunately, Ambrose had to deal with an emperor who was emphatically a
   man--a man of ability, and not deaf to the dictates of conscience. Such
   a person as his minister, Rufinus, would have cared nothing for
   ecclesiastical penalties. One day, when he found the Emperor bathed in
   tears, he could hardly conceal the disdainful smile which passed over
   his features. You smile,' said Theodosius, because you do not feel my
   misery. The Church of God is opened to slaves and beggars: to me it is
   closed, and with it the gates of heaven.'

   The year 392 was darkened by the murder of the youthful emperor,
   Valentinian II., who had been found dead--probably murdered by Arbogast
   the Frank. Chrysostom mourned his sad fate. An emperor since his
   childhood, that magnificent inheritance had brought him nothing but
   misery. He had suffered terror, flight, exile, and manifold perils,
   only to become the puppet of an insolent barbarian. He was devoted to
   Ambrose, whom he longed to see once more, and he had struggled out of
   every fault and error of his boyhood. As he was strolling in his garden
   on the banks of the Rhone at Vienne, Arbogast had strangled this pure
   and innocent boy, and had hung his body on the branch of a tree with
   his own handkerchief, to make it supposed that he had committed
   suicide. When the assassin seized him, he had called on the name of
   Ambrose, and cried, Alas! what will become of my unhappy sisters?'
   Arbogast, being a barbarian, dared not make himself emperor, but he
   chose the tenth-rate rhetorician, Eugenius, as a suitable block on
   which to hang the imperial purple. Utterly condemned by the Church,
   Arbogast and his puppet-emperor could only stand for a moment by posing
   as the champions of Arianism and Paganism. In 394 Theodosius advanced
   into Italy, with young Alaric--among others--as one of his allied
   chieftains, and defeated the rebel army in the memorable battle of the
   Frigidus. Eugenius was put to death, and Arbogast, flying to the
   mountains, fell on his own sword.

   Then Chrysostom heard the alarming news that on January 16, 395, the
   great Theodosius had breathed his last in the arms of Ambrose, leaving
   his life like a ruined sea-wall amidst the fierce barbarian tide,
   beyond which were ravaged lands.' There could not but be vast changes
   for the worse in the reigns of his two orphan sons--the stupidly dull
   Arcadius, who was now eighteen, and the malignantly dull Honorius, who
   was six or seven years younger. The Empire was divided between them,
   never again to be reunited. The successors of the brave and upright
   Spanish soldier were two vapid and lymphatic boys, the one sullen and
   stupid, the other impotent and half imbecile: neither of them capable
   of being aroused, unless it were to some transport of murderous
   jealousy against the men who overshadowed their insignificance. And
   both of them were left under the tutelage of rival aliens, who, it was
   clear, would wield all the real power. The governor of Arcadius was the
   Gaul Rufinus; of Honorius, the Vandal Stilico. The main object of each
   was to undermine and overthrow the other.

   But amid all these tragic and solemn events Chrysostom was still
   pursuing his daily duties. He had made more than one effort to win over
   to Christianity his old tutor, Libanius; but the sophist, though he was
   an honourable and open-minded man, could not be convinced. Chrysostom
   powerfully met all his other arguments and objections, but there was
   one on which Libanius dwelt with cogent force, and to which the
   Presbyter could give no reply which satisfied either Libanius or
   himself. It was the evil lives of so many nominal Christians; the fact
   that genuine, untainted goodness seemed to have become entirely
   etiolated; the usurping claims and worldly lives of so many priests;
   the haughty and tyrannous ambition of so many prelates; the furies of
   mutual antagonism which rent Christians into fierce dissensions
   respecting incomprehensible minutiæ of theological definition; the
   violence and fury of hordes of intolerant monks; the revolting
   self-maceration of multitudes of half-idiotic hermits. As Libanius
   dwelt on these evils, and quoted in proof of his allegation, not only
   Pagans like Eunapius, Zosimus, and Ammianus Marcellinus, but even the
   writings of St. Basil, of the Gregories, of Ambrose, and of Jerome,
   Chrysostom bitterly felt that such facts must be a terrible
   stumbling-block in the path of Pagan inquirers, as the chief argument
   against Christianity. Yet were we not forewarned of this? '

   When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?'

   Philip had been present during the discussion between the Presbyter and
   Libanius; and Chrysostom, deeply attached to the boy, and ever anxious
   for his welfare, exclaimed, O Philip, my son! Libanius has not shaken
   your faith, I trust?'

   Nay,' said the boy smiling. Many things which Libanius said were
   sad--and yet seemed true. But the Argonauts could not listen to the
   Sirens while Orpheus sang to them, and he who has heard Christ's voice
   cannot listen to any other.'

   May He be with thee, my son, now and evermore!' said Chrysostom; and he
   laid his right hand gently on the boy's dark hair.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XI

  GOTHS AT ANTIOCH


   Oh! thou goddess,

   Thou divine nature, how thyself thou blazon'st

   In these two princely boys!--Cymbeline, iv. 2.

   One day in the year 395, as Chrysostom and Philip were walking down the
   grand main street of Antioch, under the colonnades which sheltered them
   from the almost blinding sunlight, they saw an unwonted sight. No less
   a person than the all-powerful Rufinus had come to Antioch. Nominally
   sent on a mission by Arcadius, he had really come to avenge a terrific
   private grudge against Lucian, the Count of the East. Lucian had been a
   favourite of Rufinus, and had purchased his promotion by bribes; but he
   had used his power well, and had refused to commit an injustice to
   benefit Eucherius, the Emperor's uncle. Eucherius complained to the
   Emperor, and as his anger endangered Rufinus's plan for marrying
   Arcadius to his daughter, he was filled with fury against Lucian for
   his honest independence.

   As his mission was aimed against so powerful an official--for Antioch
   ranked with Constantinople, Rome, and Alexandria, among the four first
   cities of the Empire--the Emperor had attached to the escort of Rufinus
   some of those Gothic guards whose fine presence his father, Theodosius,
   had regarded as the most splendid ornament of his palace. They marched
   around the chariot of the Minister in the splendour of their
   armour--their necks encircled with collars of gold, the tawny wolfskins
   belted over their breasts, the quivers on their backs, the huge bow
   carried in the left hand, and their fair locks, the admiration of all
   the East, flowing under their helmets adorned with pheasant's plumes.

   They had brought with them some of their youths to witness the glories
   of the Eastern city, and on the morning after Rufinus had made his
   secret midnight entrance into the city and taken possession of the
   palace of the Seleucids, these Goths, laying aside their accoutrements,
   stalked out over the island-bridge into the streets. Barbarians of this
   stature and distinction were almost unknown in Antioch, and wherever
   they went the slim, dark Syrians and the inquisitive Greeks thronged to
   stare at them, much to their indignation. Their knowledge of Greek was
   highly imperfect, and of Syriac they knew nothing. They did not like to
   condescend to ask their way, for if they did the impudent boys in the
   crowd laughed at their pronunciation and their blunders, and had more
   than once hopelessly misdirected them. They had managed to get to the
   Forum, but with little notion where they were; and there a crowd of the
   loungers who infested Antioch gathered in knots about them. Treating
   the starers with as much indifference as they could, one of the Gothic
   youths had ventured to ask, in bad Greek, What that building was?'
   pointing to the Hall of Justice. The gamin appealed to gave some
   ridiculous answer, which made the crowd roar with laughter; and another
   tried his wit by giving the Goths the nickname of cranes,' in reference
   to their slow and stately gait. This amused the Antiochenes still more,
   and the strangers were saluted with general cries of 'Cranes! Cranes!'
   till one of the younger Goths, more quick-tempered and less disdainful
   than his brothers, gave a buffet to one of these ill-mannered
   tonguesters which laid him sprawling and howling in the dust. The rest
   of the crowd shrank back to a more respectful distance; but, jealous of
   the superior size and beauty of the Goths, and not liking to see their
   comrade so lightly felled by a mere barbarian, the boys began to pelt
   them with stones. Then the Goths indiscriminately seized some of their
   tormentors, and so soundly boxed their ears, or beat them with the flat
   of their swords, that the amusement of the crowd began to be mingled
   with a little salutary dread.

   At this moment Chrysostom entered the Forum with Philip, and the
   youth's quick glance at once took in the scene.

   My father,' he said--for so Chrysostom had told him to address him--'I
   think you are seriously wanted here,' and in a few words he rapidly
   told him what was going on.

   Chrysostom woke from one of the reveries in which he was often lost,
   and, advancing to the crowd, who all knew him, and by all of whom he
   was deeply reverenced, he said to them very sternly:

   Mischievous idlers, what is this? Do you not know that these Goths have
   come here with Rufinus, and belong to the very Bodyguard of the
   Emperor? Can you be so senseless? Do you want another affair of the
   statues, or do you wish to undergo the fate of Thessalonica? Back to
   your business, if you have any, before I summon the archers.'

   The crowd slank away, filled with alarm; and Philip picked up the
   sobbing gamin, much more frightened than hurt, whom the young Goth had
   knocked down. He told him to apologise, which the street-arab was only
   too glad to do. Meanwhile Chrysostom, speaking slowly and distinctly in
   the simplest Greek, expressed his regret to the Goths that they should
   have been thoughtlessly annoyed, and courteously offered to be their
   guide through the city:

   The Presbyter was only of middle height, and the tall Ostrogoths looked
   like giants by his side; but they recognised a man when they saw him.
   They instantly recovered the good temper which had only been ruffled
   for a moment.

   I did not know that your streets at Antioch buzzed with so many
   insects,' said their chief; but I would not willingly hurt them.'

   The people are more accustomed to you in Constantinople,' answered
   Chrysostom. They have never seen men like you before, and are, perhaps,
   a little envious.'

   The Goths smiled with gratified vanity at a perfectly sincere
   compliment, and, recognising from something indefinable in his manner
   that Chrysostom must be an ecclesiastic--though in those days the
   clergy wore the ordinary costume of the laity--he asked, Are you not
   John, the famous presbyter?'

   Not famous,' said Chrysostom; but I am John.'

   Ah!' said the Amal, you have spoken kindly to me, and let me tell you a
   story. I once went to visit the Frank Arbogast, and asked him if he
   knew the Bishop Ambrose, at Milan. "Yes," said Arbogast, "and have
   often sat at his table." "Ah, chief!" answered one of his guests, "that
   is why you are so victorious, because you are a friend of the man who
   can make the sun stand still."'

   I cannot compare my insignificance to the greatness of Ambrose,' said
   Chrysostom.

   I don't know,' said the Goth, but you, more than any man, saved Antioch
   from the fate of Thessalonica, and our Fravitta and our Gaïnas, whose
   sons these two boys are, have heard of you and honour you.'

   Would that you, noble Goths, were not Arians,' said Chrysostom, whom no
   consideration could ever prevent from saying what he thought was right.

   Oh!' said the Goth, laughing, it is not possible for us Northern
   soldiers to enter into your theological niceties, about which
   Constantinople idly chatters, and lives like Gomorrah all the same. We
   follow the doctrine of our great bishop and teacher--Wulfila, "the
   little wolf," so we called him out of love for him. He translated our
   Bible for us, and never meant to be otherwise than orthodox.'

   Chrysostom saw that it would be useless to pursue the subject, but he
   did his utmost to interest the Amals and their boys. He showed them the
   flowering banks of the Orontes; he pointed out to them the best
   statues; he walked with them to the huge Charonium, which amazed them
   above everything; he gave them a glimpse of the ravine of Parthenius,
   and took them to the Golden Gate to show them the colossal Cherubim,
   the spoils of the Temple of Jerusalem, which Titus had placed over its
   arch. Philip, meanwhile, with Greek grace and versatility, had made
   himself perfectly at home with the younger Goths, and Chrysostom gave
   them a little banquet at his own house.

   Tell me your name, Greek,' said one of the young brothers to Philip. We
   like you. You have been courteous to us.'

   My name is Philip. And yours?'

   I am Thorismund, the son of Gaïnas.'

   And I,' said the younger, am Walamir, the son of Gaïnas. We are both
   Amalings--that is, of noblest birth--and I hope we shall meet you
   again, Philip.'

   It is not likely,' said Philip, for I shall never leave the Presbyter,
   and Constantinople is far away. But if you ever return to Antioch, come
   and see us, and I hope that the street riff-raff will behave better.'

   Oh! never mind them,' said Thorismund; and if the young scamp who went
   down under my buffet was hurt, give him this,' and he put a broad
   silver piece in Philip's hand.

   I will give it to him,' said Philip, but you must not think,
   Thorismund, that we shall all of us fall down at the mere wind of a
   blow.'

   Would you like to try a friendly wrestling bout?'

   I am quite willing,' said Philip, laughing, if the Presbyter doesn't
   object. We might wrestle here on this grass-plat in the garden, and
   your chief and the Presbyter shall be umpires.'

   Chrysostom was a little scandalised by the suggestion, but he
   good-humouredly acquiesced, if the trial of strength was to be quite
   friendly and for fun.

   The two youths rose, and smilingly locked each other in a firm grasp.
   They were of about the same age, and fine specimens of Greek and
   Teutonic beauty. It soon appeared that Thorismund was the stronger, and
   Philip the more skilful, having long been trained in the boyish games
   of the palæstra. In the first trial Thorismund had some trouble to hold
   his own, but at last by sheer strength lifted Philip and threw him; but
   at the second trial Philip with his heel struck the hollow of
   Thorismund's knee, and down he fell, with Philip uppermost. They were
   about to try a third bout, when both Chrysostom and the chief Amal
   interfered.

   Enough,' they said; you have both done well. So part and be friends.'

   That we shall be,' said Thorismund, and in sign of it I will ask Philip
   to accept this.' He took from the purse at his girdle a silver fibula,
   and said, This will do to fasten your toga.'

   Well, but,' said Philip, we must be like the Homeric heroes, and if I
   take your gift you must take mine.' He fetched from his room an armlet
   of his father's workmanship, and Thorismund welcomed the gift.

   Do you know what those runes on your fibula mean, Philip?' asked
   Walamir.

   No.'

   They are the two words, "Chaste, Faithful," and you may remember our
   names by them; for of our ancestors young Thorismund was called "the
   Chaste," and Walamir "the Faithful."'

   So they said farewell to each other with mutual friendship and esteem.

   Philip gazed after them as they strode down Singon Street. What noble
   fellows!' he exclaimed. How they tower over the sly, slim, swarthy
   Antiochenes! Those two youths with the sunlight turning their short
   curls into gold might be young Apollos. If the Lystrenians saw them
   they would say, "The gods have come down to us in the likeness of
   men."'

   Yes,' said Chrysostom. They seem to belong to a nobler, stronger, purer
   race than ours. We cannot stand against them. Surely the future must
   belong to them! We have to go to them alike for our soldiers and our
   generals. Oh that they were not Arians!'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XII

  THE PRESBYTER

     Salt is good; but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall
     it be seasoned?--Luke xiv. 34.

   The next morning, however, threw a lurid light on the visit of Rufinus
   to Antioch. He had glutted to the full his private enmity. Lucian,
   Count of the East, Governor of Antioch, had been arrested by his order
   in his own palace, and, after the merest mockery of a trial, beaten to
   death, on the neck, with the frightful whips laden with knobs of lead
   known to the ancients by the name of plumbatæ. The unhappy Count had
   been thrust into a litter in a dying condition and carried back to the
   palace. The horrid deed could not be hid, and nothing but terror
   prevented the Antiochenes from avenging his death by another
   insurrection. Rufinus further purchased their complicity by ordering
   the completion of an Imperial Hall of Pillars, which long continued to
   be the most stately building in a city of palaces.

   How little did the Minister dream that a deed of vengeance which
   illustrated at once his ferocity and his all but absolute power was the
   chief moment in his own headlong downfall! His ultimate aim all along,
   though he was only an adventurer and the son of an Aquitanian cobbler,
   was nothing less than the Empire. He had cherished this mad ambition
   ever since the day when Theodosius, angry at the complaints of favours
   heaped on the intriguing and aspiring Gaul, had pettishly exclaimed,
   What is there to prevent me from making him emperor?' As a step to the
   fulfilment of this gorgeous dream Rufinus wished to marry Arcadius to
   his daughter. But when the sweet gratification of personal revenge had
   taken him to Antioch, his rival, the supple eunuch Eutropius, outwitted
   and undermined him. He slipped under the dark eyes of the young
   Emperor, as if by accident, a picture of the beautiful Eudoxia,
   daughter of the Frank general Bauto, who came from a house which hated
   Rufinus. This palace intrigue was buried in profoundest secrecy. On
   April 25, 395, a public rejoicing was ordered. Eutropius was seen to be
   busy in taking from the imperial wardrobe some of the splendid robes
   and jewels of former empresses. They were ostentatiously handed to
   attendants, and attracted a crowd before the palace gate. Everyone
   thought that they were a marriage gift to the daughter of Rufinus, and
   indulged in jeers against that hated official. But no! the procession,
   solemnly escorted by soldiers and preceded by Eutropius, suddenly
   turned into another street, and stopped at the home of Promotus, where
   Eudoxia lived. The multitudes then broke into shouts of joy. Rufinus
   found that he had been out-manoeuvred by the astuteness of the eunuch,
   and learnt for the first time the name of his future empress.

   Chrysostom heard all these events with no other thoughts than those of
   a citizen, a patriot, a Christian. How little did he dream that
   Eudoxia, Eutropius, and the Goth Gaïnas, the murderer of Rufinus, would
   be so closely mingled with his future destinies, and that their names
   would go down to history in such immediate connexion with his own! We
   live in blindness of all that may await us in the unknown future years,
   and often those things happen of which we have dreamed the least.

   The presbyter could not but feel solicitude for the future of the
   Empire, yet were there many seasons of depression in which he felt
   deeper anxiety about the future of the Church. The Church had conquered
   the world, and now the world had re-invaded and was re-conquering the
   Church. In former days golden priests had used chalices of wood; now
   wooden priests used chalices of gold. In earlier days life had been
   full of simplicity, love, and sweetness. Now Christianity had become
   largely nominal, as it had become all but universal. He saw much that
   was weak and bad in Antioch, much that he knew to be false in doctrine
   and unprimitive and unscriptural in practice. The corruption of the
   best is worst. There is no stench (so said St. Francis de Sales) so
   intolerable as that of rotten lilies. In reality there was little to
   choose between the better theoretical Paganism, as it exhibited itself
   in honest men like Libanius, Symmachus, or even the late Emperor
   Julian, and such Christianity as that of the loose livers and ambitious
   Pharisaic priests who on every side were trying to lord it over God's
   heritage, while they set the worst possible example to the flock. He
   was to become familiar hereafter with worse types than he ever yet had
   seen. Salt like this, which had utterly lost its savour, was in a
   certain sense worse than anything which had been seen on the dunghill
   of pagan Rome, and was fit for nothing but to be cast out and trodden
   under foot of man.'

   This was the sad thought which most painfully haunted the heart of
   Chrysostom; and it was the one passion of his life so to live, so to
   write, so to preach as to stem the shallow, muddy, yet drowning and
   ever-advancing tide of a merely functional, ecclesiastical, and nominal
   Christianity. If he had one conviction stronger than all others, it was
   that what the Supreme and Sacred Majesty requires of us is innocence
   alone'; that Christ came not to elaborate recondite shibboleths, but to
   create holy characters; not to elevate priests into an usurping
   autocracy, but to give unimpeded access to God to the humblest and
   guiltiest soul, and to fling wide open to all who love righteousness
   the gates of everlasting life. The indignation of Chrysostom burned hot
   against all who named the name of Christ, yet did not even attempt to
   depart from the forms of iniquity which Christ most hated; and most of
   all against the priests, who combined the privileges of angels with the
   temper of executioners, and carried into the sanctuaries of the Church
   the most hateful of the vices of the world.

   But such beliefs meant immediate failure; and such aims, in the
   ordinary condition of Churches, involved certain martyrdom.

   The day of martyrdom had not yet come, and the hour for that ultimate
   triumph--which, because truth is immortal, had all the inevitableness
   of a law--was yet far off.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK II
     __________________________________________________________________

DAYS OF STORM


   The time is out of joint:--O cursèd spite,

   That ever I was born to set it right!

   Hamlet, i. 5.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XIII

  TWO ARCHBISHOPS


   O Simon Mago, O miseri seguaci,

   Che le cose di Dio, che di bontate

   Deono essere spose, voi rapaci

   Per oro et per argento adulterate.

   Dante, Inferno, xix. 1-4.

   On September 27, 397, Nectarius, Patriarch of Constantinople, lay dead
   in his stately palace.

   On the Good Friday of that year (April 4) had died a very different
   prelate, the great St. Ambrose. He had died immediately after receiving
   the Sacrament, after lying many hours with his arms outstretched in the
   form of a cross. His friends, the chief citizens of Milan, who adored
   him, had entreated him to pray that for the sake of the Church his days
   might be prolonged, for he was but fifty-seven years old. But he
   answered, I have not so lived among you that I am ashamed to live; and
   yet--for the Lord is merciful--I do not fear to die.' It is a
   death-blow for all Italy,' exclaimed the brave Vandal, Stilico, when he
   heard it. And he was right.

   No human being would have dreamed of making any such remark about
   Nectarius. He was commonplace of the commonplace; he was of the world,
   worldly; he was a luxurious worldling, profoundly ignorant of theology.
   When appointed archbishop he was a layman; he had never even been
   baptised.

   He was, indeed, a strange successor to the humble, holy, fervid St.
   Gregory of Nazianzus, the greatest theologian and one of the greatest
   orators of his day. But Gregory had shown himself too mild, too noble,
   and too good for the magnificent office of which he may be said to have
   created the possibility. When Gregory was carried by force from his
   humble bishopric at Nazianzus to preside over the little handful of the
   orthodox at Constantinople, the city, besides being execrably corrupt,
   was predominantly Arian.

   Gregory lived in a lodging, and preached in a single room, which was
   large enough to receive the shrunken congregation. It was through his
   earnestness and fame that the room had gradually grown into a chapel,
   and the chapel into The Church of the Resurrection.' He was no imposing
   orator, but short of stature, and though only fifty years old, was
   pale, meagre, sickly, and prematurely aged, with bald head and beard
   already sable-silvered. He wore an aspect of continual melancholy; his
   careworn countenance was often bathed in tears. And so far from valuing
   the worldly eminence of his rank, his dress was more like that of a
   mendicant than of the bishop of the queen of cities, the capital of the
   Eastern world.

   It was, of course, impossible that so good a man as Gregory should
   escape a storm of odium. That is the compliment which vice pays to
   virtue. He had as many stones flung at him as bad men have roses; his
   only criticism of them was they were so ill-aimed. His life was often
   in danger. On one occasion a furious swarm of Arians, headed by beggars
   who had forfeited their claim to pity, monks who looked like goats or
   satyrs, and women more frightful than Jezebels,' armed with sticks,
   stones, and firebrands, wrecked his church, assaulted his congregation,
   mingled with blood the wine of the chalice, and nearly murdered him. He
   escaped, but because one man had been killed in the tumult he was
   summoned before the magistrates for a breach of the peace. Then he was
   nearly ousted by the intrigue of one of the basest class of clerical
   adventurers in whom that age abounded. Gregory hated the place; he
   hated the work; he hated the prevalent hypocrisy; he hated the
   universal talk about religion, without a semblance of its reality,
   which left him hardly anyone whom he could trust.

   Utterly against his will he was compelled to accept the archbishopric,
   which involved the care of the Church of the Apostles. He had not the
   least desire to be a bishop. He had never cared to hang about the doors
   of the great. With singular independence, he declared that he had never
   wished to clasp the bloodstained hands of rulers, under whose hands the
   whole world is ruled by a little diadem and a small rag of purple.'

   He found the presidency of the Second OEcumenical Council the most
   distasteful of his duties. He describes it as a scene of faction,
   disorder, jealousies, and disgraceful violence. He found that the
   assembled ecclesiastics were chiefly interested in personal questions.
   They appeared as antagonists in a battle, bandying bitter accusations,
   and leaping from their seats in transports of mutual animosity, until
   Gregory was thoroughly ashamed of them. He describes them as chattering
   like cranes and showing their teeth like wild boars, and no sooner had
   he ended a wise and conciliatory speech intended to raise them to a
   higher level, than the younger clergy buzzed about him like wasps. It
   is curious that the two best saints of the fourth century, St. Gregory
   and St. Martin of Tours, had a rooted dislike of ecclesiastical
   gatherings. Gregory breathed an earnest prayer that he might have
   nothing more to do with them, and Martin said that he had never known
   anything come of them but mischief. The great Bossuet agreed with them.
   You know'--so he wrote to a friend--'what kind of things these
   assemblies usually are.'

   Warning the congregated bishops that they were become a byword of
   strife and partisanship, and finding that they were intriguing to get
   rid of him, he offered to resign. With disgraceful alacrity the
   assembled Fathers took him at his word. He left his episcopate to be
   sought for by the restless ambitions of time-servers and hypocrites,
   'angry lions to the small and fawning spaniels to the great,' and, sick
   at heart, retired to gaze on the bright countenance of truth in the
   mild and dewy air of delightful studies.'

   Nectarius owed his election to the Patriarchate to the most casual
   incident. He was a Prætor, and as he was going to Tarsus he called on
   Chrysostom's old teacher, Diodore, Bishop of Tarsus, to ask if he could
   take any letters for him to that city. Struck with his venerable
   appearance and his placid temper, Diodore mentioned him to Flavian as a
   possible candidate for the vacant archbishopric. Flavian laughed at the
   notion, but out of compliment to Diodore put down the Prætor's name at
   the bottom of the list of selected candidates, which was handed to the
   Emperor. Theodosius passed his finger down the list, paused at the name
   of Nectarius, read the list through a second time, and then declared
   that he chose Nectarius.

   Nectarius! Who in the world is Nectarius?' asked everyone in
   astonishment, and it turned out that he had not even been baptised! But
   Theodosius had very little opinion of any ecclesiastics except Ambrose,
   and Ambrose was a layman when the voice of the people had called him to
   the Archbishopric of Milan. So Nectarius stepped from the baptismal
   font to the most influential patriarchate of the world, and to the
   presidency of the Second OEcumenical Council!

   But Theodosius was grievously mistaken if he supposed that Nectarius
   was going to be a second Ambrose.

   On the contrary, he was just one of those purpureal, imposing, nugatory
   personages who, because of his easygoing nullity, his commonplace,
   worldly shrewdness, and his total absence of zeal and genius, suited
   the corrupt luke-warmness of a semi-Christian city.

   Nectarius rose to the full height of the pomposity which had been
   impossible to Gregory. He could, indeed, give no help to the Emperor in
   the intense perplexities caused by theological disputes. The bishops
   heard a terrifying rumour that Theodosius even meant to consult the
   heretic Eunomius, who openly argued the Son was unlike the Father. The
   world, as after the Council of Rimini, might wake with a groan to find
   itself Arian! As no help was to be obtained from the ignorant
   Archbishop, Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, threw himself into the
   breach, and determined to give Theodosius a picture-lesson. He went
   with other bishops to a Court gathering. Theodosius was seated on his
   throne in all his splendour, and by him sat his little son Arcadius,
   only eight years old, whom he had recently invested with the diadem,
   and whom the courtiers were surrounding with flattering homage.
   Amphilochius saluted the Emperor, and did not take the smallest notice
   of Arcadius. What!' said the Emperor, angrily, do you not see my son?'
   Oh, said the Bishop, carelessly, I forgot. Good morning, my child!' and
   he actually had the audacity to pat the august infant on the cheek and
   tickle him with his finger! 'Turn that man out!' roared Theodosius, in
   a flame of anger. Then Amphilochius, facing him, said, You see,
   Emperor, you cannot tolerate an indignity to your son. Doubt not, then,
   that God shares the same feelings, and learn your duty.' The Emperor
   was deeply impressed, and the world was saved from the heresy of
   Eunomius!

   Under the courtly archiepiscopate of Nectarius the clergy of
   Constantinople became utterly corrupt and utterly worldly; but then,
   Nectarius was such a good manager--he kept everything so quiet, and he
   gave such good dinners! And under his sway the Church, to use
   Kingsley's phrase, swaggered on, arm in arm with the flesh and the
   devil.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XIV

  ANOTHER ARCHBISHOP

     Paul did not say, Let everyone desire the episcopate. It is a work,
     not a relaxation; a solicitude, not a luxury; a responsible
     ministration, not an irresponsible dominion; a fatherly supervision,
     not a tyrannical autocracy.--Isidore of Pelusium, Ep. iii. 216.

   Nectarius, then, on September 27, 397, lay dead in his splendid palace;
   and the breath was hardly out of the Archbishop's body when there were
   a dozen austere intriguers' in the field, and the subterranean plots
   and whisperings began, and the wirepullers were incessantly at work.
   The floodgates of ecclesiastical ambition were opened, and poured their
   muddy sluices over the capital of the East.

   All Constantinople buzzed and clacked with the counter-solicitations of
   eager interests, and every nameless pretender to the episcopal throne
   put into play every secret method in his power to win the coveted
   prize. For did not the Archbishop rank among the noblest in the whole
   land? Had he not the precedence over the most illustrious civilians at
   Court and in the houses of the great? Was not the Patriarch of
   Constantinople practically higher in position than even the Patriarchs
   of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome?

   The electorate with whom the choice rested was a little ill-defined.
   The provincial bishops were supposed to have weight in the matter, and
   as a synod of them happened at the time to be assembled in the city,
   under the presidency of Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, their
   influence was regarded as highly important. But then the illustres and
   honorati--all who had high civil offices, had also to be consulted. The
   people, too, had an undeniable voice in the nomination of their
   prelate; and the supreme court had necessarily to be reckoned with.

   So, for four weary, dreary, and shameful months Constantinople became a
   turmoil of cabals. There was the cabal of bishops, each trying to
   further the promotion of his own favourite, or of himself. There was
   the cabal of the clergy of Constantinople, some striving with all the
   reckless passion of self-interest to procure their own preferment;
   others, who had no possible chance, trying to curry favour with anyone
   who, if elected, might advance their future interests; there was the
   cabal of influential personages who felt intensely interested in the
   result, because they had pitted their importance against each other,
   and the failure of their candidate would be a diminution of their
   prestige. And each separate faction strove to calumniate and undermine
   all the candidates of the rest.

   Incomparably the most odious of these cliques were those of the clergy,
   who seemed to hesitate at no moral humiliation which would further
   their ambitious plans. There was no flattery, no complaisance to which
   they would not stoop, if they could only capture popularity among the
   lowest of the people. They trumpeted their own merits in every
   direction, and got them still more effectually trumpeted by the
   dictated eulogiums of their partisans. On the other hand, no amount of
   subterranean calumny was too gross if it served to dim the hopes or
   dash the prospects of a possible rival. As for the civil functionaries
   and Court officials, they were constantly receiving the visits of the
   clergy, who bowed before them with the most abject abasement. Money was
   spent with profusion in the furtherance of their intrigues. From dawn
   to dusk the baths, the colonnades, the church porches, the markets, had
   but one theme of common interest--who was to be the new Archbishop?

   I know,' some bourgeois would say mysteriously as he stood in a group
   of gossip-mongers.

   You know?' another would answer, with disdainful curiosity. Who is it,
   then?'

   Ah! that's telling. But I don't mind giving you a hint. It's one of the
   priests of the Church of the Anastasia.'

   Oh! you mean Alopecius,' said a third. There you're out. They could not
   possibly elect so mere a booby!'

   Ah! but,' said a fourth, he knows Castricia, and she has only to
   whisper his name in the ear of the Emperor, and he's certain. It's not
   for nothing that he gave her that pair of gold-embroidered shoes which
   he got all the way from Damascus.'

   Nonsense!' said another. 'Isaac, the monk; he's the man. Trust
   him!'--and a number of nods, and winks, and wreathed smiles seemed to
   appeal to something esoteric in the knowledge of the hearer.

   You're about right,' chimed in another. Besides, he's got hold of
   Marsa, who is much more powerful than Castricia, for she's a sort of
   aunt of the new Empress.'

   How sapient you all are!' answered another. None of you know the least
   thing about it. Isidore the Egyptian--he'll be the man, you'll see. The
   Patriarch Theophilus is moving heaven and earth to get him elected--no
   one knows why, unless it is that he may keep him under his thumb, and
   rule Constantinople with a rod of iron, as he rules Alexandria.'

   What a shame to thrust a low Egyptian on us!' they murmured.

   You are all reckoning without your host, and Theophilus too,' said
   another. There's one person who'll have more to say to the matter than
   even the Emperor himself, and that's the eunuch.'

   Eutropius!' they all exclaimed.

   Yes, Eutropius! Did you ever know any pie in which he had not his
   finger since he got rid of Rufinus?'

   Ah!' said another, then that's why a certain person took a costly
   necklace of pearls to the Chamberlain's sister yesterday.'

   A certain person! Who?'

   Serapion,' answered the speaker, who hated Serapion with a perfect
   hatred, because he had been reproved by him for cheating and perjury.

   That's just a lie out of your own wicked head,' hotly retorted the
   other. "Whatever the other may be, Serapion is a perfectly honest man,
   and if the patriarchate can only be picked out of the gutter, he would
   not stoop there for it.'

   All this odious chatter was going on day by day and week by week; and
   the clergy, who were so largely mixed up with it, were sinking lower
   and lower into the contempt of all earnest Christians. There were many
   who even dreaded that the rivalry of cliques might deluge
   Constantinople with cruel massacre, as it had deluged Rome in the
   struggle for the Papacy between Damasus and Ursicinus in 367, when a
   hundred and thirty-seven corpses had hideously defiled, not only the
   Italian and Liberian basilicas, but even the floor of the Church of St.
   Agnes.

   There seemed no end to the matter, and at last even the populace grew
   so weary and so ashamed of a struggle which seemed to banish from the
   Christian Church even the dregs of spirituality, that they agreed in a
   public assembly to leave the decision in the hands of the Emperor,
   entreating him to choose neither an intriguer, nor a nonentity, nor a
   time-serving worldling, but someone who by his ability and by his
   goodness would sustain the best traditions of a see over which a
   Gregory of Nazianzus had once presided.

   That seemed likely to settle the matter in favour of the Egyptian
   presbyter, Isidore. The Emperor was believed to incline to him;
   Arcadius had succumbed to the ascendency of the bad hypocrite,
   Theophilus of Alexandria, a man who, in his boundless ambition, his
   hateful unscrupulosity, and his fierce cruelty when he was aroused to
   envy or hatred, was perhaps the worst type of many bad forms of
   priestliness in an evil age.

   Nobody who knew him dreamt of crediting Theophilus with any pure
   motive. It was not generally known why he had pledged all his influence
   in favour of his obscure presbyter, Isidore, but it was generally
   believed that he would like to see a man of no distinction appointed,
   that he might bind him to himself by personal gratitude, and
   sufficiently dominate over him to render the throne of Constantinople
   entirely subordinate to that of Alexandria.

   No doubt that motive existed, but there was another and a worse behind.
   Isidore was in possession of one of Theophilus's many dark secrets, and
   the Patriarch was prepared to pay any price to obviate the serious, but
   quite imaginary, possibility of being blackmailed by his own presbyter.
   He need not have been afraid. The only blackmailer was his own guilty
   conscience. Isidore was an honest man, and so little was he cognisant
   of the designs of his Patriarch, that when they were mentioned to him
   he fled back to Alexandria.

   For Theophilus, whose eye was ever fixed, not on Heaven, but on the
   main chance, had seriously compromised himself nine years before; and
   the sense that he had done so must have been one of the many skeletons
   which occupied the dark places of his soul. In the year 387 the usurper
   Maximus, taking advantage of the youthful helplessness of Valentinian
   II., had invaded Italy, and though Theodosius had advanced to the
   defence of the young Emperor, the issue of the contest was highly
   uncertain. Theophilus wanted to profit by the victory of either; but as
   he had not the gift of prophecy, and could not tell which was the more
   likely to succeed, he prepared presents and sent letters of
   congratulation both to Maximus and to Theodosius, which were to be
   delivered according as victory declared for the usurper or the Emperor.
   Someone had necessarily to be taken into the Patriarch's confidence,
   and he entrusted Isidore to proceed to Rome with the duplicate letters.
   As fortune decided for Theodosius, Isidore presented to him the letter
   which bore his address. But he did not bring back with him to
   Alexandria the letter addressed to Maximus. He returned home
   precipitately, as though in great alarm, and declared that the deacon
   who accompanied him had stolen the letter to Maximus. Had that been the
   case, there was little doubt that the letter would be heard of again;
   but Theophilus wrongfully suspected that it was still in Isidore's
   possession, and there were popular rumours to that effect. The silence
   and complicity of Isidore were worth purchasing at any cost. His
   allegiance might be finally secured at the superb price of the
   Archbishopric of Constantinople, and Theophilus felt so sure of
   carrying his election that, for the first time for many years, he began
   to feel a little more at ease.

   We shall hear the final fate of Isidore hereafter. His ultimate ruin
   was only one of a long black-list of crimes committed by this man, who
   was amongst the most eminent ecclesiastics of his day. But the times
   were very bad in the Church, as in the State. The evidence under this
   head which comes to us from every side is overwhelming and conclusive.
   Another Isidore, the famous saint and abbot of Pelusium, says: Once
   pastors would die for their flocks; now they destroy the sheep by
   causing them to stumble.... Once they distributed their goods to the
   needy; now they appropriate what belongs to the poor.... Once they
   practised virtue; now they ostracise those who do.' Once men avoided
   the episcopate because of the greatness of its authority; now they rush
   into it because of the greatness of its luxury. Abate your pride, relax
   your superciliousness, remember that you are but as they. Do not use
   the arms of the priesthood against the priesthood itself.' There are
   bishops who live up to the Apostolic standard. If you say "very few," I
   do not deny it.'

   The decision as to the Archbishopric of Constantinople was now in the
   hands of the Emperor Arcadius, which, as everyone knew, meant that it
   was in the hands of the eunuch Eutropius. The Chamberlain was not in
   the slightest degree interested in the intrigues either of Theophilus
   or of any of the clergy of Constantinople. They only filled him with an
   amused but cynical disgust. He had determined on a coup de théâtre; he
   meant that Chrysostom, whom no one had ever mentioned or dreamed of,
   should be Archbishop. He had heard Chrysostom preach in Antioch, and
   had been stirred to the depths of his heart. He filled the Emperor with
   the praises of his eloquence, and of his genius.

   He will be the glory of your Empire,' said Eutropius. 'His fame will
   throw the Patriarchs of Alexandria and of the West into the shade. His
   speech rushes like the Nile in flood. No one has ever heard anything
   like it.'

   Arcadius obeyed the behest of his Minister with his usual sheepish
   nonchalance. His government was a mere slumber, in which he never did
   anything but what he was told by his master for the time being.

   But will John come?' he asked.

   I will manage that,' answered Eutropius.

   But will not the Antiochenes rebel, and prevent his removal?'

   Oh! I will manage all that. Only let your Eternity leave it to me, and
   enjoy the pageant I have provided for you to-night.'

   That night, when the palace revels were over, Eutropius gave an
   unusually magnificent reception at the house of his sister. The clergy
   attended it in throngs, with the intense desire of currying favour and
   making themselves agreeable. Theophilus was present in all his pomp,
   and was surrounded by their adulations. Wherever he turned they were on
   their knees, beseeching the blessings which he scattered on all sides
   with the most peach-ripening of smiles. He felt perfectly certain of
   success, and was convinced that before the reception was over Eutropius
   would announce that the decision of the Emperor had fallen on his
   presbyter, Isidore. Eutropius did not undeceive him, but with a very
   humble bow, before the assemblage broke up, said to him in the general
   hearing:

   May the humblest of the human race request a word with your Beatitude
   before you retire?'

   Certainly,' said the Patriarch, with bland alacrity, now more than ever
   sure that his long intrigues had been crowned with success.

   I thought that it might be interesting to your Sanctity, and to our
   friends in general, to know that the long vacancy in the Archbishopric
   has now at last been filled up.'

   The eye of Theophilus glittered as he expressed his conviction that the
   Emperor's sacred majesty would be sure to have made a worthy choice,
   which all the world would approve.

   Surely, surely,' said the eunuch, devoutly. His Eternity the Emperor,
   son of the holy and orthodox Theodosius, could not possibly do
   otherwise.'

   And the new Archbishop is----?' asked Theophilus.

   I quite agree with your Beatitude that the nomination will give
   universal delight,' said Eutropius, who, with a keen sense of amused
   malignity, was playing with the Patriarch and the assembled clergy as a
   cat plays with a mouse.

   Only you have forgotten to name the fortunate candidate,' said
   Theophilus. Doubtless it is my saintly presbyter, Isidore.'

   Oh no!' said Eutropius, blandly; it is no Egyptian. It is someone much
   more worthy and much more widely known than the nobody-in-particular
   Isidore.'

   Theophilus was in an agony of dread and disappointment. 'Who is it?' he
   asked, almost foaming with rage.

   Yes,' said Eutropius, pretending not to have heard the question. Quite
   true. I was telling the Emperor all about him this afternoon. He is the
   idol of his Church, the favourite of his people, a great writer, an
   ascetic, most purely orthodox, a man of dauntless independence, and of
   burning eloquence.'

   It would have required a layman adequately to express the fury of
   Theophilus. He felt a mad desire to throttle the eunuch then and there,
   or at least, as he was accustomed to do in Egypt, to smite him such a
   blow in the face that the blood would flow. But he had to master his
   passion, and as the little, bald, wrinkled old man continued to rub his
   hands and to eye him with a gratified smile, he turned his back, and
   said:

   If you choose to play with the feelings and insult the patience of all
   these reverend bishops and presbyters, and to conceal from us the
   Emperor's nomination, this is no place for me, and I can only retire.'

   Oh!' said Eutropius, have I not mentioned his name? I beg your
   Beatitude's pardon a thousand times. It is--' after a slight pause,
   during which he watched the Patriarch with wickedly twinkling eyes--'it
   is John, the Presbyter of Antioch.'

   John--the--Presbyter--of--Antioch!' repeated the clergy, in astonished
   tones.

   John, the Presbyter of Antioch,' repeated the Chamberlain; 'an eloquent
   man, as Paul says, and mighty in the Scriptures.'

   It was as though a thunderbolt had fallen into the midst of them,
   shattering a multitude of ambitions. But no one was more profoundly
   disturbed than Theophilus. He had been outwitted--and by an eunuch! His
   influence had been set at nought, his earnest solicitations thrown
   back, as it were, in his face! But that was by no means all. He had
   heard enough of Chrysostom to know that he was the last man to allow
   himself to be overpowered by domineering arrogance, the last man to
   play the part of a complaisant subordinate and a flattering colleague.
   Theophilus might have made many another man--even such a man as St.
   Jerome--the tool and catspaw of his machinations, but John of Antioch?
   No! And was not John the favourite presbyter of Flavian, who had
   deliberately set at nought the citations of Theophilus, and had called
   him an arrogant and overweening Egyptian'?

   I am sure that your Beatitude will feel exceptional gratification in
   consecrating John,' said Eutropius, rippling with laughter, which
   became less and less controllable as he marked the Patriarch's fierce
   discomfiture.

   Something very like a curse was smothered in the voluminous folds of
   the beard of Theophilus, as he hissed out, I will never consecrate
   him.'

   Eutropius heard, and laughed more merrily than ever, but affected not
   to have heard, and said: I must now wish good-night to all your
   reverences and your sanctities, and all the other illustrious guests
   who have honoured by their presence my poor abode; but perhaps his
   Beatitude of Alexandria will deign to give me one word in private
   before he departs.'

   The glittering assembly buzzed into groups, and speedily broke up,
   leaving Theophilus standing alone. He was so absorbed in passionate
   thought that he hardly remembered where he was till a hand pulled his
   robe.

   He started, and saw the eye of the Chamberlain fixed on him.

   Excuse me,' said Eutropius, whose whole manner had changed to one of
   insolent triumph, I think you said you would never consecrate John.'

   Never!' said Theophilus.

   What! Never?'

   Never!' repeated the Patriarch, stamping his foot, and with a glance
   which, like that of the basilisk, would have struck the eunuch dead if
   its power had equalled its will.

   Eutropius smiled, and drew from his bosom a little bundle of papers.
   Look here,' he said. Here is a certain letter you once wrote to
   Maximus. Double-dealing is dangerous--especially for Patriarchs; and
   high treason is a very serious matter.'

   The face of Theophilus grew pale as death, and he trembled.

   You will consecrate John,' said the Chamberlain, 'or----'; he tapped
   the papers with his finger, and saluted him with a mocking bow. He left
   him; but after he had taken a few paces he turned round to look at him.
   Theophilus was standing in an attitude of despair, and had lifted his
   clenched hands to heaven; but when he saw Eutropius looking at him he
   turned haughtily and indignantly away.

   What can I do?' he exclaimed to himself when he reached the sumptuous
   chamber which he occupied. The wretch holds my life in his hands.
   Curses on him! But I will watch, and by the God of heaven I will be
   avenged, I will be avenged!'

   Eutropius went into his library, and flung himself on the chair of ebon
   inlaid with ivory which stood before his writing-table. He recalled the
   past, and contrasted it with the present. I have triumphed,' he said. I
   am avenged on the cruelty and baseness of the world. My own parents
   betrayed my helpless infancy; they received my price from the
   slave-dealers of Armenia. They sold me to an Egyptian master. While my
   youth and beauty lasted he was kind to me, and I loved him; without one
   pang he sold me to Arintheus, and I had to do his vilest messages.
   Arintheus gave me to his daughter; I became a slave of the Gynæceum. I
   had to fan women with peacocks' feathers, to heat their baths, to carry
   their burdens, until that hateful Megæra, not even deigning to sell me,
   turned me out of doors as of no value. Would to God I had flung myself
   into the Nile, and not borne those years of turpitude and infamy! But
   Abundantius got me a place among the lowest eunuchs of the palace; and
   now,' he cried, striking the table with his fist, now I am here! My own
   skill, my own genius has lifted me. Theodosius himself sent me on the
   mission to John, the Egyptian eremite, who foretold his death in Italy
   when he went to fight Eugenius. I struck down the mighty Rufinus in his
   towering pride. As for Arcadius, I lead him about as if he were--a cow.
   I have brought every one of my foes to my feet, and now I have humbled
   to the dust this wicked and wily Patriarch. Stilico himself fears me.
   My name is eulogised by millions of lips. I am practically the ruler of
   the world; and--' he broke into a storm of bitter sobs, and laid his
   head on his folded hands--'and the vilest wretch who sweeps the streets
   of Constantinople is happier than I. Would to God I had never been
   born!'

   A hand was laid gently on his shoulder. He looked up with a start. It
   was his sister, who had silently entered the room--the only being on
   earth whom he loved. She was past middle life, but still showed
   something of the beauty which once had marked them both.

   He smiled at her sadly, the tears still in his eyes. She would not
   notice them. You have done a noble deed, my brother,' she said, in
   making John of Antioch the new Patriarch. He is a good man.'

   I am a Christian and a Catholic,' he answered. Would that I were a
   better Christian!' He paused; and his conscience whispered to him that
   he relied on words and formulæ alone, and that his many misdeeds--his
   greed, his revengefulness, the malice and hatred and wrath which he
   nursed in his heart against all mankind--were utterly unchristian.
   But,' he said, 'John of Antioch was the best man whom I knew among all
   the clergy of the Empire, and in selecting him I have acted right, and
   in a way which will win me deserved popularity. But as for gratitude,
   sister--alas! I never found a trace of it on earth!'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XV

  THE CAPTURE OF CHRYSOSTOM

     Fortune? There is no fortune! All is trial, or punishment, or
     recompense, or foresight.--Voltaire.

   It was a morning in February. Chrysostom was arranging with the
   faithful and indefatigable Philip the duties of the day after they had
   shared the morning meal of bread and dates. Suddenly they heard a
   summons at the door, and old Phlegon came in to say that there stood
   outside a slave in the gorgeous livery of the governor of the city, who
   had brought a letter.

   What can he want at this early hour?' said Philip as he cut the silken
   band; broke the Government seal, and handed the letter to the
   Presbyter. Chrysostom read with some surprise, 'Asterius, Count of the
   East, requests the Presbyter John to give him the honour of his company
   an hour hence at the Roman Gate, that he may have the advantage of
   visiting in his company the Martyry of St. Lucianus.'

   He handed it to Philip with a smile.

   Well, that upsets all our plans,' said Philip. But how odd! An interest
   in martyries was the last thing of which I should have suspected his
   Excellency. But it will be a delightful little excursion along the
   banks of the Orontes. You will let me walk with you as far as the Roman
   Gate? We must start almost immediately to get there in time.'

   A few minutes later they set forth from the house in Singon Street, in
   which Chrysostom had been born, in which he had lived nearly all his
   life, and in which his father Secundus, his mother Anthusa, and his
   only sister had died. It was a burning morning of the Syrian spring,
   and as they passed in happy spirits through the streets--gazing now at
   the great Charonium, now at the statue of the Fortune of Antioch, now
   at the house which had been Philip's former home, and now at the
   glancing river, seen in glimpses here and there, and at the long
   colonnades, and the palaces, and the distant hills gleaming in the
   sunshine--the last thought which could occur to their minds would have
   been that thenceforth, to one of them for long years, and to the other
   for ever, those bright scenes would from that moment vanish from their
   lives, that they would never again tread, side by side, those old,
   familiar streets. Chrysostom could not have left the home of his
   parents, of his childhood, and of so many happy and fruitful years,
   without many a sob had he distantly suspected that when he walked from
   his paternal door so unconsciously he would never again set foot upon
   its threshold. Philip's heart would have been torn with reminiscences
   of his father's execution, his mother's sad death, his cruel
   punishment, the horrible fate of his boyish friends, if he could have
   dreamed how long it was before he could look on Antioch again.

   A little before they reached the Roman Gate Asterius met them, all
   smiles and complaisance. Several of his bodyguard and slaves had
   escorted him, and fell back as Chrysostom and Philip approached. They
   were a little at a loss to know why he smiled so much, and was so very
   deferential; but they were soon to learn that

     A man may smile, and smile, and be...

   --well, no, not exactly a villain, but the accomplice in a little plot.

   The Martyry was not far beyond the city walls, and lay in an umbrageous
   grove of oaks and laurels. Asterius was walking with Chrysostom, and
   Philip followed them, a little in front of the escort. But no sooner
   had they turned into the path which led to the chapel than Asterius
   took Chrysostom by the arm, and requested him to step into a chariot
   which was there waiting.

   I am sorry, Count,' said Chrysostom, but I have my duties at Antioch,
   and directly we have paid our devotions at the shrine of the martyr I
   must return.'

   Pray oblige me,' said the Count, still all smiles; and meanwhile the
   escort had come up, and, with gentle and respectful violence, lifted
   the astonished and agitated Presbyter into the chariot, and instantly
   started off at full speed.

   What is this, Count? What does this violence mean? Have you entrapped
   me? What has happened? Am I to be suddenly murdered, as Count Lucian
   was?'

   Pray be at ease, Father,' said the Count. I cannot explain matters at
   present, but not the smallest harm or incivility is intended you.'

   Incivility!' said Chrysostom. Is it, then, no incivility to seize an
   unoffending presbyter, entrap him into a chariot, and drive away with
   him he knows not where?'

   Pardon me, dear Presbyter,' said the Count, still with a smile of
   provoking amiability. The chariot is bounding along at such a rate over
   this paved road that I can scarcely hear you. But, pray, do not be
   agitated. Not the least injury will be done. Quite the contrary. I am
   only taking you a little drive as far as Pagræ, the first station.'

   Chrysostom sank into silence, for, though he was lost in the wildest
   conjectures, it seemed useless to attempt to obtain any more
   information from the sphinx-like Count.

   But Philip?

   When the chariot bounded off at full speed he was extremely alarmed,
   and all the more because before it disappeared in a cloud of dust the
   soldiers and slaves who had accompanied the Count burst into roars of
   laughter. They were not in the secret, but they knew that no crime was
   meditated, and to them the situation had considerable elements of
   amusement. To Philip's wildly-eager inquiries they could furnish no
   information, beyond the assurance of Asterius that all was well, and
   that they should hear more on the Count's return. One thing only they
   were sure of--that Chrysostom would be detained away from Antioch for
   some time.

   Philip was a youth of courage and swift decision. He instantly
   determined what to do. He hurried back through the Roman Gate, hired a
   horse, galloped to Singon Street, told the troubled servants that their
   master had been taken off by Count Asterius, and would be absent for
   some time. Then, not wasting a moment, he threw into a leathern bag
   some of Chrysostom's manuscripts and the things which he thought he
   would most immediately need, and once more galloped towards Pagræ at
   the utmost speed to which he could urge his horse.

   A little before he reached the station, which was twelve miles from
   Antioch, he met the returning chariot of Asterius, in which, besides
   the Count, there was only one attendant and the charioteer. Asterius
   seemed still to be lost in smiles. He had a notion that the Presbyter
   John would be in a perfectly ecstatic state of mind when he first
   learnt the secret that he was to be Patriarch of Constantinople. [6]

   Philip reined in his horse, and, forgetful of everything but his own
   alarm, called to the Count:

   Oh, my lord! what has become of the Presbyter John?'

   Don't be alarmed, my good youth,' said the Count, waving to him a
   gracious and much-ringed hand, but not stopping the chariot.

   Philip again darted forward.

   At Pagræ there was quite a commotion--for there were two imperial
   chariots, with their gorgeously caparisoned horses, and by them stood
   two persons, evidently of the highest distinction, escorted by two
   decuries of mounted soldiers in full armour, which flashed in the
   sunlight.

   There were again the same mysterious smiles, the same marked deference,
   but the same obvious determination to control the movements of
   Chrysostom. The two officials at once approached with most courteous
   salutations.

   I,' said one of them, advancing, am Amantius, the almoner of the
   Empress Eudoxia, and I offer my most respectful greetings to John the
   Presbyter.'

   And I,' said the other, am Aurelian, Magister Militum of the Emperor
   Arcadius. And these two bands of soldiers are at your service as an
   escort, for they are under my command.'

   What do you want with me?' said Chrysostom, indignantly. 'The Count of
   the East has simply carried me hither against my will.'

   I fear we shall have to take the liberty of conveying you a little
   farther,' said Aurelian, with polite deference.

   Whither?' said Chrysostom.

   Aurelian glanced at Amantius, to know whether it was safe to tell him
   his destination. The official shook his head.

   At present, John, we cannot tell you,' he said; you shall know a little
   farther on.'

   But I have brought absolutely nothing with me. I merely started from
   home for a morning walk. May I not send to Antioch for things
   absolutely necessary?'

   We have everything which you can possibly require, and it is entirely
   at your disposal. But, pardon me, time is very precious. We have ample
   refreshments for you in the chariot, and at the next station we will
   sup.'

   At this moment Philip galloped into the courtyard of the hostelry, and,
   catching sight of his master and adopted father, flung himself into his
   arms, and asked what had happened.

   You must ask these gentlemen, my Philip,' said the Presbyter. They will
   give me no information.'

   I have brought you some things from home,' said Philip, and wherever
   you go I will go.'

   Nay, that cannot be, my good youth,' said Aurelian, kindly. We have no
   orders to conduct anyone but John.'

   Philip glanced from the soldier to the kind face of the eunuch, who
   seemed to be higher in authority, and he said:

   Oh, sir! may I speak to you privately?'

   Only for one moment, then,' replied Amantius, stepping aside; we are
   wasting very precious time.'

   Sir,' said Philip, the Presbyter John is a man of very delicate health.
   His digestion was utterly ruined when he lived as a hermit in the cave
   on Mount Silpius. In everything which concerns himself he is as simple
   as a child. He would never trouble himself about food or anything else
   unless someone attended to him. I have waited on him for years as a
   son. I entreat you, let me accompany him. I will be entirely faithful.
   I will make no plots. I am ready to go with him either to prison or to
   death.'

   You are a brave and gracious youth,' said Amantius, gazing with
   admiration on Philip's flushed but beautiful face. Well, I will stretch
   a point, and will speak to the Commandant.'

   He told Aurelian what the youth had said.

   Will you be responsible for him?' asked the soldier.

   Yes.'

   Then he may come. But we must at once mount the chariots. Young man,'
   he said to Philip, we are sending one of our soldiers to Asterius. He
   can ride your horse back to Antioch, and you can borrow his.'

   And feel no alarm, my young friend,' said Amantius. 'John is happy to
   have such a faithful attendant as you.'

   I thank you, sir,' said Philip. He has twice saved my life. I owe him
   everything.'

   Forward, soldiers!' shouted Aurelian; and the chariots, with their
   mounted escort, started at full gallop.

   It was useless to ask any more questions. If he attempted to do so,


   The Chamberlain, sedate and vain,

   In courteous words returned reply,

   But dallied with his golden chain,

   And, smiling, put the question by.

   But Chrysostom, who was accustomed to kind care in all personal
   matters, as greatly cheered and relieved, whatever should happen, by
   the company of his beloved and faithful Philip; and for the rest,
   wholly unable to conjecture in his simple mind what the future had in
   store for him, he resigned himself and his fortunes into the hand of
   God.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [6] The actual name Patriarch' is not found in public documents till
   rather later, but the historian Socrates uses it, and it was almost
   certainly current in common parlance.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XVI

  TALES BY THE WAY


   For Heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground

   And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

   King Richard II., iii. 2.

   Apart from the fatigues of travel and the necessary uncertainty and
   anxiety, the journey of eight hundred miles towards Constantinople was
   as pleasant for Chrysostom as his captors could make it. The modern
   love for beautiful scenery was in those days but little developed; but
   John was one of the few who keenly enjoyed the beauties of Nature, and
   he could not be indifferent to the glorious scenes through which the
   journey lay. When they did not arrive at their station till after dusk
   he would often sit silent, gazing on the stars--'those eternal flowers
   of heaven,' as St. Basil calls them--and musing on his own unknown
   future, and on the little lives of men. He was also deeply interested
   in seeing the home of St. Paul's boyhood as they passed through Tarsus,
   and looked on the silver Cydnus, up which Cleopatra had rowed in her
   gilded barge.

   Had the circumstances been less mysterious Philip would have been wild
   with delight as he galloped among the soldiery of the escort. He felt
   the exhilaration of change and exercise, and new glimpses of the great
   world; and he was naturally a favourite with the soldiers, who
   delighted in his witty Antiochene jokes and in his buoyant freshness of
   spirits, while they were struck with the genuine innocence and
   sweetness of his character. He did not share their rough quarters, but
   took his meals with Chrysostom and the two great officials, and slept
   at his master's feet, or in an anteroom.

   They reached Pessinus, the capital of Galatia, after several days of
   almost unbroken travel. There Chrysostom and Philip looked with
   interest on the legend-haunted heights of Mount Dindymus, and saw the
   ancient temple of the mother of the gods, in which the Emperor Julian
   had recently paid his devotions.

   Amantius and Aurelian had become more and more attached to their
   captive and his young companion; they no longer made any secret of the
   fact that they were conveying him to Constantinople. They pretended
   that it would be as much as their lives were worth to say why he was
   wanted; and he could not himself even form a guess, for he dismissed as
   preposterous the only conjecture which flitted across his mind. That he
   could have been elevated to the Patriarchate of Constantinople seemed
   to him an absurdity; and he would have shuddered at the prospect
   instead of being elated by it.

   The sight of the Temple of Cybele, from which the heaven-fallen image
   had been carried to Rome six centuries earlier, naturally turned their
   thoughts to heathen idolatry, and as they rested in the evening
   Aurelian said:

   Idolatry is, I suppose, nearly as ancient as mankind itself; but such
   is the epoch in which we live that I have myself seen it receive its
   deathblows.'

   Do you refer to the edicts of Theodosius?' asked Chrysostom, or to
   Ambrose's crushing answer to Symmachus, when he pleaded with Gratian to
   restore the altar of victory in the Senate-house of Rome?'

   No. I refer to the destruction of the Temple of Serapis and the battle
   of Frigidus. I was present at both.'

   Do tell us about the destruction of the Serapeum.'

   It was an event of deep interest,' said Aurelian, but I wish I could
   regard it with unmixed approval. The Christians, especially the monks,
   after Theodosius had forbidden sacrifices in 386, had headed many
   furious assaults on temples. Heathens like Libanius say that they found
   their account in doing so. They did not always escape unpunished.
   Rustic populations were passionately devoted to ancient shrines, like
   this one as Pessinus, which were mixed up with all their memories and
   traditions. You have, no doubt, heard how Marcellus, the lame Bishop of
   Apamea, was killed in his attack on the great Temple of Jupiter. But no
   temple was so famous as that of Serapis. It had been founded by the
   first Ptolemy, and Alexandria itself was called "The City of Serapis."
   The temple stood on a mound which was ascended by a hundred marble
   steps. It was of enormous size, had a great library, and was full of
   exquisite statues and precious works of art. The very walls were
   covered with plates of silver and gold. The rising of the Nile, and
   therefore the prosperity and almost the existence of Egypt, was, by the
   mass of the population, believed to depend on the favour of Serapis.
   Libanius had unwisely taunted Theodosius with leaving untouched the
   great temples at Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria, while he allowed
   the smaller temples to be assaulted, destroyed, and, alas! plundered by
   the monks. Theophilus of Alexandria, saving his reverence a bold, bad
   man, at once sanguinary and avaricious----'

   Hush!' said Chrysostom, who never hesitated to rebuke even the greatest
   if he thought it a duty.

   Well,' said Aurelian, he really is all I say, and worse; and the
   blessed Paul told the High Priest that he was a whited wall.'

   Yes,' answered Chrysostom, but directly he knew that he was the High
   Priest he apologised, and said, "It is written, Thou shalt not speak
   evil of the ruler of thy people."'

   I stand corrected, John,' answered Aurelian with a smile, for he was a
   soldier, and admired straightforward courage. But to continue.
   Theophilus had already profaned and dismantled a temple of Osiris, and
   the worshippers of Serapis, fearing the next step, garrisoned the
   Serapeum. The Christians assembled to attack it, and there would have
   been bloodshed, but the magistrates secured a truce till the Emperor
   could be consulted. Theodosius decided for the demolition of the
   temple, in revenge for the Christian prisoners whom the Pagans had
   tortured and killed. It was at once despoiled and demolished. But when
   the multitude entered the shrine where the huge gilded idol sat
   enthroned, with the basket on his head and the three-headed monster in
   his right hand, they paused in superstitious dread. Heaven and earth
   would collapse, it was believed, if the majesty of the god were
   violated. But one of my rude soldiers had no such fear. He put a ladder
   against the statue, and ascended it, amid the breathless silence of the
   multitude, with a huge battle-axe in his hand. Then the audacious
   legionary dashed his axe on the face of the image with all his force,
   and smote off its cheek. The mob expected to see him struck dead or
   blind; but no lightning flashed, no cloud darkened the blue of heaven.
   He smote again and again, while the hall rang with the echo of his
   blows. In a minute or two the hollow head of the image rolled with a
   clang on the marble floor, and out sprang an immemorial colony of rats,
   whose home had been thus rudely invaded. No sooner did the mob see the
   black, voracious creatures leaping and scurrying off in every direction
   than superstition was changed into angry contempt. The protector of
   heaven and earth had not been even able to protect his own rats! The
   people broke into shouts of laughter, swarmed up the pedestal, tore
   down the image, tripudiated on its shattered fragments as they dragged
   them through the mire of the streets, and ultimately flung them into a
   huge bonfire. There was a little delay in the rising of the Nile, and
   when it did rise it threatened a deluge. "Serapis," they murmured,
   "will avenge himself." But no; the waters sank to the due fertilising
   height, and even in Alexandria Serapis will never be worshipped more!'

   Chrysostom listened, and mused.

   But, sir,' said Philip, modestly, to Aurelian, you said you had also
   witnessed the other deathblow to Paganism.'

   Ah! I see,' said Aurelian, your youthful blood is all on fire to hear
   about battles. I have been in many. Believe me they are frightful
   things, even when we are victors. I remember only too well the massacre
   of Adrianople. I was near the person of the Emperor Valens on that
   awful August 9, 378. It was only by a moment's delay that I was shut
   out of the cottage in which he was burnt to death with his followers,
   while the barbarians were massacring two-thirds of the Roman army, of
   which, but for the darkness, none would have escaped. Alas! it was the
   Nemesis of our crimes! If Valens admitted the Goths over the Danube to
   the hospitality of Roman territory, he should not have suffered them to
   be insulted and starved. Yet, even after the retribution of Adrianople
   we were guilty, that very year, of the horrid butchery of all the
   deceived and unarmed Gothic youth, which I for one regard as the most
   frightful of all evil omens and hateful crimes.'

   I would not ask you about those shocking scenes,' said Philip; but how
   did the battle of the Frigidus put an end to Paganism?'

   I must answer you briefly,' said Aurelian. It was September 6, 394;
   Eugenius, the puppet-emperor of Arbogast the Gaul, had pretended to
   espouse the cause of the Pagans. In the mountainous passes he had
   placed statues of Jupiter, with his right hand uplifted as though to
   strike, and armed with golden thunderbolts. The battle was very risky,
   for Arbogast had posted his forces with great skill. The first day the
   enemy got the best of it. The Goths of Arbogast routed those under
   Gaïnas and slew 10,000 of them. Theodosius, pressed by many of his
   generals, would have retreated to a safer encampment, if he had not
   thought that this would look like a defeat of Christianity. "Our
   Labarum, which bears the cross on it," he cried, "shall never retreat
   before the image of Heracles."

   There was among the allies one superb young Goth, named Alaric, who, if
   I am not much mistaken, will be heard of again; he, almost alone, urged
   the Emperor to renew the battle. The enemy spent the night in songs and
   revelries; Theodosius spent it in prayer. When he slept he saw two
   terrible figures on white horses, who told him that they were St. John
   and St. Philip come to fight for him. Next morning he dared not narrate
   the dream to his troops, lest they should think it a fiction, until a
   soldier said he had dreamt the very same thing. Then Theodosius told
   his vision. His robe was wet with tears, and when he took it off to don
   his cuirass he hung the wet purple garment on a tree, as though in
   silent appeal to Heaven. Our men were filled with wild enthusiasm; but
   even then I doubt whether we should have won if suddenly--may I say
   supernaturally?--the bora, the blinding, driving, sleet-laden whirlwind
   of these mountains, had not burst in the very faces of Arbogast's
   troops. We rushed upon them in the track of the storm, and utterly
   routed them. Theodosius charged into the thick of the fray, shouting,
   "Where is the Lord God of Theodosius?" Eugenius was not fighting, as
   Theodosius did, in the forefront of the battle, but his tent was
   pitched on a knoll at a safe distance, and he sat in the tent-door in
   his purple and his diadem. He was seized by soldiers who, he fancied,
   had come to drag Theodosius a captive into his presence. They tore off
   his purple and dragged him to the feet of his conqueror, where he
   prostrated himself, trembling. Theodosius upbraided him with the murder
   of the young Valentinian. While he was pleading for life one of the
   soldiers swept off his head with a sword, and put it on a pike. Then
   our men flung down the statues of Jupiter, and, seizing the golden
   thunderbolts, took them to Theodosius. "Keep them for yourselves," said
   the Emperor, who was in one of his gayest moods. "Thank you, Emperor!"
   said the soldiers; "may we often be smitten by such thunderbolts!"
   Theodosius rolled in his saddle with laughter at their rough wit. They
   took up the laugh--and so Paganism perished, at Alexandria and at the
   Frigidus, in two shouts of mirth!'

   How sad that Theodosius should have died so soon after his great
   victory!' said Chrysostom. But John, the Egyptian hermit, prophesied
   that it would be so.'

   Yes! he exchanged the laurelled car for the coffin, and passed from
   triumph to the funeral. He has died just when he was most needed. You
   are hardly likely to have read the verses of a new and splendid Roman
   poet named Claudian, the eulogist of Stilico, but he makes the dying
   Theodosius say, and quite truly--you understand Latin?--

     Res incompositas, fateor, tumidasque reliqui.' [7]

   Were you with him when he died?'

   I was. I was on guard, and a wonderfully pretty and touching scene took
   place in his sick-room. Knowing that his last hour was near, he sent
   for his younger son, Honorius, then little more than a child. The
   Emperor was so weak that he could not preside all day at the games of
   the circus given in honour of his victory; so in the afternoon the
   little boy Honorius took his place. To secure the allegiance of Stilico
   he married the boy to Maria, the daughter of Stilico and Serena, his
   niece, who had always had a great influence over him. The two lovely
   children knelt by his bedside--Honorius with his placid, regular
   features, and Maria with her rosy cheeks and long golden locks. Stilico
   was there, his white head nobly conspicuous as he towered over the rest
   of the courtiers. The beautiful Serena bent over her little daughter.
   She wore the superb necklace of pearls which she took, perhaps wrongly,
   from the neck of the statue of Rhea, the mother of the gods.'

   Did not the old Vestal Virgin prophesy that one day she would be
   strangled with that very necklace?' asked Amantius.

   Ay,' said Aurelian, but I don't think it likely that the prophecy will
   be fulfilled. I could tell you many more incidents. I witnessed, for
   instance, the murder of that bright youth, the Emperor Gratian. But we
   must now go to sleep, for we have a long ride before us to-morrow.'

   At Nicæa, on the eastern shore of Lake Ascanius, Chrysostom visited
   with deep interest the church in which, seventy-two years earlier, the
   first Christian emperor had been present at the first great OEcumenical
   Council. From thence a day's journey brought them to Nicomedia, the
   capital of Bithynia, the favourite residence of Diocletian before his


   Self-corrected mind

   The imperial farces of the world resigned,

   and he retired to find greater happiness in the cultivation of cabbages
   at Salona. As they passed the village of Ancyron the chariots were
   stayed for half an hour that Chrysostom might visit the house and the
   room in which the great Constantine had ended the splendid and troubled
   dream of his strange life.

   He suggested that evening that Amantius should enliven their journey
   with some of his reminiscences.

   I have been, naturally,' said Amantius, with a sigh, a man of peace;
   yet I have seen one or two scenes which interested me in the East, as
   Aurelian has in the West. He has said something about the great
   Ambrose. I could tell you something about the great Basil and his
   brother, Gregory of Nyssa, and his friend, Gregory of Nazianzus;
   something, too, about the Emperor Julian and his ways.'

   Tell us something about Basil of Cæsarea,' said Chrysostom.

   The only time I saw him,' said Amantius, was in the great cathedral of
   his metropolis. The Emperor Valens was not only an Arian, but a
   persecutor. He entered the densely thronged cathedral with his
   spear-bearers--it is nearly twenty years ago--to overawe Basil into
   communicating with the Arians. The people were pressing on each other
   like the waves of the sea, and were thundering forth the Psalms of the
   day. Behind the Holy Table, facing the people, stood the Archbishop,
   his crosier in his hand, the episcopal ring on his finger, the white
   pallium, embroidered with its four crosses, over his shoulder. He stood
   there tall, stately, immovable as a statue. His beard was long and
   white, his features thin but noble; his ardent gaze was fixed on the
   Holy Table; the presbyters stood round him, and the fervour of devotion
   and beauty of holiness which reigned through the church so struck the
   timid and conscientious, though cruel, Emperor, that when he came to
   present his offering he tottered, and would have fallen heavily to the
   ground if a presbyter had not caught him in his arms. But Valens
   inspired no respect. The mob of Constantinople openly jeered at him
   when he went to meet his fate, and from the walls of Chalcedon the
   people insulted him with shouts of "Sabaiarius," or "small-beer
   drinker." If they had behaved in that way to his brother, Valentinian
   I., he would have flung them wholesale to his two bears, Golden-Flake
   and Innocence, which he kept in a den near his bedroom, and fed on
   human flesh.'

   The brute!' said Philip, sotto voce.

   Basil was as great in the East as Ambrose in the West,' said
   Chrysostom; but Philip whispers to me that he is dying to know whether
   you witnessed the murder of Rufinus.'

   Yes; and a grim sight it was. Rufinus did not feel a doubt that on that
   very day Arcadius would nominate him Augustus. His purple, his diadem,
   his Court, his largesses, his banquets, his unequalled palace of "The
   Oak," at Chalcedon, were all prepared; the oration of thanks was
   hovering on his lips. He had been baptised by Gregory of Nyssa. The
   holy Ammonius, one of the four "Tall Brothers" of Egypt, had stood
   sponsor for him. He was murdered in the Hebdomon, seven miles from
   Constantinople, just after the golden coffin of Theodosius had laid in
   state in the Church of the Apostles, with the livid face exposed.
   Rufinus was so eagerly impatient for the consummation of his ambition,
   which should turn the provincial cobbler's son into an emperor, that he
   had the audacity to pull Arcadius by his purple robe to hurry him on.
   Then the chief Gaïnas and his Goths closed round him in threatening
   circle, and a soldier suddenly plunged his sword into his heart. The
   Emperor's robe was stained in the blood of his Minister, and he fled in
   terror. They struck off the head of Rufinus and put it on a pole,
   fulfilling the prophecy he had received in the morning, "that he should
   came back that day with his head higher than all." Then they hacked his
   body to pieces. One soldier had hewed off his hand, and managed to make
   the fingers open and shut by the severed tendons. He reaped quite a
   harvest of money in the streets by carrying round this hand, and
   crying, "Give an obol to the insatiable!" What a lesson it was of
   sudden Nemesis in the moment of overweening hopes!'

   But have you no reminiscences to tell us, John?' asked Aurelian.

   Nay,' answered Chrysostom; what should a humble presbyter like me have
   to tell? You know all about the affair of the statues at Antioch, and
   you would hardly care for my trivial experiences in a lonely mountain
   cave. Yet--let me see--I can tell you one little anecdote. You know
   that Valens, who was intensely superstitious, was at one time in a
   paroxysm of alarm about magic.'

   Why was that?' asked Philip.

   Because a group of foolish persons at Antioch had tried by Pagan
   sorcery to discover the name of his successor. They wrote the letters
   of the alphabet in a circle, and held a ring by a hair in the middle of
   the circle after elaborate incantations. The ring vibrated till it had
   touched in succession the letters THEOD. But, besides this, it was
   afterwards declared that the letters magically chosen were in four
   heroic verses, which said that the successor of Valens would be a great
   prince; that they would be put to death for their curiosity, but that
   vengeance would fall on their murderers, who would perish by fire on
   the Plains of Mimas. No one knew what was meant by "the Plains of
   Mimas" till after Valens was burnt alive in the peasant's cottage near
   Adrianople, when they found there an old tomb inscribed with the words,
   "Here lies Mimas, a Macedonian Captain."

   The result of the divination was whispered abroad. Filled with fury and
   jealousy, Valens began to take vengeance. Woe to the man whose name
   began with Theod! Many Theodoruses and Theodotuses were put to death,
   and many changed their names; but, after all, his real successor,
   Theodosius, escaped, for he was then living as a private gentleman on
   his Spanish farm. But the horrors of that day will not soon be
   forgotten. Spies and informers sprang up, and flourished like a crop of
   mushrooms on rotten wood. The punishments were frightful. I myself'--he
   said, with a shudder--'saw the philosopher Simonides burnt alive in the
   Forum of Antioch. He died laughing, saying "He fled from life as from a
   mad mistress." One youth was executed for possessing a magic book,
   another for using a love-spell. An old woman perished for curing the
   daughter of a proconsul of fever by a crooning song, a boy for getting
   rid of a stomach-ache by muttering the vowels of the alphabet. The
   world went mad with silly superstition. Whole libraries were destroyed
   by the owners, lest they should be condemned to torture or death for
   being the unconscious possessors of a single book of sorcery. Many
   valuable works have thus perished for ever. Well, in those days of
   grotesque and horrible panic, when one was almost afraid to speak above
   a whisper, I was walking to the martyry of St. Babylas with my friend
   Theodore, now Bishop of Mopsuestia. He was in great danger, humble as
   he was, because of the fatal Theod in his name. We were walking under
   the flowering groves on the banks of the Orontes, when we saw something
   white floating on the river. It looked like the leaves of a book, and,
   moved by curiosity, we fished it out of the water with our staves. What
   was our horror when a glance showed us that the papyrus was written all
   over with magic formulæ. A soldier was close at hand. We suspected that
   he was an informer, and had laid a trap for us. We wrapped a stone in
   the leaves and flung them into the middle of the river. For days
   afterwards we were in an agony of apprehension; but by the mercy of God
   nothing came of it. If the soldier had seen us we should have been
   lost. To this day I count it as my greatest deliverance from imminent
   peril.'

   He was a poor creature--that Valens,' said Aurelian.

   The next evening they reached Chalcedon, and the waters of the sea
   shone before them like a sheet of gold. Across the narrow strait of the
   Bosporus they saw the gleaming walls and towers and palaces of
   Constantinople, the new Rome.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [7] Claudian, De Bell. Gild., vi. 293.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XVII

  CONSTANTINOPLE


   Urbs etiam magnæ dicitur æmula Romæ,

   Et Chalcedonias contra despectat arenas.--Ausonius.

   A spacious barge, gay with streamers, was moored for them beside the
   quay at Chalcedon, with a gilded dragon at its prow and a gorgeous
   canopy of purple silk. It was manned by five rowers in the imperial
   livery, who speedily conveyed them across the sparkling waters. To the
   bewilderment of Chrysostom, whose unworldly simplicity had not even yet
   divined the secret, a vast multitude lined the opposite shore, and
   received them with acclamations and shouts of joy, in which he
   repeatedly heard his own name. The tall chariot of the Prætorian
   Præfect, who stood highest among the illustrious,' awaited them, and in
   this they were driven at a rapid pace to the Patriarcheion, or house of
   the archbishop. The streets were cleared before them by a band of
   liveried runners. The Presbyter looked in mute inquiry to his friendly
   captors. They only informed him, with renewed smiles, that for the
   present he would find rooms prepared for him in the Palace of
   Nectarius, and that, after he had refreshed himself by a bath and a
   morning meal, some of the palace officials would be waiting to conduct
   him to an interview, first with the Grand Chamberlain, and then with
   the Emperor himself.

   Resigning himself to circumstances, and suppressing to the utmost of
   his power every impulse of curiosity, though he was conscious that some
   great crisis of his life was at hand, Chrysostom gave himself up to
   silent prayer. But Philip, in the young enthusiasm of his life, was in
   the highest spirits, and was all eyes. His journey had been full of
   exhilaration to him, and he delighted to catch a glimpse of a great
   unknown. Who could fail to look with interest on the famous city which
   was the rival of Rome? In that rapid drive he could only get confused
   glimpses of cupolas, and baths, and pillars, and statues, and churches,
   and ancient temples scattered over the seven hills of Byzantium, until
   they entered the second of the fourteen regions of the city. It covered
   the hill on which Constantine had pitched his tent, and he chose it as
   the site of his principal forum. The chariot drove under a triumphal
   arch, and on all sides were porticoes filled with the choicest works of
   ancient Greek statuary. Beside the arch, in a shrine, was the old
   statue of Cybele, which the Argonauts were said to have brought from
   Mount Dindymus. It had been turned into a statue of the genius of the
   city by removing the lions at the feet of the goddess, and altering the
   arms from a gesture of command to one of supplication. In the centre of
   the Forum stood a pillar of marble and porphyry 120 feet high. On its
   summit Constantine had placed a statue of himself, which, with that
   half-and-halfness which characterised his religious attitude, might be
   regarded as wearing the attributes either of Christ or of Apollo. Round
   its head were some of the nails said to have been brought by his
   mother, St. Helena, from Jerusalem as the nails of the Cross; but
   Pagans might, if they chose, regard them as the radiated crown of the
   old sun-god. This statue had, however, been replaced by one of Julian,
   and Julian's by that of Theodosius, which now surmounted the column. In
   this open space stood the Church of Santa Sophia, or the Holy Wisdom,
   once a Temple of Peace. South of it was a second forum, a long
   rectangle, bounded on one side by the wall of the Hippodrome, and on
   the other by the wall of the Augusteum, or Imperial Palace, now the
   Seraglio. In this stood the famous Milion, from which all the roads of
   the East were measured. It was a domed building, surrounded by an
   arcade of seven pillars, embellished with statues, and containing those
   of Constantine and St. Helena. On the east side of this second forum
   ran a long portico, called 'The Passage of Achilles.' The adjacent
   baths of Zeuxippus were enriched with the Athene of Lindus, the Muses
   of Helicon, the Amphitrite of Rhodes, the Pan consecrated by the Greeks
   after the defeat of Xerxes, and others of the loveliest works of the
   greatest Greek sculptors. North of the famous Baths stood the
   Senate-house built by Julian, and no sooner had the chariot passed this
   building than it drew up at a stately palace next to it. This was the
   Patriarcheion, the residence of Nectarius, and of the Archbishop of
   Constantinople. How unlike the humble lodging which had sufficed for
   the great St. Gregory of Nazianzus!

   Here Chrysostom and Philip alighted after a courteous farewell to
   Aurelian and Amantius, whom they thanked heartily for their many acts
   of kindness and courtesy.

   We shall often meet again,' said Amantius. Indeed, we shall see you at
   the palace in an hour's time.'

   A sumptuous breakfast was already laid out, and attendants were in
   waiting; but Chrysostom told them that he required but little food, and
   that Philip would wait on him. Philip opened the bag which he had
   hastily packed at Antioch, and provided the Presbyter with new garments
   instead of his travel-stained suit. He took the same opportunity to
   array himself in his best Antiochene costume, and, though he was not
   vain, a glance at one of the great polished silver mirrors told him
   that he looked well. When they were a little rested and refreshed
   Chrysostom, with Philip following him, was conducted in state to have
   an interview with Eutropius, the all-powerful Minister.

   Passing through the great hall of the Patriarch's house--known as the
   Thomaites--they passed by the little Church of Our Lady the Theotokos,'
   which stood in the quarter of the Jewish bronzesmiths, the
   Chalkoprateia. In the palace-wall was a gate, called the Gate of
   Meletius, in honour of the saintly Bishop of Antioch, through which the
   Emperor used to walk to the private wooden staircase--the Skepaste
   Skala--which spanned the space between the Church of Our Lady and that
   of St. Sophia.

   Through this entrance they were conducted to the suite of rooms
   occupied by Eutropius--the Præfectus sacri cubiculi, or Grand
   Chamberlain.

   The outer hall was full of attendants, and here Philip had to stop; but
   Chrysostom was ushered to the inner room.

   The officers who were conducting him knocked with their golden wands on
   the folding doors, which were flung back, and Chrysostom saw the
   Chamberlain seated at a table inlaid with precious marbles, on which
   lay a large golden inkstand, and a large pen-case, also of solid gold.
   On one side of him stood the Count of the Sacred Wardrobe, the Count of
   the Palace, and the Groom of the Bedchamber; on the other stood
   Amantius, as almoner of the Empress Eudoxia, and Aurelian, as captain
   of those palace bodyguards who were known as Silentiarii and Palatini.
   On either side of the doors stood four of these armed soldiers.

   With these great palace officials stood the two prime favourites and
   most trusted agents of the Grand Chamberlain, men whom he had lifted
   out of the mire to set among princes. One was the Spaniard Osius, once
   a cook, and always a scoundrel, whom Eutropius had elevated to the
   post, first of Count of the Sacred Largesses, and then of Master of the
   Officers. The other was Leo, once a weaver, now a fat, cheery, bibulous
   general. He was nicknamed Ajax because, unlike Tydides


   Whose little body held a mighty mind,

   his greatness was wholly corporeal. Claudian describes him as


   Abundans

   Corporis, exiguusque animi.

   Eutropius instantly rose, and made a profound bow to the embarrassed
   Presbyter. Chrysostom saw before him the practical lord of the Eastern
   Empire, who shaped every whisper of the throne.

   He was a little bald old man, with a fringe of grey hair round his
   baldness. His face might once have been beautiful in its features and
   pleasant in its expression, but now it was withered with premature old
   age, and there were deep wrinkles on the forehead. Years of degraded
   humiliation, years of anxious misery, years of triumph, avarice and
   guilt, years of cunning diplomacy, during which he held in his
   effeminate hands the threads of empire, had left their manifold, and
   therefore not easily decipherable, traces on his countenance; and if
   something of that which was, or might have been, good in him still
   sometimes shone in his glance or twinkled about his well-shaped mouth,
   the expression of his face more predominantly expressed astuteness,
   ill-dissembled arrogance, and flashes of the bitter hatred and contempt
   which he felt for the majority of mankind. Like Sir Robert Walpole,
   Eutropius held that nearly every man has his price; and he had
   repeatedly enjoyed the sinister satisfaction of seeing men who stood
   very high in the civil and religious world ready and even eager to
   kotow to him, to kiss his feet, to sell their souls to him for a mess
   of pottage. It had been the curse of his life to be driven to radical
   disbelief in human nature. He despised almost every human being whom he
   knew; he trusted scarcely anyone, unless, indeed, their personal
   interests were, like those of Osius and Leo, indissolubly connected
   with his own.

   But if there was one man in the world whom Eutropius did respect, and
   in whose moral superiority he firmly believed, it was the Syrian
   presbyter who had now been ushered into his presence. He had heard the
   thunders of his impassioned rhetoric waking the echoes of the great
   dome of the church of Antioch. In that fulminant eloquence he had
   recognised the cry which comes from a true human heart. Never before
   had he heard the unmistakable accent of intense and fervent sincerity.
   It had pierced like lightning through the thick crust of revenge,
   bitterness, and Oriental craft, under which, like a dying spark,
   beneath vast accumulations of embers, lay the true nature of Eutropius
   as God had meant it to be. Yes, this was indeed rhetoric--the ornate,
   if too Asiatic, rhetoric of a pupil of Libanius; but under the rhetoric
   burned the flame of conviction and of truth. Eutropius had heard and
   turned pale; and at the moment, trembling and terrified at accents so
   unlike those which breathed softly through the borrowed platitudes of
   Nectarius and the silken euphuisms of the corrupt and intriguing
   priests of Constantinople, his conscience had started up with pointed
   finger and outstretched arm. At those grave rebukes invincible,' though
   they were not addressed to him, and though Chrysostom had been wholly
   unaware of the presence of the then obscure and miserable eunuch,
   Eutropius had stood abashed,


   And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

   Virtue in her shape, how lovely; saw, and pined

   His loss.

   The impression had never been quite obliterated: he felt it now. But it
   gratified him to think that he had in consequence tried to do at least
   one purely good deed in his life, by elevating the preacher to an
   office which, in the hands of a great man, might practically be
   regarded as the highest in the world.

   Chrysostom did not lose his self-possession, though he could not but be
   a little agitated to feel that now the well-kept secret, which any mind
   less absolutely unworldly than his would long ago have divined, must at
   last be revealed. He returned with dignity the low bows of Eutropius,
   of Osius, of Leo, and smiled faintly back to the smiles of his friends
   Aurelian and Amantius. But Eutropius, hardly knowing what excuse to
   offer for the way in which he had trepanned his visitor, stood there,
   still bowing, and a little uneasily, washing his hands in air.

   I must,' he said, with yet another bow, apologise to your
   Beatitude----'

   My Beatitude!' exclaimed Chrysostom in amazement. 'Babai!' (which we
   may render Good Heavens!') I am but a humble Syrian presbyter of
   Antioch, and we are not addressed by such titles there.'

   The officials, even Eutropius, could not help a little laugh at this;
   but the Chamberlain continued:

   Pardon me, sir, you are no longer the humble presbyter of Flavian at
   Antioch; you are Archbishop of Constantinople and Patriarch of the
   East.'

   Here, then, was the secret! It had, indeed, once flitted across the
   thoughts of Chrysostom in his journey, because the quick and curious
   Philip had suggested it to him as a possibility. But he had instantly
   rejected it as too wildly improbable to be even contemplated.

   He stood there troubled and almost thunderstruck.

   Oh, spare me!' he cried at last, with one of those quick gestures of
   repudiation which come so spontaneously to an Oriental. I do not wish
   for this honour. I do not love this burden. I foresee that it will only
   end in trouble and misery. You yourself will repent of it, and regret
   it. I have never been consulted. I was wiled away from my home against
   my will. Oh, Amantius! oh, Aurelian! you have been cruel friends.'

   Nay,' said Eutropius, the Presbyter John must forgive us all. We
   doubted whether he would consent; and we knew that the Antiochenes love
   him too well to part with him readily. That was the sole object of our
   little ruse, and we trust that in all other respects your wishes and
   comforts have been attended to.'

   Oh! all that is nothing,' said Chrysostom, wringing his hands. But I
   must refuse. I cannot, I cannot be Patriarch of Constantinople. I am
   not ambitious. I am no courtier. Better by far the damp cave on Mount
   Silpius, in which I so nearly died. Would it had been God's will that I
   had died there rather than that this should befall me.'

   Eutropius was a little taken aback. He had meant to confer an immense
   favour; he had been foolish enough to expect an effusive gratitude.
   Why, he knew no other bishop or priest in Constantinople who would not
   have kissed his feet in transport for so magnificent a boon. And now he
   was finding it necessary to apologise and to plead.

   I bear you witness,' he said, you have not sought this responsibility;
   but we must not shun responsibility when it comes. His Eternity the
   Emperor----'

   His Eternity!' exclaimed Chrysostom, on whom, unaccustomed to the
   fulsomeness of Byzantine Courts, the title jarred like a blasphemy.

   Oh!' said Eutropius, it is only a title;' while Leo and Osius were so
   struck by this strange specimen of independence that it was with
   difficulty they refrained from laughing outright.

   It is surely a most unbecoming title,' said Chrysostom gravely. I
   thought it had been laughed out of fashion by Athanasius, even in the
   days of the Emperor Constantius. What higher title could you give to
   Christ Himself? But to give it to a man!

   All flesh is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth. "His
   Eternity!"--oh! let me return to my humble home in Antioch. I cannot
   breathe this perfumed atmosphere.'

   By Bacchus!' whispered Leo, whose expletives were not very carefully
   chosen, you have caught a Hun!'

   Eutropius was fairly disconcerted. Here he was conferring on this man
   one of the most supreme of sacred distinctions, and, so far from
   thanking him for the favour, he had already rebuked him twice! But the
   very rebukes made him feel more keenly the royal independence and
   sincerity of the Presbyter. Almost for the first time in his life he
   was met by a Christian and a disinterested man!

   Well, well, my dear Presbyter,' he said, we will waive these little
   forms of speech; but I was going to say that we must all obey the
   wishes of the Emperor. He is now expecting you in the Purple Chamber.
   Are you ready to see him?'

   I am ready,' murmured Chrysostom. Would it had been otherwise. But
   God's will be done!'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS


   He hath two greyhounds in a leash,

   Terror and Force; two slaves that serve his will,

   Pleasure and Pomp.

   Lord Lytton, The Siege of Constantinople.

   The great official personages rose in a body and preceded Chrysostom,
   by whose side walked Eutropius.

   The Purple Chamber, into which they were ushered by a crowd of slaves,
   was so called partly from its pavement and walls inlaid with porphyry,
   and partly from its rich purple hangings embroidered with gold. The
   luxury of modern days would almost seem like childish simplicity before
   the lavish pomp of Byzantine splendour. The floor along the centre was
   sprinkled with gold dust, brought from distant lands in ships and
   chariots at enormous cost, that the sacred feet of the Emperor might
   not be desecrated by treading on anything less profoundly precious. The
   walls of alabaster and other lustrous marbles were inlaid with agate
   and cornelian, and the eastern sunlight glowed hotly on pillars of the
   Numidian marble, rose-coloured or golden. Chrysostom was almost blinded
   by the sudden blaze of splendour, to which he was wholly unaccustomed.
   Two lines of the palatine soldiers stood at intervals down the centre
   of the hall. They wore Sidonian war-cloaks so richly dight that there
   were pearls on their girdles and emeralds in their helmets. [8] Between
   and behind them were massed a number of courtiers in all the ranks of
   Byzantine officialism--perfectissimi, egregii, illustres, and
   spectabiles. Round the apse at the end stood a guard of tall and fully
   armed Gothic soldiers in their collars of gold, and nearest the Emperor
   stood the four Prætorian Præfects, conspicuous, like him, in the purple
   robe, or man-dye, which they, however, wore only to the knees.

   In the centre, on a throne supported by four huge golden lions, lolled
   Arcadius on silken cushions fringed with pearls. His robe of purple was
   woven in gold with dragons, which were his imperial insignia. His
   person was a blaze of jewels. Huge rubies and emeralds were pendent
   from his ears. Necklaces of large orient pearls gleamed round his neck,
   and over his breast hung chains of precious stones chosen for their
   size and lustre. The passion for gems, which Constantine had fostered,
   had lingered among later emperors. Round the dark hair of Arcadius was
   the diadem, a band of purple silk woven with pearls and the choicest
   rubies and emeralds.

   Arcadius was but a youth of nineteen, but it seemed as if all the fire
   of his blood, all the manliness and fervency of youthful life, had
   either never existed in his ill-shaped body, or had long ago been
   drained out of him by the hollow and dreary magnificence in which his
   days were passed. His intellect was of the feeblest; his character was
   flabby and invertebrate. Chrysostom took him in at a glance. He was a
   youth of short stature, of feeble health, of thin person, and of sallow
   complexion. His thick eyelids drooped over his eyes, and gave him the
   aspect of being always half-asleep; and, except in the very rare cases
   in which he was for a moment aroused out of his listlessness, his
   speech was apt to dribble out in low, lazy, and half-finished
   sentences. He was steeped to the lips in indolent and sensuous luxury,
   and though he was too languid to be actively vicious, this lord of the
   world was the born slave of everyone who had sufficient astuteness and
   opportunity to turn him into a helpless tool.

   The look of Arcadius--who had been an emperor since he was eight years
   old, and who had been married at seventeen--betrayed nothing but
   infinite boredom. He had not even his younger brother's resource of
   keeping pet hens. He scarcely had as much activity as used to make
   Louis XV. take a courtier by the buttonhole and say, 'Ennuyons-nous
   ensemble!'

   Chrysostom could not help wondering how it happened that such a poor
   creature--and his equally poor brother, Honorius--could be sons of the
   able, stalwart, and handsome Theodosius; and why the destinies of the
   word should be committed to hands so unequal to the burden.

   And, if there was ever a man to be pitied, it was this hapless
   potentate. There was no bliss in his youthfulness. He cared for no one,
   and believed in no one. He regarded even the Ministers who domineered
   over him with a dull jealousy and suspicion, and would soon have got
   rid of them if he could only have summoned up the energy to do without
   them. Eutropius only suited him because he saved all trouble, relieved
   him of the intolerable burdens of empire, transacted the minute details
   and functions of necessary business; and arranged for him the
   amusements which served to dissipate his deadly dulness and to


   Disguise the querulous morrow

   From its unseen reproval of to-day.

   But meanwhile the wretched little human deity felt an inexorable
   weariness of everything:


   Because his greatness, being of a kind

   Which grew from all men's littleness combined,

   Dwelt self-condemned among the multitude

   Of voices lifted to proclaim it good.

   And so he sat in his vast hall and in his sacred' chambers


   An undelighted man. To him all meat

   Was tasteless and all sweetnesses unsweet;

   To him all beauty was unbeautiful,

   All pleasures without pleasantness, and dull

   Each day's delights.

   The Chamberlain and officials advanced with genuflexions and
   prostrations, and with hands which shaded their eyes, as though they
   were blinded with the divine and sunlike radiance of the Emperor.
   Chrysostom bowed low, and then advanced in the simple dignity of his
   manhood. Eutropius took him by the hand and presented him to Arcadius.

   This, sire,' he said, is John, the Presbyter of Antioch, whom your
   sacred Majesty has been pleased to appoint to the vacant
   Archbishopric.'

   Oh!' said Arcadius, slowly and languidly. I am glad to see you.'

   Chrysostom bowed again, and since Arcadius seemed to have nothing more
   to say, he replied:

   I thank your Clemency, though, had I been consulted, I would gladly
   have remained in my former obscurity.'

   Well,' said the Emperor, you shall be consecrated Archbishop on the
   twenty-seventh of this month. Meanwhile, as my Chamberlain has
   doubtless explained to you, the palace and the revenues of the
   Patriarchate are yours.'

   May God help me to do my duty!' said Chrysostom, and as Arcadius had
   now exhausted his conversational resources he bowed once more and stood
   aside. Eutropius gave his arm to the Emperor, who stepped down from his
   throne and retired. Then all the egregii, and spectabiles, and the
   rest, thronged round Chrysostom to load him with congratulations and
   fulsome compliments. From this embarrassment he was set free by a
   message that her Sacredness the Empress Eudoxia desired to see him; and
   his friend Amantius, as her almoner, conducted him into the presence of
   the young Nobilissima.

   Eudoxia was a very different personage from Arcadius. She was a Frank,
   brilliant, beautiful, impetuous, full of passion and vivacity,
   determined, as far as possible, to brighten by every sort of
   excitement, mundane and religious, the dull though gilded prison of
   imperialism. Her reception of the Archbishop--for as such he was now
   regarded--was in singular contrast with that of her pale-blooded lord.
   One or two high officials were present in her audience-room, and among
   them the showy Count John, who was her favourite, and whom the
   scandalmongers of Constantinople declared to be her lover and the
   father of her children. At that time she had only one daughter,
   Flaccilla, who was now a year old, and whose rosy little face shone out
   of the glowing silk of her cradle inlaid with gold and ivory, beside
   the chair of the Empress.

   Eudoxia rose to greet Chrysostom, and so far from allowing him to kiss
   her hand, she herself passionately pressed to her lips the hem of his
   garment. Eudoxia had, or fancied she had, deep religious feelings, and
   she certainly had strong superstitions, which she took for religion.
   Her religiosity was intense, but almost exclusively external. It
   impelled her to give alms, to build churches, to attend services, to
   prostrate herself to her favourite priests, and to adore the relics of
   martyrs; but so long as she manifested her devotion in this way she did
   not think it of any importance that it should regulate the passions of
   her heart and the duties of her daily life. Her one object at this
   moment was to depose the hated Eutropius, and to put herself and her
   favourite, Count John, in his place. She respected and liked Amantius,
   who was a man of unaffected piety; but his character was too pure and
   his temperament too placid to give her material help in her ambitious
   designs. From the first she had intended to attract Chrysostom, and
   never doubted for a moment, that she could make him her devoted ally.

   Most heartily do I congratulate your Sanctity,' she said, on this high
   promotion.'

   I thank you, Empress,' he replied; but may I ask you to call me by some
   less flattering title? I am strange to the world of sounding
   designations which I hear on every lip around me. Sanctity! There is
   none good but One.'

   The Empress smiled, for it was new to her to be corrected. Chrysostom
   had spoken with humility, but his independence was something
   delightfully unusual. It would make him a powerful friend, and to her
   Frankish temperament it was infinitely more refreshing than the
   slavishness with which she was surrounded from morning to night.

   You shall not be again offended by the title,' she said. I know that we
   shall be friends, and that I shall constantly enjoy the privileges of
   your holy counsel. You will have great demands upon you for the needs
   of the Church and of the poor; and your friend and my treasurer,
   Amantius, has my commands to further your benevolence with the largest
   liberality. Rely on my best assistance in all your good endeavours.'

   Chrysostom warmly thanked her; for while he had no personal desires, he
   had an intense appreciation of almsgiving and munificence to churches.
   He felt favourably to the Empress, whose avarice and duplicity had not
   yet revealed themselves, because she had chosen for her chamberlain a
   man so gentle, blameless and pious as Amantius.

   You must show your gratitude,' she said sweetly, 'by coming to our
   banquet on the 24th. It is Lent, I know, but that day is the Festival
   of St. Matthias.'

   Chrysostom could not refuse; but now he was glad to make his escape
   into privacy. The Empress asked him to give his blessing to her and to
   her child; and Amantius conducted him back to the outer hall, where
   they found the faithful Philip impatiently awaiting them.

   No sooner had they left the Palace and entered the Patriarcheion than
   the youth, who was bubbling over with excitement and gratification,
   exclaimed:

   So the secret is out, my father. To tell you the truth, I had guessed,
   or half-guessed, it might be so some days since. And only to think that
   you are Archbishop of Constantinople, lord-paramount over bishops
   innumerable, one of the four great Patriarchs of the world, and with
   the precedence over all but Rome!'

   Ah, Philip, Philip! it is natural for youth to be dazzled by honours
   and externals. I was disenchanted of them all long ago in my mountain
   cavern. To me they have not the smallest attraction. Life has but one
   real boon--the blessing and peace of God.'

   But there is much to do,' said Philip. Won't you let me write at once
   to Phlegon and the other servants at Antioch to come here, and bring
   with them all you need? They tell me that Osius is the
   Postmaster-General, and while you were with the Empress I saw him, and
   he will put vehicles at your disposal. Don't take any trouble,
   father--or my Lord Archbishop I must now call you, or your Beatitude,
   or your Sanctity, or----'

   Nay,' said Chrysostom, call me "father" always, Philip. Let me feel
   that I have still some ties to a past which I already feel will have
   been far happier than the future can ever be.'

   Well, I will arrange it all; but won't you come and look round this
   enormous palace which is now yours!'

   Oh, how much I prefer the little house in Singon Street?' sighed
   Chrysostom.

   They went on their tour of inspection, accompanied by some of the
   sumptuous slaves whom Nectarius had left. Chrysostom tolerated the
   great marble hall Thomaites, and the halls of justice for
   ecclesiastical cases which opened out of it; but he groaned as he
   passed over the rich carpets and saw the silver vases and superb
   furniture of the room which the late Patriarch had occupied.

   Alas!' he said to Philip, this will never do. I could not live in all
   this sumptuosity. How can it befit those who ought to wash one
   another's feet? I cannot retain these luxuries; they must be sold and
   given to the poor.'

   The slaves of Nectarius, who stood behind Chrysostom as he spoke the
   words, lifted up their hands and shrugged their shoulders in displeased
   astonishment.

   Babai!' whispered one to another, does he think that the palace of a
   Patriarch is to be no better than a damp, unpleasant mountain-cave?'

   Chrysostom selected for his own use an airy room with an antechamber,
   in which Philip could sit, and intercept needless chatterers,
   intruders, and wasters of time. It was the most simply furnished room
   in this Palace; but he gave orders to remove from it everything
   approaching to luxury, and he proposed to fill it with the old familiar
   books and simple surroundings of his former home as soon as they could
   arrive.

   When the slaves had conducted the strangers round the Palace, they took
   them into the garden which lay between it and the Senate-house, and
   there, for the first time, Chrysostom was genuinely delighted.

   Ah!' he said, 'Philip, most things have their alleviations. Our dear
   old home would go into this Palace ten times over; and we have not here
   the snowy mountains, or the river, or the ravines, though we have the
   sea! But this garden--yes, it will be delightful to me; and perhaps
   among these palms and cypresses and vines I may sometimes sit in the
   shadow and forget the crushing burdens of my new life. As for the fine
   gentlemen behind us, we must dismiss as many as possible of them with
   all convenient speed.'

   There was no difficulty about this, for when Philip ordered the simple
   meal of bread and vegetables and dates, with the commonest wine, which,
   thin as it was, Chrysostom scarcely ever touched, the servants,
   accustomed to the Salian banquets of Nectarius, were utterly disgusted.
   Why,' they said to each other, we might as well go into monasteries at
   once. Only to think of having such a Patriarch! He is banausos!'

   But Chrysostom went into the room which he had selected, laid his head
   on his hands, and fairly sobbed. The day had been to him infinitely
   trying, and now a revulsion of feeling came over him like a flood,
   drowning his past excitement in despair. Why, oh! why had he been torn
   from the old scenes, the old ties, the home of his childhood, the happy
   and peaceful past? Ah, Lord!' he cried, how many have wished for this
   high office, how many would be transported with delight to have it
   bestowed on them! Thou knowest I sought it not. I love it not. But if
   Thou hast put me to this work, oh, give me strength for it! I have but
   one prayer, O Lord; it is, "

   Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth Thee, for Thou art my God; let
   Thy loving Spirit lead me into the land of righteousness."'

   Philip would not interfere with his dark hour; but seeing him given up
   to uncontrollable sadness, he came with the gentleness of a son, and,
   laying his hand on his shoulder, he said:

   Dear father, is it all so dark? Is not God at Constantinople as He was
   at Antioch? Will not He make your way plain before your face? I wish
   you many and happy days as Patriarch of the East.'

   Not many, my Philip--and that, perhaps, is well--and certainly not
   happy. Mere paraphernalia of rank and wealth are hateful to me. Ever
   since I heard of this promotion, as they call it, a heaviness has been
   growing on my spirit. This great, wicked city seems to me like a haunt
   of the demons. How can I ever do the good which I desire, at which I
   must aim? My happy days are over, Philip, for ever. I shall have very
   few to love me. Try to support me with your true affection, my son, my
   son!'

   And again the new Patriarch of the East bent down his head, and wept in
   his splendid palace, till Philip once more came to him, and said:

   My father, your meal is ready. Be comforted. Man cannot do the work of
   Providence, but he can do his best, and await all that God will send.'

   You are right, my Philip,' said the Archbishop; I will, by God's grace,
   at once shake off this despondency. No cross, no crown.'
     __________________________________________________________________

   [8] Claud., de Laud. Stil., ii. 88.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XIX

  GUESTS AT AN IMPERIAL BANQUET

     Sumptuous gluttonies and gorgeous feasts.--Milton.

   The Patriarch had a few days of respite before his consecration would
   plunge him into the incessant, onerous, and intensely responsible
   duties of his new office. They were only broken by the banquet at the
   Palace.

   What am I to wear among hundreds of bejewelled popinjays?' he asked
   Philip in amazement. I have no conception in what sort of costume
   Nectarius would have appeared. Fortunately, I shall henceforth imitate
   the great Nazianzen, and refuse all invitations.'

   Philip was equal to the occasion.

   You have,' he said, the white robe which Anthusa embroidered for you in
   gold with calliculæ and gammadias that you might wear it at Count
   Lucian's. That will do splendidly.'

   So he was conducted by some of the palace eunuchs to the banquet,
   looking more dignified by far in his simplicity than the glittering
   courtiers whom Arcadius and Eudoxia had invited.

   What a scene it was, and how distasteful to the simple Presbyter!

   He was led up stairs carpeted with crimson cloths of which the borders
   were stiff golden broideries, and between tall lamps in which fragrant
   flames were burning, and of which the pedestals were covered with
   wreaths and garlands. The tables were of thyine and other precious
   woods, and were laden with crystal and myrrhine vases which had once
   been carried in Roman triumphs, and were now crowned with the choicest
   Chian, Lesbian, and Thasian wines. Between them were large golden
   salvers heaped with the most delicious fruits, and there was no dainty
   of the earth, the air, or the sea which the thousand cooks of the
   Palace did not procure for the Emperor's table. As for the richly
   dressed attendants, it seemed impossible to count the number of eunuchs
   and pages, of which the younger, specially chosen for their beauty,
   wore their hair in long, essenced curls. The whole spectacle was to
   Chrysostom inexpressibly distasteful. This materialism of luxury
   wearied and repelled him. The only thing which made it seem even
   excusable to his conscience was his reminiscence of Solomon feasting
   the Queen of Sheba in his halls of Lebanonian cedar, amid the dazzling
   display of gold and Tyrian purple, and slaves, and souls of men.

   He was led to a seat at the sigma, or crescent-shaped table of rich
   mosaic rimmed with silver, which was pre-eminently the seat of honour.
   The Emperor sat at the centre, on a dais, in a chair of gold, with the
   Empress at his right. Next to her sat Theophilus of Alexandria.
   Chrysostom was placed at the left of Arcadius, and next to him sat
   Eutropius. The only others admitted to the royal sigma were the four
   Prætorian Præfects, who were highest of all in official rank.

   Chrysostom barely touched either the dainties or the wines.
   Considerations of health, as well as his own tastes and wishes, made
   him habitually and to the highest degree abstemious; and, indeed, the
   chronic indigestion caused by the excess of his youthful austerities
   usually compelled him to take his meals alone. But all, or nearly all,
   of these assembled clarissimi and illustres were to be under his
   spiritual care, and he was interested in gazing round upon them.

   Arcadius had the misfortune, for a ruler, of being intensely shy. He
   was overpowered with self-consciousness. After one or two half-attempts
   at commonplaces, uttered with blinking eyes, he gave up the fatiguing
   effort to converse. But the liveliness of Eutropius, who was in great
   good-humour, helped to while away the time. He pointed out to
   Chrysostom the three famous widows--Marsa, Castricia, and
   Epigraphia--in their upper robes of gauze, woven in gold with scenes
   from the Gospels, their necklaces, their earrings, their hands hidden
   with rings, and their shimmer of numberless jewels. Chrysostom gazed at
   them with a look of disapproval, but in his own mind contrasted them
   most unfavourably with three others of the noblest ladies present, who
   were conspicuous for the severe and almost nun-like simplicity of their
   adornment. One of these was Olympias, once the betrothed of the Emperor
   Constans; another was the Princess Salvina; the third was the good
   Nicarete, who was--what was rare in ancient days--an old maid, and who
   found her sole delight--so Eutropius bore her witness--in deeds of
   kindness to the poor.

   Chrysostom looked longer at the male guests. He did not know Theophilus
   by sight, and asked the Chamberlain who that stately and richly clad
   ecclesiastic was.

   That,' said Eutropius, in a meaning tone, is the Patriarch of
   Alexandria.'

   Why does he scowl so heavily at me when he looks this way?'

   Because of jealousy, defeated intrigue, envy, hatred, malice, and all
   uncharitableness.'

   Impossible, surely!' said Chrysostom. I have never seen him before. How
   can I possibly have wronged him?'

   I cannot tell you the whole story; but he wanted his presbyter,
   Isidore, elected instead of you. The man has a sinister and evil eye.
   May Christ protect you from it!'

   Amen,' muttered Chrysostom. I will speak to him after the banquet in
   all friendliness. But will the Emperor like us to talk in this way, and
   neglect him?'

   Oh!' said Eutropius, laughing, His Eter---- I beg your pardon, his
   Sublimity, is more than half-asleep already, and will be fast asleep
   soon. He will not notice.'

   Well, then,' said Chysostom, tell me the names of those two Gothic
   warriors sitting near the top of the tables below us.'

   The elder is Fravitta,' said Eutropius. Though he is a Pagan, as his
   fathers were, he is most friendly to the Empire, and can be absolutely
   trusted. Have you never heard how he saved the life of the Emperor
   Theodosius?'

   No.'

   When you have been here a little longer, and begin to understand the
   intricate wheelwork of our intrigues, you will learn that there are two
   factions of Goths. One is thoroughly loyal to the Empire. It is scanty
   in number, and would be almost impotent if it were not headed by that
   noble Fravitta, a man who rises above the faithlessness of many of his
   fellows. One day Theodosius, who was always kind to the Goths, invited
   some of them to a banquet, unaware that Eriulph, the head of the
   hostile Gothic faction, was plotting to overthrow the Empire. When
   Fravitta and Eriulph grew warm with wine they fiercely quarrelled, and
   Theodosius had to break up the banquet. Fravitta, fearing that Eriulph
   directly he left the palace would stir up a civil war, impetuously drew
   his sword, and, taunting him with treachery, stabbed him to the heart.
   A fierce tumult arose, and Fravitta would have been torn to pieces by
   Eriulph's followers if he had not been saved by the Imperial Guards. It
   is more than lucky for us that the Goths are not at one.'

   Do you foment their disagreements?'

   On that subject,' said Eutropius, smiling, as Æschylus says, "A great
   ox hath passed upon my tongue."'

   This man,' he thought to himself, has no idea of diplomatic secrets. He
   divines everything by sheer force of honesty.'

   The Chamberlain was quite right, for Chrysostom replied:

   I see you have not forgotten the old Roman secret of "Divide and rule."
   But who is the other Goth?'

   An entirely different kind of person. He is an Arian; and all the Goths
   are so devoted to the memory of their missionary, Wulfila, that I doubt
   their ever being converted to orthodoxy. You must have heard his name
   often, for he has played a great part in recent events. It was he who
   brought down God's vengeance on the guilty head of Rufinus. It is
   Gaïnas.'

   Chrysostom did not like the bitter tone in which the words were spoken;
   but as he was silent Eutropius continued:

   Do you not mark his discontented look? He is a conspirator, and will, I
   fear, create trouble from his influence over the army. Near him is his
   countryman, the barbarous Tribigild, and, if I am not much mistaken,
   they are at this moment hatching perilous plots.'

   I see a group of bishops seated at yonder table.'

   Yes, they are assembled under the presidency of Theophilus to settle
   some small ecclesiastical matter. Some of them have been here for
   weeks. Constantinople is constantly full of bishops. One cannot walk
   down the Chalkoprateia without stumbling across them. I see them very
   frequently at my humble abode,' he added--his eyes and features all
   a-twinkle, as they always were when some mischievous fancy reminded him
   of men's weaknesses.

   I wish they would remain in their own dioceses,' thought Chrysostom,
   with a sigh; but he only said; It would be kind if you would tell me
   the names of one or two of them, that I may address them afterwards.'

   Well, if I may lay aside formality in talking to your Beati---- Oh! I
   beg your pardon. Well, in talking about bishops, I will describe the
   one or two of them whom I know best. You see that ponderous--I had
   almost said elephantine--specimen of humanity? That is Maruthas, Bishop
   of Mesopotamia. The little, slim, highly venomous-looking
   personage----'

   Chrysostom looked reproof, and Eutropius, more and more convinced that
   his Patriarch was quite a new phenomenon at Constantinople, said:

   Oh ! I mean nothing; but for freedom's sake let me talk in my own way.
   After all, my dear Archbishop, I am simply telling you the bald truth
   about the man, and setting down nought in malice. You will be able,
   later on, to judge for yourself. Well, the small man is Cyrinus, Bishop
   of Chalcedon. That portly, handsome, florid ecclesiastic, who looks as
   if one of our thousand palace-barbers had arranged his curls as well as
   those of the pages, is Severian, Bishop of Gabala, who would be
   exceedingly glad--if he could--to be bishop of something else. I could
   tell you a good deal about him, but I do not wish to shock your
   charity. Lastly, not to weary you, the old gentleman who is so heartily
   enjoying his dinner is Acacius, Bishop of Beroea.'

   I wish, Chamberlain, you would speak more respectfully of the bishops.'

   I have caught a Hun, as Leo remarked,' thought Eutropius. He does
   nothing but reprove me. No other presbyter or bishop speaks to me like
   this.'

   Seriously, and quite apart from all levity,' he said, 'I wish I could.
   But, in sober truth, I have not found that even the most exalted
   pretensions always carry with them the most elementary Christian
   graces. Sadly I say it to you, I find their Religiosities just as
   worldly and ambitious, just as unfair and bitter, as any of us poor
   laymen. Like priest, like people.'

   Yes,' said Chrysostom, with a deep sigh, but the reverse is also true.
   Priests are what people make them. But there is one ecclesiastic whose
   face and manner profoundly interests me, and you have not told me who
   he is.'

   That,' said Eutropius, laughing aloud, is a very distinguished
   person--Synesius of Cyrene.' [9]

   I have heard of him. He is a brilliant writer. But why do you laugh?'

   He is a great man,' said the Chamberlain, a poet, an orator, honest to
   the heart's core, but the oddest mixture in the whole Church. I suppose
   he is an orthodox Christian, but he is a pupil and ardent admirer of
   the beautiful Pagan Neo-platonist, Hypatia. He is also a most
   enthusiastic sportsman, breeder of horses, and patriot. He is,
   moreover, a married man. He loves profane studies, is not very sure of
   the Resurrection, and----'

   Then how did he become a bishop?'

   You must ask Theophilus, who overcame his scruples, allows him to
   philosophise at home, and excused him from preaching what he calls
   "fables" abroad. But then, he has a genealogy of seventeen centuries,
   and much must be naturally excused to a lineal descendant of Hercules
   and the Spartan kings!'

   What brought him to Constantinople?' asked the Archbishop, without
   noticing the sarcasm.

   He came as a sort of ambassador from Cyrene; and by the interest of his
   friends, to say nothing of the crown of gold which he brought to
   Arcadius, he was allowed to deliver a great oration on the "duty of
   kings" before the Emperor and his Court. I never heard such audacity in
   my life!' (Even you would hardly have surpassed its boldness,' he added
   mentally.) In the plainest way he arraigned the Emperor and the whole
   official system, and even me! If his----if the Emperor had not been
   fast asleep long before he got to the middle, and if I had not been
   very tolerant, the strange bishop might have lost his head. But people
   do me injustice. I am a very kindly and merciful person.'

   Why, what did he say?'

   It is easier to tell you what he didn't say, for he passed a sweepingly
   comprehensive condemnation on things in general. He represents what is
   called the Roman party. He called the Goths "Scythian fugitives";
   openly blamed Theodosius for admitting them into the army and into
   dignities; denounced them for avarice and contempt of our civilisation,
   and compared them to the stone suspended over the head of Tantalus. He
   told the Emperor--most lucky for Synesius that he was asleep--that he
   ought to be like his predecessors, who were soldiers in fight, leaders
   in counsel, flying hither and thither to defend the Empire, and that he
   should entrust our defence to a native army, not to barbarian
   mercenaries, whom he ought either to reduce to the condition of helots
   or to drive back into the solitudes of Scythia. I expected to see
   Gaïnas or one of them send an arrow through his heart, but, luckily,
   most of them did not understand half he said.'

   'Was the Emperor much influenced by his oration?'

   Eutropius laughed long and loud.

   'I have told you he did not really hear it, and knew nothing about it,
   though it was the talk of all Constantinople. His only remark was that
   it was dull and very long. The next thing he did was to make Alaric the
   Visigoth Master-General of Illyricum. After all, what can Arcadius do?
   Have not our native troops become so slothful that, in the reign of
   Gratian, they actually laid aside their defensive armour because it
   bored them to wear it? Alas! we live in degenerate days. Our soldiers
   now wear neither helmet nor cuirass, nor carry broadsword, nor pilum,
   nor even shields! Most of them have sunk down to miserable bows.'

   But to object to foreign mercenaries was hardly to attack the Emperor.'

   No; but he went on to say that a king who knows nothing about soldiers
   is like a cobbler who knows nothing about shoes; and then--after the
   condescending remark, "Do not be vexed at what I say; the fault is not
   yours"--he actually declared that the ruin of the Empire was due to
   surrounding the king with a theatrical pomp and semblance of "Divine
   mystery." "It reduces you" (this to the Emperor!) "to a sort of State
   prisoner. You see nothing, you hear nothing that can be of any use to
   you. Your only pleasures are sensual. You live the life of a sea
   anemone!" Imagine anyone saying this to a Theodosius! If he had said it
   to Valentinian he would have been flung to the bears in no time. Then
   he continued: "You think yourself great because you are arrayed in
   purple and gold; because you have gems from mountains and barbarous
   seas in your hair, your sandals, your robe, your girdle, your ears,
   your seats; and because, by walking on gold dust, you indulge the very
   soles of your feet in luxury. Things were far better when emperors were
   men with tanned faces, of simple habits, and in coarse dress."'

   But you were awake if the Emperor was not. Did he attack you?'

   I should think he did!' said Eutropius. 'He accused the Emperor of
   repelling the wise and noble, and admitting to his familiarity mere
   counterfeits of humanity. "You patronise men," he said, "with small
   heads and scanty brains, with idiotic grins and equally idiotic tears,
   to relieve by buffoonery the cloud of tedium brought upon you by the
   unnatural character of your life." But you see the satire was too
   ludicrous to hurt me; otherwise he should have had the fate of----'

   Of----?' asked Chrysostom.

   'Never mind,' said Eutropius.

   He was ashamed to blazon the wicked and ungrateful revenge which he had
   inflicted on Abundantius, who had first introduced him into the palace,
   and whom he had driven into beggary at Sidon; on the sausage-seller
   Bargus, whom he had used as his tool to defame and ruin the brave
   general, Timasius; and on Timasius himself, whom, by virtue of the
   forgeries of Bargus, he had got banished to Libya, where he was never
   heard of again. His widow Pentadia only saved herself by flying into
   sanctuary.

   But at this point Arcadius began to show signs of vitality, and
   dismissed the guests. Chrysostom was deeply troubled by much that he
   had seen and heard. He paid his homage to the Emperor and Empress, and
   took the earliest opportunity to retire to his home.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [9] I have ventured here on a slight anachronism. Synesius was at
   Constantinople for three years about this time, but he did not become a
   bishop till a.d. 410.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XX

  FIRST IMPRESSIONS

     And yet bubbles o'er like a city with gossip, scandal, and spite.

     Tennyson.

   On February 26, 398, the humble Presbyter of Antioch attained the
   dignity for which so many had longed, intrigued, and bribed, and which
   myriads of ecclesiastics would have regarded as uplifting them into the
   seventh heaven of gratified ambition and satisfied desires.

   The imposing ceremony took place in the cathedral of Constantinople,
   the great Church of St. Sophia. Its magnificence illustrated the
   altered fortunes of Christianity since Constantine had first placed the
   jewelled cross on the purple silk of his labarum. Its great doors were
   of shining bronze enriched with bas-reliefs; the windows were formed of
   thin slices of alabaster and other transparent marbles. The pillars and
   their capitals, carved with foliage, were all of porphyry or of
   Numidian giallo-antico. The floors were of lustrous and many-coloured
   marbles, with which also the walls were tessellated; the domes and
   architraves were inlaid with mosaic on a gold ground, and picked out
   with polychromes of blue and vermilion. [10] The Holy Table, which even
   then had begun by a false analogy to receive the unscriptural and
   unprimitive designation of altar,' stood in front of the apse, not
   against the wall, but in the middle of the chancel space. It was of
   gold decorated with precious stones, and between the columns which
   supported it hung curtains of silk, embroidered in gold with figures of
   our Lord, St. John the Baptist, and St. Paul. The iconostasis was of
   silver, with a frieze of medallions representing Christ, the Virgin
   Mary, and the Apostles. In the apse was the Throne of the Patriarch and
   the synthronus, or stalls of the presbyters, which were canopied and
   were of silver-gilt. The choir extended nearly as far as the ambo, or
   reader's pulpit, which was of precious marbles with mosaics of lambs,
   doves, fishes, and peacocks, inlaid with gems. It was ascended by two
   flights of steps, one on the west side, one on the east, and the canopy
   above it rested on eight columns. The space below it, enclosed by
   railings, was occupied by the choir and the readers. The soleas, or
   division which marked off the seats of the clergy, was made of onyx.
   The tapestries which usually shrouded the sanctuary were drawn back for
   the service. The seats for the Emperor and Empress were on the south
   side; and not only were they present, but they came in their utmost
   pomp, attended with crowds of perfectissimi and illustres arrayed in
   their most brilliant robes.

   Chrysostom was consecrated Archbishop by the darkly scowling
   Theophilus, and was the reverse of happy. The rasping voice of the
   wicked and black-browed Patriarch of Alexandria was hoarse with
   antagonism. It almost made him shudder, by the same subtle instinct
   which makes the nobler animals tremble at the hiss of the serpent. He
   felt the man's magnetic hatred, jealousy, and burning spirit of revenge
   in his very touch. But, besides this, he could not but mourn that God
   had called him to a work which he felt would be painful and stormy. He
   sighed for the love which had surrounded him in Antioch, and even more
   for the peaceful days of his monastery and mountain-cave. What were
   these rich carpets and gleaming floors to the grass that groweth on the
   mountains, and the lilies in the valleys of Mount Amanus? What were
   these crimson and gold-embroidered tapestries to the shadows of the
   blossoming trees on the banks of his loved Orontes? How could he ever
   acquire over this luxurious, turbulent, money-loving, pleasure-hunting,
   worldly throng of curious strangers, of whom so many were already
   inclined to hate him, the gentle influence which he had wielded over
   his former flock?

   With a heavy heart and a mind over which flitted many a sombre cloud of
   misgiving he uttered his enthronisation discourse. In it he touched on
   the various spheres of duty which he regarded as belonging to his place
   as Archbishop of this metropolitan see. As yet, of course, he could
   only speak generally. There are still Pagans,' he said, in
   Constantinople: I will try to win them by setting a Christian example,
   and endeavouring to promote the true ideal of the Christian life. There
   are many Arians and other heretics: I will use no other weapon against
   them than the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. I will be
   a bishop, not a gladiator. I hate as unchristian the bitter spirit of
   unfairness in theological controversy. I repudiate as execrable the use
   of violence in ecclesiastical propaganda. Rather than exacerbate
   differences, I will willingly incur the ignorant calumny aimed at the
   great Basil of Cæsarea, that his teaching was like a river avoiding
   rocks to hide itself in sands. Theological battles and ecclesiastical
   cabals are an incomparably poorer proof of orthodoxy than simple
   faithfulness. "The bees," said Basil, "fly in swarms, and do not
   begrudge each other the flowers. It is not so with us. We are not at
   unity. More eager about his own wrath than his own salvation, each aims
   his sting against his neighbour." And, because of this, Basil was
   called a heretic! But his only answer was: "I have determined to
   neglect no labour, to shun no humble word or deed, to excuse myself
   going no journey, to decline no burden, if I may obtain the reward of
   the peacemaker."' 'As for myself,' said Chrysostom, I will, God helping
   me, boldly rebuke vice; I will make no agreements with death, no
   covenant with hell. In marshalling the hosts of righteousness to the
   Armageddon battle against sin, the trumpet in my hands shall give no
   uncertain sound. To wickedness and vice I must, by the very call of
   God, be an uncompromising enemy; but to the offenders themselves I
   would ever act in the spirit of compassion, and, as far as in me lies,
   will live peaceably with all men. But, beloved, man is nothing. God is
   all-in-all. Oh! help me by your sympathy! Oh! support me by your
   prayers!'

   The sermon was not one of Chrysostom's greatest. There was but little
   of the cadenced rhetoric, little of the Asiatic luxuriance, nothing of
   the volcanic passion. Yet there was enough to show to the good that he
   was a good man, that he would not be one of those who mistake pride for
   dignity, or require people to speak to him out of the dust. But most of
   the fashionables in the audience were disappointed by what they
   regarded as the tameness of the discourse, and they said so to one
   another with little circumlocution.

   It is a merciful provision that preachers do not hear the remarks and
   criticisms of their dispersing congregations. At every door such
   remarks hover in the air, like flocks of ravens, to peck away any good
   seed which may chance to lie on the trodden road of men's hearts.

   But Philip, who was not known by sight, did hear many of the remarks
   that were made, as he stood by the great bronze door, waiting for
   Chrysostom to come out, that he might conduct him home.

   A group of ladies passed by. How very poor! How very tame! No dazzling
   metaphor; no flights of rhetoric!'

   Ah!' thought Philip, it won't be long before you, my fine ladies, will
   have eloquence enough for you. I hope it won't singe your gay feathers
   too severely.'

   I thought the fellow could speak,' said an exquisite, who had intrigued
   and bribed in vain for Isaac the Monk. 'Why, he was as heavy as lead
   and as dull as ditch-water!'

   A group of bishops passed by, escorting Theophilus of Alexandria. They
   were talking in tones which showed that they did not in the least
   object to be heard.

   I feel sure he is secretly unsound,' said Cyrinus of Chalcedon,
   venomously. Look how leniently he spoke of heretics.'

   Yes,' said Severian of Gabala, he will be like Theramenes, whom the
   Greeks called "Cothurnus," because that buskin fits on either foot; or
   rather, as the proverb says, "more slippery than a slipper."'

   A regular trimmer, I fear,' murmured Antiochus of Ptolemais;--and an
   alarmed titter, instantly suppressed, ran through the group, for
   everyone knew that 'Amphallax,' or 'Trimmer,' was a recognised nickname
   of Theophilus, and the black look which the Alexandrian turned on the
   speaker seemed as though he took an accidental slip for an intentional
   insult.

   What does your Sanctity think?' asked Isaac the Monk in a deferential
   tone.

   I think,' said Theophilus, savagely, that if we give him enough rope he
   will soon hang himself.'

   Who would have supposed,' murmured the priest Elpidius, who had founded
   a cheap reputation for wit on vapid malignities, that even as an orator
   we should so soon have to regret Nectarius?'

   Philip was literally boiling over with indignation as he watched the
   receding group. These be your Christian bishops!' he muttered. It is
   almost enough to make one turn Pagan. What! more of them?' he said, for
   another group of ecclesiastics was approaching.

   Not one appeal to the clergy! Not one compliment to them!' said a
   presbyter. What a churl he must be! Look how Archbishop Gregory of
   Nazianzus publicly praised Maximus the Cynic.'

   A most unlucky instance;' said the Archdeacon Serapion, with much
   scorn, seeing that Maximus turned out to be a rogue of the deepest
   dye.'

   Hurrah!' said Philip to himself, the priestling did not get the best of
   that.'

   Next passed Eutropius, with Osius, Leo, and others of his parasites.

   Surely, surely, Eutropius,' said Osius, he might have said at least one
   word of gratitude to you, who lifted him out of nothing.'

   I did not expect it,' said Eutropius. He despises me, but I respect
   him. He is a true man.'

   Well said, Chamberlain!' thought Philip; in spite of your crimes you
   are--or, if the baseness of the world would have let you, would have
   been--more of a man than the men who fool you to the top of your bent.'

   He might at least have said something of his Eternity the Emperor and
   of the lovely, pious Empress,' said the fat and waddling Leo.

   I wonder whether a lion ever dies of asses' kicks?' muttered the young
   Antiochene, shaking his fist at Leo's retreating back.

   Ah! my young friend,' said Aurelian, who at that moment was passing out
   of church with Amantius, and noticed the gesture, your master is
   coming. Look after him. He will need all your care in the sink of
   virulence and vileness which he will find in Constantinople.'

   I will, sir,' said Philip. In courage, in nobleness, in learning, he is
   a man of men; but in domestic matters he is a child.'

   I have already noticed,' said Amantius, that he is but little versed in
   the world's ways. You may be most useful to him, Philip. I am very glad
   that we let you come with him.'
     __________________________________________________________________

   [10] The Church of St. Sophia is described by Paul the Silentiary and
   others. The descriptions apply to the Church of Justinian, but are
   generally true of the other church also.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXI

  ANXIETIES AND TROUBLES, FRIENDS AND FOES

     Insomnes longo veniunt examine Curæ.

   Claud., In Ruf. i. 38.

   Chrysostom's first care after his enthronisation was to arrange his
   household, and then to master the manifold duties--diocesan, social,
   and patriarchal--of his high station.

   His faithful servants had come from Antioch, and had brought with them
   the simple furniture of his paternal home. Old Phlegon was installed as
   porter at the Patriarcheion; and when he was vexed with the throngs of
   visitors and the incessant summonses which brought him out of his
   porter's cell, he sighed for Singon Street as much as his master.
   Social duties lay on Chrysostom with a heavier weight than the work of
   his archiepiscopate. Nectarius had given frequent and superb
   entertainments, not only to the bishops who visited Constantinople from
   every quarter of the world and to the leading clergy, but also to the
   prætorian præfects, the great senators, and all the high Court
   officials. The Emperor himself had sometimes been his guest. It would
   have been profoundly distasteful to Chrysostom to undertake anything of
   the kind. Valuing all the intercourse of private life which might be
   used for high and noble ends, he shrank from the pleasures and
   unprofitable frivolities of society as from a dreary and barren Sahara.
   He was impatient of the quotidian ague of frigid impertinences.' This
   was soon discovered by the worldly, the dissipated, and the idle, the
   illustrious dandies, and the fine ladies. The very aspect of the
   Archbishop's Palace became so severely simple that it kept them off.

   Philip,' said Chrysostom, I cannot bear the sight of all these curtains
   and tapestries and gorgeous superfluities. The bishops tell me that
   there is no harm in them; that hospitality is a duty; that I have a
   position to keep up, and so forth. It may be so. I blame neither
   Nectarius nor anyone else; but as for me, these things always seem to
   reproach my hermit notions with the thought of the carpenter's shop at
   Nazareth, and of Him Who

   had not where to lay His head. Surely St. Peter or St. John had a
   position to keep up, yet did not need these outward splendours to help
   them? You must get rid of them all for me.'

   But, your Beatitude----' said Philip.

   Nay, nay, my boy. If I must bear those tinsel titles from others, never
   call me by any other address than "Bishop" in public, and in private
   (as I told you) use the old, dear name of "father," as at Antioch.'

   Well, my father, my best happiness is to save you trouble in every
   way.'

   And you do, dear Philip. Often, when I have a happy, quiet hour in my
   study or in the garden, with St. Matthew, or the Acts of the Apostles,
   or the works of Basil and Gregory on my table, I know that you are
   doing all kinds of necessary business for me, and sheltering me from
   needless worries in matters in which I am helpless. And I know that you
   do it all kindly, courteously, and with perfect tact.'

   That was quite true. Philip was Chrysostom's controller of the
   household, master of the ceremonies, and factotum. He meddled, of
   course, with no ecclesiastical business, except in arranging mere
   outward details. All that was done by Serapion, the Archdeacon.
   Serapion's position near Chrysostom was a misfortune to him. He was a
   true man, but was blunt and brusque; the mass of the clergy hated him
   because of his plain forthrightness and impatience of all shams. But
   Philip managed the servants, arranged all domestic matters, saw
   importunate beggars, deftly dealt with various genera of lunatics who
   came to the Patriarch with peculiar hobbies, inspirations, and
   discoveries about the Apocalypse; answered all merely business letters;
   kept an eye on tradesmen; fended his master from fussy intrusiveness;
   sifted the visitors who might or might not see the Patriarch; acted as
   an invaluable screen between the Archbishop and the irrelevancies,
   nonentities, and little nothings which would otherwise have wasted his
   time and worried his temper. And all this he did with consummate
   fidelity and grace. He might have abused his really important position
   in a thousand ways. Many tried to flatter, and even to bribe him, and
   to induce him to pull the wires for them and their interests as though
   he had been a Palace official. But though he was always bright,
   good-natured, and exquisitely courteous, he had rejected the overtures
   of party intriguers and slanderers with such contempt and indignation
   that it speedily became known that he was useless except for all
   honourable and disinterested ends, and had no sympathy with prejudices,
   private interests, or partial affections.'

   What am I to do with the grandeurs, father?' he asked.

   Sell them, and give the money to the poor.'

   As to selling them, I can manage that, if you wish it. I have made a
   friend named Michael in the Chalkoprateia, who is the soul of honesty
   and holiness, and he can get that done for us easily. But on what
   principle will you give them to the poor?'

   There are thousands of the poor in Constantinople, Philip. At every
   door of Dives there lie a multitude of starving Lazaruses, who watch
   the banquets and purple and fine linen. They even throng the
   church-doors.'

   Yes, but the difficulty is to know the real Lazarus from all the sham
   ones. The impostures of the beggars are, as you know, sickening and
   endless. Some of them actually blind and maim their own children to
   make money by them. They terrify weak women by menaces or by
   adjurations, and are mixed up in many villainies.'

   You are right, Philip. One must not encourage the wretched and wicked
   trade of mendicity, which makes not a few nominal beggars rich. We must
   never give without some inquiry.'

   Even that does not always insure certainty,' said Philip. You know
   young Eutyches--that beautiful half-Gothic lad, left an orphan--the
   youth who looks as if he wore a nimbus when the sun shines through his
   light hair! Don't you know him yet? Well, he is being trained for a
   reader, and the deacons sometimes send him on messages. The other day a
   woman had come to them in paroxysms of distress, saying that her
   husband was dead, leaving her with five young children, and that she
   had no money to bury him. They sent Eutyches to inquire. He heard some
   shuffling before he was admitted, but the woman told him that all her
   children were out, and pointed to the figure of her dead husband, who
   was laid out on a long bier, under a covering. When Eutyches returned
   to the deacon--the house was at a distance, near the Forum of
   Constantine--he found that he had forgotten his tablets. Coming back
   for them, and entering suddenly, he surprised the corpse in the act of
   reading his tablets and eating a large dish of sausages.'

   Chrysostom laughed, and then sighed.

   I do not mean to lavish the money, as our saintly friend Olympias does.
   I mean to give it to found one or two greatly needed hospitals for
   lepers and others, as the Lady Fabiola has done in Rome, and as Basil
   did at Cæsarea. I shall want large funds. You must sell for me not only
   the magnificent furniture, but all those fine, pompous robes.'

   What! the pontifical vestments?'

   Yes. I cannot be pageanted about the cathedral as if I were some gaudy
   idol. Paul had but his one sea-stained cloak, for which he wrote to
   Troas; John had his garment of camel's hair.'

   But the High Priest had his golden robes and ardent Urim.'

   We have no High Priest but Christ, Philip, nor are we Jews. Moreover,
   the High Priest only wore his robes for half an hour on one day in the
   whole year; ordinarily he dressed in simple white linen.'

   You will offend the clergy.'

   I would not willingly offend them. But these sacerdotal pomps are a
   thing of yesterday; they represent no needs, and real needs are
   clamorously urgent. The great Basil wore one old threadbare dress;
   Ambrose sold even his church plate to redeem captives; and I am told
   that my brilliant and saintly brother, Augustine, who three years ago
   was made Bishop of Hippo against his will, when a gorgeous cope is
   given him, declines to wear it, and sells it for the common good.'

   They shall be sold,' said Philip. But, father, may I say something
   more, or are you too busy?'

   You never waste my time, Philip.'

   Well then, father, if I am to help you, I have really more to do than I
   can manage. May I have a fellow-secretary--or even two?'

   Certainly you may, Philip. I have noticed lately that you seemed
   overworked.'

   Thanks, father. Then give me Eutyches for one assistant. He is as good
   as he is beautiful; I never knew a whiter soul. And for the other----'
   Philip paused and blushed.

   Who is it?'

   Father, it is the son of Michael, whom I mentioned. His name is David.
   He is seventeen, writes swiftly and exquisitely, is very clever, knows
   Latin and Hebrew, as well as Greek. He would make you a first-rate
   secretary and attendant.'

   What! he knows Hebrew? Is he a Jew?'

   No,' said Philip, a baptised Christian, and a real one, as his
   ancestors have been for nearly four centuries; but of Jewish race, and
   that,' he added in an awestruck tone, 'the highest, the very, very
   highest.'

   You interest me,' said Chrysostom.

   Father, you know that the Jews keep their genealogies most sacredly.
   Bishop Synesius says he is descended from Hercules. Well, my David is
   descended from King David; and more than that.'

   More than that?'

   Yes. You know that there was a family in Palestine called the
   Desposyni, because they were the earthly relatives of St. Joseph and
   the Blessed Virgin.'

   I know it,' said Chrysostom. The Emperor Domitian, in jealousy, sent
   for them to Rome in a.d. 94, as though they were claimants for a
   kingdom. They told him that they were of the family of Nazareth, and
   had for years cultivated the little farm which they had inherited. And
   when he saw that their hands were hard and horny with labour, he
   dismissed them with contempt, as though they were insignificant
   peasants.'

   The descendants of the family still exist. Father, Michael and David,
   though out of deepest reverence they never speak of it, are of the
   family of the Desposyni.'

   Chrysostom was awestruck. But how did you discover the secret, Philip?'

   I was in the Chalkoprateia when I saw people rushing away from a dog
   which was snapping and foaming, and was evidently mad. A little crying,
   half-naked child of five was in its path, and was in terrible danger. I
   rushed after the dog, and luckily seized it by the back of the neck. At
   the same moment I saw Michael spring out of his bronzesmith's shop, and
   catch up the child in his arms. The great fountain is close by, and
   some good angel inspired me to hold the dog under water till it was
   drowned. I was frightened, and suppose I looked pale; and as I passed
   Michael's shop David stepped out and invited me to come in. There they
   gave me some delicious libbân and pure wine. On the wall I saw a little
   simple painting of the youthful Christ, copied, Michael told me, from
   one in the catacomb of St. Callistus at Rome. It could only have been
   fancy, but David looked to me exactly like that picture--so happy, so
   pure. Michael seemed greatly pleased with my seizing the mad dog, and
   in talking he told me about his descent. He said I might tell you, but
   no one else. Then David and I took the little child to the deacon's,
   who restored him to his home.'

   You must ask Michael to bring David, and come to see me.'

   I will. But, dear father, I would not conceal anything from you.'
   Philip seemed embarrassed, and a still deeper blush mounted on his
   cheek. 'David has a very beautiful young sister. I saw her that day,
   and have seen her since.'

   Philip, has Love lit his torch in your heart? I have ever hoped that
   you would some day be one of my presbyters.'

   No, father, that can never be. I feel no vocation for that sacred work;
   and, to tell the honest truth, what I have seen of most of the clergy
   here does not make me wish to join them. When I hear their worldly
   plans and slanderous speeches--when (pardon my frankness, father!) I
   contrast their immense pretensions with their very scanty virtues--it
   almost seems to me as if a man like the Chamberlain Amantius or the
   tradesman Michael were far nearer than they are to the Kingdom of
   Heaven. Father, have I your sanction, if I can win Miriam's love?'

   Philip,' said Chrysostom, 'your happiness is dearer to me than my own;
   but ah!----'

   He thought of the day when Philip must inevitably leave him, and he was
   too old to make new friends. But he would have been the last to let
   selfish feelings stand in the way of the happiness of a youth, or of
   anyone whom he loved.

   I am sorry you cannot seek the priesthood, Philip,' he said; but God
   bless you! The callings of men are different, and many (I know) serve
   Him unspeakably better in the world than some do in the priesthood.'

   So Eutyches and David were duly installed with Philip as secretaries
   and acolytes. There was ample work for them to do, and it was not often
   that all three could be in the anteroom at one time, for there were
   constant messages to be taken, and visits paid, and details arranged.
   But they were happy of temperament and they were young and pure of
   heart, and in their presence and ready faithfulness Chrysostom found
   some of the scanty happiness of his troubled life.

   The room in which they sat communicated with Chrysostom's study, and
   was curtained off from the large outer hall called Thomaites. If the
   Archbishop was engaged, visitors of importance often sat to wait in the
   room of the three youths, or on divans beyond the curtain.

   In the hall itself often sat Serapion, the Archdeacon, who saw the
   clergy, heard their petitions or complaints, and gave them any advice
   or assistance which did not necessitate the intervention or sanction of
   the Archbishop.

   Philip soon became well acquainted with such true friends of Chrysostom
   as had no private interests to serve, and were attracted rather than
   repelled by his unworldly simplicity. Among these was a group of noble
   and saintly ladies. The society ladies of Constantinople--the Marsas,
   Castricias, and Epigraphias--at first thought the dear Archbishop' on
   the whole piquant, and declared that they should like him; but soon
   found his sincerity alarming, and began to bewail their lost Nectarius,
   who never rebuked them, but was always ready to exchange courtly
   compliments. He, in his rare sermons, distressed no conscience, but
   steered triumphantly through the shallow waves of platitude. But there
   were some ladies who, themselves earnest and sincere, were drawn as
   with a powerful magnet by the unmistakable earnestness and sincerity of
   Chrysostom. Foremost among these was the beautiful, noble, and wealthy
   Olympias. Daughter of a count of the Empire, who left her the heiress
   of an immense fortune, she had been wedded in early youth to the young
   and handsome Nebridius, who, after two years, left her a childless
   widow. A widow she determined to remain, and to devote her life to
   good. She even braved the wrath of Theodosius by refusing to marry one
   of his kinsmen. Gregory of Nazianzus, while he was Patriarch, had loved
   her as a daughter, calling her his own Olympias'. Gregory of Nyssa had
   dedicated to her his Commentary on the Song of Songs, written at her
   request. Her good deeds and austerities were known to the whole Church,
   and her palace was the constant home of bishops, who rarely left her
   without immense grants in aid of their dioceses. Her gifts were so
   lavish and so freely bestowed that ecclesiastics of the baser sort
   preyed on her credulity. Among these was Theophilus, who on one
   occasion prostrated himself before her in a burst of crocodile
   gratitude and kissed her knees, which so shocked her humility that she
   flung herself with tears at his feet. Nectarius had made her a
   deaconess, and, being entirely ignorant himself, frequently consulted
   her. She was now at the head of a little college of younger
   deaconesses. She became the almoner of Chrysostom, and helped him in
   his great missionary and other designs, both at home and abroad. It was
   his painful duty to warn her against the exploitations of Theophilus
   and other episcopal vultures. He told her that she was responsible to
   God for the use of her vast wealth, which should be not merely lavish,
   but also wise and well considered. Part of the many sources of fury
   against Chrysostom in the bad heart of Theophilus and other bishops was
   due to the fact that he had dried up a fountain of beneficence which
   was wasting itself in barren sands.

   Another devoted Church-worker was the virgin Nicarete. She was so
   humble that, in spite of a host of good deeds, she would never become a
   deaconess or accept the headship of the Consecrated Virgins, which the
   Patriarch pressed upon her. Her little foible was the belief that she
   was herself more skilled in healing than any professional physician.
   She went about with her little box of drugs and simples, which she
   pressed upon all with affectionate and confiding solicitude.

   No, Lady Nicarete, no pills for me to-day, thank you,' said Philip, as
   he laughingly ushered her into Chrysostom's room; I am in riotous
   health, which I do not wish to be disturbed.'

   Foolish boy!' said Nicarete, smiling. But now, does not your young
   friend Eutyches want a little medicine? He looks pale.'

   Pale!' said Philip, why there is a whole Daphne of roses on his cheeks!
   And, Nicarete, I really must interdict you from pressing any of the
   contents of your medicine-box on the Archbishop. He is not in riotous
   health, but his digestion is in a sufficient state of conflagration
   already, and he is so good-natured that he will destroy himself by
   taking all you give him.'

   You naughty lad!' said Nicarete; how shall I punish your sauciness?
   Eutyches is much more polite.'

   That is because he takes your prescriptions like an angel; but if you
   look in his drawer, you will find them all there, untouched.'

   Don't you mind what he says, Lady Nicarete,' said Eutyches; he laughs
   at us all.'

   Far different from Nicarete was the deaconess Salvina. She, too, was of
   the noblest rank--a daughter of the unhappy rebel, Gildo, Count of
   Africa, and the widow of the nephew of the Empress Flaccilla, who had
   been educated with Arcadius and Honorius. She had two children, and,
   young as she was, determined to remain a widow. She devoted herself to
   good works, and became the patroness of the Churches of the East, and
   of all the clergy who visited the Court of Arcadius. Such was her fame
   that even St. Jerome had from his cell at Bethlehem written her one of
   his anti-matrimonial letters, of which the tone would have been
   resented in our days as supremely distasteful. Her life was absorbed in
   the education of her son and daughter, the due management of her
   wealth, and the service of God in all holy works.

   And like her in ardent allegiance to Chrysostom was Pentadia, widow of
   the great Consul and Master of the Forces, Timasius. Eutropius--it was
   one of his basest crimes--had foully done the brave soldier to death by
   the agency of the ungrateful sausage-seller, Bargus, whom Timasius had
   befriended. The general and his son both disappeared--the victims,
   probably, of secret murder--in the oasis of Libya. Eutropius had marked
   out Pentadia also for destruction; but she fled to sanctuary, which, in
   spite of the efforts of the all-powerful Minister, the Archbishop would
   not allow to be violated. When it was safe for her to leave the asylum
   she became a recluse, rarely leaving her home except to go to the
   church, but helping in all sacred and charitable organization.

   These were Chrysostom's friends, and, among the great men of the Court,
   officials of high character like Amantius and Aurelian. And the mass of
   the poorer population of Constantinople soon learnt to be devoted to
   him. They saw in him a sincere and holy man, who, whatever might be his
   faults, had not a single ignoble or personal aim, and whose one object
   it was to support the weak and to fight against oppression, robbery,
   and wrong. But among the clergy very few are mentioned among his
   friends. The quiet, indeed, and the good and the faithful, grappled him
   to their souls with hooks of steel; but those who usually arrogated to
   themselves the title of the Church,' and all their organs of public
   opinion, were fiercely antagonistic to him. They hesitated at no
   calumny, sneers, or falsehood, and as they were the noisy, the pushing,
   and the intriguing, they claimed to be the sole representatives of
   clerical public opinion. To them nothing that Chrysostom could do was
   tolerable, and nothing that he could say was right.

   It happened one day that two of the bishops, who from the first had set
   themselves most determinedly against the Patriarch, though as yet in
   secret, were seated in the great hall, which happened to be empty,
   except that the Archdeacon Serapion was sitting at a table there with
   papers before him. They lounged on the divan by the curtain, which was
   not drawn back, for Olympias was with Chrysostom, consulting about his
   new hospital. They were Cyrinus of Chalcedon and Antiochus of
   Ptolemais; and they began to indulge in the gossip about the Patriarch
   which was already current in all clerical circles. Serapion, an
   Egyptian by birth, was a hot-headed and yet a taciturn man. They did
   not know his unwavering loyalty, and assumed that he would be a sharer
   in the ordinary ecclesiastical opinion about his chief. At first the
   bishops conversed in low tones, and although they did not exclude
   Serapion from their discussion, they did not often address him. These
   bishops condemned what they were pleased to call the squalid
   niggardliness of the Patriarcheion under the present régime. They
   severely denounced Chrysostom's intention of selling for the poor the
   splendid marbles which Nectarius had collected to decorate the Church
   of the Resurrection. They more than hinted at private peculation. To
   much of this conversation Serapion paid no attention, though he
   sometimes made a contemptuous nod of dissent when they appealed to him.
   But as the bishops lit up the smouldering fumes of each other's malice
   they began to talk in louder and more excited tones.

   He utterly neglects the duties of hospitality,' said Cyrinus, but they
   say that by himself he indulges in Cyclopean orgies.'

   Yes,' said Antiochus, and it is very unseemly that he should be often
   closeted with ladies. Olympias is always with him. She is with him now.
   You really should call his attention to some of these things,
   Archdeacon.'

   These last remarks completely upset Serapion's usual disdainful
   indifference to what people said. He usually followed the rule, Get the
   thing done, and let them howl.' He often compared the tittle-tattle of
   society to the whirring of idle grasshoppers in the fields or the
   monotonous croak of frogs in a malarious marsh.

   He rose from his seat in towering indignation, and, standing in front
   of the astonished prelates, he cried:

   How can you talk in that way? Are you neither afraid nor ashamed to let
   your tongues rage like fires, and worlds of iniquity set aflame of
   hell, and thus to run riot in defaming and defacing your spiritual
   head, who is a saint of God, which you are not? Cyclopean orgies! You
   spend more over one of your meals, Cyrinus, than the Patriarch does in
   six months. And you, Antiochus, is it not an infamy too black even for
   you to hint your foul insinuations not only against Chrysostom, but
   also against a saint like Olympias? Fie on you! You are not worthy to
   be bishops, you are not worthy even to be exorcists of the lowest rank,
   since you have not yet cast the evil spirits out of your own hearts.'

   Had a thunderbolt fallen before the two bishops they could hardly have
   been more amazed than by this outburst. They were bishops, they lived
   amid the incense of flatteries and lordlinesses, and to be addressed
   thus--and by a mere deacon!

   You forget yourself,' said Antiochus, and you forget who we are.'

   I forget not,' answered Serapion hotly. I honour bishops who are
   bishops indeed. I honour not you; I honour not backbiters and
   slanderers.'

   You shall smart for this--you and your master too,' said Cyrinus.

   I know that there are scorpions, and that they can sting. But if God be
   with the right, what has John to fear from you? He shall tread upon the
   adder and the dragon. Go, false bishops, and abase yourselves in the
   dust, if haply the wicked thoughts of your hearts may be forgiven!'

   My cousin, the Patriarch of Alexandria, shall hear of this,' said
   Cyrinus.

   Let him!' said Serapion. I neither respect nor honour him. Go home to
   your neglected sees, you hireling shepherds. You have come here for
   your ambition and your greed, to air your rhetoric and fill your
   purses. I know you, and fear you not.'

   The storm was over. The bishops, without waiting any longer to see the
   Patriarch, swept out of the hall in fierce anger. Serapion's wrath was
   honest, but he had gone too far in giving place to it. What he had said
   was true, but it was dangerous and unwise; and when he went to speak to
   Philip in the anteroom, still throbbing with suppressed passion, he
   told him what had occurred, and admitted that he had done wrong to put
   no curb upon his denunciation.

   You certainly did not spare them, Archdeacon,' said Philip. Really, if
   I had heard such lies and such insinuations I should have found it hard
   not to seize them both by the neck and fling them out.'

   Ah!' said Serapion, you are young, Philip; but I am older, and should
   have put more control upon my feelings.'

   But into what a nest of hornets we have come!' said Philip. '"Cyclopean
   orgies" indeed!' and then the ludicrousness of the accusation struck
   him, and as he thought of the crude apples and thin wine which too
   often constituted Chrysostom's sole meal, he laughed till the room rang
   again.

   Not long after this Chrysostom asked Acacius, Bishop of Beroea, to dine
   with him. He had quite forgotten what Eutropius told him at the
   imperial banquet of the Bishop's foible for good living, and he had
   given no special order for the meal. Acacius, who had been accustomed
   to sup with Nectarius, was mute with surprise. Such a scant meal! and
   not a single dainty! and no Thasian, nor even Chian wine! He waited for
   at least some dainty which should prove that Chrysostom had done honour
   to his episcopal dignity. Chrysostom, entirely unconscious of his
   feelings, was talking to him, not about dinners, but about hospitals,
   and missions to the Persians, and St. Paul's visit to Beroea. Acacius
   got more and more sullen, and determined to go back and dine at home.
   So completely had he lost his equanimity that he exclaimed loudly as he
   passed through the hall, 'I'll cook a dish for him!'

   Philip, who heard the remark, could hardly help laughing, for he was
   quick to see the ludicrous side of things.

   Tantæne animis coelestibus iræ?' he said, turning to David, with whom
   he had been reading Virgil.

   Yes,' said David, smiling, but another Latin poet says:


   Longissima coenæ

   Spes homini.'

   Yet I am sorry, too,' said Philip. Here is one enemy more, and the
   Archbishop has enough already. We lived so simply at Antioch that I
   humbly confess my deficiencies as regards the kitchen department. What
   can one do, Eutyches? An epicure like you ought to be able to advise.'

   The others laughed too, as Eutyches was the most abstemious of the
   three; but he said:

   I will tell you, Philip. You must speak to Olympias. You are no good;
   you let him starve himself, and other people, even me.'

   Philip shook his fist at him.

   I let you off,' he said, only because of your good suggestion. Olympias
   will know all about it.'

   And he?'--the youths often spoke of the Archbishop among themselves as
   he'--'he must ask Acacius again, and give him a Salian banquet.'

   Too late!' said Philip, sighing. The good Bishop will never again
   expose himself to so frightful a risk. When those red herrings came in,
   you should have seen his face!'

   They consulted Olympias, and from that time she looked after
   Chrysostom's kitchen: saw that he had proper food, and that he did not
   starve himself; and that he kept a table for guests which, though in
   comparison with that of his predecessor it was only as moonlight unto
   sunlight, and as water unto wine,' yet was not so wholly inartistic as
   that which had so deeply stirred the wrath of the old Bishop of Beroea.

   But when Olympias mused over the story she was hardly surprised at the
   remark she read in St. Isidore of Pelusium, that there were very few
   bishops who inspired any respect for their holiness; or at what
   Chrysostom himself had said in one of his homilies, that he feared more
   bishops would be lost than saved.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXII

  MANIFOLD STRUGGLES

     Truth is cruel.--Père Hyacinthe.

   Every day brought upon Chrysostom the burden of new and incessant
   duties. The care of Constantinople and its diocese would have been
   enough to exhaust the energies of any man; but the affairs of many
   other dioceses, over which custom gave him a patriarchal jurisdiction,
   came before him; and besides his schemes of reformation and beneficence
   at home, he felt an intense eagerness to further the cause of the
   Gospel by missions among the Persians, the Phoenicians, and other
   nations. Meanwhile he was getting an insight into the general
   corruption and worldliness into which the Church had fallen, and was
   preparing to put in force every possible remedy. He saw on all sides of
   him a Christianity which was a Christianity in name alone; a
   Christianity passionately eager about theological shibboleths; a
   Christianity which plunged into all the vices and follies of the world,
   while it busied itself with all the functions and formulæ of the
   Church; a Christianity which relied for salvation on orthodoxies and
   amulets, while it neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice,
   mercy, and truth. What shocked him most was to find these false forms
   of a Christianity which had become hollow and nominal chiefly rife
   among the clergy. Their condition illustrated 'the eternal Pharisaism
   of the human heart.' They said, and did not. No word was more common on
   their lips than the word scandal.' Every petty divergence from their
   own conventionality, every recognition that the river of the grace of
   God might be deeper and broader than their straight-dug ditches, every
   cordial sign of union with brethren whose opinions or organisation
   differed slightly from their own, was always a scandal'. But the
   scandal of their own pettiness, narrowness, subterranean meanness, and
   total want of charity, was to them a source not of penitence, but of
   pride. The rottenness of dying superstitions and a feeble pretence at
   perverted intellectualism had half strangled Christianity with ever-new
   watchwords and ever-new creeds. Eyes blinded by immoral partisanship
   were incapable of recognising pure goodness. The thin dust on the
   balances of orthodoxy, and small ecclesiastical scrupulosities, had
   become more to them than the solid gold of righteousness and love.
   Strong in their opiniated self-satisfaction, they often yielded without
   a struggle to the coarsest temptations. Their hypocrisy became so
   ingenious that it even deceived themselves, and they voided the most
   envenomed virulence on those who repudiated their pretensions and
   loathed their habitual manoeuvres.

   All this had been seen and had been bewailed already by some of the
   greatest and holiest of the saints of God. Chrysostom had read the
   views of St. Hilary, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Basil, St. Jerome,
   St. Isidore of Pelusium, and St. Nilus, the many letters to lapsed
   virgins and fallen monks, and the many stories of much-admired clerical
   adventurers; but he was slow to admit the reality of the sad condition
   of things which more and more was forcing itself upon his conviction.
   He would not act on impulse or in a hurry; he would wait, and watch,
   and pray, and discriminate, and use his private influence to the
   uttermost before he gave vent to any public utterance or struck any
   open blow.

   It was the Emperor's custom to leave Constantinople in the summer, and
   retire to the voluptuous privacy of Ancyra. The plan had been devised
   by Eutropius, whose one object was so completely to absorb Arcadius in
   luxurious self-indulgence that he might leave all serious business in
   the hands of his Chamberlain. At Constantinople he kept him engaged day
   after day in the Hippodrome and the Circus, where he might see the
   runners, and the chariot-races, and the wrestlers, and the fighters,
   and excite himself, as far as his languor permitted, with the factions
   of the Blue and Green. Lolling and sleeping on soft silken cushions in
   the Kathisma, or Emperor's box, Arcadius could occasionally diversify
   his satiated boredom by looking on while funambulists walked upwards
   and downwards on tight ropes, or gymnasts, to the stupefaction of the
   mob, balanced a pole on their foreheads, on the top of which a little
   boy would go through all sorts of antics. Sometimes a thrill of
   delicious sensation would pass through the audience when the
   funambulist missed his footing and was dashed dead on the orchestra, or
   the boy tumbled from his balanced pole and broke a leg. If such an
   accident tended to cause too much emotion, the jesters called moriones,
   or cordaces, were at hand, who acted the part of clowns, and soon set
   the audience in a roar of laughter.

   But lest monotony should jade the Imperial mind, especially during the
   burning heats of summer, Eutropius had provided the palace at Ancyra.
   The day of the journey was announced, and then the Chamberlain
   gratified the mob of the city with a gorgeous spectacle. On that
   occasion the Emperor always wore a crown of gold set with the most
   precious gems. His robes were of purple silk woven with golden dragons.
   He wore the most splendid of his earrings, and strings of orient pearls
   hung one below another over his breast. The attendant guards were
   decked with golden chains and armlets, and the heads of their lances
   were gilded, with silken streamers of purple pendent from them. The
   Palatini also carried dazzling shields with bosses of gold, round which
   were painted golden eyes. The chariot of the Emperor was a blaze of
   gold, and was covered with thin laminæ of flexile gold, which moved and
   glittered as it advanced. The white mules which drew it were shod with
   gold, their housings were blazoned with golden broidery, and the reins
   glittered with gems. Crowds of bedizened courtiers, and hundreds of
   attendant pages, and eunuchs of every age and of every race, walked in
   sumptuous procession before and behind, through streets thronged with
   thousands of sightseers, many of whom had been patiently waiting since
   the morning to see the palace gates flung open and the pomp issue
   forth. Yet, as one penetrates into the depths of a pyramid, to find at
   last only the ashes of a monkey or a cat, so the centre of universal
   interest was with the occupants of the chariot, and they were only a
   sallow, sleepy youth and a wrinkled, kotowing eunuch. Nevertheless


   the rich retinue long

   Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,

   Dazzled the crowd and set them all agape.

   The procession wended its way to the harbour, where lay crowds of
   gilded barges to convey the Emperor and his Court to the other side of
   the Bosporus, whence they went by land to the soft climate of Phrygia.
   At Ancyra Eutropius amused and enervated the Emperor with banquets, and
   spectacles of dancing-girls, and with every costly diversion which the
   ingenious luxury of idleness could devise.

   Philip and his young friends had watched the Emperor's departure with
   the curiosity and not ungenial cynicism of youth. As for Philip, he was
   an observer of human nature, and never missed the chance of seeing
   anything. Full of fun, he accused David of envying all the glory.

   Why should I envy the bloom on the wings of butterflies?' said David.

   Oh yes, you are a philosopher, David. But you,' he said to Eutyches, 'I
   confess that, in spite of your protesting look, you would give your
   eyes to be one of those processional gentlemen, and strut in gold
   amidst the cheers of the mob. I feel sure that you are saying to
   yourself, "Oh that I could be Eutropius for but one hour!"'

   Eutyches turned to him his laughing face. 'You know better,' he said. I
   greatly prefer to be a clerk at the Patriarch's. As for Eutropius, if I
   had an enemy, and if I wanted to curse him----'

   Two impossible suppositions for you, Eutyches,' said David.

   Well, if I had, and if I could, I should say, change lots with
   Eutropius!'

   Curses wait round him open-eyed,' said Philip, but you would like to be
   Aurelian, now?'

   What, with Typhos, that wicked brother of his, dogging his heels and
   secretly trying to devour him?'

   All very fine, Eutyches; but you know you asked the Patriarch to come
   and see the show.'

   And do you know what he called it?'

   Vanity of vanities, probably,' said Philip.

   Well, something like it. He called it gilded misery and painted tears.
   But, Philip, you are the culprit. You are dying to enjoy an armlet and
   a gold collar, and so you accuse us!'

   Perhaps,' said Philip. Who can tell?'

   An old man in the cloak of a philosopher had overheard them. Ah! young
   man,' he said, Do you want riches, power, honour? Well, I have what you
   desire.' And then he opened and shut his hand three times.

   Is that a sort of incantation?' asked Philip, laughing.

   No,' said the old man. I have grasped the wind.'

   But though the Patriarch had not cared to leave his books and waste his
   time to stare at the procession, he had gone the day before to pay his
   farewell respects to Arcadius, and he had taken the opportunity of
   holding a very serious conversation with the powerful Chamberlain.

   Eutropius welcomed him almost effusively. His presence seemed to the
   favourite to give a touch of reality to a world of phantasms. Most of
   the insects who thronged about his noonday beam he utterly despised. He
   knew the value of the transports with which they kissed his hand or
   grovelled at his feet. He knew that their one object was self-interest,
   and that they would be ready to spit at and trample on him to-morrow if
   his fortunes fell. But among these spectres the presence of Chrysostom
   brought him in contact with a man who desired nothing from him, who
   neither feared nor flattered him, but who did deeply and genuinely
   care, if not for his temporal, yet for his supremest, interests.

   I welcome the visit of your Beatitude,' he said, after Chrysostom's
   simple greeting, though you constantly oppose my wishes and show little
   respect to my office. Why, præfects and patricians have barely left the
   room, every one of whom treated me almost as if I were Emperor, and you
   address me without the smallest approach to ceremony!'

   Do not I thereby honour you? To me you are Eutropius, a soul for whom
   Christ died. To be a Præfect of the Sacred Chamber is little, is
   nothing, but to be a man is something; and if a man be but a beggar,
   and yet a true Christian, his dignity is more glorious than that of
   many an emperor.'

   You have come, I see, to reprove me. I am a clarissimus; I am the
   greatest man under the Emperor. In farthest cities, to the remotest
   corners of the Empire, I wield the sacred power of Arcadius. Suppose I
   refuse to be reproved?'

   You can refuse; but have you never heard the Word: "

   He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his heart shall suddenly be
   cut off, and that without remedy"?'

   But what right have you to lord it over me, as though I were a culprit,
   and you my judge?'

   Nay, nay,' said Chrysostom. As a man I am but your poor fellow-sinner;
   but regard me as the impersonal voice of your own slumbering
   conscience.'

   I am not so black as I am painted,' said Eutropius indignantly, as he
   began to pace to and fro. 'I am not one atom worse, perhaps I am not
   nearly so bad, as many of your bishops and clergy.'

   Ah! how idle are all such comparisons!' said Chrysostom. 'Ultimately,
   for each human being there are but two entities--God and his own soul.
   May I speak to you plainly, Eutropius, not in priestly arrogance, yet
   without subterfuge, without disguise? I speak not as a judge, nor as a
   Pharisee. I would only fain help you to see the eternal realities.'

   Speak,' said Eutropius. You are the only living man from whom I would
   tolerate such freedom.'

   I would ask you, then, To what end is this vast accumulation of wealth,
   this dishonourable traffic in high offices? You are old. How long have
   you to live? Can you carry with you your gold, your estates, your
   palaces?'

   Wealth is power,' he answered sullenly.

   But how stable is your power? The Empress is your enemy. Gaïnas is your
   enemy. Your power rests only on a prince's favour.

   Put not your trust in princes. Put not your trust in wrong and robbery.
   All these will fail you. God alone, if you seek Him, will fail you
   not.'

   You speak to me very boldly,' said the aggravated eunuch. Look out into
   yonder square. You will see my statues in bronze and marble in every
   attitude. Go into the houses of the nobles, you will see my statuettes
   in gold and silver. I have but to touch this bell, and princes and
   senators will crowd in to flatter me. I sit in the theatre, and the
   nobles shout applause and the illustrious call me the Father of the
   Emperor, and the third founder of Constantinople after Byzas and
   Constantine.'

   Does it make you happy?'

   Happy?' said Eutropius; how could such an one as I, the victim of men's
   brutalism, stupidity, and vileness--how could I be happy? Think of what
   my childhood, my boyhood, my youth were. Think how I have been trampled
   into the mire, insulted, taunted, by the very meanest of mankind. Is it
   nothing that now I sit among princes, and that all the world rings with
   the two names of Stilico and Eutropius?'

   And yet, Eutropius, all this would be sold cheap for one self-approving
   hour. You are angry that I resisted you about the right of sanctuary. I
   did, and I will continue to do so. On whose behalf? Does the story of a
   lady like Pentadia awaken in you no stings of remorse? When you hear
   the name of the wronged Timasius, of the wronged Abundantius, do the
   Furies never shake their torches in your heart?'

   Leave me!' said Eutropius. You have deeply wounded me.'

   Faithful are the wounds of a friend,' said Chrysostom. 'It is only the
   kisses of so many enemies which are deceitful and poisonous, Eutropius.
   I love thee better than thy flatterers: I who reprove thee, not in my
   own name, but in His whose thou art--care for thee far more than thy
   false friends. Oh! forgive me if I seem to have been hard on thee, and
   think on all these things before the fall of night!'

   Too late! too late!' said Eutropius, deeply moved. 'I have chosen my
   lot; I must follow it to the end.'

   It is never too late to repent, never too late to be forgiven,' said
   Chrysostom. Nay, I will not let you part from me in anger. Farewell,
   and may God be merciful to me and thee!'

   How often did that warning ring in the memory of the unhappy
   Chamberlain! Next day, when he sat beside the Emperor in the blaze of
   splendour, men noticed that his face was very sad, though on those
   occasions it was usually wreathed in the blandest smiles. He was
   thinking of Chrysostom and his reproof.

   And so the days passed by, bringing their changes and their varied
   duties. That year was marked at Constantinople by the horror of unusual
   storms and earthquakes. A huge wave rolled over the Bosporus, and laid
   in ruins many of the houses nearest to the seashore. The quaking and
   yawning earth swallowed up others, and flames issued from the rent
   fissures. The distress was unspeakable, for supernatural fears added
   terror to these catastrophes, and while there were some who tremblingly
   anticipated that the end of all things was at hand, and plunged into
   the most slavish superstitions, others, in the mad defiance which
   always characterises such epochs of calamity, flung themselves into
   reckless debauchery, like sailors who break open the stores and drink
   themselves drunk when it is too late to save the foundering ship.

   Amid such scenes Chrysostom kept his strong heart uncowed, and many a
   time in St. Sophia he comforted and inspired the timorous throngs of
   his people, trying to calm them with that peace of God which can face
   all the perils of life, because it has no fear of death.

   But the Archbishop rarely had rest for long. When the earthquakes
   ceased the Arians began to give trouble. They had been a powerful party
   in Constantinople since the days of Valens, and they were strong in the
   adherence of so many of the warrior Goths of Gaïnas. By a decree of
   Theodosius they were not allowed to worship within the walls of
   Constantinople, but they still cherished the determination to get a
   church assigned to them. They began to inaugurate nightly processions,
   which marched through the streets and colonnades chanting in antiphon
   the strange theological hymns of Arius. Among these was one which had
   the taunting refrain:


   Where are now the men who say,

   In their enigmatic way--

   Who the riddle right can see?--

   'Three are one, and one is three?'

   Having chanted such strains all the night, they retired at dawn to
   their church outside the walls.

   Chrysostom was the more vexed because, though his own conviction was
   unshakenly orthodox, he had always endeavoured to treat the Arians with
   courtesy and fairness. He consulted two very different
   persons--Michael, the humble Desposynos, and Serapion, the
   uncompromising archdeacon.

   Michael was not unfrequently summoned from his bronzesmith's shop by
   his son David to come and talk to the Archbishop, who valued his
   counsel--though he hardly knew what to make of his immense liberality
   and his total indifference to ecclesiastical conventions. The favourite
   quotation of Michael was the saying of Tertullian, 'Christ is truth,
   not custom; truth, not tradition.'

   How would you counsel me to deal with these noisy and troublesome
   Arians?' asked Chrysostom.

   I would humbly advise that you treat them with all gentleness, with all
   meekness, with all courtesy--nay, with all love.'

   They are heretics,' said Chrysostom. It is necessary to be firm with
   them.'

   I counsel meekness, Bishop, not weakness. Love is not weakness. Which
   do we need most, Catholics or saints?'

   We must not betray to the Arians the true divinity of Christ,' said
   Chrysostom.

   No, nor yet to the Apollinarians His perfect humanity,' answered
   Michael. But oh! it was an evil day for Christianity when men began to
   hate each other for watchwords and definitions, instead of loving the
   Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in sincerity and truth, and showing
   their love to Him by love to all for whom He died.'

   But we cannot regard the Arians as Christians.'

   The Goths have learned their Christianity from Bishop Wulfila. Was not
   he a saint of God?'

   The Patriarch was silent, for, like all men, he loved and honoured the
   memory of the holy Wulfila.

   Did Christ come to affirm a creed, Bishop, or to create a character? Is
   not he a Christian who does the works of Christ? Did not Christ say,

   "If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments"? Did not the
   Beloved Disciple say, "

   He that doeth righteousness is righteous," and "

   He that doeth righteousness is born of God"? May we not be received
   into eternal life with many wrong opinions? The Arians, too, believe
   that Christ was Divine, though they err in the nature of His divinity.
   And when John said,

   "We forbade him because he followeth not us," did not Christ say,

   "Forbid him not, for he who is not against us is on our side"?'

   Yes, but did He not say also,

   "He who is not for us is against us"?'

   Both principles are true in their proper perspective,' said Michael.
   The one does not falsify the other. No deadlier disservice could be
   done to the cause of Christ than the angry clashing of formulæ, in
   which love and humility are lost. How far better is meekness of wisdom,
   and the emulation of good works!'

   What, then, would you advise?'

   Send for the leaders and priests of the Arians. Reason with them kindly
   and forbearingly, not in wrath and strife. Point out to them that these
   nightly processions can but annoy and embitter their opponents, and
   disgrace their cause. Do this, and all will be well.'

   Philip had been present while they talked, and he ventured very
   modestly to express his earnest hope that the Patriarch would follow
   Michael's advice. 'Shall I carry a message for you,' he asked, 'to the
   Arian bishop?'

   No, Philip, not yet. I must talk the matter over with Serapion.'

   Serapion, as usual, was unconciliatory and uncompromising. He never
   joined the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re. He talked of
   betraying the cause of Christ, of seeming to favour heresy, of the need
   of severe repression; and he advised the getting up of
   counter-processions and counter-litanies.

   So the streets were rendered hideous with the harsh shouts of
   contending theologies. The processions swelled in numbers and attracted
   all the idlest riff-raff of the wicked city. Nothing was less
   devotional than hymns chanted in rivalry, by voices harsh with anger,
   amid jibes and jeers. The theatres parodied and ridiculed the
   animosities of Christians, and made the multitude roar with laughter at
   mock processions, singing lewd and fantastic songs. Then the Empress
   took up the matter, for at that time she was most anxious to use
   Chrysostom as a powerful ally against Eutropius;--and that was one
   reason why she bade Amantius lavish her treasures upon him for
   hospitals and churches, the designs of which she drew with her own
   hands. She furnished the processions of the Catholics with silver
   crosses; she paid for devices and banners, and she ordered her
   Chamberlain, Briso, himself to walk at the head of the procession. The
   result might have been predicted: the crowds increased, the Arians grew
   more and more irritated. Scuffles began to take place, then furious
   attempts of each party to break up or disorganise the procession of the
   other. At last there were sanguinary conflicts. Philip, David, and
   Eutyches, loyally went out with the processions, though they did not
   like them, and always exerted themselves to keep the peace. One
   dreadful night not a few were left dead in the streets, and many were
   wounded. Philip came home with a broken collar-bone, and both the other
   youths had been hurt. The august Briso himself was seriously wounded by
   a stone which had struck him on the head. After that the indignant
   Empress left Arcadius no peace till he had interfered by peremptorily
   forbidding all Arian processions, while he allowed those of the
   Orthodox to continue. But Chrysostom, grieving that the holy name of
   Christianity had thus been smirched and degraded by mutual hatreds, was
   sorry that he had not followed the advice of the humble Desposynos.

   One more event marked the close of the year 398. Chrysostom had
   received as a present from Synope the relics of the martyr Phokas; and
   Vigilius, Bishop of Trieste, had also sent him the remains of the
   martyrs Sisinnius, Martyrius, and Alexander. He announced that he would
   conduct them in a solemn procession at midnight to the Church of St.
   Thomas at Drypia, near the sea, a distance of nine Roman miles from the
   city. The huge procession was accompanied by a multitude of officers,
   and many illustres, spectabiles, and clarissimi were seen edifyingly
   commingled with the poor, and amicably walking with them side by side.
   More than all, the Empress Eudoxia in person walked the whole way on
   foot, in the simplest of robes, without a single ornament. She joined
   in the chants, and humbly held a fringe of the rich silken corporal
   which covered the relics. Although she had very little regard for
   righteousness, Eudoxia was genuinely superstitious, and Chrysostom,
   deceived as yet, took her superstition for true religion. He was
   carried away by the extravagance of his joy. He thought that the
   Empress would be indeed a protectress of the poor, a pillar of the true
   faith. When they reached the church his excited feelings found vent.
   What shall I say?' he cried. 'What shall I speak? I exult, I am beside
   myself with joy. See what an example the Empress has set! As though she
   were a maidservant, she, the wearer of the diadem and the purple, she
   whom not even all the officials of the Palace are allowed to see, has
   walked behind the holy relics. Blessed be thou, O Empress! Not we only,
   but all generations, shall proclaim thy blessedness. Thou hast been the
   hostess of the saints, the mother of Churches. Thy zeal almost equals
   that of the Apostles. We count thee among the saintly matrons, for in
   building sanctuaries, and upholding martyrs, and pulling down the
   errors of heretics, thou usest thine earthly royalty as a means for the
   attainment of everlasting felicity.'

   After the discourse the multitude streamed homewards, and criticisms,
   as usual, were rife.

   Did you ever hear such a welter of Asiatic rhetoric?' said Antiochus of
   Ptolemais, 'and such indecent fulsomeness of praise? "I dance, I am
   mad!" Did ever Patriarch disgrace his office by such trash?'

   How different, how stately, how classic would have been your own chaste
   eloquence,' said Severian of Gabala, who had made Antiochus his model,
   and determined to walk in his steps.

   Unluckily, Chrysostom's youthful secretaries walked near the bishops,
   as the Patriarch's attendants, and again Philip was forced to hear
   these unsympathetic and carping criticisms of the master whom he so
   fondly loved. Eutyches and David, though vexed, remained silent, and as
   they passed greeted the bishops with the usual demonstrations of
   profound respect. But Philip looked in the opposite direction, and
   would not bow.

   They were very angry. Who is that rude young churl?' asked the Bishop
   of Ptolemais.

   Oh! an Antiochene whom the Archbishop says he has adopted,' answered
   Severian.

   The next day Arcadius himself went to the Church of St. Thomas,
   accompanied by soldiers; and he, too, honoured the martyrs by laying
   aside his purple, his armour, and his diadem before their shrine.
   Chrysostom again delivered a discourse; but it was impossible to
   elevate the thin-blooded Arcadius into either a hero or a saint, and
   the language of his eulogy was much more measured.

   Next day Philip looked in to see Michael; for he rarely missed the
   chance of visiting the Desposynos, in the hope of seeing Miriam, whom,
   though silently as yet, he loved with an ever-deeper devotion, and whom
   he believed to be not indifferent to him. He had a powerful ally in
   David, who loved Philip so much that in the family they always called
   him Jonathan, and David was never weary of singing Philip's praises.

   Is it not delightful,' said Philip, to see their Sublimities taking so
   much interest in the festivals of the Church?'

   Michael smiled dubiously. Yes,' he said; but I am sorry that "he", as
   you boys call the Patriarch, lends so much sanction to the rage for
   relics.'

   Is it not natural to honour the mortal remains of saints and martyrs?'

   To honour, if you will, though they are but dust. Yet their cult has
   been pushed to fatal extremes. It has led to such gross imposture that
   sham monks go about cheating silly women with the bones of Noah or
   Methuselah. St. Martin discovered that his people were worshipping the
   relics of an executed criminal, and Bishop Coecilian had to reprove a
   wealthy lady for kissing and hugging a supposed martyr's bone. It is
   twelve years since Theodosius had to pass a strong edict against this
   relic-worship, which seemed to him idolatrous and degrading. That is
   why the Pagans call us cinerarii ("worshippers of ashes ").'

   Everyone seems to approve of it,' said Philip. Is it not a Catholic
   custom?'

   I fear that many things are called "Catholic" nowadays,' said the
   Desposynos, which are neither Scriptural, nor primitive, nor Christian,
   nor in any sense true. Your experience will soon teach you, Philip,
   that the current opinion of fashionable religiousness, however
   widespread it may seem, is often unspeakably shallow, as well as
   turbid. The life of the Apostles, of Athanasius--nay, of the Lord
   Christ Himself--proves to us that it is only one, with God, who is
   always in a majority. Many a true man has to cry with Elijah, "

   I, even I only, am left."'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXIII

  FACE TO FACE WITH SHAMS


   Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti,

   Sta come torre ferma, che non crolla

   Giammai la cima per sofflar de' venti.

   Dante, Purg., v. 13-15.

   The errors of Chrysostom were errors of judgment only. He might have
   been equally inflexible without producing so deadly an exacerbation.
   Ambrose had been no less masterful than he, and no less fearless; but
   the training of Ambrose in civil offices had taught him the art of
   dealing with men. Even in his most bold proceedings he displayed a
   certain tact. We are apt to despise tact as a petty accomplishment; but
   just as a trivial oversight may ruin the smooth working of complicated
   machinery, so trivial faults of tone and manner, or a little lack of
   conciliatoriness, which is something wholly different from unfaithful
   concession, may throw out of gear the movement of great societies.

   Certainly there had been little in the past experience of Chrysostom to
   bring this quality prominently forward. He had as little of it as
   Savonarola, whom he resembled more closely than any other historic
   parallel.

   His long years of ascetic, monastic, and eremitic solitude, while they
   revealed to him many abysses of the deceitful human heart, and burned
   into his conviction the indefeasible supremacy of the moral law, had
   but little fitted him to bear the infirmities of the weak. He was out
   of touch with his surroundings.

   Men are sometimes called upon to cleanse Augean stables without the
   Herculean strength by which alone the task can be accomplished. Men of
   unflinching honesty and flaming zeal are sometimes placed in the midst
   of societies hopelessly corrupt, and their heroic efforts only seem to
   precipitate their own destruction. Such a man was Gregory of Nazianzus,
   and Chrysostom, and Hus, and Luther, and Whitefield. Such men are
   forced, as it were, to dash themselves against barriers of adamant.

   And his experiences in the mountain-cave had done Chrysostom another
   disservice. By hopelessly ruining his health they had caused also a
   sort of irritability--not so much of feeling as of tone and
   manner--which was more a physical accident than a moral defect, but
   which made what he said seem less easy to bear than otherwise it might
   have been. To this we must add the fact that his inexhaustible
   vocabulary and impassioned style made his words smite their hearers
   like a storm of hail. He was himself unaware of the effect produced by
   his own utterances. It was often more tremendous than he had intended.
   Even a platitude, wrapped round in the lightning of his fervent
   rhetoric, sounded like a paradox and a defiance. Sometimes, when he had
   preached a sermon in which he only seemed to himself to have enunciated
   the most obvious moral certainties, he found to his astonishment that
   he had thrown all Constantinople into a ferment of agitation. If, for
   instance, oppressed by social problems and the glaring contrast between
   plethoric wealth and starving populations, he simply enunciated the
   plainest truths inculcated by Christianity and the Apostles, he found
   himself on the one hand besieged by applications from gross impostors
   who cursed him as a hypocrite if he refused their claims, while at the
   same time the upper classes were denouncing him as a dangerous
   Socialist and a reckless demagogue.

   How is it, my son,' he once said to Philip, that over and over again I
   only utter truths which hundreds have said before me, yet when I say
   them they seem to rouse men to fury, and when others say the very same
   thing they are set down as commonplaces?'

   There are ways of saying things, father,' said Philip, smiling; the
   gnats buzz, and the thunder roars, and the ultimate elements of sound
   are much the same, but they produce different effects.'

   You odd boy!' said Chrysostom--for their intercourse was always playful
   and unrestrained--'I think you must have learnt your style of talking
   at Antioch.'

   I thought we were both Antiochenes,' said Philip, demurely; but as you
   don't appreciate my simile, I will give you another. I shake this
   table, and no one notices it except a fly or two; but when an
   earthquake shakes things, even emperors and empresses get in a fright.'

   You haven't solved my perplexity, Philip. Gregory, Basil, Ambrose,
   Jerome--they are all every bit as much earthquakes as I am, but they
   didn't shake everything round them into a chaos of hatred.'

   Didn't they?' said Philip, innocently. 'Gregory had to leave
   Constantinople, shaking the dust off his feet, and comparing the
   OEcumenical Council to geese and cranes. Basil, I have heard you say,
   almost broke his heart at the savagery with which he was attacked,
   especially by bishops like Eusebius and Atarbius. Ambrose had to be
   defended in his church by the populace for days together. Jerome was
   driven from Rome by the rich, and by the monks, and by the clergy, and
   as he left Rome he called the city a purpurata meretrix, and compared
   her to Babylon.'

   Nevertheless, Philip,' said Chrysostom, it remains true that when
   Severian, for instance, or Antiochus, say the very same things that I
   do, the air does not become full of flame. You don't help me, Philip; I
   shall ask Serapion.'

   It all comes to this, father,' said Philip, there are ways of saying
   things, and it makes a difference whether they are spoken from the
   heart, or through masks and cotton-wool. One man may steal a horse,
   another may not look over the hedge.'

   You are as riddling as the Sphinx, Philip. Send Serapion to me; I will
   ask him.'

   Philip left the room laughing. He had but little experience of life to
   help his natural shrewdness, but he felt that what made Chrysostom's
   enunciation of a truth sound so tremendous, when on the lips of a
   Severian or an Isaac the Monk it would seem like a mere dulcet
   platitude, was that the one meant and acted on what he said, whereas
   everyone knew that the others did not.

   But Chrysostom asked Serapion whether he spoke too strongly, and
   Serapion, akin to him in all his feelings, entirely repudiated the
   suggestion.

   You have rebuked the luxury of the rich,' he said. 'Have you said
   anything stronger than St. James? You have warned voluptuous women.
   Have you spoken more plainly than Isaiah?'

   Chrysostom had asked these opinions because he had long had it in his
   mind to summon in the Thomaites two large meetings--first, of the
   virgins, the widows, and the deaconesses; then of the monks and clergy;
   and while he felt it to be his duty to address them with the utter
   faithfulness which they needed, he was anxious to tell the truth in
   love and not willingly or needlessly to exacerbate or wound.

   The meeting of the consecrated' women took place first, and Chrysostom
   was grieved that he could not spare their vices. He was infected with
   the unscriptural and dangerous error of his times about the inherent
   sanctity of celibacy. Ignorant of marriage, and living at a period
   when, owing to the down-trodden position of most women in the East, the
   loftiest ideal of matrimony was but rarely realised, he could paint
   with caustic severity its trials and drawbacks, but did not fully
   recognise its supreme sanctity.

   So far as words were concerned he repudiated the Manichean notion of
   the inherent taint of matter, and maintained that outward chastity was
   worthless if accompanied by inward depravity; yet he looked on marriage
   as an inferior condition. He drew for himself the loveliest ideals of
   virginity and consecrated widowhood. In such a consecration of
   womanhood he saw the existence of a new and unsuspected force on the
   side of Christianity, such as had already baffled the Emperor Julian at
   Antioch, and might still stem the swelling tide of corruption. It was,
   then, infinitely painful to him to think that worldliness, frivolity,
   and corruption could so invade the inmost recesses of the sanctuary as
   to falsify the conditions which ought to have been a pattern to all
   mankind. An Olympias, a Salvina, a Pentadia, seemed to him to have
   attained a conception of life which, if it became more common, might
   regenerate the world. But to see virgins wearing their ostentatiously
   coarse robes with almost meretricious coquetry; to see them adopt a
   demeanour so piquant that the dress was actually adopted by the lowest
   of their sex to enhance their own fascinations; to see them use the
   freedom and emancipation gained from their position to overstep the
   bounds of modesty, to gad about in promiscuous assemblies, to be seen
   in questionable places of amusement; to see widows who were so far from
   being widows indeed' that, like the women whom Isaiah denounced, they '

   sewed pillows to all armholes,' and abounded in wimples and crisping
   pins; to see deaconesses at once bold and mincing, to see them forward,
   intriguing, uncharitable, slanderous--all this was as gall and wormwood
   to the burning sincerity of the Archbishop. And of all this he spoke to
   the seething throng of official religionism with a directness and power
   which made their cheeks blush and then hearts burn. The few of them who
   were sincere rejoiced to be reminded that position is one thing and
   character another; but the majority of them winced, and hated him with
   the quintessence of perverted femininity. He had carefully avoided what
   could be regarded as obvious personality, and spoke to classes, not to
   individuals; but his style was so picturesque, and his rebukes so
   unsparing, that not a few felt as if the masks as well as the veils had
   been torn off their faces, and their becoming religious costumes, which
   had fascinated so many sacerdotal eyes, had been torn and tattered on
   their backs. These were not in the smallest degree penitent; on the
   contrary, in their hearts they cursed and raged. They swelled with
   indignation, and their noses seemed more vengefully sharp than ever as
   they peered out of their hoods. Was it not monstrous that they, the
   religious,' they, so accustomed to veneration for saintliness, should
   be treated thus! How unlike their dear Nectarius was this Antiochene
   intruder! He was no bishop! They could only pray for better times. And
   so all the well-springs of human vinegar, sour and cold', were stirred
   up, and Chrysostom, who had hitherto had so little experience in that
   line, had to learn the 'Notumque furens quid femina possit!'
   Henceforward as he met these ladies in the street, young or old, not a
   few of them drew back their garment's hem as though it were a pollution
   to touch him, and he was struck dead by forked lightnings from female
   eyes.

   Then came the meeting of the clergy. To them the Patriarch had to speak
   truths even more disagreeable, and again he did not spare. He began
   with denouncing their ambitious worldliness. What had they to do with
   idle luxuries, when they ought to be setting the pure example of plain
   living and high thinking? Had not the eremite of Bethlehem, one of the
   ablest writers of the West, warned even a bishop against giving
   sumptuous banquets, and feeling flattered by the sight of the lictors
   and guards of a consul hanging outside his doors? You ought,' said
   Chrysostom, to live more frugally and more simply. It is painful to see
   presbyters of Christ indulging in parasitical flatteries to nobles who
   deserve their sternest rebukes. Do not tell me that you want to get
   money from them for your charities, or to intercede for poor criminals.
   Simplicity and sincerity would procure you an influence ten times more
   legitimate and ten times more availing. How can you rebuke extravagance
   when you practise it? and avarice when you are yourselves so deeply
   tainted with it? and luxury when you indulge in it? and ambition when
   the one aim of so many of you seems to be to induce some palace eunuch
   to get you a bishopric? I would not speak of myself, but have I not
   tried to set you an example in these respects? I do not give wasteful
   entertainments.'

   No,' whispered Antiochus to Severian; witness the dinner he gave to the
   poor Bishop of Beroea, of which Acacius is never tired of complaining.'

   No,' hissed Cyrinus in the ear of one of his presbyters, 'but they say,
   at any rate, that he indulges in enormous feasts all by himself.'

   Even in the palace of the Patriarch,' continued Chrysostom, not
   noticing the whispering bishops, I try still to live the life of a monk
   and an ascetic. I never so much as set foot in the Court of the Emperor
   unless I am summoned, or unless some great need of the Church demands
   my intervention.

   But though these evils are bad enough, there are others which are
   worse. You are unmarried. Though the Council of Nicæa did not require
   this of the clergy, the Council of Eliberis demanded it, and so does
   the custom of the East. The Fathers of Nicæa allowed you to retain your
   wives, and listened to the impassioned appeal of the monk and hermit,
   Paphnutius, when he pleaded as St. Paul pleaded--and in accordance with
   the words of Him Who said that all men were not able to bear
   celibacy--that this burden should not be laid on your shoulders, and
   become a snare to you. But this celibacy has led to the all but
   universal adoption of a custom unseemly, nay, dangerous, nay,
   disgraceful, a custom which naturally and necessarily defames you,
   sometimes, not even rarely, with absolute criminality, but always with
   inevitable suspicion. It is a custom at which the very buffoons in the
   circus and the theatre aim their broadest sneers, amid the laughter of
   the multitude. The Council of Nice allowed you, if unmarried, to have
   your houses managed by a mother, a sister, or an aunt; but many have
   shamefully abused this rule. You live in the same narrow house with
   epeisactæ--with maidens who are no relations to you at all. You call
   them your "spiritual sisters," and this has become an offence and a
   source of untold iniquity. You are either weak or strong. If you are
   weak, it becomes the most sacred of your duties to shun temptation, to
   beat it back as you would beat back with a redhot iron a raging beast;
   but you surround yourselves with temptation, you court temptation, you
   live in the very atmosphere of temptation. But if you are strong, then
   you have no excuse, for in encouraging others to follow an example,
   which you profess to be harmless to yourselves, so far from bearing the
   infirmities of the weak, you render them fatal. It were far better than
   this that you should marry outright. A married presbyter could not
   possibly diminish his influence so much as one who, living with a
   young, perhaps attractive, maiden as the manager of his house, either
   tampers with sacred chastity, or leads others to think that he does so,
   and to do so themselves. Heaven's shame upon you!'

   As he thus poured out the lava stream of his moral indignation,
   scorching the consciences of most of his hearers--for there were very
   few who had not rendered themselves liable to this reproach--a deep
   murmur of wrath rose among the offended presbyters, and fierce
   exclamations were heard.

   Serapion started indignantly from his seat at Chrysostom's right hand.
   Bishop!' he exclaimed, you will never subdue these mutinous priests
   till you drive them all before you with a single rod.'

   Nay, nay, Serapion,' said Chrysostom, with a deprecatory gesture, 'I
   speak not of all. There are some, I know, who live alone, or only with
   their nearest relations, or with poor and aged women. But I speak of
   those whose rooms you cannot enter, though they profess to be celibate
   priests, without seeing the place strewn with caps and ribbons, and
   wool-baskets, and fashionable trumpery. Is it not monstrous to see such
   a man going to the silversmith's to ask for his lady's mirror, and
   thence to the perfumer's for her scents, and thence to the
   haberdasher's for her furbelows? Is it not even more distressing and
   unseemly to see them making room for these ladies in the very churches,
   and proudly stalking in front of them as though they were young dandies
   or gallants? Oh, my brethren, my brethren! when I see all this my heart
   bleeds and my spirit faints within me. And now, turning to you monks, I
   know not whether a still sharper pang does not strike into my soul when
   I see you--you who profess the sole Divine philosophy, you who should
   lead the angelic life--when I see you going about idle, oiled and
   curled, haunting the antechambers of the wealthy, whispering into the
   ear of painted matrons, begging in every direction for dubious objects,
   vending sham relics, merged in the black mud of ignorance, stirring up
   turbulent fanaticism, mixing yourselves with worldly intrigues,
   breaking your vows every day and in every direction. When I see this I
   feel inclined to cry, with Elijah,

   "Now, O Lord, take away my life!"'

   In the description of false monks Chrysostom had not intended to depict
   one person in particular. But it was characteristic of the pictorial
   character of his intellect that he always saw everything in the
   concrete, and that, in describing a class, some prominent
   representative of the class rose spontaneously before his view. There
   were many monks and clerical adventurers of the kind which he had
   denounced. Every great city of the Empire swarmed with them, and in
   country places there were whole sets of them--like the Remoboth--who
   were regarded as positive nuisances. Bonaventura tells us that even in
   the second generation of the Franciscans people fled from mendicant
   friars as from the pestilence; and Augustine and others had said much
   the same of the wandering monks who belonged to no definite community.
   But on the lips of Chrysostom all this sounded like a new and
   unheard-of attack. While he spoke many, with the facility which most
   men have of applying the sermon to the man in the next pew, and being
   keenly alive to the way in which he must feel it, had turned their
   glances towards Isaac, the Syrian monk. That portly and despicable
   personage, who went about Constantinopolitan society like a sort of
   saintly dandy, oozing over with unctuous nonentity, and with his hair
   gilded and essenced and carefully arranged in curls, answered in every
   particular to Chrysostom's description. He thought that the harangue
   had been designedly and exclusively aimed at him. He left the hall with
   the rage of a demon in his false heart, a rage which, with his access
   to all the great officials, ecclesiastics, and Court ladies, he felt
   sure that sooner or later he would be able to gratify to the full. The
   Church of the fourth century reeked--by the confession of her own best
   saints--with frightful phenomena, but the most portentous of them all
   were men like Isaac the Monk.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE CONSULSHIP OF EUTROPIUS


   This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth

   The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,

   And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;

   The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.

   Henry VIII., iii. 2.

   'I have a piece of news for you,' said Eutyches to his two young
   friends; quite a first-rate piece of news. And I crow over Philip, who
   always fancies that he has the monopoly of news.'

   Out with it,' said Philip, before you burst!'

   Who do you think is to be the Consul for next year?'

   Who? I don't believe you know; it is mere gossip.'

   But I do; and the news is certain.'

   Well, who?' said Philip.

   No, no!' said Eutyches, I am not going to gratify your burning
   curiosity so cheaply.'

   I'll guess it in three guesses.'

   No you won't. I'll give you fellows ten guesses between you. If Philip
   guesses right I'll give him a picture of the Archbishop in gold on a
   blue ground, to stick up on his bedroom-wall; if David guesses right
   I'll give him an earthenware vase full of roses from the flower-market;
   and if neither of you guess in ten guesses, what will you give me?'

   Sly fellow!' said Philip. It's a sort of bet. But if we don't guess,
   I'll go to the brass-market and get you a little bronze----'

   Who's the sly fellow now?' said Eutyches. 'One word for me, and ever so
   many for yourself. We all know why Philip buys all his presents at the
   brass-market. We all know why the Archbishop's bills at a certain shop
   are so extravagant----'

   You young scoundrel!' said Philip. Whoever heard such impudence?'
   Eutyches dodged the box on the ear, and Philip chased him round the
   room. Finally, when the boy was driven into a corner, he snatched up a
   chair and held it out with its legs towards Philip by way of
   fortification.

   Chrysostom was wondering what made his young friends so lively in the
   next room, but he was always pleased to think that they were merry and
   happy in the dull Patriarcheion.

   What mischief are you boys about?' he called out from his study.

   It's only that noisy Eutyches, sir,' said Philip. That young person is
   always up to his pranks.'

   We all know how staid and quiet you are, Philip,' said Chrysostom.

   There now!' said Eutyches. You've disturbed him and maligned me. Now
   begin your guessing. You first, David.'

   That's to give him the best chance,' said Philip, because the roses
   will cost less than the picture I mean to win. But I see through you.'

   As the washerwoman remarked when the bottom of her tub fell out,' said
   Eutyches, keeping on the alert for another assault from Philip.

   Well, if I don't guess right,' said David, I'll give you a little
   alabaster pen-tray. I guess Aurelian, the new Prætorian Præfect.'

   He would be a first-rate Consul,' said Eutyches; but you're wrong. Now
   Philip.'

   Asterius, Count of the East.'

   Wrong,' said Eutyches.

   Cæsarius, Master of the Offices,' guessed David.

   Wrong. Philip thinks he's got it now.'

   Yes,' said Philip, the excellent Anthemius. He's young, and that is the
   reason why you are surprised.'

   Ever so wrong!' said Eutyches.

   Hellebichus,' guessed David.

   Wrong again, David.'

   I've got it!' said Philip. 'Gaïnas the Goth. It's no use guessing
   respectable people, as David does.'

   Wrong, O master of wisdom! I shall get my bronze--whatever it is to be.
   There are five wrong guesses. Now try again.'

   Arcadius himself,' said David. It will be his fifth Consulship.'

   Wrong. Now, Philip, try number seven.'

   Leo the Paunch,' said Philip. That would account for your excitement.'

   What! Ajax?' laughed Eutyches. Ajax the ex-weaver, whose huge body
   holds such a little mind? No.'

   I'll try no respectability this time,' said David; 'Osius.'

   Osius the ex-cook! No, David, you're quite out of it.'

   I have it,' said Philip. It's Count John.'

   What! the Empress's handsome favourite? Wronger and wronger. Oh, you
   imbecilities! You've exhausted all your guesses. Philip, go straight to
   the Chalk----'

   Take care,' said Philip.

   And buy me my bronze, whatever it is,' said Eutyches. 'I believe you
   guessed wrong on purpose to get an excuse for going.'

   Give me one guess more, to soothe my wounded vanity,' said Philip.

   Very well.'

   It can't be Eutr---- No, that would be altogether too absurd. Yet it
   must be somebody odd, or you wouldn't make such a fuss about it. Let me
   see.... I have it! It must be that old Pagan, Fravitta the Goth.'

   Hurrah!' said Eutyches, clapping his hands. Eleven guesses, and every
   one of them wrong. Never make the smallest pretence to political
   sagacity again, Philip.'

   Do give me only one guess more, to make the round dozen.'

   Oh you cheat!' said Eutyches; and then, perhaps, if you guess, you
   won't be able to go and see Mir----.'

   Look out!' said Philip, seizing him by the collar.

   I mean you won't be able to go to the Chalkoprateia after all. Well,
   one guess more.'

   Typhos, the demon brother of Aurelian.'

   Wrong again; and you will be wrong ad infinitum,' said Eutyches, so I
   shall get my bronze what's-his-name after all.'

   Do tell us,' said David; we are wild with curiosity.'

   What do you say to Eutropius himself?'

   Eutropius!' they both exclaimed, while


   Up went the hushed amaze of hand and eye!

   'None other,' said Eutyches.

   Good Heavens!' said Philip. I had his name again and again on the tip
   of my tongue, and rejected it as too insanely preposterous. Arcadius
   must have been asleep, and have nominated him in a nightmare.'

   Very likely; but the new Consuls are to be Eutropius for the East, and
   Mallius Theodorus for the West.'

   What a contrast!' said David. 'Theodorus is a scholar, a poet, a man of
   blameless integrity, who has written on Plato's "Ideas" and on the
   origin of the world, whom men honour for his probity, to whom Augustine
   dedicated his treatise on the "Happy Life." Eutropius is----'

   You will have to leave Philip to express your feelings for you, David,'
   said Eutyches. You are quite too gentle; you want a few years at
   Antioch to enrich your vocabulary.'

   I will say it for him,' said Philip, who was too deeply moved to notice
   the chaff of Eutyches. 'Eutropius is an insect of the harems, an
   incarnate rapacity, a whisperer of bedchambers, an old, bald, wrinkled
   creature only one remove above a monkey----'

   Oh oh, Philip!' said David. Slack the bow a little.'

   Well, but----' said Philip. That a fellow who has filled baths for
   house-slaves should sit on the curule chair! That a thing accustomed
   for years to flap fine ladies with peacocks' fans should sway the
   world's imperial fasces! Shades of the Decii! shades of the Camilli!
   have we come to this?'

   You ought to have been born in Rome,' said Eutyches. 'They would like
   to hear you declaim thus in the Senate. You will see that the East will
   stand it well enough. We are accustomed to the portentous spectacle of
   women and eunuch favourites who rule the world. But what will the West
   say?'

   It is really an awful business,' said Philip. I wonder whether he will
   guess? Let's ask him.'

   Sir,' he said to Chrysostom, going through the curtains, 'can you spare
   us a minute?'

   The kind-hearted Patriarch came in.

   Eutyches, sir, has been gossiping in the Palace as usual, and----'

   Philip never does so?' said Eutyches, though he's as eager as an
   Athenian for news; only he's rather jealous that I have forestalled
   him.'

   Never mind him, Eutyches,' said Chrysostom; we all understand Philip.'

   And he thinks he has found out who is to be the new Consul,' said
   Philip, and he wants you to guess, only he's too shy to ask.'

   He need never be shy with me!' said Chrysostom.

   We've guessed Aurelian, Asterius, Cæsarius, Hellebichus, Anthemius,
   Gaïnas the Goth, Count John, Leo, Osius, Arcadius himself, Fravitta the
   Goth, and Typhos, and all twelve guesses were wrong; so you will see,
   sir, that it must be a very odd appointment. Eutyches has been getting
   out of us all sorts of presents----'

   Bronze things, and others,' said Eutyches, demurely, while Philip
   kicked his shin under the table.

   And no doubt wants to get one out of you, sir, unless you hit it off in
   five guesses.'

   Very well,' said Chrysostom, entering into their fun. 'I'll give
   Eutyches a little ivory diptych if I don't succeed; but after your
   experience perhaps I shall.'

   Take my advice, sir, and guess the oddest persons you can think of.'

   I will,' said Chrysostom. Is it Synesius?'

   No.'

   Saturninus, then?'

   No.'

   Perhaps it's this new Count Tribigild, who has come here from the
   Gruthonges, and whose tribe has to be gratified?'

   No.'

   It cannot surely be Amantius, the Empress's almoner?'

   No; but you're getting near it.'

   Briso, then?' said the Archbishop.

   To make up for his broken head,' said Philip, laughing. 'No, sir; and
   now Eutyches, who practically told us we were idiots for not guessing,
   will have to----'

   How am I to stop his audacious tongue, sir?' asked Eutyches.

   You don't really mean to say that the Emperor has ventured to nominate
   Eutropius?'

   You have guessed it, sir,' said Eutyches, clapping his hands, 'and they
   didn't.'

   Oh! this is serious indeed!' said Chrysostom. I fear the Chamberlain
   will have utterly destroyed himself by this insane ambition. It is
   dementation before doom.'

   Philip had rightly anticipated that the effects of the Emperor's new
   stupidity would produce a far less intense impression upon the East
   than upon the West. The East received the strange intelligence with
   easy laughter, and contented itself with the cynical emphasis with
   which they called Eutropius the Father of the Emperor. But the first
   rumours which reached Rome and Milan were received with astonished
   incredulity, which, on the confirmation of the report, broke out in a
   thunder of indignation. The Consulship, it was true, was now mainly
   functional; it was shorn of any effective power. Nevertheless, the
   Consul stood at the summit of all official rank; he had unquestioned
   precedence; he gave his name to the year; he was the inheritor of
   centuries of heroic traditions. And that the honour should be bestowed
   on an obscure eunuch, born no one knew where, hawked about for sale by
   Armenian slave-sellers, subject to years of infamous degradations, a
   curler of women's hair, who had at last been turned out of doors--as
   not worth selling, and as too ugly to be even ornamental--to beg his
   bread in nameless purlieus----! And that such a man was not only to be
   made a patrician, but to sweep through the streets in gorgeous
   paludaments, attended by lictors, and to hold the ivory sceptre at the
   meetings of Senators! It was a portent ominous of blighted harvests and
   prodigious births or absolute infecundity! It was an outrage on ten
   centuries of history and thrice three hundred triumphs! It was an omen
   of frightful decadence. It would make the Roman world the open gibe of
   hosts of brave barbarians! It must not, it should not be!

   The official confirmation reached Honorius in the Court at Milan as he
   and his warrior father-in-law, the brave Vandal, Stilico, were giving
   stately audience to an embassy of Germani and Suevi, who had been sent
   to ask for treaties of peace with promises of allegiance. Their
   presence was a proof that the glories of Rome were not yet dead, and
   that she could still boast of Saxons defeated, of Britain defended from
   the Picts, of subjugated races on the borders of the Danube and the
   Rhine. Crowds of Italians gazed with a thrill of pride on these
   stalwart barbarians in their mantles of skin, with their long red
   moustaches and lofty stature. And was it at such a moment that the
   dignity of Rome was to be humiliated by the association of her noble
   Consul, Mallius Theodorus, with a creature swept out of the scum of the
   Gynæceum? Claudian, the soldier-poet, whom Stilico had elevated into a
   military tribune, was present at this audience, and he became the
   impassioned voice of the indignation of the West.

   He appealed to the young Honorius. You, O Prince!' he cried, you, the
   son of Theodosius the Great, have been four times Consul; and you, O
   Stilico, victor of a hundred battles, you have been Consul. Will you
   allow the Imperial fasti to be stained with this foul blot? Will you
   wage the wars of Rome under these womanish auspices? Are eunuchs to
   leave their fans and array themselves in the trabea? Are the hands
   which held umbrellas over dowagers to wield the axes of Latium? Spirits
   of the warrior dead--Bruti, Cornelii, Scipios, Claudii--start from your
   marble sepulchres, drive off this half-man who would wear your robes,
   would parade your insignia! Let the East, if it will, corrupted by the
   evil models of the Arsacidæ, accept the inert and slavish dominance of
   creatures who never drew a sword, who rarely stepped out of a
   bedchamber, who are only fit to fold up Tyrian robes and have the
   custody of secret jewel-boxes.'

   The sonorous lilt of Claudian's hexameters echoed the wrath of the
   Western world, and Stilico and Honorius were not sorry to show their
   contempt for Arcadius and Constantinople by refusing to disgrace the
   Consular fasti with the eunuch's name. The year 399, by the first
   precedent during twelve hundred years, was named after a single Consul.
   It was the consulship of Mallius Theodorus alone.

   Not many in the East could speak Latin; they were more Greeks than
   Romans. They did not read Claudian's heroics, and were untouched by his
   thunderous wrath. On the Calends of January Mallius Theodorus was
   installed as Consul in the ivory chair in the Capitol at Rome; and
   Eutropius, in the imperial palace of the Cæsars, was seated in all his
   grandeur in an ample robe broidered with golden palms, and surrounded
   by all the nobles and servants and great officials, who were emulous to
   kiss his hands, or, if more highly favoured, his withered cheeks. And
   as they bowed the knee before him the hall rang with acclamations which
   saluted him as the safeguard of the laws and the saviour of his
   country. Then the palace doors were thrown open, as though it were the
   residence of Eutropius himself, and in rushed the eager crowd with
   jests and shouting. After the reception Eutropius, still wearing his
   palmata vestis, arose, and, surrounded by his lictors and an escort of
   palace soldiers, went in stately progress to the Curia of Constantine,
   where he was formally inaugurated. Then he paced all round the Forum
   with its fine porticoes, and with intoxicated vanity saw images of
   himself clad in toga or military harness, and equestrian statues of
   marble and gilded bronze, among those of warrior-benefactors and
   ancient deities. A host of paid claqueurs rent the air with venal
   shouts, repeating the pompous titles engraven on the pedestals, and
   hailing him as the third founder of Constantinople.

   How little he realised that he was seated on a razor's edge! The frenzy
   of his superhuman success clouded the usual shrewdness of his
   intellect. It was, as Chrysostom had said, the irony of impending doom.
   From two opposite directions, little as he had dreamed of it,
   destruction was marching on him with mighty strides; and Destiny had
   placed these dazzling crowns upon his head only to smite upon it, with
   deadlier force, her wedges and her shattering club.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE GOTHS

     Rem Romanam alius circumsteterat metus totius Gothiæ.

   Amm. Marcell., xxx. 2.

   As Chrysostom began to understand the general condition of society and
   politics at Constantinople he found that there were three predominant
   and fiercely antagonistic parties. He was more or less concerned with
   the affairs of them all. In each of the three parties he had some
   friends; with each he had some points of sympathy. The result was that
   every trouble and agitation in Constantinople became more or less a
   trouble or agitation for him, and he had to suffer from


   Desperate currents of a whole world's anguish,

   Forced through the channel of a single heart.

   First, there was the old Conservative Roman party, at the head of which
   stood his friend Aurelian, who, in spite of the desperate intrigues of
   his wicked brother, only known to history by the nickname of Typhos,
   was now in the high position of Prætorian Præfect. The literary
   exponent of this party was his friend Synesius. Although Constantinople
   was regarded as the capital of the East, it was called New Rome, and
   all of the old stock disdained to regard themselves in any other light
   than that of genuine Romans. They therefore looked with horror on the
   constant increase of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Suevi, and Vandals, who now
   not only crowded the ranks of the Roman army, but constituted at least
   half of its numerical strength. They saw a fatal menace for the future
   in the fact that the three commanders-in-chief of the Roman
   forces--Stilico, Alaric, and Gaïnas--the three generals who were
   thought to monopolise the military genius of the day, were all
   barbarians. The object of the great oration of Synesius before Arcadius
   had been to arouse him to a sense of the immediate dangers and of the
   certain peril to the ultimate fortunes of the Empire involved in this
   state of things.

   Opposed to this Roman party was the Gothic party, headed at
   Constantinople by Gaïnas, formidable in arms, in numbers, in physical
   strength, in native manhood, and in military experience. [11] Even if
   they could have found none but barbarians to help their cause, it would
   have been difficult to resist them; but they were aided by the
   incessant intrigues of Romans like Typhos, who cared for nothing but
   their own pelf and advancement; and also by the intricate feminine
   intrigues of evil-living ladies like the wife of Typhos. If Gaïnas had
   even been such a man as Stilico, or, still more, such a man as
   Fravitta, who, though he still continued to be a Pagan, had married a
   Roman wife, and felt himself bound by laws of honour and loyalty, the
   Ostrogoths, who were the nominal defenders of Constantinople, would
   have constituted a less threatening factor in the problems of the day.
   But Gaïnas was a man of fierce, restless, unstable character. He was
   actuated by the passions of ambition and revenge which were common to
   him with most of his countrymen. He was discontented. He had helped
   Theodosius both against the usurper Maximus and the usurper Eugenius,
   and deemed himself inadequately rewarded, though he had received
   honours and donatives of which his fathers had never dreamed.
   Unhappily, too, the party of Gaïnas was not only the Gothic party, but
   the Arian party. The Arians, as we have seen, were still numerous. In
   the days of Nectarius they had even risen and burnt down the
   Patriarcheion. Fanatically devoted to their heresy, they were willing
   to make common cause with the Gothic chieftain, who fancied that even
   the diadem itself might not be beyond his reach. Arbogast, indeed, had
   thought that a barbarian could not venture to assume the purple, but
   things had advanced since the days of Arbogast. Arians had been
   emperors, and Goths had made emperors; why could not a Goth and an
   Arian elevate the glory of Wulfila even to the throne of Constantine?

   The third party was that of Eutropius: the party of civil officialism
   and palace favourites, the party of eunuchs and wirepullers. It derived
   its sole strength from the subservient ineptitude of the reigning
   emperor, but wielded an immense prestige from the fact that it could
   invariably command the influence of the Throne.

   Typhos, indignant at his brother's elevation to the Præfecture, on
   which he had set his heart, began to intrigue secretly with Gaïnas, and
   the unscrupulous wife of Typhos with the wife of Gaïnas. The Goth, full
   of cunning and suspicion, was willing to utilise them both, but he was
   much too cautious to betray to them his own private plans.

   Those plans were now nearly ripe for action. A kinsman of the
   Goth--Tribigild, a military tribune and chieftain of the Gruthongs--had
   come to Constantinople partly to compliment Eutropius on his elevation
   to the Consulship, but in reality to plead for higher office for
   himself and larger subsidies for his warlike nation.

   Eutropius simply dallied with and fooled the Gruthongian chieftain. He
   despised his tribe as a distant section of the Ostrogoths too
   numerically feeble to be formidable. After manifold delays he snubbed
   Tribigild altogether, and sent him back without added pay, without
   presents, without even the cheap reward of empty titles. It was a fatal
   impolicy, due too the vertigo of his unwonted exaltation. No doubt such
   requests as those of Tribigild were an incessant worry to the Court;
   but Eutropius might have had sufficient foresight to see that a
   relation of Gaïnas, and a chief of high pretensions, could not be duped
   and insulted with impunity.

   What passed between Gaïnas and Tribigild is not known, but there seems
   to be little doubt that they concocted between them a disastrous
   conspiracy.

   Angry and dejected, his Scythian breast, as Claudian calls it, inflamed
   with want, his pride humiliated, his hand empty of gifts, the
   Gruthongian chieftain made his way home. His wife saw him approaching
   from a distance, and flew to meet him. She was one of those strong, and
   lofty-statured Teutonic women, by whose side the enervated Roman ladies
   looked so puny and slight-natured. She was clad in robes of fine linen,
   fastened at the breast with a jewelled brooch, and her long, fair
   tresses were confined by a band clasped with golden serpents. Joyously
   meeting him, and flinging her white arms round his neck, she asked what
   titles he had won, what presents he had brought for himself and her,
   what largesses for his tribe. Doubtless he had some necklace of orient
   pearls or emeralds for her, and some shield with its golden boss set
   round with gems to hang upon the wall of his banquet-chamber, and
   testify the admiration of Arcadius for a loyal chief?

   Ask me not!' he answered with sullen anger; I bring nothing. My
   requests have all been refused. No larger subsidies are conceded. They
   have not given me the title of Count. I have been insulted--and by a
   eunuch.'

   Then, in all the old passion of a barbarian woman, his wife tore her
   cheeks with her nails and poured out her fierce taunts.

   Back, then, to your plough,' she said, husbandman, unfit to be a
   warrior! Fling away the sword, and take to the harrow. Let your
   Gruthongs sink to the level of an earth-grubbing peasantry. Oh! why did
   fortune link me with a poltroon? There are other Gothic women whose
   husbands have not been content to sweat over spades, whose homes are
   adorned with the spoils of cities that their husbands have laid waste,
   who are waited on by fair Argive and Laconian maidens. But the chief of
   their clan was an Alaric, and not a Tribigild.'

   My tribe is small,' said Tribigild, my warriors are few.'

   Tush!' she said; war will give you allies, war will crowd your ranks.
   Fling off the half-Roman; be a true Goth once more. They have spurned
   your fidelity; let them dread your injuries.'

   No Goth could resist such appeals. Tribigild roused his tribe, and flew
   to arms. Multitudes of slaves and barbarians joined him. The rich
   plains of Phrygia lay before him, and its cities were only defended by
   walls which had long crumbled into decay. He devastated the whole
   country with fire and flame, and the terrified people appealed to
   Constantinople for protection from massacre and ruin.

   At first Eutropius affected to make light of the catastrophe which his
   levity had precipitated. 'It is but an incursion of brigands,' he said
   to the frightened Emperor. They want chains, not troops. I will send a
   Prætor, not a Tribune, to punish them.' It was, as Claudian says, the
   policy of the ostrich, which hides its head in the sand, and thinks
   that its enemy will not see it. Secretly, however, he sent to negotiate
   with Tribigild. Experience had given him an immense belief in the
   omnipotence of bribes. In this instance they were vain. The Gruthong
   had already enriched himself with abundant spoil. He disdained to
   accept donatives wrung from fear. He affected to despise the honours
   which came from an eunuch. What, then, do you want?' said the
   emissaries.

   I want neither a courtship, nor presents, nor a donative,' he answered.

   Will nothing content you?'

   Yes! I want revenge. Send me the head of the eunuch and I grant you
   peace.'

   Gaïnas made matters much worse by doing his utmost to increase the
   general consternation. My cousin Tribigild,' he said, is a first-rate
   general, and those Gruthongs are splendid fighters.'

   Eutropius was in despair. At last he summoned such advisers as he could
   trust. But he had few on whom to rely except dandy youths and loose old
   men, whose chief glory it was to discover new refinements of luxury for
   their banquets, and to have peacocks and green parrots among the
   entremets. The chief subject of their chatter was the description of
   dresses and the discussion of the rival merits of athletes. Their very
   rings and their silk dresses were a burden to their decrepit
   enervation, and their chief aim was to look effeminate and have a good
   supply of lewd witticisms, while they talked of the wrigglings of
   acrobats and the dancing of actresses. But now Eutropius told them that
   affairs were serious. What was he to do?

   They agreed that it would be unwise to send Gaïnas to suppress the
   rebellion. He was a Goth, and could not be trusted to put down Goths.
   His allegiance was more than suspected, and Tribigild was his cousin.
   No; there was nothing for it but to appoint Leo general.

   Even in that conclave of his creatures the suggestion of Eutropius was
   received with an ill-suppressed titter, in which his prime favourite,
   the Spanish ex-cook, Osius, joined. For Leo was a common joke. He was
   so fat that he could neither walk without waddling nor speak without
   panting. What soldiers, whether Gothic or Roman, could respect or would
   obey such a general? Yet he valiantly exclaimed that he would drag this
   upstart Tribigild and these Gruthongian deserters behind his chariot to
   Constantinople.

   So, while owls screeched their evil omens, he was sent forth to meet
   his doom, and to feed the Molossian vultures with the carcases of his
   soldiers. Never was there such a dissipated and ill-disciplined host.
   No one knew how to choose encampments. No scouts brought news of the
   enemy; no guides led them by the shortest routes; no sentries watched
   the vallum at night. Like a disorderly procession, the motley host
   marched towards the valleys and mountain-passes of the Taurus.

   Tribigild, by a pretence of alarm, lulled the Roman army into fatal
   demoralisation. Leo, with senseless ignorance, had chosen his camp at a
   spot where a vast marsh at his rear cut off all hope of retreat. His
   insubordinate army spent the night in revelry and drunkenness. At
   darkest midnight Tribigild and his Goths burst over the unguarded
   rampart, and massacred at their will the drowsy and drunken soldiers.
   There was no battle--only a slaughter and a rout. Leo mounted his
   horse, and fled headlong towards the marsh, in which thousands of his
   miserable soldiers were already floundering. The horse, covered with
   streaming sweat under the precipitate career and enormous corpulence of
   its rider, stumbled in the marsh, and flung Leo over its head. The
   wretched general tried in vain to crawl out on his belly through the
   mud and slush. Sunk down by his own weight, he died, partly of terror,
   and partly of suffocation. Tribigild could leave the wasted regions of
   Phrygia behind him, and burn and pillage at his will the rich plains of
   Pamphylia and Pisidia.

   Arcadius had now no choice but to leave Constantinople practically
   undefended, and to send Gaïnas to check the dangerous career of the
   rebel. He crossed the Bosporus, and ostensibly marched to crush the
   enemy. But dog will not eat dog,' and he practically did nothing. The
   Emperor was mocked by missives in which Gaïnas lauded Tribigild as the
   best general of the age, and the Gruthongs as the most invincible
   soldiers. He saw no hope of defeating them. But they were inclined to
   be loyal had they not been so grievously offended. If the Emperor would
   only grant Tribigild's just demand for the head of the
   Chamberlain--Gaïnas would not call him Consul--the chief would lay down
   his arms and return to his own land. Was the safety of Eutropius to be
   preferred to the well-being of the entire Empire?

   Nor was this all. A new terror began to threaten Arcadius. Bahram IV.,
   King of Persia, had been his friend and faithful ally; but now the
   anti-Roman party had succeeded in effecting the murder of Bahram, and
   the first act of his successor, Izdegerd, was to send an army to attack
   Syria. Surely the omen of the Consulship of Eutropius had been
   sinister, and even deadly. For worse was still behind. If there was one
   person whom Arcadius hated, it was Stilico; and if there was one person
   against whom he cherished a malignant jealousy, it was his brother
   Honorius, who, though he was such a poor specimen of humanity, was yet
   on the whole his superior. Honorius and Stilico had disdainfully
   refused to acknowledge his new Consul, and now it began to be openly
   rumoured that Stilico, impatient of the disgraces and disorders of the
   East, meditated the suppression of Arcadius altogether, and the union
   of the dissevered empires of the East and West under a single emperor.
   This was the news which, more than any other, made the pale blood of
   Arcadius run cold.

   How will it be with me if I am dispossessed?' asked Arcadius of
   himself. How if I am rendered incapable of further rule, not only by
   imprisonment, but by akroteriasm?'

   The frightful meaning of that word haunted him. It meant the cutting
   off of his hands and feet. He pictured to himself an abject cripple
   lying mutilated in a foul dungeon; and that cripple was himself, while
   the hated Honorius and the hated Stilico revelled in the purple
   chambers of the Byzantine Palace.

   Harassed to misery by these sources of dread from many quarters, even
   Arcadius could hardly refrain from asking himself, Can I not avert the
   worst of these catastrophes by the sacrifice of one wretched old man?'

   Whether his hesitation would otherwise have been broken down we cannot
   tell; but a sudden act of insane folly on the part of the eunuch called
   down the avalanche on his own head.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [11] The name Gaïnas is an abbreviation of Gaisananths, spear-bold.'
   Zosimus writes it Gaines, Socrates Gainas.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE FALL OF EUTROPIUS


   Tolluntur in altum

   Ut lapsu graviore cadant.

   Claudian.

   The mixture of dread, irritation, and intoxicated vanity which had come
   upon Eutropius as Patrician and Consul had clouded the usual keenness
   of his intellect and overthrown his shrewd judgment. He might have seen
   at some moments that, as a breath had made, so a breath could unmake
   him, and that the most ordinary common-sense dictated the advisability
   of his keeping on the best terms with the Imperial family. But of late
   Eudoxia had adopted towards him a tone almost of command, which he did
   not like. One day she spoke to him about the ravages of Tribigild, the
   insolence and probable treachery of Gaïnas, the certainty of a Persian
   war, and this intolerable menace of Stilico's intervention. She gave
   him to understand that she did not think he had managed well, and
   blamed him for sending against the Gruthongs such a man as Leo, when he
   might have sent a man of proved valour like Aurelian, or a man of
   capacity like Count John.

   Leave me to arrange these matters with the Emperor,' he said curtly. As
   for Aurelian, his appointment would have irritated Gaïnas; as for Count
   John--' he shrugged his shoulders, and looked at Eudoxia.

   A blush mounted her cheeks, dyed them with crimson, and rose to the
   roots of her fair hair; but she disdained to notice what she regarded
   as an insolent innuendo.

   At any rate,' she said, you need not have sent a mere fat, incompetent
   glutton like Leo.'

   Leo was my friend, madam,' he said. You are no judge of his military
   aptness.'

   He has shown it egregiously,' retorted the Empress. 'Who ever heard of
   a Roman general suffocated in a scramble through the mud, as he
   galloped away in headlong flight?'

   It was his misfortune, not his fault.'

   Such misfortunes seem to come thick in your Consulship.'

   Eutropius could not stand this. Was he Consul and Patrician--had he
   broken his birth's invidious bar--had he sold provinces and appointed
   præfects--had senators and nobles grovelled before him--had he made his
   name ring through the world side by side with Stilico's, only to be
   mocked by a Frankish woman who owed her position exclusively to him?

   Have a care, madam,' he said rudely. The same hand that raised you up
   can put you down.'

   Eudoxia flushed into angry tears at the insult. Starting from her seat,
   she waved him aside with an imperious gesture, and made her way
   straight to the Purple Chamber, where were her two children. She took
   the little Flaccilla by the hand, and snatched the baby Pulcheria,
   afterwards destined to play so memorable a part in history, into her
   arms. Then, heedless of all Court ceremonial, she burst unannounced
   into the room where the Emperor was sitting, and flung herself, still
   weeping, at his knees. She could not speak for shame and anger, and the
   beautiful little children, understanding nothing, but catching the
   contagion of their mother's emotion, wept and wailed with her, while
   Arcadius, deeply disturbed, kept asking what was the matter.

   Am I your wife,' she cried, when she found voice to speak, or am I not?
   Am I your empress, or a slave and puppet of eunuchs? Are these your
   children? and is their mother nothing to you?'

   What is the matter? What is the matter?' Arcadius kept repeating.

   Eutropius,' she sobbed--'he has insulted me. I know that it is only
   because of him that you have withheld from me the title of Augusta,
   though I have borne you two children. But that is nothing. He says I
   owe my place solely to him. He threatens to drag me down when he likes.
   Is he emperor, or are you?'

   Arcadius for more than a month had come to the slowly formed conviction
   that his supine abandonment of everything into the hands of his
   Chamberlain was likely to cost him dear. Nothing but the indolence
   which Eutropius had fostered, and the dread of innumerable worries from
   which the Minister had relieved him, had prevented him from taking some
   step for the general good. Eudoxia's indignant fury was the last spark
   to fire the sluggish train. He would be a slave no longer to his own
   official. Eudoxia was now demanding his dismissal as the sole way to
   protect her from his insults, and, striking while the iron was hot,
   Arcadius acted on the impulse of a sudden resolution. He calmed
   Eudoxia's passion by a promise that her wrongs should be redressed, and
   striking a silver gong with unwonted energy, bade the officer to go at
   once to Eutropius with the order to leave the Palace on pain of instant
   death.

   The officer was thunderstruck. Was he really to give this message to
   the Patrician, the Consul, the Grand Chamberlain, who but an hour ago
   had wielded absolute control of life and death, and had been the most
   powerful man in the whole Empire?

   He had not to carry his message far. Eutropius had marked the wild rage
   of the beautiful Empress. He recognised that he had gone too far; that
   she was not like one of those soft Roman and Eastern ladies who cared
   for nothing but scents and jewels. She was a Frank, the daughter of a
   Frank general, and felt herself capable of rule. The home from which
   she came had made her unfavourable to Eutropius, much as she owed to
   him. She had no intention to be his subordinate. He watched her go to
   the Purple Chamber, watched her hurry with her children into the
   presence of Arcadius, heard the tumult of cries and sobs, heard the
   voice of the Emperor raised to a tone which he had never heard before,
   heard him summon an officer. But even he did not anticipate the
   summariness and tremendous finality of his doom.

   The officer as he passed had mentioned to others the tenor of his
   heart-shaking message; attendants gathered round the door had overheard
   what the Emperor said. The news spread through the throng of
   sycophantic hangers-on in the Palace with the rapidity of lightning. In
   five minutes it was universally known. Eutropius received the mandate.
   He was informed that soldiers were coming to arrest him. He had not a
   moment to lose. The Emperor's private passage spanned the
   Chalkoprateia, and led into the Church of St. Sophia. To reach it he
   had to walk through vast antechambers thronged with slaves, pages,
   soldiers, Court officials. Ten minutes earlier, if he had passed along,
   he would have been received with prostrations, and genuflexions, and
   hand-kissings, and titles of admiration, and wreathed smiles. Now he
   saw only scowls, and averted faces, and pointed fingers, and heard
   nothing but smothered curses and whispered jeers. The wretched man
   recognised that the sun of his fortune had suddenly plunged into
   deepest night. He hurried into the private passage, ran at full speed
   into the Cathedral, rushed up the steps among the astonished deacons
   and presbyters, and choosing for his asylum the most sacred and
   inviolable spot, he flung himself under the Holy Table, and grasped one
   of the gilded columns by which it was supported.

   And there, still in the palm-woven robes of his consular dignity, in
   the purple mantle of his patrician rank, with dust scattered over his
   bald head, and grey thin locks, he lay and sobbed and grovelled in the
   dust.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXVII

  IN SANCTUARY


   Illatas Consul poenas, se consule, solvit...

   Sævit in auctorem prodigiosus honor.

   Claudian.

   Philip had been by accident in the Church of St. Sophia when Eutropius
   rushed into it down the private passage from the Palace which led into
   the Emperor's gallery, and down the staircase from the gallery into the
   nave. Lost in astonishment, Philip saw the unhappy man speed in wild
   affright up the porphyry steps of the sanctuary and disappear behind
   the drawn curtain. Usually the new Patrician and Consul was never seen
   in public except when he paced to the Theatre or Circus between his
   lictors, or in the centre of a throng of soldiers, slaves, and
   sycophants, while everywhere the claque of paid adherents received hire
   with acclamations, as if he were a hero or a god. What could possibly
   be the meaning of the unwonted spectacle of the most powerful of living
   men, pale, terrified, dishevelled, ungreeted and ungreeting, unattended
   even by a single slave, running at full speed, though with his knees
   trembling under him, and often stumbling on the road? Something
   portentous must have happened, and without even guessing what it was,
   the youth's shrewd and practical intellect instantly took in the
   importance of the occurrence. Whatever else it meant, it could only
   mean that Eutropius was taking sanctuary--was flying to the protection
   of that right of asylum of which he had endeavoured to rob the Church
   of Christ.

   But great men do not fall, any more than great trees fall crashing over
   the forest which they overshadow, without serious commotion; and Philip
   was far from sure that Eutropius would not become the victim of his own
   law, which had excepted the crime of læsa majestas from the right of
   ecclesiastical protection. He foresaw that in half an hour's time, or
   less, when the news of the favourite's ruin had spread, the church
   would be transformed into a scene of the wildest commotion. It was
   necessary that Chrysostom should be instantly informed of what had
   happened.

   The Patriarch's palace stood opposite the wall of the Imperial
   precincts, and was but a minute's distance from the eastern gate of St.
   Sophia. It faced the Milion and the line of statues which adorned the
   northern facade of the Hippodrome. While the few who were in the church
   were still lost in wonder, and were crowding up towards the presbytery
   to catch a glimpse of Eutropius when the curtains were drawn, Philip
   darted home, and passing straight into the Archbishop's room, said:

   Father, your presence is instantly needed in the Great Church!
   Eutropius has taken refuge in the sacrarium!'

   Eutropius?' exclaimed Chrysostom in amazement. 'He has fled to
   sanctuary? What has happened?'

   I know nothing more,' said Philip, but I saw him flash by me as I stood
   in the nave. He looked as pale as death. Terror was stamped on every
   feature. His robes were in disorder; his head was defiled with dust. In
   a few moments there will be some terrible scene. There is not an
   instant to be lost!'

   I will join you directly,' said Chrysostom. I have but to put on my
   pallium. Summon Bishop Palladius, Serapion, Tigrius, Cassian, Germanus,
   and all the clergy who may be in the Thomaites, to accompany me.'

   Come, David and Eutyches,' said Philip as he passed through the
   anteroom. It is I who have strange news to-day, but it is beyond all
   jest. The Archbishop will join the clergy in the Hall directly. Leave
   your work and come to St. Sophia, where you will see a scene which will
   be memorable for all time.'

   The youths sprang up, and almost immediately Chrysostom came out, and,
   attended by his clergy and secretaries, walked rapidly to the
   Cathedral. The throng was already very large, and was momentarily
   increasing. The startling news had spread as though on wings of fire.
   It had reached the streets, where the crowds were yelling with savage
   satisfaction. It had reached the soldiers, who were in tumult. It had
   reached the Hippodrome, and passed as in a moment, none knew how,
   through its assembled thousands. Then a strange event happened. Of late
   Eutropius had spent whole days in the Theatre and the Hippodrome,
   seated in state, graciously unbending to gratify the multitude,
   scattering smiles and largesses, flattering and flattered, omnia
   serviliter pro imperio, to all appearance the assured favourite of the
   promiscuous inhabitants of Constantinople. Yet now--such is fame, such
   the worth of the applause of the multitude!--the whole assembled
   populace rose as one man, shouting, Death to the eunuch!'

   Chrysostom was not a moment too soon. But for Philip's swift resolution
   the hated Minister might ere now have been torn by rude hands from his
   place of shelter, and the sacredness of the shrine been polluted with
   the horror of bloodshed. Already there was tumult, and unwonted cries
   were heard in the holy place; but a hush fell on the people as the
   Patriarch came in sight in his pallium woven with crosses, and they
   made way before him as, in stately solemnity, he advanced towards the
   sacrarium with his attendant presbyters and deacons. They ascended the
   steps and passed through the curtain. It was there that Eutropius and
   Chrysostom met once more.

   There was no manliness, there was no dignity in the anguish of the
   fallen Chamberlain: it was abject, it was womanish; it was calculated
   to awaken contempt rather than pity. The memory of his crimes added to
   the degradation of his wretchedness. It was as though the spectres of
   Timasius and Abundantius towered over him, and pointed him out to the
   avenging Furies. The idol which had so suddenly crumbled to the dust
   was a mean and ugly one. This was no Marius, sitting hungry and unshorn
   in his wretched dungeon, but still clothed in the majesty of manhood;
   no Pompeius, grand even in the midst of his calamities. It was a
   wretched, gilded insect of the harem whom Destiny, in one of her most
   cruel and sarcastic jokes, had first elevated from the most degraded
   slavedom to more than imperial power, and then suddenly, as in a
   moment, had flung away her plaything, with utter scorn, to grinning
   infamy.

   The moment Eutropius saw the Archbishop he grovelled face downwards
   under the Holy Table, and wept and tore his hair; but at first his
   chattering teeth refused to frame a sound. Then he half rose, but hid
   his face in his robe, which was wet with tears and foul with dust.

   Look at me!' said Chrysostom.

   For an instant the eunuch turned to him the deplorable, wrinkled face
   of his dishonoured age, with a look of appeal which would have been
   infinitely pathetic but for the ludicrous dishevelment and paltriness
   of the man, which made even sorrow seem too lofty an emotion for such a
   spectacle. Yet Eutyches and David were deeply moved, and there were
   tears in Philip's eyes.

   Destiny is pitiless,' said Chrysostom. Pray to God, pray to Christ to
   help thee. I fear thou mayst be beyond the help of man. But He who
   outstretched His arms upon the cross has a heart compassionate enough
   to embrace all wretchedness, and even the deepest guilt, so it be
   penitent.'

   Eutropius could not answer. The Archbishop was thinking of the world
   beyond the grave; his own thoughts were all absorbed in the terror of
   the brief and passing present.

   Meanwhile, through the opened curtains of the presbytery the crowd
   caught sight of the crouching figure, and amid the tumult and the
   menacing cries, which rose louder and louder, the tramp of soldiers and
   the clang of armour made itself ever more distinctly heard.

   The sounds renewed the wildest alarm of the fugitive. 'Oh, save me!' he
   cried, save me!' And as he spoke he snatched at the Archbishop's robe,
   and kissed its hem.

   I will save thee,' said Chrysostom, if man may at all save thee.'

   Swear to me,' said the wretched man.

   Nay, a good man's word needs no oath. Fear not. Leave the Holy Table.
   Serapion will take thee into the Chamber of the Holy Vessels.'

   Leaving the Archdeacon to attend to the eunuch and supply his needs,
   Chrysostom advanced to the front of the chancel, and ordered the
   curtains to be drawn behind him. He looked out on a wild scene. The
   armed Prætorians had forced their way through the dense mob to the
   front, and stood there shouting and brandishing their drawn swords,
   with cries of The eunuch! give us up the eunuch! He is in hiding here.
   He shall die!'

   It was always in such scenes that Chrysostom rose to the fullest
   grandeur of his undaunted nobleness. Many a man will quail before a mad
   and mutinous mob who will face almost any other form of menace. But
   Chrysostom, as he looked on those gleaming eyes and furious faces, was
   as calm as if he had been talking to Philip in his own room. Not a
   pulse beat the quicker, and though his figure was not majestic, he
   seemed to dilate with the grandeur of his appointed task.

   Silence!' he called out in his clear, resonant voice, which was heard
   above the madness of the multitude; and once more, as they did not heed
   his command, he raised his arm in an attitude of authority and again
   cried,

   Silence, ye people, and ye turbulent Prætorians! Silence!' Astonished
   and overawed by the fearlessness of the man, which filled the
   disciplined soldiery with admiration, the crowd sank for an instant to
   silence.

   What mean ye? What do ye desire?' said the Patriarch, 'that ye fill
   with your lewd clamour the sacred silence of the church of Christ?
   Depart hence! The Hippodrome is the fitter scene for your shouts and
   tumults.'

   The eunuch! he is hidden here! Death, death to the eunuch!' they
   shouted.

   He has taken sanctuary,' said Chrysostom, with perfect calmness. 'He
   has flung himself on the protection of the Church. She spreads over him
   her mantle of mercy. Depart hence! your errand is in vain. He is
   inviolable here.'

   Nay, but you are breaking the law,' said the Tribune of the Prætorians.
   He has been guilty of treason. By the edict of Arcadius, by the edict
   he himself demanded and carried, he has no right to protection. You
   must give him up.'

   Never!' said Chrysostom.

   Nay, but we will have him; we will drag him out hence by the hair!'
   shouted the soldiers.

   You dare not!' said Chrysostom.

   We will soon see whether we dare,' cried the boldest of them, who were
   Arian Goths, filled with special hatred of the fallen Minister; and
   some of them began to rush up the marble steps.

   Back!' said Chrysostom, advancing with uplifted hand and checking their
   menacing onrush; while Philip and his two friends, who were watching
   the scene with intense excitement and unbounded admiration for their
   master, eagerly sprang forward, to protect him if possible, to die with
   him if necessary.

   This won't do,' shouted the Tribune. We have the Emperor's orders.'

   The Emperor's orders? What avail the Emperor's orders in the sanctuary
   of God? He is an emperor over frail men; we are the servants of the
   Most High God. What!' he cried, as he laid a firm hand on the cuirass
   of the foremost soldier, though he was brandishing his drawn sword over
   his head--'what! do you presume to violate the sanctuary of your
   Saviour?'

   We don't want to hurt you; but, we will have the eunuch!'

   Then,' said Chrysostom, spreading out his arms across the narrow space,
   advance if you will; but if you do it must be over my body--yes, and
   over the bodies of these my presbyters;' for now they were all standing
   round the Archbishop, prepared--all unarmed as they were--to defend the
   sanctuary, even with their lives.

   Shame on you! shame on you, soldiers!' cried young Eutyches, carried
   out of himself by the scene. 'Would you defile the Holy Place of God
   with the blood of His murdered ministers? And are you not afraid that
   the lightning will flash on you, or the floor be rent with earthquake
   to swallow you up quick, like Korah and all his company?'

   Silence, you young cub!' said a soldier, striking the boy on the cheek,
   while others still pressed forward, being almost forced on by the waves
   of the people who surged behind them.

   It was one of those crucial moments when the possibility of enormous
   crimes trembles, as it were, in the balance, and when there is but a
   hair's-breadth between scenes such as history records for ever, or the
   averting of some dreadful catastrophe. At any moment one of those
   uplifted swords might descend on the head of the Archbishop; and then
   the soldiers and the mob, drunken with blood and fury, would have
   trampled down the presbyters, would have dragged Eutropius from his
   hiding-place, and hacked him to pieces at the very altar. The cheek of
   Eutyches was bleeding with the soldier's blow, and Philip and David had
   climbed up the balustrade, their faces aflame with the very enthusiasm
   of martyrdom, and had taken their places close beside their master,
   ready to shield him with their bodies.

   The absolute calm of the Archbishop averted the peril. 'You have
   heard,' he said, as though God's voice had spoken to you by a boy's
   lips--you have heard the awfulness of the atrocity which you seem to be
   on the verge of committing. Pause ere you drown your souls for ever in
   destruction and perdition!'

   Give us the eunuch!' said a soldier, and we will disperse this
   multitude with the flat of our swords, march out in peace, and close
   the church-gates.'

   I will not give you the fugitive who has flung himself on Heaven's
   protection. Listen to me. Let the Emperor decide. Take me to him here
   and now. Take me to him as your prisoner, if you will. Leave some of
   your number, pledged by the word of your Tribune to defend the
   sanctuary from rioters while I am absent, and hear whether the Emperor
   really bids you to desecrate the church of God.'

   Not waiting for any consultation, Chrysostom quietly began to descend
   the steps. I will walk,' he said, in the midst of you.'

   Let us come with you, sir,' said Philip, earnestly.

   These are my young secretaries,' said Chrysostom to the Tribune. They
   are not formidable. Let them accompany us. They may be very useful in
   writing notes or taking messages. Your face bleeds, my poor lad,' he
   said to Eutyches. You might have dealt less roughly with the harmless
   boy,' he said to the Prætorian who had struck him. The Goth actually
   blushed at his words, and shrank back as he would not have done from
   the sword of the strongest enemy.

   So the Tribune bade the soldiers form two lines and walk with uplifted
   lances or drawn swords on either side of the Patriarch to the Imperial
   Palace. The crowd in the church divided to let them pass; and in the
   streets they walked through myriads of spectators, struck with the
   unwonted spectacle of their Patriarch conducted into the presence of
   the Emperor by armed Trabantes, who did not abstain from cries of Death
   to the eunuch! We demand the head of Eutropius!'

   As the streets were in a state of excitement, Aurelian, as Prætorian
   Præfect, had drawn up many soldiers as well as the Royal Guards before
   the gate, and through these the Patriarch and his escort passed in
   silence, until they had conducted him to the door of the Emperor's
   room.

   Chrysostom briefly recounted all that had taken place, and Arcadius
   feebly pleaded that Eutropius, as a State criminal who had treasonably
   mismanaged affairs, and who had openly insulted the sacred majesty of
   the Empress, could not claim asylum from which the law exempted him.

   It was a cruel, it was a wrong, it was an unjustifiable law,' said
   Chrysostom. 'No doubt, if justice were perfect, if there were no
   officials to do deeds of oppression, robbery and wrong, the privilege
   of asylum might be abused, and might become dangerous and evil to the
   State. But it is not so. It may be that, here and there, it throws a
   shield over the guilty, but ten times more often it protects the
   innocent.'

   Eutropius is not innocent,' said the Emperor pettishly.

   I said not that he was,' said Chrysostom, but in the days of his
   fortune, in the days when he was your all-honoured plenipotentiary, in
   the days when he wielded and abused all your power----'

   Arcadius winced.

   In those days I resisted to his face the arbitrary injustice of
   invading the sacred privilege of the Church. I made him my enemy by
   doing so.'

   Then why does your Beatitude protect him now?'

   I protect him all the more, Emperor, ten times the more, because he was
   my enemy. The question is not of him: it is of the rights of Christ and
   of His Church.'

   But he is guilty,' reiterated the Emperor.

   Granted, if you will. It does not affect the question. Think of others
   who were not guilty. Think of the innocent, the holy Pentadia, whom but
   for the rights of sanctuary Eutropius might have dragged into torture,
   or penury, or to share the death of her wronged and murdered husband,
   Timasius. Think of Lucian, Count of the East, whom, not for
   wrong-doing, but for an act of noble justice, your Minister Rufinus
   beat to death with leaded whips. Had he but foreseen his peril he might
   have been safe in the Church of Antioch.'

   But I have passed an edict on the subject.'

   Yes, or Eutropius passed one in your Majesty's name.'

   Arcadius again winced, and almost summoned up sufficient energy to look
   angry.

   But though your laws are decisive in all human questions, one who, like
   yourself, desires to be a pious emperor cannot pretend to interfere
   with the indefeasible laws of God. Human law, except so far as it is a
   part of the Divine law--what is it? It is, and it is not. It is passed
   to-day, it is destroyed to-morrow. But Divine law? Well has the Greek
   poet sung that it is not of to-day, or of yesterday, but lives for ever
   and ever, and none knoweth whence it was manifested. The laws even of
   emperors are invalid if they encroach upon the privilege of Christ. The
   wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.'

   The Emperor was overborne. He was timid and superstitious, and dreaded
   lest he should kindle the displeasure of Heaven.

   What do you wish me to do?' he said helplessly.

   Nothing ignoble, nothing in any way unworthy of your sublime power:
   only one of those acts of mercy and of justice more glorious than the
   diadem. Come out with me, and bid Aurelian announce to his Prætorians
   that the sacred precincts shall not be violated.'

   Arcadius went out in purple and diadem, and when Aurelian genuflected
   before him, he said, I must ask you to tell your Prætorians it is my
   will that the asylum of Eutropius should be respected.'

   He spoke--and stood irresolute; for, regardless of his presence, the
   soldiers, who in the silence had heard his decision, broke into a
   wrathful murmur and cries of 'Death to the eunuch!' which even Aurelian
   could not suppress. The emperor felt indefinitely strengthened by the
   presence of the Patriarch, but the most rigid law of Court ceremony
   forbade Chrysostom to speak. Arcadius, in halting, hesitating words,
   endeavoured to impress on the minds of his Guards what Chrysostom had
   been saying to him, but the arguments sounded very different on his
   lips. The soldiers paid no sort of regard to them.

   Why are you so enraged against the Chamberlain?' asked the Emperor. If
   he has done some bad deeds, surely he has done some good ones, too?'

   What good deeds has he done?' asked a Prætorian rudely.

   My father Theodosius sent him to John, the holy eremite of Egypt, and
   he brought back the prophecy of his victory and speedy death.'

   A coarse laugh from the soldiers was the only reply, and one of them
   said: Why, any fool would have done as much as that.' The cries of
   Death to the eunuch!' were redoubled, mingled with shouts of Who
   murdered Timasius? Who put up Gildo? Who betrayed the army to
   Tribigild?'

   Things looked very ominous, for the soldiers began to leap in the air
   and shake their long spears. Had Arcadius thought of ordering either
   Aurelian or Chrysostom to address the mutineers, they would no doubt
   have brought them to their senses; but he did not, and the revolt might
   very speedily have become a revolution. But at that moment Arcadius was
   protected by his very helplessness. He simply burst into tears, and
   implored the soldiers for his sake to spare his disgraced Minister.
   They were unaccustomed to the sight of an emperor in tears, and they
   sullenly consented to abandon their demand.

   Chrysostom thanked the Emperor, and went back under escort through the
   raging mob to St. Sophia. The church was practically in a state of
   siege, and it was with difficulty that the soldiers secured his
   entrance. He brought to Eutropius the news of his immediate safety,
   which the eunuch received with transports of gratitude. He left him in
   charge of a number of the clergy, to whom Aurelian assigned the
   protection of a hundred soldiers; and then he returned home, deeply
   wearied with the adventures of the day, but thankful to God that he had
   saved the life of the suppliant, and successfully defended the
   prerogatives of the Church.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  INEVITABLE NEMESIS


   Ambition this shall tempt to rise,

   Then whirl the wretch from high,

   To bitter scorn a sacrifice,

   And grinning infamy.--Gray.

   The next morning was Sunday, and never--not even at the most sumptuous
   of Easter festivities--had so vast a congregation thronged the ample
   spaces of St. Sophia. Nave, tribunes, galleries, porticoes, were
   filled, till there was no standing-room--not so much by worshippers as
   by multitudes eager for new and powerful emotions. Virgins had quitted
   their chambers, women had left the Gynæceum empty, men had deserted the
   Forum and the Hippodrome. The Emperor and the Empress were present in
   the royal pew, in the centre of groups of betitled and bejewelled
   officials; scarcely a præfect, patrician, or illustris was absent; and
   soldiers in their glittering armour were mingled with the crowd.

   After the service Chrysostom advanced to the ambo, and seated himself
   for his discourse. In the dead silence he perused for a moment the sea
   of upturned faces. Many of them were fixed on him in bitter anger
   because he had snatched their enemy from destruction. On other faces
   gleamed and flickered the vulgar joy of the base at the fall of the
   great into calamity. Others showed only the idle curiosity which makes
   dread disasters the sources of pleasurable sensation, provided only
   that they fall on their neighbours, not upon themselves.

   It was just such a moment as that in Notre Dame when as vast a
   multitude watched Massillon mount the pulpit before which lay the
   coffin containing the mortal remains of Louis XIV., and when, after a
   pause, he began his sermon and melted all to tears by the simple words,
   'God alone is great.'

   Chrysostom ordered the curtains of the presbytery to be thrown back,
   and there the assembled multitude beheld the man whom a single day had
   hurled from the summit of human eminence to the lowest deep of human
   misery. He was lying under the altar, a pitiable spectacle, pale as a
   corpse, clinging convulsively to one of its golden pillars. If he
   raised for a moment his miserable face, he saw the dense throng of
   soldiers who had formed part of his escort, of slaves to whom his nod
   was law, of citizens who had shouted applause to him for hours in
   public places. Higher up, in the gilded gallery, he saw the Empress
   whom he had elevated from insignificance, the Emperor whom he had
   treated like a tame animal. Then the voice of the sacred orator fell
   upon his ears, saying

   "

   Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities--all is
   vanity!" True always, it never seemed more true than now. Where now is
   the splendour of the Consulate? Where the gleaming of lamps and
   torches, the acclamations, the dances, the festivities, the joyous
   assemblies? Where are the crowns and Tyrian tapestries? The flattering
   murmur of the city, the greetings of the Circus, the flatteries of
   thousands of spectators--where are they now? All that is past. The
   hurricane has swept down upon the tree, and not only scattered all its
   leaves, but upturned it by the roots, and whirled it to the earth.
   Where are the false friends, the swarms of parasites, the tables laden
   with viands, the goblets crowned with luscious wines and passing all
   day long from hand to hand, the delicacies of banquets, the soft
   murmurs of the slaves of power? What has become of it all? It has
   vanished like a dream when one awakes; it has faded like a flower of
   the spring under the sirocco; it has disappeared like a shadow. It is
   scattered like a vapour, bursten like a bubble, torn like a spider's
   web. Say, then, say ever, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!" Write it
   on your walls, on your garments, in your Forum, in your streets, on
   your houses, on your windows, on your gates. Write it most of all on
   your consciences, that it may be ever present to your thoughts.
   Reiterate it at all your banquets, and in worldly assemblies let each
   repeat it to his neighbour: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!"

   And thou,' he cried, turning to Eutropius, said I not to thee
   incessantly that

   riches make to themselves wings and flee away, and thou wouldst not
   listen? Said I not to thee that popularity was vain as the smoke and
   lukewarm water of mouth-friends, caring only for their own interests?
   Thou wouldst not believe me. And now experience hath shown thee that
   wealth is not only a thankless but a murderous slave. I became thine
   enemy because I told thee the truth; but said I not, "I am a truer
   friend to thee than they that flatter thee"? Warned I thee not that

   faithful are the wounds of a friend, deceitful the kisses of an enemy?
   Hadst thou borne my wounds thou hadst not been destroyed by their
   kisses. My wounds were health, their kisses death. Where now are the
   songs which welcomed thee? Where the army of slaves who cleared the way
   before thine omnipotence? They have deserted to thy foes, they deny thy
   favours. But I, whom thou couldst barely endure, have not abandoned
   thee, and now in thy fall it is I alone who support and solace thee.
   Thou foughtest against the Church, and the Church has opened her arms
   to receive thee; thou favouredst the theatres, and they are shrieking
   for thy head. When I warned thee not to tread thus gaily the road to
   ruin, thou, with a shrug of disdain, wouldst fly to the Circus. Lo! the
   Circus multitude, enriched by thy lavishness, whets the sword to slay
   thee; the Church, troubled by thy rage, is running hither and thither
   to snatch thee from thy misfortunes!'

   And then the thought seemed to strike the Archbishop that he had been
   too severe--that he had not sufficiently tempered his words with pity
   for the fallen. It was from no lack of tenderness and compassion; it
   was from the abstract impersonal light in which he regarded the whole
   scene. The poor fallen wretch had been the enemy of the Church, and he
   was no obscure criminal, to be either punished or pardoned, and then
   doomed to swift oblivion. He had played his part on the world's most
   brilliant stage; he was a man whom God had smitten with His thunder, on
   whom in all his guilt God's messenger was now pronouncing the
   humiliation of pardon.' The Archbishop had often reproved Eutropius for
   avarice, rapacity, injustice. The Minister's fall could not alter the
   mean estimate Chrysostom had formed of his character, and he almost
   forgot the personal feelings of the sufferer, almost ceased to regard
   him as one that suffered, in the strangeness of the spectacle, and in
   the desire to point to the frovolous multitude of nominal
   Christians--above all to guilty, grasping, luxurious nobles and
   officials, and to the wealthy classes in general--the terrible
   object-lesson which, from the speaker's point of view, their Saviour
   Himself had brought before their eyes. No doubt a man less inflexible
   of character, less rigid in his unsparing righteousness--man with more
   knowledge of the world, and trained in the midst of political affairs
   rather than by monks and hermits--would have managed the occasion with
   finer adaptability. His enemies declared that he had been merciless to
   the unfortunate. It was, indeed, the last thing which he had intended,
   and in the simpleness of his integrity he doubtless imagined that he
   had sufficiently proved the sincerity of his compassion by the generous
   sacrifice--by the sacrifice even of life itself--which he had been
   ready to make to protect the Church's suppliant. Still, as the thought
   crossed his mind that haply his language might have seemed harsh, he
   paused, and said:

   Nay, think not that I desire for a moment to insult a fallen man; my
   aim is to forewarn those who stand, and to bid them take heed lest they
   fall. I stand not here to fret the sores of the wounded, but to
   preserve the health of those who have no wounds; not to roll the
   billows over the head of the shipwrecked, but to point out the hidden
   reefs to those whose sails are swelled by the favouring wind as their
   prow cleaves the gleaming sea. Who was ever so great as this man? What
   living man in all the world could rival him in wealth? Consul,
   Patrician, Præfect of the Sacred Chamber--what honour was lacking to
   his Eminence? He was the envy of all men, and now he is as naked as the
   slave, indigent as the beggar. Drawn swords, and pits, and tortures,
   and the path that leads to execution, are ever before his eyes. These
   are the things, not the pleasures which he has exhausted, which crowd
   his vision. Why paint the picture which is before your very eyes?
   Behold him!

   I say again I desire not to insult his misery, but to touch your
   hearts, to warn your consciences, to make of his misfortunes angels to
   speak trumpet-tongued to your carelessness. I know that there are some
   of you who reproach me for having sheltered him. Wherein am I to blame?
   He used, you say, to attack the Church. Yes! but now he has taken
   refuge there. Should we not thank God that the enemy of the Church has
   recognised her mercy and her power? Her power--for she has won the
   victory; her pity--for she has pardoned him, and folded over him the
   wings of her protection. Should not Jews and Pagans blush to see, in
   his presence here, the trophy of her greatness? He denied her
   privileges; he strove to deconsecrate her sanctuary. He has himself
   fled to that sanctuary, and, tenderly as a mother, she hides him under
   her inviolable veil from the resentment of the Emperor and the fury of
   the mob! Look at yonder Holy Table! It is adorned with gold and
   precious stones; but its richest ornament is the fugitive who crouches
   there.

   An ornament? you cry. This man, so greedy, so rapacious, so unjust. How
   can this criminal adorn the altar which he strove to violate? Ah!
   silence! Should you not think of Him who suffered the harlot, out of
   whom he had cast seven devils, to wash His feet with her tears, and
   wipe them with the hairs of her head? Of Him Who, when brutal soldiers
   were nailing Him to the cross, still breathed the prayer,

   "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Murmur not that
   the man who would fain have closed our asylum should avail himself of
   it, for by so doing he has established its sacredness. The Church is as
   a monarch, who is not greatest when he sits on his throne in purple,
   with the circle of sovereignty upon his brow, but when barbarians,
   their hands bound behind their backs, lie vanquished at his feet. Come,
   then, let us now celebrate the Holy Mysteries, and afterwards we will
   go in a body to the Emperor to implore for Eutropius his pity and his
   pardon, and to lay the golden ears of the harvest of our compassion
   before his feet!'

   The scene was too memorably striking to be ever forgotten by those who
   witnessed it, and the discourse of Chrysostom was too impassioned not
   to leave the deepest impression. But the courage of the Patriarch and
   the protection of the Church were all in vain. So long as Eutropius lay
   hidden in the sanctuary St. Sophia continued to be almost in a state of
   siege, and the Forum outside was the scene of incessant tumults. The
   eunuch himself grew weary of his incarceration. Death itself seemed
   hardly less intolerable than the blank and impotent
   existence--dishonoured, aimless, unoccupied--to which he was now
   reduced. The perpetual moaning in his ears of chants and litanies; the
   sight of no one but presbyters, deacons, and acolytes in the small dim
   chambers behind the apse; the voices which insulted him; the eyes which
   glared fiercely upon him, if he stepped into the sacrarium; the days so
   deadly with unbroken ennui; the nights haunted with ghastly visions;
   the perpetual sense of the presence of religion without any of its
   consolations became altogether too much for the miserable man. His
   overwhelming misfortune presented a contemptible spectacle, because it
   was unredeemed by one touch of the dignity which it would have derived
   from repentance or resignation. The sole thing left him was bare life,
   and he clung to bare life, but not under the dreary conditions which
   now dazed and stunned him. On the Wednesday, as he was sitting in the
   sacrarium in infinite despair, he saw Typhos, the brother of Aurelian,
   beckoning to him. He stepped within hearing distance, and Typhos
   promised him that if he would give himself up without tumult or
   resistance his life would be spared, and he should be sent to the
   island of Cyprus. 'Give me,' said Eutropius, the Emperor's oath that I
   shall not be slain, and I will give myself up.'

   Next day he received the Emperor's sworn assurance, and in the dusk of
   evening, when the church was empty, he left the sanctuary. He was
   hurried in the darkness to a ship which lay by the quay in the
   Bosporus, and it at once spread sail for Cyprus.

   But the moment the news was known it became manifest that his enemies
   would not be content with any such deportation. Is this, they said, a
   sufficient punishment for his many crimes? and what guarantee have we
   that he may not creep back again, wind himself once more into the
   favour of the Emperor, and rule as he did before?

   In vain did Arcadius publish a decree of unexampled severity against
   him, which was to be affixed to the walls in public planes in every
   city of the Empire. The document is too curious an illustration of the
   times to be omitted. It ran as follows:

   'The Emperors Arcadius and Honorius to Aurelian, Prætorian Præfect.

   We have confiscated to our Treasury all the property of Eutropius,
   formerly our Præfect of the Sacred Chamber, having stripped him of his
   splendour, and delivered the Consulate from the foul stain of his
   tenure, and from the recollection of his name, and the base filth
   thereof; so that, all his acts having been repealed, all time may be
   dumb concerning him; and that the blot of our age may not appear by the
   mention of him; and that those who by their valour and their wounds
   extend the Roman borders, or guard the same by equity, may not groan
   over the fact that the divine guerdon of the Consulship has been
   befouled and defiled by a filthy monster. Let him learn that he has
   been degraded from the Consulate and all other dignities which he
   stained with the obliquity of his character; that all statues, images,
   and pictures of him, of every material and colour, be abolished
   everywhere, that they may not pollute the gaze of beholders as a brand
   of infamy on our age. Let him be taken under escort of your faithful
   guards to Cyprus, where let your Sublimity know that he has been
   banished, so that, being there watchfully guarded, he may be unable to
   work confusion by his mad designs.

   Dated January 17, at Constantinople, in the Consulship of Theodorus, a
   most illustrious man.' [12]

   It was a strange thing that Arcadius should be blind to the fact that
   it was he, and he alone, who had made Eutropius Consul, and that all
   this talk about the filth and pollution of his mere name redounded to
   the utter discredit of the Emperor, who was responsible for his entire
   career, and had until yesterday regarded him with boundless approval.
   But even this sanguinary proclamation did not suffice. Gaïnas and
   Tribigild refused to be satisfied with anything less than the head of
   Eutropius. The Western Empire still openly murmured that his punishment
   had been wholly inadequate to his crimes. True that the Emperor had
   pledged his oath that the eunuch's life should be spared, but the oath
   must be got rid of by any chicanery. Arcadius was persuaded to salve
   his conscience with the unction that he had only promised him safety as
   long as he was in Constantinople, and that he could be executed on new
   charges, though not on the old ones. A ridiculous accusation was
   accordingly trumped up that Eutropius had sometimes placed insignia
   which were purely imperial among the ornaments of his consular dignity;
   and, still worse, that he had caused to be yoked to his own chariot the
   steeds of a peculiar breed and colour, called kosmoi, which were never
   used by anyone except the Emperor himself. On this trumpery pretext,
   which was probably an invention for the occasion, and may have had no
   existence except in the vengeful brain of the Empress Eudoxia and her
   intimates, the hapless eunuch was dragged back from Cyprus to
   Chalcedon, seeing on every side of him his own rent pictures and
   dismantled statues, and there, after the most hurried mockery of a
   trial, his head was placed under the axe, and a career was ended which,
   passing in full circle from nameless abjectness, through imperial
   splendour, to immeasurable degradation, is one of the most dramatically
   strange which History has ever recorded on her varied page.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [12] The date January 17 is obviously erroneous.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXIX

  EUTYCHES IS INDIGNANT


   Botoli trove poi...

   Tanto più trove, di can farsi lupi...


   Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi

   Trove le volpi, si piene di froda

   Che non temono ingegno the le occùpi.

   Dante, Purg. xiv. 46-54.

   In all the later phases of his career Chrysostom had taken a noble and
   blameless part, unless a certain want of tact and of gracious
   versatility be attributed to him as a crime. Yet, as is so often the
   lot of the men to whose shining virtues the vicious pay the tribute of
   implacable hatred, Chrysostom was blamed and abused on every side. His
   moral brightness was, as his friend and biographer, Palladius, Bishop
   of Helenopolis, expressed it, like a lamp flashing in sore eyes. The
   enemies of Eutropius denounced the Archbishop for having sheltered him;
   the enemies of Chrysostom himself infamously pretended that he had
   betrayed him to the soldiers. Eutropius had not a single friend, but
   many who would not have let their little finger ache to save his life
   stormed at the prelate, who alone had pitied him, and who, at the risk
   of assassination, had stood between him and the swords of his
   assailants. He had been too hard and cruel for their delicate
   sensibilities! The incarnate vices of society united to sting to death
   the one man whose pure virtue was an embodied reproach to their
   wickedness. At Constantinople he


   Lived pilloried on Infamy's high stage,

   And bore the pelting scorn of half an age.

   It happened a day or two after these events that Elpidius, one of the
   worst of the Constantinopolitan clergy, was walking on the wooded
   shores of the Bosporus with the Bishop of Chalcedon. Elpidius was in
   his way a man of note among the clergy, because, in spite of a
   character entirely despicable, he was a heated and unscrupulous
   partisan. He identified religion with his own personal views, and,
   though his intellect was mean, his blind party spirit acquired for him
   the position of a leader among the most heated controversialists. His
   notions of argument were those which have been prevalent in every age
   among such men as he. They consisted in loud and overbearing
   reiteration of assertions, supported by flimsy sophisms which had been
   over and over again refuted; in boundless vituperation of his
   opponents, which among similar characters passed for reasoning; in the
   ignoring of the proofs which had long undermined the sandy bases of his
   false and unscriptural orthodoxy; and in the glaring and habitual
   misquotation of the words of his opponents. Such controversy, deeply
   dyed in vulgarity, virulence, and venom, was of a kind which no good
   man could deign to notice. It was mere malice, meanness, and
   misrepresentation, adapted only to feed the most ignorant prejudices
   and worst passions of his partisans. The Church'--a word for ever on
   his lips--meant, on the lips of Elpidius, himself and those who held
   his views.' It was the asserted authority for every superstitious
   accretion, for every Pagan development, for every soul-dwarfing
   falsity. The teaching and example of Christ, of the Apostles, and of
   the Christians of the first two centuries, were regarded as
   unimportant. Christ's reprobation of errors which were now thrust
   forward as the be-all and the end-all of orthodox religiosity went for
   nothing; but if any isolated phrase in the New Testament could be
   distorted into the false semblance of an argument, whole systems were
   built on it, like pyramids upon their apex. In short, Elpidius was one
   of those Churchmen,' so common in every age, to whom shibboleths,
   ceremonial, and their own self-exaltation, were of infinitely more
   account than judgment, righteousness, and truth. He represented the
   practical supersession of Christianity pure and undefiled by a dead
   Pharisaism and a dead Judaism, mixed up with elements of Pagan
   superstition and Pagan ritual. If the decrees of Councils decided in
   his direction, they were infallible; if they traversed his views, they
   were a collection of obsolete canons. If bishops supported his party
   they were elevated into an apotheosis of sainthood, and adored with
   genuflexions; if they opposed him they were a disgrace and a scandal,'
   to be treated with the most contumelious indifference. The
   controversial methods of Elpidius consisted mainly in exalting his own
   clique, and blackening all who differed from him with boundless
   depreciation. His all-absorbing churchliness and supernatural claims of
   sacerdotal supremacy were in nowise incompatible with violations of the
   most ordinary courtesies of a gentleman, or the most rudimentary
   virtues of a Christian.

   Against Chrysostom Elpidius cherished one of those burning hatreds
   which, if opportunity be only favourable, stop short at no falsehood
   and no crime. He never spoke of the Archbishop without the hiss of the
   serpent being heard in every word. Nothing that Chrysostom could say
   was tolerable, nothing that he could do was right. Elpidius had been
   one of those who had been forced to wince under the Patriarch's
   scathing denunciation of the worldliness which hung about the tables of
   the great, and of the underhand intrigues which thought all means
   lawful if they furthered a favourite ecclesiastical end. He was
   notoriously one of the auriscalpii, who abused their priestly position
   to lead captive silly women laden with lust; one of those who, having
   frightfully abused even the safeguarded office of a public confessor,
   which Nectarius abolished because of the iniquities to which it led,
   had used every influence to get the office restored. He was one of
   those who, sanctioned by the abuse of custom, had lived with a young
   and beautiful agapete, whom he called his spiritual sister,' and for
   whose richly dressed loveliness he always secured a prominent place in
   St. Sophia, until Chrysostom had threatened him with instant
   excommunication unless he reformed a style of living which injured the
   reputation of the Church. Since then he had hated Chrysostom with a
   hatred of which a bad layman might have envied, but certainly could not
   have surpassed, the unscrupulous intensity. He was animated by the one
   desire and object to blast, and undermine, and overthrow his
   thrice-detested ecclesiastical superior.

   A certain freemasonry of intuition made Elpidius and others of
   Chrysostom's enemies aware of the venomous dislike and jealousy
   entertained against him by the Bishop of Chalcedon, although Cyrinus
   had never manifested it to the world in general, and had, for his own
   reasons, concealed it entirely from the Archbishop himself. Elpidius
   and he had been discussing the revolt of Tribigild and the fall of
   Eutropius, and sat down to rest on a bank, entirely heedless of the
   presence of two youths who were also resting but a few feet distant
   from them on the shingly beach. As the youths were but plainly dressed,
   and evidently did not belong to the classes,' but to the masses,' such
   exalted personages as the Bishop and the leading presbyter did not
   think it worth while to notice their existence, or to talk in lower
   tones because they were so near. The two youths were David and
   Eutyches. The affair of Eutropius had thrown an immense amount of extra
   work upon them, and the kindly Archbishop had told them to go to the
   shore and breathe a little of the fresh sea air, especially as the
   cheek of Eutyches was not yet healed, and he had been a little shaken
   by the fierce buffet of the Gothic soldier. Chrysostom wanted Philip to
   go, too, but as business might arise at any moment, Philip would not
   leave him; and besides, though Olympias had now made herself
   responsible for his being provided with proper meals, Chrysostom was as
   likely as not to forget all about them, and leave them untouched while
   he was absorbed in his work, unless Philip were at hand to see that he
   took them.

   Were you present at St. Sophia when John delivered that sermon with
   Eutropius under the altar?' asked the Bishop.

   Present, my lord?' answered Elpidius in a tone of disgust; I should
   think I was!'

   I am told that it was very fine,' said Cyrinus tentatively.

   Fine!' answered Elpidius, raising his voice in a gust of anger. I don't
   know what they call fine. Eloquence? Turgid rhetoric I call it, empty
   bombast, the wind of platitudes; sound and fury, signifying nothing, It
   was shameful, it was infamous, it was a perfect scandal! John had no
   business whatever to break the law by giving shelter at all to such a
   criminal. But if he did, he had no right to insult him grossly, and
   browbeat and denounce him as he lay grovelling there. And afterwards, I
   am told, he betrayed him. Doubtless he got a good round sum, first for
   his protection, and then for his treachery which will add to the
   treasure of which he robs the Church daily, and which will supply the
   secret orgies of the Patriarcheion. What can you expect of a man like
   that--a cheat, a miser, a hypocrite, a liar, a man with a heart hard as
   a nether millstone and a fist close as that of a Harpagon?'

   Elpidius, as he gave place to the devil, and flung the reins on the
   neck of his envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, had spoken
   louder and louder, so that all the last part of his remarks had been
   poured forth upstanding, and with fierce gesticulations, in a hurricane
   of frenzied wrath.

   It was lucky that the fiery Philip was not there. There is no knowing
   how fiercely he might have rebutted so deadly an outrage on the
   character of his adopted father and benefactor. But such a tornado of
   brutalities and insults roused even the gentler spirit of Eutyches to
   indignant revolt. Before David--who would have seen the uselessness of
   any intervention--knew what he was about, Eutyches had advanced to the
   speaker. He was a very modest boy, and it was not till then that he
   recognised the Bishop of Chalcedon. The episcopal dignity overawed him,
   but after kneeling to kiss the Bishop's hand, as was usual, he said:

   My Lord Bishop, I know not who that presbyter may be, but suffer me to
   say that he has spoken to you the most shocking calumnies. The
   Archbishop gave shelter to Eutropius because, in defending the Church's
   right to sanctuary, he would have done so to the meanest of mankind and
   the worst of his own enemies. So far from being cruel, I saw him offer
   his own unprotected breast to the naked swords of the Goths in his
   defence. It was he, and he alone, who pleaded for him to the Emperor.
   Eutropius gave himself up against the Archbishop's will, and in spite
   of his warnings and remonstrances. To say that he either protected him
   for a bribe, or betrayed him for a bribe, is a wicked falsehood,
   whoever says it! Yes,' he added, fixing his clear and innocent gaze on
   the face of Elpidius, 'as wicked a falsehood as that the Archbishop is
   a miser or a hypocrite. On the contrary, he is profoundly indifferent
   to gold, and is a saint of God, if ever there was one.'

   There was something in the words and bearing of Eutyches which
   overwhelmed Elpidius, and even Cyrinus, with confusion. His manner had
   been perfectly respectful, and as he stood there in all the glow of his
   ardent sympathy for the master to whom he was devoted, and all the
   bloom of his youthful innocence, Elpidius felt much as Milton makes
   Satan feel before the reproach of Ithuriel:


   So spake the cherub; and his grave rebuke,

   Severe in youthful beauty, added grace

   Invincible. Abashed the devil stood,

   And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

   Virtue in her form how lovely--saw, and pined

   His loss; but chiefly to find here observed

   His lustre visibly impair'd: yet seem'd

   Dauntless.

   Ashamed to have been thus openly rebuked by a boy, and especially in
   the presence of a bishop, Elpidius tried to assume a disdainful
   indifference.

   Who is this impudent baby with a raw wound on his cheek who has been
   eavesdropping?' he said in his most brutal tone.

   It was now David's turn to be indignant, but he put strong control over
   his feelings. This,' he said very quietly, is an orphan boy, one of the
   Patriarch's secretaries, who will soon be ordained a reader. You can
   hardly wonder, my Lord, that he was deeply moved when he heard such
   shameless defamation of his beloved master and benefactor shouted to
   the four winds in a voice which might have been heard a hundred yards
   off. And for the wound on his cheek, it is the mark of a soldier's
   blow, whom he was trying to keep from assailing the Patriarch while he
   was defending Eutropius at peril of his life.'

   Elpidius and the Bishop looked from speaker to speaker in silent
   astonishment. There was something in their aspect before which vulgar
   rage was, if not disarmed, yet rendered impotent. Eutyches, disfigured
   as he was at the moment, yet had the face of an angel. There had been
   nothing obtrusive, nothing unworthy of the respect due from youth to
   age, in the generous enthusiasm with which he had defended his master
   from wanton slanders. And now David stood by him, in the dress which
   marked his humble birth as the son of a tradesman, but with a face
   which showed the purest and loftiest type of the beauty of his race.
   David could never forget that he was by birth a Desposynos, that he
   came from the family of Joseph, which had once had their home at
   Nazareth, and which was also nearly akin to the family of the Virgin
   Mary. He had that type of countenance which dim tradition was already
   beginning to assign to the Son of Man--the perfectly oval face, the
   waved and wine-dark hair, the glowing complexion, the eyes whose depths
   seemed to be lighted by some holy spiritual flame within--of Him who
   had been fairer than the children of men. Besides this, his voice was
   full of melody, and the gravity of his demeanour was mixed with
   habitual sweetness and courtesy to all. The remembrance of his birth
   was to David a most sacred amulet. It was no source of pride, but
   rather of overwhelming responsibility, which would have humiliated him
   to the dust if ever the reflexion of his own severe and modest eye upon
   himself could have seen him doing or imagining what was base, were it
   in the deepest secrecy.' It was impossible, even for the wretched
   Elpidius, to resent words spoken with perfect calm and dignity, and
   with no shadow of anger or disrespect. Both he and the Bishop felt as
   if they had been suddenly rebuked by two good spirits. Conscious of
   themselves, and of the unhallowed feelings which too often ran riot in
   their hearts, they could not help glancing with a sense of uneasy
   humiliation on these two youths, whose very look and bearing were a
   silent rebuke to them. Elpidius turned away, and hated the burning hue
   of shame which, in spite of himself, mounted to the very roots of his
   hair. He would have liked to seize Eutyches by the neck, and cuff him
   on the face; but as it was he had to sit still, and feel for a few
   moments the pangs of Gehenna, as he kicked violently at a tough root of
   arum which happened to be growing beside his feet. Eutyches,
   half-amazed at his own forwardness, bowed low, and was about to walk
   away, but David ended the scene by taking his hand, and saying to
   Cyrinus:

   My Lord, you are a Bishop; pardon us if we have offended, and, before
   we go, give us your blessing.'

   You are strange youths,' said Cyrinus, and you should not listen to
   words not meant for your ears.'

   My Lord, we listened not,' said David respectfully. 'We would fain not
   have heard, but what this presbyter said might have been heard almost
   on the pier.'

   Well, you may depart.'

   The Bishop gave them the Greek form of Benediction, in which the
   crossed and bent fingers stand for ICXC, or Jesus Christ; and they
   walked home almost in silence.

   They agreed not to tell Philip anything that had occurred, for it made
   him almost beside himself to know that the wicked world outside, and
   the almost more virulently malignant form of the world which called
   itself 'the Church,' should ever be pouring on the stainless name of
   the Patriarch its oil of vitriol in endless calumnies.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE GOTHS AT CONSTANTINOPLE


   Bis domitum civile nefas, bis rupimus Alpes:

   Tot nos bella docent, nulli servire tyranno.

   Claud. In Ruf., ii. 389, 390.

   Rufinus, who, under the merely nominal emperor, had wielded the sceptre
   of the world, had been lynched under the very eyes of Arcadius by
   vengeful Goths; Eutropius, who succeeded him as the arbiter of the
   fortunes of the nations, had been also flung by their influence from
   the dizzy pinnacles of greatness into headlong infamy. Gaïnas the Goth
   was now the most formidable personage in the Eastern world. On him the
   inevitable doom was next to fall. The Empress Eudoxia was the
   inheritress of the influence of the two murdered Ministers; but for her
   also this dread summit of Cæsarean power' involved nothing better than
   a few years of storms, remorse, and torturing anxiety, to be followed
   by an early, miserable, and unregretted death.

   Thrown on his own helplessness by the fall of Eutropius, and feeling
   under the absolute necessity of being governed by someone, the fainéant
   Arcadius was thankful, rather than otherwise, to succumb to the more
   virile yoke of his haughty wife. But Eudoxia, in a State distracted by
   rival parties, not one of which could be neglected with impunity, felt
   the necessity of holding the balance between them. The Court party of
   slaves and officials had, for the time, been annihilated by the
   overthrow of the Chamberlain, and Eudoxia thought that she could
   herself represent the whole power of the Court if she formed against
   the Goths an alliance with the Roman party--the party of Aurelian, the
   friend of Chrysostom, and of Synesius, whose ideal object was the
   repression of the barbarian element which had recently sprung to such
   abnormal prominence, both in the East and in the West.

   She had, accordingly, procured the nomination of Aurelian to the great
   office of Prætorian Præfect, and of her favourite, Count John, to the
   position of Comptroller of the Sacred Largesses, while she also brought
   into power and influence the soldierly ex-Consul Saturninus, the
   husband of her friend Castricia.

   She had, however, to counterbalance the forces, not only of the Goths,
   but of the Arians. The majority of the Goths were Arians of the
   moderate school of their saintly apostle, Wulfila, to whom they owed
   the precious treasure of their vernacular Bible. But there were many
   other Arians in Constantinople, Greeks and Romans. In the days of
   Valens they completely outnumbered the Catholic party, and they had
   never acquiesced in the triumph gained by the orthodox Christians
   through the ability of Gregory Nazianzus and the repressive edicts of
   Theodosius. They were constantly plotting to regain their ascendency,
   which they hoped to do through the power of Gaïnas.

   At the head of these Arians, but more through policy than conviction,
   was a dark and dangerous conspirator, whose very name, by one of the
   curious accidents of history, remains unknown to us, but who is usually
   called by the nickname of Typhos, the Egyptian Satan, given to him in a
   narrative of this epoch, written in an allegorical form, by Synesius.
   This little romance is called The Egyptians,' and, not deeming it safe
   to describe actual events, the Bishop threw his reminiscences into the
   form of a story of the struggles between the good Osiris and the evil
   Typhos. Typhos was the brother of Aurelian, but hated him with a deadly
   hatred, and watched him with devouring envy.

   When Aurelian was made Prætorian Præfect and Consul-designate, Typhos,
   who had set his heart on the office, was sick with rage; and his no
   less evilly disposed wife, who had longed for the prestige of a more
   exalted rank, did her utmost to abet him. They represented the most
   abandoned class of aristocratic society, and their private
   entertainments were scenes of gross licentiousness. For some reason
   unknown to us, but connected either with contumacious blasphemy or
   coarse dissipation, Typhos had established the practice of
   snoring-matches, and highly honoured those of his base companions who
   excelled in producing what Synesius calls the roundest snorts.' His
   wife, who spent her days in the insatiable pursuit of excitement at the
   Theatre and in the Forum, devoted hours to the adornment of her person,
   and filled her assembly-rooms with women of abandoned character. The
   object, both of Typhos and his wife, seemed to be the enlisting of
   false religion, immoral pleasures, and ostentatious Philistinism into a
   league of contrast with, and defiance to, the literary culture,
   orthodox faith, and noble propriety of Aurelian and his consort. When
   Typhos was disappointed of his ambitious desire, he flung himself alike
   into reckless debauchery and deep-laid treason, for which he also was
   shortly to meet his doom. He and his party became the Arrabiati of
   Constantinople.

   To console his disappointment by yet more shameless luxury, he had a
   lake constructed in his garden, in which were artificial islands and
   warm baths. Here he and his adherents of both sexes abandoned
   themselves to shocking orgies. Meanwhile both he and his wife were in
   secret communication with the unworthy wife of Gaïnas, through whose
   means they ceaselessly endeavoured to seduce the Gothic chieftain from
   all semblance of allegiance. He was already the chief general of the
   Eastern Empire. The Goths accepted his sway, and the army under him was
   largely composed of German elements. He aspired to re-establish
   Arianism and to be the Stilico of the East--perhaps ultimately to wear
   the diadem, or at least to be the Consul, and king of his tribe, as
   Alaric was. Gaïnas was by no means contented with the scanty results
   which he had obtained from the ruin of Eutropius. So far from bringing
   him the additional honours which he had expected, it had only issued in
   the promotion and strengthening of the heads of the Roman party, whose
   opposition to all barbarian interests had found voice in the outspoken
   harangue of Synesius before the Emperor. The alliance with Typhos and
   his party seemed to put in his grasp the fulfilment of his wildest
   ambition.

   So he threw off the mask, and having up to this time been in secret
   communication with Tribigild, now openly joined him at Thyatira. The
   two Gothic contingents entered into a perfect understanding with each
   other. Gaïnas marched to Chalcedon, plundering as he went. Tribigild,
   with equal impunity, advanced to Lampsacus. At Chalcedon Typhos and his
   wife paid secret visits to the camp of Gaïnas, and encouraged him to
   undisguised rebellion. Inspired by them, Gaïnas insolently demanded
   that Arcadius should come to him in person at Chalcedon, and one of the
   terms upon which he chose to insist was that the unnatural hatred of
   Typhos to his noble brother should be gratified by Aurelian's
   execution.

   Gaïnas accordingly sent to tell the Emperor that he did not choose to
   treat with inferior ambassadors, and that Arcadius must come in person
   to Chalcedon, that he might hear the conditions on which his life, his
   capital, and his empire would be spared.

   Arcadius had no choice but to submit. The Roman forces on which he
   could rely were few, and were scattered in garrisons throughout the
   Empire. He had no soldiers to oppose to the army of the Gothic chief.
   It seemed as if the worse fears of Synesius were about to be justified,
   and half of the once undivided Roman Empire was now to be enfeoffed to
   barbarian aliens.

   On the summit of a gentle hill near Chalcedon stood a Church of St.
   Euphemia, famous for its supernatural sacredness. Here the meeting was
   to take place, and here the helpless Arcadius had the humiliation of
   receiving the dictates of the rebel chieftain. Gaïnas was to be
   promised the Consulship; he was to be made Generalissimo of the East;
   he and Tribigild were to be permitted to cross the Bosporus unmolested.
   Worse than all, the Emperor was at once to deliver up Aurelian, the
   Consular Saturninus, and Count John, to be put to death, or to be kept
   as hostages, as the Goth should choose. Arcadius must consent to this,
   or---- Gaïnas emphasised the alternative by pointing to the hilt of his
   sword, and by a wave of his arm towards the camp of his army of 30,000
   men.

   What could the wretched son of Theodosius do? To yield was infamy, to
   refuse was destruction. The concession of the other demands was
   inevitable. But how could he, without bitter shame, betray the lives of
   his blameless Consul-designate and Prætorian Præfect, at that moment
   the first man in his Court and capital, and of the Consular Saturninus,
   who had in 382 suppressed the forces of Athanaric, and was the husband
   of his wife's kinswoman and most intimate friend? And what was the
   significance of the demand for the extradition of Count John? His rank
   and importance were purely official. He had no independent authority.
   He could not be regarded, like the two others, as a leader of the Roman
   party. Eudoxia saw, if Arcadius did not see, that this demand was
   simply aimed at her. Everyone except the Emperor knew that Count John
   was in a very special sense her favourite, and many believed that he
   was her accepted lover. She read in the inclusion of his name a sign
   that Gaïnas, with Typhos and his wife to help him, intended to strike
   her down as they had struck down her enemy, Eutropius.

   Her anger was intense, and she even ventured to taunt the wretched
   Emperor with his impotence.

   Surely,' she said, you will never consent to this insolently outrageous
   condition! You might as well take off your diadem, and place it on the
   brow of that gross barbarian.'

   What can I possibly do?' said Arcadius, as he sat in limpest attitude
   on his embroidered cushions.

   Better abdicate,' she said, at once than give up at a breath one after
   another of your greatest and most faithful servants. Is this Goth a
   Cerberus, that at every bark he is to be pacified by flinging to him
   the head of your noblest subjects? Do you think that your father,
   Theodosius, would for a moment have tolerated such dictation? Is the
   Empire worth having if you are to sit in chains under the feet of a
   Scythian?'

   How can I refuse the general of 30,000 men? Do you think that my
   handful of Silentiarii and Palatini could stand for five minutes
   against them?'

   Then you will betray your noble servants?' she said, rising from her
   seat with contemptuous indignation. You are emperor in name alone!
   Would God I were emperor in your place! If the Archbishop John were
   emperor he would die a thousand times rather than yield.'

   Eudoxia stood up before him with her face aflame, and took no pains to
   veil the scorn which sat upon her beautiful lips.

   What can I do?' asked Arcadius again in querulous helplessness.

   Do?' she cried. Be a man! You have millions of subjects. Appeal to
   their protection. Throw yourself on their loyalty. Why, even that
   half-man, Eutropius, would have shown more dignity and more courage!'

   I should simply be murdered,' he said.

   Then die like a man!' she answered. 'It were better not to be than not
   to be noble.'

   But as her words kindled no spark of generosity, she turned away with a
   gesture of proud despair, and left him.

   Arcadius simply collapsed into a dishevelled heap of imbecility. Not
   knowing what to do, and feeling equally incapable of thought or of
   action, he let things take their own course. He was not obliged to give
   an answer to Gaïnas as before the next day; meanwhile something might
   turn up.

   The terms which Gaïnas had laid down soon became known, and the crisis
   was terrible. Civil war seemed the least of possible alternatives, for
   before any Roman forces could be summoned and concentrated there was
   nothing to prevent the sack of the undefended city, full as it was of
   Goths and Arians--and perhaps the establishment of a new and barbarian
   dynasty.

   Under these circumstances Aurelian invited Saturninus and Count John to
   meet him at his house for consultation. He pointed out to them that the
   other conditions were inevitable, but that Arcadius could not hand them
   over against their will without infinite disgrace. And then he made a
   proposal worthy of the Decii. Let us,' he said, go voluntarily and
   secretly to Chalcedon, and there let us place ourselves in the hands of
   the Goth. He will throw us into prison. It is too probable that he will
   put us to death. But we shall have saved this distracted Empire--at any
   rate, we shall have given it a little breathing-space.'

   Saturninus readily accepted the noble proposition. Count John murmured
   and hesitated; but if such was the decision of two men so much greater
   than himself, he felt it impossible to refuse.

   They agreed to cross the Bosporus at once, and to be landed a little to
   the east of Chalcedon. Thence they advanced alone and unattended, and,
   announcing their name and rank, handed themselves over to the first
   Gothic sentries whom they encountered. By them they were conducted to
   the tent of Gaïnas. His eye gleamed with vengeful ferocity and
   gratified ambition as he informed them that by that day week he would
   decide their ultimate fate. They were manacled with heavy iron chains,
   and Aurelian, as he was led out of the presence of Gaïnas, was almost
   certain that through the partly open tent-folds of the inner room he
   caught sight of the dark eyes and malignant features of his brother. He
   was quite sure that, mingled with the tones of the wife of Gaïnas, he
   heard the shameless laugh of the wife of Typhos.

   News always spread with miraculous rapidity through the populace of
   Constantinople, and David soon heard in the Chalkoprateia, where he was
   visiting his father, of the glorious self-devotion of Aurelian and his
   colleagues. He hurried to convey the news to his two friends, who
   shared the tension of the general anxiety.

   It is my turn now to be newsbearer,' he said. 'Eutyches told us of the
   Consulship of Eutropius; you, Philip, of his fall. Neither of you
   deserved the rewards of good tidings; but I do. For the present we are
   saved. Philip, your friend Aurelian, and Saturninus, and Count John,
   voluntarily went to Chalcedon an hour ago, and gave themselves up to
   Gaïnas to save the Empire.'

   A noble sacrifice!' said Philip; but "he" must be told of it
   instantly.'

   He went into the Patriarch's study, and told him. Chrysostom was struck
   with admiration at the heroic conduct of the doomed three, but he was
   also deeply moved. In the whole Court of Arcadius there was no one for
   whom he felt a warmer regard or a higher esteem than for Aurelian, the
   Prætorian Præfect.

   I must,' he said, go to Gaïnas instantly, and intercede for their
   lives. You, Philip and Eutyches, come with me. I will leave our steady
   David to look after all business in our absence, and Heracleides and
   Serapion can attend to the visitors.'

   But the Goths are all Arians,' said Philip.

   It matters not,' said Chrysostom. Am I not by my office the common
   father of all? And, though Arians, they are still Christians. Come,
   there is no time to be lost. Those barbarians are liable to sudden and
   perilous impulses.'

   They started immediately, and on landing the Archbishop, with his two
   youthful attendants, was conducted with great respect into the presence
   of the Gothic chieftain.

   Gaïnas was a Goth who had never really identified himself with the
   interests of the Empire. The veneer of civilisation which he had
   received was far more superficial than that which made the Romans
   accept the authority of Stilico, Vandal as he was; and, unlike Stilico,
   Gaïnas had married a Gothic wife. He was a barbarian whose nobler
   qualities had been almost obliterated by contact with culture, while
   the inherent vices of his race--ambition, avarice and revenge--had only
   been stimulated into excessive violence. He was a noble-looking Amal,
   like those whom Chrysostom had admired in the streets of Antioch,
   though the natural beauty and manliness of his countenance had been
   spoiled by the dominance of selfish passions.

   But, like all men who were really men, he felt a deep and genuine
   reverence for the Archbishop of Constantinople. He was struck by his
   natural dignity; and won by his transparent sincerity and
   straightforwardness. He distinguished between him and the ordinary mass
   of soft nobles and corrupt officials with whom he had to do. He
   recognised in him a prophet and a man of God. He felt that if there had
   been such a religious leader among the Arians his own religious
   convictions might have exercised a more real sway over his heart.
   Mentally, he always compared him to the Apostle of the Goths, as he had
   been described to him by his father, whom Wulfila had converted.

   And something of admiration, with more of pity, filled the heart of
   Chrysostom as he thought how different, under better influences, this
   tall, fair-haired barbarian might have become. Had he but been
   orthodox--had he but been thrown with true Christians, not with nominal
   professors of the faith--this noble specimen of humanity might have
   been one of the glories of the Gospel in the day when Christ made up
   His jewels.

   It was impossible to mistake the genuine reverence of the warrior's
   manner as he rose to receive his visitor. In sign of deep humility he
   took the hands of Chrysostom, and laid them on his own eyes. Then he
   summoned his two sons, Thorismund and Walamir, from the neighbouring
   tent, and, leading them to Chrysostom, bade them kneel and embrace his
   holy knees, while he asked the Archbishop to bless them. Chrysostom
   laid his hand on the fair, short curls of each sunny head, and made
   over them the sign of benediction. Then the two youths advanced eagerly
   to Philip, who at once recognised them, as they recognised him, with
   cordial greeting, though several years had passed since they had met at
   Antioch during the visit of Rufinus. They had never seen Eutyches
   before, but looked with frank admiration at his winning face.

   While the youths stood apart the Archbishop told Gaïnas that he had not
   been commissioned to come to him either by the Emperor, or by Eudoxia,
   or by any official. He had come at the spontaneous instigation of
   compassion. Aurelian was a friend whom he highly esteemed, and
   Saturninus had been a worthy and valued servant of the Empire. Of Count
   John he knew less, but none of the three had ever injured Gaïnas, and
   it was unworthy of him to wreak on them a vague desire for vengeance.

   They are the foes of my countrymen,' said Gaïnas. 'The Roman party, of
   which Aurelian is the head, wants to sweep us back across the Ister. It
   was Aurelian who procured for Bishop Synesius the permission to deliver
   that oration before Arcadius in which he openly argued that we should
   be cashiered from all offices, and not even be suffered to serve in the
   army.'

   I do not share those opinions,' said Chrysostom. I am one of those who
   have long thought that our race, weakened by luxury and indolence,
   needs the infusion of fresh blood. I have long looked forward to see
   Roman and Teuton united in one nobler nation. Yet, remember that the
   views of the Roman party are not unnatural. The Goths in the Empire are
   but of yesterday in a nation which has been dominant for a thousand
   years.'

   Yes, and foully have we been treated,' said the Goth. 'Consider how we
   are subjected to the infamous exactions of Lupicinus, the corrupt and
   greedy Governor of Valens in Thrace. Consider the massacre of our
   glorious youth in the cities of the East. Know you that my own eldest
   son was murdered in that foul butchery?'

   I knew it not,' said the Archbishop. I grieve for thee. But there have
   been wrongs on both sides. It is needless now to enter into the
   terrible and chequered past--the massacre of Adrianople, the
   devastation of Elyria by Alaric, of Phrygia by Tribigild, your kinsman.
   Aurelian and the others are in nowise responsible for the old wrongs.
   Surely your sense of nobleness may be touched by the fearless loyalty
   with which they have, of their own accord, placed their lives at your
   disposal? Spare them, Gaïnas, and rise superior to your own lower self.
   Eutropius may have injured you; Aurelian never did.'

   We still have bitter wrongs to avenge,' said the warrior.

   Which is nobler,' said Chrysostom, revenge or forgiveness? Revenge and
   wrong still bring forth fresh tiger-whelps which resemble their
   parents. Since I came to Constantinople I have learnt a little Gothic,
   that I might sometimes minister in the church of the orthodox Goths.
   Have you never read these words?' He repeated from the version of the
   Lord's Prayer by Wulfila the words:

   'Yah aflet uns thatei skulans siyaima, swa swe yah weis afletain thaim
   skulam unseraim' (And let off us that which debtors we are, so as also
   we let off our debtors').

   I cannot answer you now,' said Gaïnas. 'Your eloquence and your
   presence bewitch me, and calm down the rancour in my heart. Come again,
   Patriarch; I love to talk to you. And, ere you go, bless me. I am not
   altogether the demon you take me for.'

   A demon!--no!' said the Patriarch. Not a demon, Gaïnas, but a noble
   human being who has too much given place to the devil. But promise me
   you will take no step until you have told me of your decision.'

   I promise,' said Gaïnas.

   Thorismund,' said Philip to the Gothic youth, intercede with your
   father for the life of Aurelian when we have gone. Aurelian is a noble
   fellow.'

   Let that lad with the angel's face make me the same request,' said
   Thorismund. I should like to hear his voice.'

   I don't wonder at that,' said Philip, for he is a chorister, and has
   the sweetest voice in Constantinople.'

   What makes him look so unlike the Greeks and Romans here?' asked
   Thorismund.

   Is it your Gothic way to compliment each other?' said Eutyches,
   blushing. But I do beg you to intercede with your father. And you also,
   Walamir. And you must listen to me, for though my father was a Roman,
   my mother was a Gothic lady.'

   Ah!' said Thorismund, I thought that you must have some Gothic blood in
   you, from the colour of your hair; you look too ingenuous for a Roman.'

   Babai!' exclaimed Philip; that's a poor compliment to me.'

   Oh! you are a Syrian,' said Thorismund; but we will speak to our father
   for your friends.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE DOOMED THREE

     'Old man, tis not so difficult to die.'

     Byron, Manfred.

   'Well, has John talked you over?' asked Typhos, with a sneer, coming
   forward from another part of the tent when Chrysostom had left.

   He has not,' said Gaïnas.

   Good!' said Typhos. Leave the little man to deal with his priests.
   They, I imagine, will give him enough to do ere long, and they all hate
   him like poison.'

   Because he is the best among them all,' said Gaïnas.

   It may be so,' said Typhos, with a shrug of his shoulders; 'but he has
   no right to come interfering with you.'

   He proceeded to undo all the good that the Patriarch had done by
   appealing to every evil passion in the warrior's nature--pride,
   ambition, and revenge. Gaïnas almost decided to execute his three
   opponents, and so to sweep them out of the way. But when Typhos had
   gone his two sons came in.

   Father,' said Thorismund, don't behead those men. They behaved nobly in
   giving themselves up.'

   What cause have we to love or to spare these Romans, Thorismund?'

   Yet spare them, father! They are voluntary hostages in your hands.
   Their lives may serve you better than their deaths.'

   Is it policy or compassion, son?'

   Perhaps a little of both, father.'

   And what says my Walamir?' asked Gaïnas.

   Spare them, father,' said Walamir, who was his father's favourite. That
   boy who looked as if he had never done wrong in his life asked us both
   to intercede with you, and we promised--and he is half a Goth.'

   I will think of it,' said Gaïnas.

   While the fate of the three great officials yet hung in the balance, no
   day passed without a visit from the Archbishop to the tent of the
   Gothic chief. He would have carried his point almost from the first but
   for the countermining efforts of Typhos and of the chieftain's wife,
   who had been won over by the wife of Typhos. And these, again, would
   have succeeded more easily but for the faithful influence of Thorismund
   and Walamir. So there was a struggle in the mind of the magister
   militum, between the impulse of the barbarian and the softening
   influence of his imperfect Christianity; and it was far from certain
   which would win the victory. Chrysostom was always accompanied by
   Philip, and generally by either Eutyches or David. While he was
   pleading with the chieftain, the Gothic youths took their friends round
   the camp, to repay Philip, Thorismund said, for his kindness to them at
   Antioch.

   One day, when Chrysostom told them that he should be detained by
   business for some hours at Chalcedon, and bade them come for him in the
   evening, they seized the opportunity to take the young Goths to the
   Patriarcheion at Constantinople, and to show them the chief sights of
   the city. There sprang up between them one of those warm friendships
   which often arise amid complete dissimilarity.

   At last the Archbishop triumphed. He received from Gaïnas the definite
   promise that the lives of Aurelian, Saturninus, and Count John should
   be spared. He begged that he might go to the tent where they still lay,
   fettered, under the close guard of Gothic sentries, and be the first to
   break to them the glad intelligence.

   Nay,' said Gaïnas, with a grim smile; I have reasons of my own why that
   must not be. Farewell, Archbishop! Whatever happens in the future--and
   many things may happen--you at least I shall ever hold in honour, and I
   beg your prayers. Farewell, but leave those two youths here with my
   young wolf-cubs. They shall bear you news of what I do.'

   So Chrysostom went back over the Bosporus, and when Gaïnas saw his
   pinnace on its way, he told his boys to keep Philip and Eutyches with
   them at the end of the tent, and not to let them move, but at the same
   time not to be themselves alarmed by what they should see. Then, with a
   colossal Goth by his side, who leaned on a huge sword, and whom
   Thorismund knew to be the executioner, the chieftain ordered Aurelian
   to be brought into his presence.

   The noble Roman was led in, and neither his chains nor his untrimmed
   beard and hair, and the squalor of his imprisonment, detracted from a
   dignity of bearing worthy of the Prætorian Præfect and
   Consul-designate. He glanced at the executioner, but did not wince, and
   confronted the Gothic Amal with an undaunted look.

   So you are the man,' said Gaïnas, rudely, who wants me to be ousted
   from all my offices? You are the man to whom all Goths are contemptible
   Scythians, little better than animals, who ought to be turned out of
   the Roman armies in a mass, and I suppose massacred, as some of them
   have been ere now, by you holy Romans.'

   You wrong me, chieftain,' answered Aurelian calmly, 'and you know that
   you wrong me. I have never despised your countrymen; there is much in
   them that I admire. As for massacre, I loathe and abhor it. Let there
   be Goths in Gothland, and Romans for the Empire, and let them be allies
   and friends. But it boots not to argue. I am ready for my fate.'

   Prepare, then, to die,' said Gaïnas. Kneel at this block.'

   One moment, and I am ready,' he said. He folded his hands, turned his
   gaze heavenwards, and his lips moved in silent prayer. Now strike,' he
   said; I am a Christian. A Christian does not fear to die.'

   He bowed his head, and the executioner raised his mighty sword.
   Eutyches trembled and turned deadly pale. An involuntary cry of anguish
   and despair had burst from the lips of Philip, and he would have sprung
   forward, but Thorismund held him back with a hand of iron, and, putting
   his other hand upon Philip's lips, whispered, Hush! Fear not! My father
   is not a Roman. He keeps his word.'

   Down swept the sword, and a rude laugh burst from the Gothic
   chieftain's lips. For the descending glaive had but touched the neck of
   Aurelian. It had not made a scratch. It had not even drawn blood.

   Rise, Aurelian,' said Gaïnas, and thank the Patriarch John that your
   life is spared.'

   It was a frightful experience. The sudden revulsion of feeling was
   infinitely trying, but the Roman was master of himself. Rising from the
   block, he bowed, and said nothing. Even Gaïnas was struck with
   admiration. 'Strike off his chains,' he said, and lead him away. Only
   keep him under guard.'

   Let me go away,' said Eutyches to Walamir. This grim jest is cruel.'

   Nay, you must see it, Eutyches, and tell the Patriarch,' said Walamir;
   but no blood will be shed.'

   Then Saturninus was led in; and he, too, did nothing common or mean,
   but bore himself worthily of a Consular of Rome.

   Kneel, enemy of the Goths!' said Gaïnas. There is the block. Prepare to
   die.'

   I have faced death many a time on the battlefields where I have
   defeated your countrymen. I am a soldier and a Roman. Slay me if thou
   wilt. There is a God in heaven who will avenge my blood.'

   Again the executioner lifted his two-handed sword; again he arrested
   the blow in mid-air, and only grazed the neck of the Consular.

   Rise! Go!' said Gaïnas; you are not dead. Thank the Patriarch John for
   your life. Unchain him. Lead him away.'

   Count John was led in last. He was white as death. He trembled as he
   saw the huge executioner wiping his sword, as though from the stain of
   blood.

   So you are the lover of the Empress,' said Gaïnas, disdainfully, for he
   despised the man. You are the father of the Emperor's children. You are
   the man who weaves plots in the Gynæceum with hags like Marsa and
   Epigraphia.'

   Count John summoned up all the dignity and fortitude which he could
   command. Kill me,' he said with trembling lips, if you will, but spare
   your brutal taunts, and do not slander the sacredness of your Empress.'

   A Frankish woman, an adulteress; no Empress of mine,' said Gaïnas,
   pointing to the block. Kneel. You shall die.'

   Count John, who had been one of the gilded youth--one of the many
   handsome dandies of Constantinople who murmured at the weight of their
   own rings and silken dress--a lady's man, and a debauchee, could not
   pretend to regard death lightly, as the Christian and the soldier had
   done. A blood-red mist seemed to sweep over his eyes. He stumbled
   piteously as he felt for the block.

   Strike!' said Gaïnas. The sword swished frightfully through the air,
   and inflicted on the Count's neck a wound slight indeed, but a trifle
   deeper than the barely visible scratch which had been given to the
   others.

   Rise,' said Gaïnas, laughing once more. You are not dead, coward.'

   But John rose not. Overcome with the horror of the moment, sensible
   that the sword had cut his skin, he had swooned away. Gaïnas sprang
   forward, a little alarmed. 'Has terror done the work of the glaive?' he
   cried, seizing the arm of Count John. No; his pulse beats. He has only
   fainted. Fling a bucket of cold water over him. Carry him away. Enough,
   Wolf, for the day,' he said to the executioner. There is a gold-piece
   for thee. Go!'

   Philip and Eutyches were deeply agitated by this stern spectacle. Go
   back to the Patriarch, and tell him what you have witnessed,' said
   Gaïnas. Tell him I have kept my word; and though I have thoroughly
   frightened his three friends--and I really am sorry for Aurelian--I
   spare their lives, though so many in the city and in the camp have
   urged me night and day to slay them. I swore that they should kneel at
   the block, and they have done so. Tell him further, that for his sake I
   shall send them into banishment, that they may do me no more mischief;
   but I shall not even forfeit their goods. I am not a Rufinus; I am not
   a Eutropius.'

   We will tell him, sir,' said Philip.

   My father, you see, has kept his word,' said Thorismund to Philip.

   Yes, Thorismund,' said Philip, but it was a grim and cruel jest.'

   It was meant to be more than a jest,' said, the young Goth. 'But it
   will not hurt them. They are men--at least two of them are.'

   The face of Eutyches had not recovered its colour. His intensely
   sympathetic character and quick imagination always made him suffer with
   those whom he saw suffer. He felt as if he, too, had knelt at the
   block, expecting instant death, and had heard the sword rush down.
   Walamir was still holding his hand, and swinging it uneasily, as though
   he would fain apologise to his wounded feelings.

   At last he said: Do not think worse of us, Eutyches. We are altogether
   Goths, not Romans or half-Romans. Trained in raids, or battles and
   hardships, we think far less of scenes which seem terrible to you.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXII

  THREE YOUTHS SAVE CONSTANTINOPLE

     Now there was found in that city a poor wise man, and he by his
     wisdom delivered the city; yet no one remembered that same poor man.

     Eccl. ix. 15.

   After these events it really seems as if Gaïnas, to use a modern
   expression, had completely lost his head, or, to give the view of it
   taken by himself and his contemporaries, as if a demon had begun to
   trouble him; for his conduct became aimless and uncertain. Discontent,
   revenge, ambition, and evil counsels destroyed in him all capacity for
   wise and generous policy. Contact with the elements of a corrupting
   civilisation had deadened in him the savage virtues of his race, and
   gave nothing better to restore his moral balance.

   He and Tribigild carried their armies across the Bosporus into Europe,
   so that Constantinople found herself overshadowed by a host of 30,000
   men, of whom the vast majority were Gruthongs and other tribes of
   Ostrogoths. The city had nothing to oppose to them at the moment but
   the insignificant handful of Palace troops who were responsible for the
   immediate safety of the Emperor. The gates, the barracks, the walls
   were all in the hands of barbarians, whose allegiance was wavering, and
   whose ultimate objects were uncertain. The year 400 opened with the
   worst and darkest omens of misery and fear.

   For the dominance of the Goths had rendered it necessary to fill the
   high office of Prætorian Præfect, from which Aurelian had been
   expelled, by the elevation of Typhos, his wicked and unnatural brother.
   And Typhos inaugurated a reign of terror more intolerable than that of
   Eutropius had ever been. He oppressed the provinces with frightful
   taxes; he sold the governorships to the highest bidder. Civil office
   could be purchased by the worst of reprobates, if they had enough of
   base skill or of ill-gotten gold to flatter or bribe the dissolute wife
   of the new Minister. Almost every independent voice was silenced.
   Synesius, with faithful friendship, did his utmost to support the cause
   of his friend Aurelian, and had even publicly pleaded in the presence
   of his brother. The only result was that Synesius himself was now kept
   under close surveillance, and was refused permission to return to his
   native Cyrene. Often in those bad days he sought the counsel of
   Chrysostom, and, though they were men of widely different sympathies,
   they had many an interesting discussion. But for the time being the
   Patriarch was personally powerless. The Empress, finding that she could
   not make him her tool, was already beginning to turn against him.

   Indeed, the times were very dark. 'Everything,' said Chrysostom in a
   sermon delivered at this time, 'is full of fright, danger, mistrust,
   trembling and despair; no one trusts another, everyone is terrified of
   his neighbour; no friend seems sure, no brother trustworthy. The civil
   war raging in the midst of our society pervades not only all open, but
   all secret, relations. Everywhere are countless treacheries and dark
   concealments. Under the sheepskins are hidden a thousand wolves, so
   that we almost feel more confidence in the midst of open enemies than
   of semblable friends. They who greeted us yesterday with profound
   respect, and kissed our hands, to-day have flung away the guise of
   their masks, and have not only assumed the guise of enemies, but of our
   bitterest accusers.'

   So Gaïnas overshadowed the miserable city from without; and Typhos and
   his wife, and Eudoxia and her Court, caballed within; and the Arians,
   aided by barbarians and false Romans, resumed the high hopes which they
   once had had of winning back the East to the creed of the Council of
   Rimini.

   As for Tribigild, we hear no more of him. He went glimmering back into
   the night whence he had emerged. He died about this time, suddenly, and
   not without suspicious circumstances.

   But now Gaïnas was goaded to show his ascendancy by demanding from
   Arcadius the cession of one of the churches of Constantinople for the
   exclusive possession of the Arians. The only church at present assigned
   to them was outside the walls. It is not reasonable,' said Gaïnas to
   the Emperor, it is an insult to my dignity, that I, the
   commander-in-chief of the forces of the East, and now the
   Consul-designate, should be forced to steal out of the city to worship
   outside the walls.'

   The Emperor, as usual, drifted impotently between I would' and I dare
   not.' He hated to say Yes,' yet how could he venture in the presence of
   superior force to say 'No'? Chrysostom, hearing of the Goth's
   requisition, went to the Palace, and told Arcadius that under no
   circumstances must he comply with the demand; at whatever cost, he must
   peremptorily refuse. The helpless sovereign clutched at any straw.
   'This,' said he to Gaïnas, is a religious question. The Patriarch
   desires to discuss it with you in person. Meet him at the Palace in my
   presence to-morrow.'

   Gaïnas was nothing loth. Strange to say, he prided himself on being an
   irresistible theologian. In earlier days he had maintained a lively
   controversy with the far-famed Egyptian eremite, St. Nilus, in which
   the Goth boasted, perhaps seriously imagined, that he had won the
   victory in argument in favour of the Arian as against the Catholic
   creed. He came to the Palace with some of the leading clergy of the
   Arian party, and Chrysostom came with some of his bishops. The
   interview did not, however, take the form of a theological controversy,
   for, in truth, Gaïnas felt himself quelled and dominated by the saintly
   dignity and fearlessness of the Archbishop. His genius felt rebuked in
   that holy presence, and he cowered before John as the birds cower and
   lie low when the eagle is in the air. He did not venture to cross
   swords with the eloquent Patriarch in questions of faith and dogmatic
   definition, but, taking an entirely different ground, he said:

   I demand a church--one church only--for myself and my fellow-Arians. Is
   it just that I should be refused a church in the city I defend?'

   Refused a church?' said Chrysostom. Every church alike in the city is
   freely open to you.'

   But the opinions they represent are not mine.'

   Is the Catholic Church to alter her opinions to suit you? Is she to
   cancel the canons at which her assembled Bishops and Fathers, headed by
   such men as Athanasius and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, deliberately
   arrived in the OEcumenical Councils of Nicæa and Constantinople? Are
   creeds to be abandoned and betrayed under the terror of armed forces?'

   I have been treated,' said Gaïnas, with injustice and ingratitude. Am I
   not the protector of the East? Did I not help the Emperor Theodosius to
   defeat the usurper Maximus at the great battle of Siscia, and the
   usurper Eugenius at the great battle of the Frigidus?'

   Treated with ingratitude, Gaïnas?' said Chrysostom. 'You amaze me.
   Surely your services have been not only amply, but superabundantly,
   rewarded. You came over the Danube a fugitive Goth. You came in hunger,
   you came in rags, you came a suppliant for our mercy, you came in when
   the Huns were driving you before them like drift on the sea-wave. Were
   you not received into the pity and the Empire? Consider what you now
   are, and what you then were. You are standing here in the Palace,
   splendid in your armour, in the Consular ornaments and Magister Militum
   of the forces of the East talking face to face to the Emperor, and
   almost daring to address him on equal terms.'

   I have the right to demand what I wish,' said Gaïnas, sullenly.

   How the right? Where is your solemn oath of allegiance to Theodosius?
   Where your fidelity?'

   I can demand what I choose.'

   Yes, if you are false to your allegiance; but the Emperor cannot grant
   your petition. The laws of God transcend the law of man. Emperor, you
   will refuse, will you not? Better to lose empire, better to lose life
   than to be untrue to the Lord who bought you, Whose you are, and Whom
   you serve.'

   At such high and dauntless words Arcadius plucked up his courage, 'You
   see, chieftain,' he said, that your request is impossible. I dare not
   grant anything against the rights and privileges of the Church of God.'

   Gaïnas was angry, but he was also abashed.

   Then it is useless for me to stay here any longer,' he said, rudely
   turning away. "But it may be you will live to rue this day.'

   Do you threaten?' asked Chrysostom sternly. Nay, Gaïnas, let your
   better mind, your better heart, prevail. Listen not to evil
   counsellors. Seek not thus madly your own ends. The path of duty is the
   path also of safety, of happiness, and of glory.'

   Gaïnas looked at him almost with a look of appeal. He humbled himself
   so far as to kiss his hand. He would fain, but he dared not, have asked
   his blessing. But they never met face to face again.

   When the chief left the Palace he strode with great strides through the
   city, back to his house, full of sullenness, of fury, of mad plans,
   which chased each other through his brain. Now his better self won the
   victory, and he determined to abandon wild dreams of universal
   dominance, and become a true soldier of the Empire in the East, as
   Stilico was in the West; and his two boys did their utmost to encourage
   this mood. But then, again, the sinister shadow of Typhos would fall
   over him, and his mind became as that of a demon.

   It was this mood which, unhappily, prevailed. Two desperate plans
   suggested themselves to him, one after the other. One was to plunder
   the treasures of the goldsmiths and bankers, whose massive plate and
   uncounted stores, displayed in their bazaars and offices, excited the
   mad cupidity of the worst of his barbarian followers; the other, to
   fire the Palace, and rifle its purple chambers of their jewels and
   hoards of gold--and so, in either case, to break openly with the Roman
   Empire, and with all civilisation, and fight his way to some
   independent kingdom of his own.

   Both plans were odious to Thorismund, his eldest son. Though he was so
   young, he exercised a strong and wholesome influence over his father,
   which might have saved him from utter ruin, if it had not been
   counteracted by the intrigues of his mother, who was wholly in league
   with Typhos and his wife. Thorismund could have no scruple in
   endeavouring to defeat designs which he regarded as wicked,
   dishonourable, and disastrous; for his views were also the views of the
   best, wisest, and least barbarous of the Gothic chieftains, and of all
   those Goths who, though they were Arians, were sincere in their
   adherence to the morals of the Gospel. They held a secret council, and
   empowered Thorismund to use every legitimate endeavour to prevent the
   accomplishment of the marauding treachery, which could not but bring on
   them immediate ruin and ultimate destruction. They saw that Gaïnas had
   miscalculated his power and influence, and that, as Roman troops were
   being gradually called into the city by the order of Arcadius, their
   wisest as well as their worthiest policy would be to keep the Gothic
   army on the footing which had existed previous to the revolt of
   Tribigild.

   To Thorismund, therefore, the noblest leaders entrusted the task of
   saving Gaïnas and the whole body of the Goths from ultimate ruin by any
   means in his power. In deepest secrecy he sought his friend Philip,
   told of the nefarious plots which were being concocted, and asked his
   advice how best to counteract them without any open catastrophe.

   Think not, Philip,' he said, that in seeking you I am acting as a
   traitor to my father, or to my own people. My father is not himself. I
   have often heard him groaning in his room, and murmuring that his soul
   is in the possession of an evil demon. I think that the bad Typhos must
   have bewitched him. Several of the greatest of our allied chiefs, and
   his own officials, have authorised me to save him if I can from this
   dire infatuation. To reveal the existence of these plans to the Court
   or to the people would be to betray this city to flames and massacre.
   You must not tell any great man, you must not even tell John the
   Patriarch. The peril must be averted by secret means.'

   Let me think,' said Philip; and then, when a plan suggested itself to
   his quick intelligence, he asked: Tell me two things only, and I will,
   God helping me, save your father from this madness, and save the Goths,
   and this city, and the Empire. First, May I tell my two friends, David
   and Eutyches, whom you know and love? next, Are the days fixed for
   these attempts?'

   I trust your friends as I trust you,' said Thorismund; 'you are
   innocent; you fear God; He is with you. One day is fixed for both
   designs--it is three days hence. The banks and bazaars are to be
   pillaged in the morning, the Palace to be attacked and fired that
   night. Be wise; be secret.'

   Wise as Solomon,' said Philip, smiling to reassure him; 'secret as
   death!'

   The young Goth departed, and Philip called David and Eutyches to
   council. Now, first,' he said, keeping this peril utterly secret from
   the world in general, how are we to save the vast treasure of the banks
   from robbery?'

   David gave his counsel. There, are,' he said, fourteen districts of the
   city, and there are rich shops and banks in only six of them. Let us
   each undertake two districts. Let us ask him for a day's holiday, as
   there is no immediately pressing correspondence. Then let us each take
   two districts, and go round in disguise--for that is essential--to the
   banks, ask for a private interview with the head of each, hand him an
   unsigned letter of warning, and be off.'

   Disguise!' asked Eutyches; how can we manage that?'

   Easily,' said David; my father, with the help of Miriam and her
   servants, will easily supply us, and we can steal out at early morning,
   or at dusk, or, perhaps better still, at the noonday siesta.'

   Good!' said Philip. I will write a letter, and we will all make copies
   of it.'

   He wrote: Be warned! Guard your offices, and remove your treasures for
   a week to a safe place. Brigands abroad! Keep this profoundly secret,
   or all is lost.--A Friend.'

   They carried out their plan that very evening and the next morning. It
   was entirely successful. Every banker and merchant took the hint, and
   kept his own counsel. People vainly wondered why the city looked so
   much less glittering and gay. The Goths noticed it, too, and saw that
   their very loosely guarded secret had got wind. It did not surprise
   them; but the intended attack on the Palace had only been announced to
   few, and remained unsuspected.

   Philip and his friends had not seen how this tremendous peril was to be
   averted. The suggestion came from Eutyches.

   The Goths,' he said, are given over to superstition. Their terrors of
   the supernatural are easily excited, and men are always cowards when
   they are engaged in nefarious deeds. There are no troops to hold the
   Palace, if they choose to assault it. Could they not in some way be
   terrified from it?'

   Excellent! excellent, my Eutyches!' cried Philip. 'You are a very
   Daniel. Just now the Goths are in such a state of tremor that the sound
   of a shaken leaf would make them fly; that sword-shaped comet, that has
   seemed to be rushing eastward from the constellation Cepheus, has
   frightened us all; but to them it has seemed a terrific omen. And I
   have heard them talking of a dozen other portents, especially of an
   armed colossal vision of the Archangel Michael, towering over the city
   and waving them northward. At this very moment they think that the
   powers of Heaven are declaring against them.'

   But we can't get into the Palace,' said David; and who could trust that
   mass of corrupt officials and pampered slaves?'

   I know two thoroughly good men in the Palace intimately,' said Philip.
   'Amantius is a true Christian, and he has been my warm friend ever
   since I travelled with him from Antioch, when they entrapped the
   Patriarch. Briso is also indebted to me, for when he got hit on the
   head by a stone by one of the Arian processionists, and might have been
   trampled under foot, it was I who dragged him out of danger, and
   conducted him home. Both are chamberlains of the Empress.'

   Capital!' said Eutyches. Then the servants of Arcadius himself need
   know nothing about it. Now, mark--the only places the Goths can attack
   are either the wall of the Palace opposite the Hippodrome, at the Royal
   Gate, or the short, high wall at the back of the Imperial Gardens,
   towards the Bosporus. Station a few ghosts or angels at both, and the
   Palace will be saved.'

   Ghosts and angels indeed!' said Philip, pulling his hair. Did you ever
   hear such a midnight conspirator, David? He will be trying some of his
   ghosts or angels on us next.'

   Well, it is surely fair, is it not?' said Eutyches. Did not Onias, the
   High Priest, frighten Heliodorus out of the Temple at Jerusalem by two
   youths with scourges, whom the robber took for an angelic vision?'

   Onias?' said Philip. Oh, you heretic! Who told you it was Onias? It was
   two real angels. Do you think all ghosts and angels are of your sort?'

   Never mind his chaff, Eutyches,' said David. Your suggestion is a
   brilliant one. If the Palace is saved, it will be you who have saved
   it.'

   All right, you conspiring Onias,' said Philip. Now I am off for a
   secret interview with Amantius and Briso.'

   The tact, quickness, and consummate good-sense of the young Antiochene
   made him an admirable manager of practical business. Knowing that
   Amantius was experienced and altogether trustworthy, and that no time
   was to be lost, he first pledged the Chamberlain to secrecy by a solemn
   oath, and then told him of the contemplated attack, concealing only the
   name of Gaïnas, and speaking of a loose raid of undisciplined
   barbarians. He pointed out that if once a riot or tumult arose, the
   consequence might be incalculably disastrous, and that if the Goths
   rose in a body, nothing could prevent the sack and burning of the
   Palace.

   Amantius literally trembled in his shoes, and said, 'Surely it is my
   plain duty to tell the Emperor at once.'

   Nay,' said Philip, you have pledged yourself by oath not to do so; and
   if you do, you will precipitate the ruin which can now be averted.'

   Who told you of this?' asked Amantius. What do you suggest?'

   Your Dignity must not ask who told me,' said Philip; 'but you know me,
   and I am sure that you can and do trust me perfectly.'

   I do,' said Amantius heartily; but what can be done?'

   Do not laugh, sir,' said Philip; but the Goths are children of
   superstition, and I am convinced that by a very little contrivance, and
   at no cost, they may be simply frightened from the Palace.'

   I am not skilful, I fear, at masquerades,' said Amantius.

   Will your Dignity ask the almoner Briso to come and consult with us?'

   Yes,' said Amantius gladly. He is much younger than I, and will help us
   in this very quaint manner of averting an awful peril much better than
   I can.'

   Briso came. He had plenty of shrewdness and humour, and it was settled
   that Amantius should leave all details to him and Philip, only
   procuring permission for the free admittance of himself and his two
   friends to the walk which ran along under the immediate summit of the
   Palace wall. Briso suggested to Philip that they might utilise the
   abundant skill of some of the acrobats of the theatre--not, of course,
   letting them into the secret, but only telling them that a silent
   masquerade was being got up by some of the Palace servants, and that
   they were simply to follow Philip's directions. Leave was obtained for
   a little private scene and frolic for a few of Briso's friends:
   Mirrors, hidden lights, white robes, stilts, and other scenic stage
   properties were kept in readiness, and by midnight all was ready. Of
   course the Goths did not approach en masse. They crept noiselessly, in
   small groups, with muffled tread, from various quarters; and as the
   earliest comers glanced upwards at the Palace, they saw strange
   effects. There were all sorts of mysterious flashes of fire. Gigantic
   figures robed in white gleamed out for a moment and faded away. Beings
   of strange aspect, angels or demons they knew not which, were moving to
   and fro. A terror seized the barbarians. They hurried back to the
   contingents whom they had left under arms in their camp. They infected
   them with their own mysterious and horror-stricken dread. The
   shuddering soldiers declared that nothing should induce them to brave
   such awful visitants. The streets and Forum sank into the wonted
   midnight silence. The mad designs of Typhos and Gaïnas had failed, and
   the three youths who sat in the antechamber of Chrysostom, unknown to
   all but one or two, had saved the Emperor from assassination, the
   Palace from fire, the city from pillage and slaughter, the Empire
   itself from disastrous wars.

   But though the facts were unknown, it soon leaked out from a multitude
   of sources that, by merest accident, Constantinople had escaped an
   overwhelming peril from the hands of the Goths; and it became more and
   more imperative to deliver the East from the forked lightning which now
   flashed with lurid and scarcely intermittent flames across the whole
   horizon.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  THE MASSACRE

     Your hands are full of blood.--Isaiah i. 15.

   Foiled at every turn, Gaïnas began to feel that his star was no longer
   in the ascendant; that fortune had abandoned him; that in the game of
   ambition he had been finally defeated; that Nemesis was but awaiting
   her opportunity. Tormented more and more by indecision and
   disappointment, and seeing in their effects the anger of a besetting
   demon, he gave out that he was ill, and that he should resort to the
   Chapel of St. John the Baptist at the Hebdomon. It was seven miles
   distant from the capital, and stood on the scene of the murder of
   Rufinus. Gaïnas said, I will pray for the recovery of my health.' He
   gave secret orders to his army to join him there, not in one body, but
   by detachments of ten thousand at a time. They were to bring with them
   from Constantinople their wives, their children--all their possessions.
   He felt that at Constantinople, as far as he was concerned, all was
   over. He would throw himself back on the wild and roving life of his
   ancestors. Asia had long been exhausted by rapine, but he would plunder
   the cities of Thrace and of Europe, and, making his way to the Danube,
   would there reoccupy the wide regions of wasted land, and make a new
   home for his people away from the curse of a dying and polluted
   civilisation.

   But now disaster after disaster befell him, and never again did he
   enjoy a happy day.

   Two-thirds of his army had joined him at the Hebdomon, when one of
   those workings of God's unseen Providence, by men nicknamed chance,'
   which by no means unfrequently have decided the mightiest crises of
   history, let loose the rush of the avalanche by which he was ultimately
   to be overwhelmed.

   It only remained for the last division of the Gothic soldiers to shake
   the dust of Constantinople off their feet and join their chieftain,
   eager for fresh fields and pastures new. The city was full of the most
   painful disquietude and alarm. What did the Goths intend? Whither were
   they going? Was the end of the world at hand? What possible deliverance
   could be expected from the tyranny within or the terror without?

   It was the 12th of July, 399. At the city gate of the Blachernæ suburb
   sat habitually an old beggar-woman. It was morning, and she had noticed
   that since the early dawn the Goths had been stealing by hundreds out
   of the city. She noticed, too, that they were all armed, though it
   seemed as if they were trying to conceal their arms. She was seized
   with misgiving. What were they going to do? Would they ere sunset
   assault and burn the city? Dropping her beggar's dish, she wailed, and
   wrung her hands, and cried aloud to the gods. The Goths but imperfectly
   understood her words and her demeanour. They thought that she was
   cursing and insulting them, and one of the fiery barbarians lifted his
   sword to cleave her head. Indignant at such treatment of an old and
   well-known figure, a Roman struck the Goth to the ground. Then the
   Goths raised a wild and angry cry, and curious spectators came flocking
   up on every side. In the heat of the quarrel which arose both the
   soldiers and the multitude assumed a most threatening attitude. As the
   people outnumbered the soldiers in a proportion of three to one, the
   Goths became alarmed, and blood began to flow freely on both sides.
   Meanwhile the whole population of Constantinople seemed to be gathering
   in the streets, and there was no mistaking the significance of the
   fierce, indignant hum which betrayed the pent-up feelings of wrath with
   which the multitude regarded these alien intruders, who had so long
   imposed upon them an odious and insulting tyranny. At that early hour
   of morning twilight, before the stream of business and amusement had
   begun, all the citizens were free, and they naturally thronged to the
   scene of combat. More than this, the manhood of Constantinople showed
   on all occasions a more Roman, and therefore a more vigorous, manhood
   than was the case in the other cities of the East. The most fearless of
   them had not only seized whatever implements were available, but had
   eagerly torn the swords out of the grasp of the dead and wounded Goths,
   and were using them with terrible effect. Hemmed in by a threatening
   mass of infuriated and implacable enemies, some of the Goths hewed
   their path to the nearest gate and forced their way through. At the
   head of these was Thorismund, who had been left to accompany the last
   contingent; for the wife of Gaïnas was so utterly reluctant to leave
   the charms of security and civilisation for the roving life of
   incessant battlefields, that she had been one of the last to leave her
   home with Walamir, her younger son. She was surrounded by an escort of
   her countrymen, but they were far too few for so frightful and
   unexpected an emergency. Thorismund and the soldiers with him had
   fought their way safely out of the city, and, in the self-confidence of
   Gothic courage, felt no doubt that the whole remainder of the army
   would follow them. In this conviction they marched forward, and chose a
   place for their camp at some distance from the walls. But their
   conviction was mistaken. The populace had completely got the upper hand
   over their deeply disheartened and far-outnumbered opponents. In that
   street warfare, suspecting treachery at every turn, the Goths fought
   with far less than their usual resistless impetuosity. They made a wild
   effort to keep their mastery over the gate, to follow their comrades,
   or at the worst to give them intelligence of their frightful position,
   and entreat them to send reinforcements. But they were too late: the
   citizens had seized and manned every path of egress. When Typhos sent
   to them, demanding that the gates should be handed over to his guards,
   so deep was their distrust of him that they flatly refused to obey.
   Conscious of their success, they raised the pæan of victory. The Goths
   outside the walls, being at some distance, mistook its import, and made
   sure that it meant the triumph of their countrymen. One of the Goths
   managed at the point of the sword to make his way out of the city by
   one of the less guarded gates, and he undeceived them. Then Thorismund,
   at the head of all the most valiant warriors whom he could assemble,
   made his way back to the city. It was in vain. Every gate was shut
   against him. The walls bristled with hostile bows and spears. The young
   warrior could only rage in vain, while within the fatal circle the
   hapless barbarians got more and more entangled in the streets, and were
   at last hemmed inextricably into one narrow space, where, in despair
   almost too deep for attempted self-defence, they were being hacked, and
   hewn down, and stabbed by thousands of furious citizens, who were now
   mostly armed.

   Through the burning heat of that dreadful morning the massacre went on,
   and a dozen Goths were struck down by stones from the windows, or
   pierced with arrows, or beaten to the ground with clubs and swords, for
   every one of their assailants whom they slew. Religious hatred,
   political hatred, race hatred, in their most enflamed bitterness, were
   incited to overwhelm for ever the detested, overbearing, and heretical
   barbarians.

   The horrid scene still continued, and all attempt at interference would
   have been hopeless, for the multitude was mad with rage and the
   gratification of long-suppressed jealousy and revenge. The dominance of
   Gaïnas, in itself sufficiently detestable to the citizens, was
   identified in their minds with the still more execrated dominance of
   Typhos. Now that chance seemed to have offered them a hope of getting
   rid of both, they seized it with frantic avidity. Not much of the
   tumult was witnessed by Chrysostom, for the Silentiarii were posted at
   every entrance to the Forum, in order to secure the protection of the
   Palace. But his secretaries and some of the presbyters now and then
   brought him some description of the blood-bath which was deluging the
   streets, and as at least 7,000 Goths were still pent up in the city,
   the citizens, with scarcely any effectual retaliation, continued to
   slay and slay and slay. Distressed by the cries which reached his ears,
   and by his inability to prevent the massacre, Chrysostom ventured to
   seek an interview with Arcadius, and ask whether no energetic measure
   could be resorted to which might stay the fury of the sword. But the
   Emperor was stolidly obdurate. He regarded this dire event as a Divine
   intervention to rid him, in a manner wholly unexpected, alike of Gothic
   and of Arian tyranny. Beyond protecting his own palace he refused to
   give a single order or take a single step.

   On the other hand, the ardent spirit of youth naturally made it
   impossible for Philip and his two friends to sit quietly in the
   protected Patriarcheion while so fierce a battle was thundering through
   the city streets. It was obvious that they could not join in the
   fighting, for Goths and Byzantines alike were under the Archbishop's
   care; but if any opportunity offered itself for deeds of mercy and
   service, they desired to seize it. All three of them were
   parabolani--that is, they were members of a guild ostensibly formed for
   the purpose of burying the dead, a duty which was often difficult, and
   was sometimes shockingly neglected. But this was not their only
   function: they were always ready for any other deed of mercy.

   By the afternoon the bodies of several hundreds of the Goths strewed
   the streets, and among them lay not a few of the citizens who had
   perished in the dreadful encounter. But seven thousand still remained,
   surrounded on every side by myriads of threatening faces and fiercely
   brandished arms. They determined to make one more desperate effort for
   their lives, and the word was passed among them to hew their way to the
   church which had been set apart for the worship of orthodox Goths. It
   was a church in which Chrysostom had taken deep interest. He had
   fancied that it might become a nucleus of proselytising influence to
   win back this grand nation of barbarians to the faith of the Catholics;
   and he had even taken pains to procure presbyters and mission-agents,
   familiar with the Gothic language, to set before the Arians in their
   beloved native tongue the fulness of the Nicene verity. Into this
   church, then, the Goths determined to fight a passage, feeling no doubt
   at all that the sacred right of asylum, which had protected the life of
   Eutropius, would suffice to secure their imperilled safety. It never
   occurred to them that they, who had so long been servants of the
   Empire, and had fought its battles, whatever may have been the errors
   into which they had of late been misled by their chiefs, would be
   treated with a fury too implacable to be sated by anything short of
   their complete extermination. So with stern faces they turned to bay,
   and, cleaving themselves a lane through the living barrier of their
   enemies, fought their way towards the Gothic church. It was outside the
   great Forum, though at no great distance from it. They succeeded in
   their effort, though with ever-diminished numbers, since the crowd
   harassed them at every step and cut off every straggler.

   David had been occupied in various parts of the city in tending any
   wounded citizen whom he could help to his home, or conduct to one of
   the Patriarch's hospitals. Eutyches, who was much younger and of a more
   timid disposition, strayed as little as possible from the side of
   Philip. Their dress as parabolani accounted for their presence in the
   streets in a peaceful capacity, and it was not long before their
   benevolent efforts were signally rewarded; for their eyes were
   attracted by a spectacle which would have moved a heart of stone.

   In the centre of the stream of Goths, protected to the utmost by their
   shields, yet very imperfectly sheltered from the missiles hurled down
   on the doomed warriors from roofs and lattices, walked a tall and
   stately woman with her son, a boy of fifteen, a perfect type of manly
   Gothic beauty, by her side. She was richly dressed, and the brooch
   which fastened her embroidered robes was set with large emeralds, but
   she was now in a deplorable condition of fatigue and wretchedness. Her
   long, fair tresses streamed dishevelled over her shoulders: the
   jewelled ribbon of silk, which had confined them at the back of her
   head, had been torn away, and they were stained with blood from a wound
   in her forehead, caused by a stone, which had struck her with violence.
   With feelings harrowed to their depths, she watched the awful
   catastrophe which had befallen this mass of her fellow-countrymen; and
   it had long dawned on her mind that, in the crushing and crimson surge
   of massacre which every now and then deluged the heterogeneous
   conflict, and for which she herself felt partly guilty, her life could
   only be saved by a miracle.

   It was Liuba, the wife of Gaïnas, and the boy by her side was Walamir,
   who had formed so romantic an affection for Eutyches in his father's
   tent. Walamir had never looked so beautiful or so noble. He was dressed
   in the armour of his nation. The light of battle was in his eyes, and
   the sunlight which burned in his short, bright curls where they were
   uncovered by his helmet, made a sort of nimbus round his face. Boy as
   he was, he had fought like a hero. He carried a drawn sword in his
   hand, and a bow and quiver were slung over his back. Now and then, if
   chance offered, he would thrust the sword into its scabbard, snatch an
   arrow from his quiver, and aim it at some prominent assailant; but his
   mind was mainly absorbed in the effort to protect his mother, to whom
   his restless glances constantly returned. He himself had evidently been
   wounded. A sword-point had pierced his leg, for he limped with painful
   efforts, and often stumbled; and he was pale with loss of blood from a
   deep arrow-wound in his shoulder, which had dyed his white tunic and
   the wolfskin belted across his breast with deep red stains.

   Eutyches was the first to catch a glimpse of him amid the serried ranks
   of his warriors. He caught Philip's arms, and cried in an agitated
   voice: Oh, Philip! let us press as near as we can, and try to save
   him.'

   We will, my boy,' cried Philip; but oh! I fear the case is desperate.'

   And now the Goths had reached the open space in front of the church,
   and by a natural movement they rushed forward to gain the entrance. The
   crowd pressed still more firmly on their ranks, to prevent them from
   reaching their asylum. Walamir and his mother were thrust on one side
   by the rush of the narrowing stream of soldiers, and, seizing his
   chance, a brutal citizen smote the wife of Gaïnas on the head with a
   club. She sank down without a groan, and would instantly have been
   trampled to death had not Philip leapt forward, and, aided by
   Eutyches--for the costume of the charitable brotherhood secured them
   from molestation--dragged her a little aside into the corner of the
   Galilee. Walamir had cut down the cowardly striker of a woman with a
   blow of his sword, and then, too faint from his wounds to make any
   further effort, sank with a low wail upon his mother's corpse.

   Thousands of the Goths had now pressed into the church, till it was
   full from end to end, and those who could not enter were slain with
   scarcely the shadow of resistance. While the tumult roared about the
   gates one rioter aimed an infamous blow at Walamir, who, lying
   prostrate and with outstretched arms, was now conscious of nothing but
   that his mother was dead and his people were perishing. The force of
   the blow was broken, for without a moment's hesitation Philip felled
   the man with a blow on the temple from his clenched fist. But Walamir
   had swooned, and Philip and Eutyches, seeing that his mother was past
   help, gently disengaged his arms from her corpse. Philip had often been
   with his master to the church, and was well acquainted with its
   precincts. The humble residence of the presbyter, a venerable Goth, was
   at the back of the church, and the entrance to it lay through a shady
   little garden, entered by a wicket-gate which was scarcely observable
   amid the mass of creepers which twined about it in rank luxuriance.
   Through this wicket he and Eutyches carried the poor wounded lad, and
   the humble presbyter, thankful for the opportunity of helping one of
   his countrymen, laid the young Ostrogoth on his own bed, and entrusted
   him to the charge of his sister, who kept his house.

   There for a time we must leave him, and narrate the savage and shameful
   tragedy which thereon ensued. For not even in the church were the
   hunted remnant of the Goths to find a secure refuge. They were within;
   they had barred the gates; they determined, if the place were assaulted
   by violence, to sell their lives dear. But the mob of their assailants,
   thwarted for the moment, had forced their way through the soldiers into
   the Forum, and were now yelling at the Royal Gate of the Palace,
   demanding that Arcadius should give them leave to violate the right of
   asylum and put a final end to the to terror of Gothic intimidation. It
   was always the impulse of Arcadius to yield. Perhaps he thought it
   useless to attempt resistance. Perhaps he fancied in his muddled and
   bewildered religionism that a holocaust of the Goths could not be but a
   pleasing sacrifice to God. Perhaps he fell back on his own edict that
   State criminals of the worst dye could not be protected by the rights
   of sanctuary. Be that as it may, he declined to interfere. Then the mob
   flew back to the church, pressed into their service every ladder which
   could be found, swarmed to the roofs of the sacred building, and tore
   them up, and broke them down with axes and hammers and battering-rams.
   Below was the dreadful spectacle of thousands of warriors densely
   wedged together in the sacred space, unable to defend themselves,
   unable to strike a single blow; above, on the ladders and walls and
   roofs, were the faces of their enemies, distorted by hatred and
   malignant triumph. There are scenes and occasions in which men become
   transformed into incarnate demons. It was so on that dreadful day with
   the mob of Constantinople. Pitiless as at the games of the
   Amphitheatre, they gloated on the final scene of slaughter, which
   incarnadined the sacred place with rivers of gore. Many of the Goths,
   seeing their desperate extremity, embraced their brethren-in-arms, and
   heroically fell by their own or one another's friendly swords. Others
   sat down on the pavement, with their heads bowed upon their knees,
   awaiting whatever form of death might come. Many who were Christians
   joined in the lilt of some Christian chant; others who were still
   Pagans raised fragments of the songs of their native land. The butchery
   did not last long when hundreds were hurling down on them showers of
   stones, and masses of burning wood, and huge fragments of masonry, and
   most of them chose rather to die by each other's hands. In the course
   of an hour not one was left alive. Portions of the church had caught
   fire, and there were places where the creeping streams of fire were
   quenched in blood. By evening, through the dismantled roofs of the
   wrecked edifice, the silent heavens looked down on masses of ruin, and
   blackened beams, and shattered rafters, and heaps of dying men and
   charred corpses, and broken arms.

   History knows but of one scene which resembles this in its tragedy: it
   is the massacre of Corcyra. But in the massacre of Corcyra, B.C. 425,
   only 300 perished. That was on Mount Istone, not in any temple or
   sacred place. In this massacre at Constantinople 7,000 were helplessly
   and pitilessly butchered in a church which but a day or two before had
   rung with hymns and murmured with prayers to the White Christ, to the
   God of all mercy and all compassion.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  GAÏNAS MEETS HIS DOOM


   Desinat elatis quisquam confidere rebus,

   Instabilesque Deos ac lubrica numina discat...,

   ...Qui Sidonio velari credidit auro

   Nudus pascit aves.

   Claud., In Ruf. ii. 440.

   Such were the frightful tidings which reached the Ostrogothic chieftain
   in his camp at the Hebdomon. His wife had been slain; one-third of his
   army had been massacred; the gates of Constantinople were closed, and
   its walls garrisoned against him. His brave son, Thorismund, was with
   him, but he knew not the fate of the son of his heart, his beloved and
   beautiful Walamir. But there was no time to waste in anguish or in
   funeral obsequies--the case demanded instant action. Typhos was still
   left in power as Prætorian Præfect at Constantinople, and with Typhos
   he was in secret agreement. But this last thread of hope was speedily
   cut short. True that Typhos seemed almost indispensable to Arcadius for
   the moment, because, bad as he was, the unscrupulous thoroughness of
   his impartial oppression helped to replenish the exhausted treasury.
   But the breach between the Emperor and the Goths was now irreparable.
   Gaïnas was declared a public enemy. An extraordinary commission was
   appointed to examine into the misdeeds of Typhos. His manifold acts of
   treachery were exposed. He was flung into prison. For a time his
   execution was only averted by the intercession of Aurelian, who was now
   recalled from his undeserved banishment. But doomsday came to Typhos at
   last, as it comes in turn to all transgressors. Amid universal
   detestation, unaided by the vast treasures he had amassed for such
   brief enjoyment, he expiated his manifold malfeasance under the hands
   of the common executioner, and his wife died, shunned and execrated, in
   abject misery.

   Gaïnas broke up his camp, and marched forward to ravage the lands of
   Thrace. But there comes to many a man who was once the spoiled
   favourite of fortune a time when he finds that everything has turned
   for him to thorns. Gaïnas and his army were utterly baulked of the rich
   plunder which they had hoped to win from the depopulation of Thrace.
   The Romans had everywhere been encouraged to contempt and defiance by
   the disaster of the barbarians at Constantinople. Gaïnas found the
   cities not undefended, like those of Asia; not with crumbling walls,
   but powerfully garrisoned and amply fortified. To take them by siege
   was impossible: time and siege-trains alike were lacking. In the place
   of harvests he found only wastes of stubble: the fields had been reaped
   already, the grain stored, the cattle driven into places of safety. It
   seemed as if he and all his Goths were engaged in a fruitless raid, in
   which at last they would be reduced to starve.

   Overwhelmed with anxiety and despair, he made his way towards the
   Hellespont. He would once more cross to the lands of Asia, which,
   ravaged as they had been, still seemed to offer an inexhaustible
   resource. But meanwhile another event had happened.

   Fravitta, a Goth by birth, a Pagan in religion, was, as we have said,
   by conviction a member of the Roman party. He had married a Roman wife;
   he accepted the duties of civilisation as the only rôle hereafter open
   to his fellow-countrymen. The line of Claudian was often on his lips:--

     We are all one nation.
     'Quod cuncti gens una sumus.'

   Already, in his earlier days, he had, at peril of his own life, saved
   Theodosius from the dangerous conspiracy of Eriulph. His fiery youth
   was passed, but his courage was unquenched, his allegiance unshaken. He
   came forward and offered his sword and his services to Arcadius. The
   Emperor elevated him to the rank of Commander-in-Chief in place of
   Gaïnas, and he promised to make the rebellious Goths accept the yoke,
   or to drive them back beyond the Danube.

   The safety of Thrace had been practically secured by the prudence of
   its own inhabitants and the bold front which they presented to the
   enemy. Still, Fravitta watched the movements of Gaïnas, and received
   early notice of his intention to fall back on the Hellespont. Fravitta
   arranged his forces on the Asiatic shore, and confronted the Gothic
   army, which was extended along the coasts of the Chersonese from Parium
   to opposite Abydos; he also assembled a fleet of Liburnian galleys to
   prevent the passage of the straits.

   Gaïnas grew desperate. He and his army were suffering from the pressure
   of famine. Cross over to Asia he must, at whatever cost; and yet he had
   not a single ship, and there was a fleet to bar his passage!

   The Goths did not know the art of shipbuilding, and, even had they done
   so, time would have failed them for the purpose. Behind them was hungry
   desolation; before them a determined army and the wild sea-waves.
   Gaïnas ordered every tree they could find in the peninsula to be cut
   down, and rude rafts to be constructed from the trunks lashed together.
   These rafts, helmless and rudderless as they were, were laden with men
   and horses, and launched to the chances of the sea-currents to sweep
   them whither they would. Gaïnas felt strangely confident of victory,
   and waited on the shore to watch the success of his plan. But Fravitta
   was more than ready for him. His galleys were at some distance from the
   coast, and he had armed them with iron prows. A strong west wind came
   to his aid. No sooner did he observe the rafts in the grasp of the
   isthmus-currents than he swept down on one of the largest, split it,
   sank it, and dashed its struggling occupants, cavalry and infantry
   together, into the deep sea. Those who could not swim were instantly
   drowned, the more easily because many of them were encumbered with the
   weight of their armour. Those who could swim flung away their arms; but
   the galleys drove amongst them, and struck them down, or they were
   pushed under the billows by the points of hostile spears.

   In this way thousands were destroyed. Gaïnas saw a vast contingent of
   his army perish ignominiously under his very eyes. There was no
   possibility of assembling a new host. His prestige was gone; his
   auspices appeared to be branded with fatality; his troops were daily
   weakened by desertions. Already the advanced detachments of Fravitta's
   Romans began to harry his rear as he fled through the Thracian plains,
   so void of sustenance. In despairing rage he slaughtered all the Roman
   hostages and prisoners who were with him, and made his way towards the
   Danube, determined to re-seek the home of his youth, and there achieve
   some fresh plan of vengeance, or end the clouded and dishonoured
   remnant of his days.

   By the time he reached the banks of the Danube there were but few
   followers with him; but among them were his son Thorismund and the band
   of warriors who were specially devoted to the service of that fine
   young chieftain. Gaïnas, now more than ever in the grasp of the demon,
   spurred his foaming warhorse towards the stream, plunged recklessly
   into it, and swam it far ahead of the majority of his followers.
   Unhappily for him, the shore on which he landed was in possession of
   the Huns and their king, Uldes. This chieftain, who had many plans for
   the future, was most anxious to gain the favour and confidence of the
   Emperor of the East, and he well knew that he could offer him no more
   precious gift than the head of the enemy who for so many years had kept
   him in terrified subjection. Gaïnas, with about a dozen of his escort,
   rode up to Uldes, and asked permission simply to pass through his
   territory to their own old lands. The ugly face of the Hun only
   gathered into a frown. He gave a signal to his troop, and they closed
   in dense ranks round the unhappy Ostrogoth. He saw that his time was
   come. One gleam of joy alone lightened his last hour: it was that his
   son Thorismund was not one of those who had thus been shut up with him
   in the serried army of these treacherous enemies, so that it might
   still be possible for him to swim back across the Danube, and escape.
   Nothing remained but to sell his life as dearly as he could, and to
   this task he set himself with all the stern delight of battle.

   Ha!' he, shouted, raising his voice to its full pitch, 'it is treachery
   and death. Fly, Thorismund! But you, my brave comrades, you are Goths;
   let some, at least, of these grinning fiends accompany us to the realms
   of Hela! They think that we will tamely lay down our arms! They know us
   not. At them, my warriors!'

   Gaïnas himself spurred his horse straight at Uldes; but the Hun swerved
   from his charge, and the Ostrogoth found himself in the very thick of
   the Hunnish legion. He fought like a lion. Many a Hun bit the ground
   before his strong arm and practiced sword; but he was already separate
   from his little band. In a few minutes every one of them had been
   slain, and Gaïnas, now covered with wounds, was dragged from his steed,
   and received his death-stab. In his last moments all the passions and
   instincts of his Pagan forefathers had come back to him, and as his
   life-blood ebbed away he felt, in one flash of consolation, that the
   Valkyrie would not be ashamed of him, for he had not died tamely, but
   as an Ostrogoth should die, with his broken sword in his grasp, and
   leaning on his broken shield, yet in the midst of foes whom he had
   slain. They tore off his golden collar and his ornaments, and then,
   from the neck on which it had towered in its pride of strength and
   comeliness, they struck off the warrior's head, and spiked it on the
   summit of a lance, to send it to Arcadius as a gage of friendship and
   the best pledge of the Hunnish king's allegiance.

   And it was thus that Gaïnas also met his doom.

   But Thorismund and his followers, seeing the dread event, recrossed the
   Danube at full speed--for of what use would it be to throw away their
   lives in an attack upon a host which outnumbered them by a hundred to
   one? When they had reached a place of safety they drew rein, and after
   brief consultation determined to make their way to Illyricum, and there
   offer their swords to Alaric the Visigoth for his contemplated invasion
   of the West.

   Alaric was ever jealous of Gaïnas,' said an old warrior. 'They rarely
   acted together.'

   They were comrades-in-arms at the battle of the Frigidus,' said
   Thorismund, and the Ostrogoths are brothers of the Visigoths. Alaric
   will not refuse a suppliant who will aid him in exacting vengeance from
   the cruel and perfidious Romans. They have cheated and oppressed us.
   They deceived and massacred our noble youth. They have just slaughtered
   whole holocausts of our warriors in their accursed streets. We will
   still beat them to the dust. If not Constantinople, at least Rome,
   shall yet be in our hands. Courage, my Ostrogoths! If we cannot
   conquer, we will die in our simplicity.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXV

  WALAMIR AND EUTYCHES


   Like a flower, that cannot all unfold,

   So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun.--Tennyson

   Weeping, ringing his hands, casting up his tear-dimmed eyes to Heaven,
   Reikhild, the aged presbyter of the Catholic Goths, stood in his
   wrecked, desecrated church. It was the morning after the battle in the
   streets, and the spectacle which met his eyes could hardly fail to rend
   the heart of a pastor. What had been his Holy Sanctuary was now a
   revolting slaughterhouse, and among the fallen timbers, and shattered
   stones, and shapeless heaps of desolation, lay in their blood the torn
   limbs and putrescent corpses of hundreds of murdered men, which in the
   fierce summer sunlight had already begun to taint the air. His church
   was a ghastly ruin, an evitandum bidental, of which the very site would
   be thenceforward shunned as a haunt of demons, which no lustration
   would ever purify. On such an Aceldama no church could ever be built
   again. In the capital of the East the era of the Goths was at an end.
   Henceforward the billows of barbarian invasion would roll shoreward,
   and strike and be dissipated' on the cities of the Western world. With
   the Church had disappeared the congregation also. The occupation of the
   presbyter was gone; the work of his life was shipwrecked; the words of
   Reikhild, the son of Witiges, were ended.

   Shocked beyond utterance by all that he had heard and witnessed, the
   old man tottered back to his lonely presbytery. But the scene had been
   altogether too much for him. Never had his aged sister seen him so
   pale; she noticed on his face, for the first time, that grey hue which
   is the harbinger of death. Nor was she mistaken. That very evening he
   took to his bed, and before a fortnight was over he had passed to his
   eternal rest.

   Walamir still lay unconscious on the couch where they had laid him, and
   it was impossible for her to tend him with the incessant care needed by
   his critical condition now that she was beset by the new anxiety of her
   brother's illness. The parabolani were already hard at work in the
   ruined church, endeavouring to bury in one huge pit the unnumbered
   corpses of the dead which strewed the sacred precincts and the
   neighbouring streets. They laid the wife of Gaïnas in a separate grave.
   Philip and David had come to help them, while Eutyches went into the
   presbyter's house to see his wounded friend. He found Walamir in
   desperate case, unable to speak a word. The barb of the arrow by which
   he had been wounded was still embedded in the flesh of the shoulder,
   and unless it were cut out nothing could prevent a fatal termination.
   He must obviously be removed, and that at once. Eutyches hastened to
   the Patriarch, and begged that the young Goth might occupy his own bed
   and chamber till his recovery, or death, as he could himself easily
   sleep in an adjoining room in the many-chambered palace. Chrysostom,
   ever ready to do deeds of mercy, gladly assented, and the more so
   because the very limited hospital accommodation was already strained to
   its utmost capacity by the necessary tendance of wounded citizens, who
   in the present exasperation of feeling might resent the invasion of
   their privilege by a wounded Goth, even though that Goth was a mere
   boy, and though the secret that he was a son of Gaïnas was closely
   kept.

   So Eutyches flew back to Philip, and with the aid of David and others
   of the parabolani carried Walamir in the easiest litter they could
   procure to the Patriarcheion. There the lad, still entirely
   unconscious, was laid with all tenderness on the bed of his friend, and
   Asclepias, the most skilful physician in Constantinople, was summoned
   to attend him. He pronounced that the arrow-head must be cut out
   without delay, and did not conceal that in the patient's present state
   of exhaustion the operation might end in death. But the boy had the
   magnificent physique of his father, and had been in that splendid
   health which is the natural result of purity and moderation. There was
   hope for him when there would be none for another.

   He recovered consciousness during the consultation, and asked that his
   agony might be ended by the excision of the rankling barb. In those
   days anæsthetics were unknown, but Walamir begged Eutyches to hold his
   left hand, set his teeth hard, and bared his breast. He would not
   scream under the knife. He bore the agony without a groan, only when
   the iron was drawn but he turned white as death, and fainted away with
   the ensuing hæmorrhage.

   Nothing more could be done for him, the physician said, but to give him
   perfect rest and quiet, and simple, healthful food in small quantities
   at frequent intervals. All that skill and tenderness could do was done.
   The Lady Olympias came daily to the Patriarch's palace to see that the
   wants of Chrysostom were properly attended to, and she often cared for
   the needs of the sick boy. Nicarete also took his case in hand, and
   tended him with all the skill which she had learnt from daily attention
   to the wants of the sick and suffering in the hospitals and in their
   own poor houses. And in the long evenings Eutyches, with look and smile
   a healing in themselves,' sat by his bedside, carrying out with
   unwearying solicitude every direction he had received, and feeling more
   and more closely drawn to the now helpless lad, who had so earnestly
   sought his friendship. When they had first met in the tent of Gaïnas,
   Walamir had been like a picture of early youth in its finest promise;
   now he lay there worn and wasted, and recognising no one, and with
   fortunes utterly ruined, and very nigh to death.

   But in such a frame as his Nature fought hard against the ravages of
   illness. The wound in his leg was relatively trivial, and soon healed.
   The pure, untainted blood which coursed through his veins gradually
   wrought the cure of the other and more serious wound, and if only he
   could hold out against extreme weakness he might yet recover.

   Eutyches anxiously awaited the hour when he should awake to perfect
   consciousness and the delirium would cease, in which he murmured
   constantly of the scenes of recent slaughter, which seemed to shroud
   his memory in a mist of blood.

   At last the hour came. It was evening, and the warm sunlight streaming
   through the lattice, with an infinitely soft air from the sea, which,
   came in laden with the balm of the innumerable roses in the garden,
   shone and breathed on the boy's face. He woke sane, sighed, opened his
   eyes, and, looking round him, asked in a low voice:

   Where am I?'

   You are in the palace of the Patriarch John, Walamir,' said his friend.

   And you?' he said, fixing his large blue eyes on the face of
   Eutyches--'surely you are he--whom my brother Thorismund called the boy
   who looks like an angel?'

   I am Eutyches, and your friend, and Philip is here, whom Thorismund
   loved well.'

   How came I here? What has happened?'

   'You were badly wounded.'

   Ah!'

   The words let loose upon him an avalanche of memories. For a time he
   did not speak; then a sob shook his frame and silent tears streamed
   down his cheeks. Oh, hide, hide from me the horrid vision!' he said,
   lifting his hand as though he would shut out the phantasmagoria of
   hideous recollections. My father?' he asked faintly.

   The chief marched away with his army into Thrace.'

   My brother?'

   Thorismund escaped through the gates with some of his trusted warriors.
   He joined Gaïnas.'

   My mother?'

   Eutyches was silent.

   Oh! you need not tell me. I remember, I remember all! And my
   people--what happened to all the rest that day?'

   Do not talk more now, dear Walamir. You shall hear all in time. Try now
   to sleep.'

   Walamir was, in truth, too exhausted to ask more. He lay back and
   closed his eyes, but could only sink into short and troubled slumbers.
   That night Olympias and Pentadia took it in turn to watch by his
   bedside.

   Next day he seemed weaker. His mind was working incessantly, and it had
   nothing but tragedies on which to dwell.

   The next evening he told Eutyches that he did not think that he could
   live. But Eutyches cheered him, holding him by the hand. I fear,' he
   said, you do not desire to live. But you are young; only think how much
   happiness may yet lie in store for you.'

   I am young,' he answered, and the sunlight is warm, and the sea air
   sweet, and these roses are beautiful'--for Eutyches had put by his side
   the vase which David had given him, and it was full of roses--'but what
   have I to live for? My father and my brother are exiles, burning,
   perhaps vainly, for revenge. My mother is dead. My people are slain. I
   am homeless and friendless.'

   Not friendless,' said Eutyches. We all love you. There is many a home
   which would receive you.'

   Ay, as a slave,' he said, or a humble dependent. But that can never be
   for a son of Gaïnas and an Amaling of the Ostrogoths.'

   Nay,' said Eutyches, '"

   sufficient for the day is its own evil." God will provide. Trust Him
   for the future. You are a Christian, though an Arian. Do you not know
   that Christ loves you?'

   How can the White Christ of the Romans love me?' he said. He must have
   deserted us. He must be angry with us about some formula we cannot
   understand. How else could He have suffered us to perish? Why else
   could He have thus smitten me into helplessness and misery?'

   Oh, hush! hush!' said Eutyches. I know little, I understand little. To
   confess to you the simple truth, I seem to care little about the hard,
   unintelligible words of which every idle tongue prates. But if I do not
   understand the doctrine, I try to do the will. I love Christ, and I
   know that Christ is love; and He is my Master and my Lord, and I have
   given my youth to Him, that He may have it under His own holy keeping,
   to save it from itself, and save it for Himself. Do I tire you?'

   The only answer was a pressure of the hand.

   Well then, Walamir, I seem to myself to know nothing of life, and to
   see nothing but its mysteries. I am but an ignorant boy, but I doubt
   whether even wise men--whether even he, the Patriarch, really
   understands what life means, or why God suffers us to be afflicted. I
   have not yet been much afflicted, though I, too, am an orphan, Walamir.
   The Patriarch gave me a home, and Philip loves me, and David, and
   you--and I am happy; and for the rest, doubtless the day of anguish
   will come to me, as it has come to you. We are born: let that come
   which must come. Only, may God help us for a short time to bear it, and
   make us faithful. I am sure that He cares for us. Try to live, Walamir;
   pray that you may live and serve.'

   Tell me more of your faith,' said Walamir.

   I have been trained,' said Eutyches, from earliest childhood in holy
   homes. My father was a Catholic Goth. He died early. My mother loved
   God. I have been rocked in the cradle and nursed on the knees by saints
   of God, and that on which I built all my faith and all my love is that

   God is love, and that Christ is God.'

   Again the mind of the Gothic boy was actively at work, and sorrows
   rushed in on him like a flood. He felt very tired, and as if he were at
   the point to die.

   Eutyches', he said, I think that I am dying. Lean my head upon your
   shoulder.'

   Eutyches took him in his arms and pillowed the weary head on his
   shoulder. His tears fell on his friend's cheek as he stooped over him,
   but he spoke cheery words.

   Walamir,' he said, something tells me you will not die, but live, and
   do great deeds. What you now need more than all is sleep. Nicarete
   takes care of you to-night. One night of good sleep, and you will
   recover. To-morrow morning I shall bring him to see you.'

   Him?' asked Walamir.

   The Patriarch John,' said Eutyches. We call him so among ourselves.'

   The great and holy Patriarch who blessed me in my father's tent? He
   will not care to come and pray with a wretched, wounded, dying Gothic
   boy.'

   He is all kindness,' said Eutyches. He will come, and you will live.'

   The next morning, as Eutyches had prophesied, Walamir felt a little
   stronger. His wound was dressed by the good Nicarete, who was in her
   element in a sick-room. Then Chrysostom came and knelt by his bedside,
   and poured forth for him a deep, strong, short, and tender prayer. We
   have heard how many a life has been saved by an affusion of blood from
   the pulses of strong and healthy veins. Such a moral and spiritual
   affusion into the life of the young Ostrogoth was the prayer of
   Chrysostom. From that moment he visibly amended. Very soon he could be
   carried into the garden, and could lie under a couch in the deep shade,
   among the flowers. A little longer and he could walk thither, leaning
   on the arm of Eutyches, who had been partly set free from work to tend
   him in his recovery.

   It was then that the very serious question arose what was to be done
   with him; in what way they could provide for his future?

   Philip and his friends were discussing it together. Of course,' said
   Philip, 'he,' pointing his finger towards the Archbishop's study--'he
   would readily provide for him; but how, and where? That is the
   difficulty. After what has happened the people hate the very sight of a
   Goth. He would hardly be safe from insult in the streets. If anyone but
   ourselves knew that he was the son of Gaïnas, there are plenty of
   brutes and villains in the city who would strike him down.'

   I wish we could keep him with us,' said Eutyches.

   Impossible!' said David. He is born Ostrogoth. Much as he loves you,
   Eutyches, his temperament is as different from yours in most things as
   any nature could be. The spirit and the aspirations of his wild
   forefathers are in him. He will be a warrior, and in these days no
   other career is open to him. He could not live our quiet life. The pen
   may be for us; the sword must be for him.'

   Would it be possible to send him back to his father?'

   It would be full of risk,' said David; and in the present fortunes of
   Gaïnas the outlook for him would be desperate.'

   Then, what has the wise David to suggest?' asked Philip; for I am quite
   sure that you would not say all this if you had no plan.'

   I have, said David. 'Aurelian has been recalled from banishment. He is
   a Christian; a good man, a great soldier. You know him, Philip. Ask the
   Patriarch to go to Aurelian, and see if he cannot provide Walamir, as
   soon as he is quite well, with some place near his own person. He will
   do it; and among Aurelian's soldierly surroundings Walamir may be
   trained in arms and in the scenes and exercises which he loves, and yet
   in a Christian home.'

   Admirable!' said Philip; nothing could be better. We shall change your
   name immediately from David to Solomon!'

   And yours from Philip to Alexander,' said David with his grave smile.

   Which?' said Philip--'the Great, or the Coppersmith?'

   Oh! the Coppersmith, the Coppersmith, of course,' said Eutyches. That
   accounts for his being so much in the Chalkoprateia.'

   Will nothing cure your audacity?' said Philip, and he tried to seize
   him; but Eutyches darted off, and Philip shook his fist. Wait till I
   catch you,' he said.

   Alexander the Coppersmith did me much evil,' said Eutyches demurely.
   'And that reminds me I never got the bronze what's-his-name which you
   owe me for not guessing that Eutropius was to be Consul.'

   Oh, you scoundrel!' said Philip; you forfeited it by your impudence.
   But I have no time to thrash you now, for I must ask him, and then be
   off to Count Aurelian's.'

   Chrysostom was struck by the good-sense of the proposal, and Aurelian,
   who had always retained a kindly regard for Philip, gave him a cordial
   welcome, and at once agreed to receive the young Goth as a member of
   his household. The Præfect was, indeed, purposely living in comparative
   retirement until the exasperation of feeling between the Romans and the
   Goths should have died down. But he still had soldiers about him, and,
   as he soon formed a warm attachment to the noble and friendless boy, he
   gave him the training of a skilled soldier and of a high-minded,
   honourable man, which bore fine fruit in later years.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  HIS MURDERED FATHER'S HEAD


   Est genus extremos Scythiæ vergentis in ortus

   Trans gelidum Tanaim, quo non famosius ullum

   Arctos abit; turpes habitus, obscænaque visu

   Corpora.

   Claud. In Ruf. ii. 323-26.

   So Walamir found a home, and often joined his friends in the
   Patriarcheion in their bathes and strolls and games in the gymnasium,
   having as it were grappled Eutyches to his soul with hooks of steel. He
   would have been even happy--for youth is less grievously haunted than
   age or manhood by the gnawing vultures of memory--if no further events
   had disturbed his life. But his happiness was constantly shaken by the
   dark news about his father's reverses. There was no way of hearing from
   him or communicating with him, nor did the young Ostrogoth dare to
   speak of him openly, or to let it be known that he was his son. He was
   again plunged in despair when he heard the intelligence of the drowning
   of thousands more of his countrymen by Fravitta's fleet during their
   wild attempt to cross the Hellespont on unguided rafts. After that
   catastrophe nothing was known for a long time, except that Gaïnas had
   ridden away with his remaining cavalry towards the banks of the Ister.
   Walamir feared that he would never again hear of his father or of his
   strong brother, Thorismund.

   It was now January, 401. One day he was walking home with Eutyches from
   a rowing excursion on the Bosporus, when they saw a crowd of people
   assembling in the colonnade of the Forum, and were told that a
   deputation of Huns from Uldes, the Hunnish king, was marching to the
   Palace with a present to Arcadius and offers of allegiance and peace.

   The two youths waited to watch the procession. The foremost Huns, who
   were soldiers marching in front of the ambassador, passed by. They were
   Taifals, the ugliest of the human race, and had the universal
   reputation of being also the vilest and most brutal. Nothing could be a
   more complete contrast than that between them and the fine-looking
   Goths. They were squat, and short, and yellow, and inconceivably ugly.
   Their cunning little eyes were the merest dots and slits in their large
   Mongolian faces. Their shock heads of hair seemed to be of no
   particular colour. Their wicked faces looked as if they were all
   mouths. 'Their faces,' says Jordanes, the Gothic historian, 'could
   hardly be called faces--rather shapeless, black collops of flesh with
   little points instead of eyes; little in stature, but lithe and active;
   good riders, broad-shouldered, good at the bow, obstinate and proud,
   hiding under a barely human form the ferocity of a wild beast.' Their
   wars were mere enslavement, lust, and rapine. They cut down
   fruit-trees, they stopped wells; their chiefs boasted that where their
   horses had once trod no harvests ever grew. Their invasions were like
   the descent of devouring and disgusting locusts. The land was as the
   Garden of Eden before them; behind them it was a desolate wilderness.

   The Goths looked on these execrable savages with a peculiarly deadly
   hatred. It was before the wave on wave of their innumerable myriads,
   pressing one after another out of the vast steppes of Asia, that, first
   the Ostrogoths, and then the Visigoths, had been driven forward out of
   the lands they loved, the lands of their immemorial possession. They
   felt it to be an infamy to succumb to these semi-human demons, who
   gained their distorted name of Tartars from the popular belief that
   they had been disgorged from the depths of Tartarus. But how could
   human valour or human wisdom fight against numbers numberless, bred as
   though from verminiferous pains? Warriors might fight with men, but
   they shrank from conflict with demon cannibals.

   Some of these feelings were struggling in the mind of Walamir, and he
   was looking on the hideous phenomena with a shudder, when suddenly
   another part of the procession swept round the cornet of the Passage of
   Achilles into the Forum. Conspicuous among them was a young, swart
   soldier, clad in skins, but fully armed, carrying a long lance with
   something at its summit. It was the son of King Uldes himself, who had
   been set apart for what he deemed to be a service of honour.

   At that moment Walamir was staring with a frown on the faces of the
   nearest Huns, not concealing an expression of unmistakable disgust, for
   their aspect justified and deepened the old hereditary loathing. But
   the quick glance of Eutyches recognised what that thing on the
   lance-point was. A dim rumour had reached him of the fate of Gaïnas at
   the hands of the Hunnish king; but as it was only a rumour, he had felt
   himself justified in keeping it from the ears of his friend. The news
   was also known to Aurelian, but he had kindly ordered his household to
   conceal it, and he had hoped that the procession would be over before
   Walamir returned from the Bosporus. Eutyches saw at once that the
   Hunnish prince was carrying the head of the Ostrogothic Amal who, when
   he last left Constantinople, had been Prætorian Præfect,
   Consul-designate, and Commander-in-Chief. It was so that one of the
   Gothic comrades of Gaïnas had carried into Constantinople the head of
   the murdered Rufinus; it was so that his own murdered head was now
   carried through the streets which had once witnessed his towering
   stature and lordly stride. The blood of Eutyches ran cold. What was he
   to do? He knew the fiery and almost ungovernable impulses of Walamir,
   and at that moment the young Goth was slowly turning to look at the new
   contingent of the Hunnish embassy.

   Come away! come away!' said Eutyches in a hurried whisper. Do not let
   us look any longer. We have seen enough of these wretches.'

   No, no!' said Walamir. Remember, I never saw such creatures as these
   before. I must see them march up to the Royal Gate---- God! what is
   that?'

   Too fatally, with too frightful suddenness, the grim spectacle had
   burst upon him. With a shock of horror utterly indescribable he had
   seen the Hunnish prince stalking nearer with his uplifted lance--and on
   its summit that livid face, those short, light curls, stiffened with
   dark blood. Good God! it was unmistakable! it was the head of his
   father Gaïnas!

   With a cry like that of a wounded lion he sprang forward, and struck a
   wild blow at the young Hun. Happily for him, happily for
   Constantinople, Eutyches pulled him back with all his force. The hand
   of Walamir did, indeed, strike the cheek of the Hun, and in his
   startled fury and amazement he lost the unequal balance of his lance,
   and from its point the ghastly relic rolled in the dust of the street.
   Instantly swords flashed out. The son of King Uldes raised a yell of
   rage, and bloodshed would have ensued but for the admirable presence of
   mind displayed by Aurelian.

   It is a madman!' he said, calmly addressing the Hun. 'We are not
   responsible. Soldiers, take away the lunatic. If need be, put him in
   manacles.'

   The Hun had not been hurt, for the blow had scarcely reached him. He
   picked up the dissevered head, again spiked it on his lance-point,
   patted with insolent brutality the livid cheek, and marched onward with
   a broad grin. The attention of the multitude was too much absorbed to
   notice the incident. The rumour which Eutyches had heard had begun to
   spread among them, and they were receiving the head of Gaïnas with
   shouts of acclamation.

   But the sight had been too much for Walamir. In the revulsion of
   feeling he fell senseless to the ground, and his wound, which had not
   long healed, burst out afresh, crimsoning with blood the Gothic
   wolfskin which, at some peril to himself, but in the spirit of defiant
   patriotism, he had always refused to discard. Aurelian's soldiers knew
   him, and understood the incident. To save appearances they made a show
   of arresting him. They fettered his hands with light manacles, and led
   him home. Aurelian, when he returned, excused and forgave his rashness,
   spoke to him a few words of quiet sympathy and warning, and set him
   free.

   But the lad was nearly broken-hearted. He was again prostrated by a
   sharp attack of illness, and during his recovery he formed the
   invincible determination rather to beg his bread than to stay in that
   hateful, guilty city a day longer than he could help. As soon as he was
   permitted he visited Eutyches, and consulted with him and his friends
   what was to be done.

   I cannot,' he said, remain in the house of Aurelian. I honour, I love
   him. He has been kind and generous. But wherever I walk in the streets
   I seem to breathe the crimson fumes of blood from the massacre of my
   people, and now I shall never be able to look upwards in the Forum
   without seeming to see----' He waved his hands before his face as
   though to avert a vision of horror.

   But what will you do if you leave us?' asked Eutyches.

   I have thought of that. The Gruthongs are no more. Alaric the Balt is a
   Therving, [13] not a Gruthong, but he is now at the head of my people.
   I will make my way to him.'

   It will not be easy for you to make your way to Illyria in these
   troublous times,' said Philip.

   I can be of use in that matter,' said David. Owing to the known and
   stainless integrity of my father, he is often entrusted with
   commissions by the Jewish merchants of Constantinople. Walamir could
   not travel with him in his Gothic dress, but if he will condescend to
   wear a disguise for three days, till he is well beyond the immediate
   boundaries of Thrace, within a week my father will take him as a
   companion as far as Illyricum, and even to Æmona.'

   When does he start?' asked Walamir eagerly.

   To-morrow,' said David, at earliest dawn. Come to him now.'

   The four youths went, Philip being, as usual, delighted by even a
   chance of seeing Miriam. They found that little disguise was needed. An
   upper garment of striped cloth, worn like the Jewish abeyeh, and a wig
   of long, dark hair under a turban, so effectually disguised the young
   Goth that his best friend would not easily have recognised him, and
   they all laughed at the complete transformation. That night Walamir
   wrote a few lines to Aurelian. Illustrious and kind!' he said; after
   what has happened this city is to me like a dungeon or a lazar-house. I
   thank you with true gratitude. Pardon me that I leave you. Farewell.'
   He gave the letter to the slave in the porter's cell, who let him out
   at dawn. He had bidden farewell to Philip and David the evening before,
   but Eutyches met him in the Chalkoprateia, before he went into
   Michael's house to be disguised. With hearts full of foreboding that
   they should never meet again they embraced each other. Walamir, who
   owed so much to his friend, fell upon his neck and wept, and Eutyches
   wept on his neck, and, parting to fulfil their widely and divergent
   destinies, they saw each other no more. Walamir travelled with the
   Desposynos, and, pitying his almost wild impatience, Michael pressed
   forward as rapidly as possible on his way. They had no special
   adventures on the journey. In two days the youth was able to discard
   the disguise, which he could barely tolerate. Within a week he was at
   Æmona, the capital of Illyricum, where the King of the Visigoths held
   his Court.

   It was Alaric's custom every morning to take his seat in the hall of
   his palace, attended by warriors with spear and shield, and there to
   receive all who brought him their petitions.

   The session had scarcely begun when a boy in full Gothic dress, pale,
   but of fearless and noble mien, and beautiful as a young god, advanced
   alone up the hall towards the King. The Visigoths looked on in
   astonishment, for his bearing was that of a chief's son, and they did
   not know his face. Unheeding of the gaze of so many eyes fixed upon
   him, he walked straight towards the King's chair, bent his knee for a
   moment in sign of homage, and stood before him with folded arms. He was
   dressed entirely in white. His mantle of the finest white wool was
   fastened on the right shoulder with a golden eagle. His short-sleeved
   tunic of fine silk woven with gold threads was tightened round his
   waist by a girdle. His leggings reached a little below his knee, and,
   like his wide turned-down collar, were fringed with an ornamental
   pattern which indicated his high rank. Two broad bracelets of gold,
   after the fashion of his nation, spanned his strong, naked arms, and
   through the opening of his collar was visible the torque of fretted
   gold, carved with runes, on which one who stood near him could read the
   words, Gut annom hai laq (Sacred to the treasure of the Goths').

   Speak, boy,' said Alaric kindly. Thy look is that of a young warrior.
   Hast come to cast in thy lot among us?'

   King,' said Walamir, I am an Amal of the Gruthongs, the younger son of
   Gaïnas. I have fled from Constantinople; I would fain fight against the
   cowards and traitors who have destroyed my father and massacred my
   people. My brother--I know not whether he lives or is dead.'

   He lives, brother!' cried Thorismund, springing from his place among
   the bodyguard, and clasping his brother to his heart in a long embrace.
   He had been strangely moved from the moment his young brother had
   entered the hall, but in the months which had elapsed since they parted
   Walamir had passed the boundary between boyhood and youth. He had grown
   much taller and stronger, and the golden down was beginning to shine
   upon his upper lip. The pallor which his recent shock had left on his
   face, together with the improbability that he should be there, had
   prevented instant recognition. In truth, Thorismund thought that he had
   been killed with his mother in the massacre of June.

   My brother!' he cried, and I thought you dead! Now, God be praised! we
   will never part again.'

   Is he your brother, Thorismund?' said Alaric, taking him by the hand.
   Young Amal, you shall be as welcome to me as Thorismund has been. You
   shall be my page-at-arms, and you shall both be by my side when we
   enter the gates of Rome.'

   We will!' said the young Amalings, lifting up their hands to Heaven.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [13] The Ostrogoths called themselves Gruthongs; the Visigoths bore the
   tribal name of Thervings.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK III
     __________________________________________________________________

A CHAOS OF HATREDS


   Omai convien che tu così ti spoltre,

   Disse il maestro; chè seggendo in piuma

   In fama non si vien, nè sotto coltre.

   Dante, Inf. xxiv. 46-48.


   'Now needs thy best of man'--so spake my guide--

   'For not on downy plumes, nor under shade

   Of canopy reposing, heaven is won.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL

     The wicked spirit, which at that time had gained possession of the
     affairs of men.--Zosimus.

   We cannot, for some time, see Walamir again, or live among the Goths.
   We must remain in the stifling, corrupted city, amidst its meanness,
   its hatreds, its ecclesiastics, its society seething with cabals, its
   Court rank with intrigues, its base, manifold corruptions of the world,
   the devil, and the flesh.

   The longer Chrysostom remained at work, the more pronounced of
   necessity became his antagonism to the gross worldliness of a purely
   nominal Christianity. Unfortunately, in his struggle with it his
   unflinching honesty of purpose did not save him from errors of
   judgment; did not enable him always to see things in their due
   perspective, nor to deal with them in the most effective and the least
   exasperating way. Already the main body of the clergy were his deadly
   enemies, especially the noisiest and the most domineering of them, and
   those who arrogated the right to speak for themselves, and for what
   they called 'the Church,' by which they never meant anything but the
   cliques who shared their own views.' A little group of the best among
   the ecclesiastics was devoted to him. Men like the bright and earnest
   Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis; men like the venerable and original
   Synesius, as long as he remained in Constantinople; men like St.
   Cassian, who ultimately founded the great monastery of St. Victor at
   Marseilles; good presbyters like Germanus, the friend and relative of
   Cassian, and so closely linked with him in friendship that they were
   said to have but one soul in two bodies; sincere enthusiasts and
   disciplinarians like Serapion the Archdeacon and the Presbyter
   Tigrius--knew his saintliness, recognised his great intellect and
   incomparable worth. But he was feared and hated by the majority: by the
   great mass of loose, greedy, and fiercely dogmatic monks, led by their
   Archimandrite, Isaac; by the too numerous bishops who neglected their
   sees for their greed or ambition; by the great mass of the clergy, who
   would not be parted from their youthful, agapetæ, or give up their
   cringing to the wealthy and powerful; and by all the sham widows, and
   sham virgins, and sham deaconesses, who arrogated to themselves the
   reverence of sainthood by virtue of the distinctive dress, which served
   them at once as a passport to delightful freedom and as a broadened
   phylactery of pretentious profession. All these detested him with that
   bitterest kind of virulence which the world calls theological,' and
   recognises as not to be paralleled among secular circles.

   As for the world of fashion and wealth, at first it did not make up its
   mind whether to crush Chrysostom or to patronise him. It soon found the
   latter course impossible. His warnings were so unmistakable in their
   plainness, so direct in their aim, so unique in their severity, that
   they could not be classed among the other thousand utterances of vapid
   pulpit rhetoric, which were generally understood to mean nothing in
   particular. This man was not indulging in the language of professional
   conventionality. It was quite clear that he meant what he said, and
   that he would act up to it. For he was not content with idle
   denunciation, or with talk which might be regarded as suitable enough
   for St. Sophia, but might be safely ignored in ordinary life. On the
   contrary, he declared in the most solemn manner that he would
   excommunicate the worst offenders, and that he would repel from the
   Holy Table those who obstinately refused to listen to his warnings and
   to reform their habits.

   Preachers in all ages lave attacked particulars of dress. St. Jerome
   was so much disgusted with the innovation of Roman ladies in sprinkling
   their hair with gold dust that he calls it reddening their locks with
   flames of Gehenna.' Mediæval preachers used to attack the custom of
   wearing peaked boots. It is not, perhaps, wise to enter on such vain
   crusades. Fashions are but symptoms of passing vanity and folly, and
   their removal would not mean the cure of the disease. Chrysostom,
   however, thought it right to discourage and ridicule the
   silk-embroidered boots of young men, which were the marks of the most
   elaborate dandyism. He drew scornful pictures of these youthful dandies
   carefully picking their way through the streets so as not to soil their
   precious shoes. 'Boots,' he said, were made to be soiled. If your boots
   are so gorgeous, why don't you take them off and wear them on your
   heads? You laugh, but I feel more inclined to weep over your follies.'

   It was a more serious matter to kindle against himself the wrath of the
   worst part of the female world, but Chrysostom thought it his duty to
   attack the custom of wearing fringes. To us this might seem unworthy of
   his good sense; but in all such matters we cannot judge unless we are
   able to transfer ourselves to the habits of thought which prevail in
   other lands and other countries. In the East, from time immemorial, it
   had been regarded as worse than unbecoming for a woman to have her hair
   uncovered in public, and especially in sacred places. St. Paul himself
   shared this view. He approved of the Oriental prejudice which, in spite
   of the custom of Greece, forbade a woman to have her hair uncovered '

   because of the angels.' If a woman appeared with unveiled head, it was
   believed that the evil spirits, the Shedîm, the impure demons,
   immediately alighted and sat upon it. The belief continued in the days
   of Mahomet. Khadijah tested whether it really was Gabriel or not who
   appeared to the Prophet, by taking off her veil; whereupon Gabriel
   immediately retired, which an evil spirit would not have done. In
   Byzantine pictures the hair of the Virgin Mary is, as a rule, carefully
   concealed. The same practice continues among the Eastern Jews to this
   day. At Constantinople itself the abandonment of the chalebi, a hideous
   female headdress of the East, was held to be a sufficient reason to
   account for the advent of the cholera along the coasts of the Bosporus.

   But, apart from this ancient conviction, the wearing of a fringe of
   hair on the forehead had hitherto been the recognised sign of women of
   bad character. It seemed to Chrysostom a shameless thing that women
   professing to be Christians should have the effrontery--for so he
   regarded it--to appear in church in a guise which seemed to defy public
   propriety. In public and in private he spoke of this practice with
   angry and disdainful sarcasm.

   Superannuated coquettes who aimed at juvenility of dress and manner
   were Chrysostom's pet abhorrence; and, unfortunately for him, the
   leaders of female fashion at Constantinople in his day were three
   ladies of high rank, of luxurious manners, of enormous possessions, and
   of a worldly morality which was in no way disturbed by ecclesiastical
   scrupulosities of outward observance. They excited his severest
   reprobation. They were Marsa, Castricia, and Epigraphia, and all three
   were now widows, which to Chrysostom--accustomed to the unaffected
   piety and genuine devotion of his mother, Anthusa--made their behaviour
   seem the more detestable. Marsa was the widow of the general Promotus,
   who had been suppressed and put to death by the jealousy of Rufinus.
   Theodosius had taken pity on her two children, and they had been
   educated with his sons Arcadius and Honorius. Besides this high title
   to social distinction, Marsa was, on the mother's side, a cousin of the
   Empress. Thus, she was the unquestioned leader of fashion among the
   ladies of the capital.

   Castricia had only recently been left a widow by the death of the brave
   Consular, Saturninus, who had probably died during the exile to which
   he had been doomed by the jealousy of Gaïnas. We know nothing more of
   her than that she closely resembled her two friends.

   The worst of the three, by unanimous testimony, was Epigraphia. In
   exact proportion as Chrysostom honoured a widow who, like Olympias, was
   a widow indeed, he felt repelled by a widow who, forgetful of her loss,
   cared only for the pleasures of the world, and gave rise to grave
   scandal by her light demeanour. Epigraphia threw open her house
   promiscuously to all the clergy of worldly habits and dubious
   antecedents, and also to women whose character was known to be the
   reverse of estimable. Added to this, the way in which she tried to look
   young by the resuscitation of her faded charms was, to an ardent
   ascetic like Chrysostom, an intolerable folly.

   It was this pulpit denunciation which would, to these ladies, seem
   directly personal, since the glance of the orator fell directly upon
   them as they sat in their prominent gallery, in proximity to the ambo
   from which he spoke. Worse than this, the surging multitude which
   always thronged St. Sophia to be thrilled by the Patriarch's eloquence
   belonged mainly to the poorer classes; and though the populace of
   Constantinople was not quite so giddy as that of Antioch, yet there
   were many among them whose levity led them to turn their laughing eyes
   towards the wealthy widows, and emphasise the points of the sermon by
   meaning smiles in their direction.

   Nor was Chrysostom satisfied with public references. The three
   aristocratic ladies were the chief offenders, and he held it his duty
   to pay them a pastoral visit, and try the effect of personal
   remonstrance, urged with all the weight of his high authority.

   He went first to the house of Epigraphia; and as this cabal of female
   intriguers formed their most common rendezvous in her gossip-mongering
   drawing-room, he found them sitting together, and, as it happened,
   talking of him with the bitterest anger, at the very moment that he was
   announced.

   They tell me,' said Marsa----

   But the precious piece of scandal derived from They say'--who is always
   much more than half a liar--was for the present lost, for at this
   moment the slave, with a deep bow, announced His Beatitude the
   Patriarch John of Constantinople.'

   The three ladies rose, and, according to the universal custom, knelt
   and kissed his hand; but in other respects their reception of him was
   ostentatiously frigid.

   Chrysostom had not come to bandy compliments, and, being incessantly
   occupied, he could never afford to waste time. Without an allusion to
   the weather or the movements of the Court, he said at once that he had
   come for the express purpose of reproving them. He considered their
   dress in every sense unbecoming to their age and widowhood.

   Our dress,' said Marsa, coldly, is our own concern. What can an
   ecclesiastic and a semi-anchorite like you know about a lady's dress?'

   Our dear Patriarch Nectarius honoured us with his respect and
   friendship,' said Castricia. In his day we were not subjected to these
   annoyances and insults.'

   It would be much better,' said Epigraphia, if you confined yourself to
   your episcopal duties. We do not all choose to go about as if we were
   beggars, like Olympias and Salvina.'

   I do not speak to you in my own name,' said the Patriarch gravely. You
   know the words of the great Apostle, St. Peter: "

   Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the
   hair, and putting on of gold, and wearing of apparel, but let it be the
   hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the
   ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of
   great price." Look at your dresses! Pagan ladies wear their robes of
   gauze woven with such scenes as the labours of Hercules. Yours, I see,
   are embroidered with the story of the Paralytic, and other scenes of
   the Gospels. Do you think that you honour Christ by carrying into the
   Circus, the Theatre, and all scenes of sin and frivolity, the stories
   of His Gospel? Oh that rather you would carry Him in your hearts!'

   Now that shows the difference between you and a truly courteous bishop
   like Severian,' said Marsa. When he saw us this morning in these very
   robes, he said, with a gracious smile: '"

   The King's daughter is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought
   gold, she shall be brought in to the King in raiment of needlework."'

   You are not young Jewish virgins at a great nuptial ceremony. You are
   aged widows.'

   Aged!' almost shrieked Epigraphia, while the other two winced visibly.
   Turning her back on the Archbishop, she said, with as much rudeness as
   she could possibly throw into her voice and attitude: Pray, is your
   Beatitude a milliner? We dress in accordance with our rank and our own
   tastes, and you may rely upon it that, in spite of your horrid remarks,
   we shall continue to do so.'

   And shall you,' he asked, persist also in wearing your hair in curled
   fringes over your foreheads to the general scandal, and in painting
   your cheeks with minium and dyeing your eyes with antimony, to support
   the illusion of pretended youth?'

   This is a mere outrage,' said Epigraphia, rising in a tornado of
   spleen. Be assured that the Emperor shall know of it. Marsa will inform
   her cousin, the Empress, and she will protect us henceforth from these
   insults.'

   To reprove is not to insult,' said Chrysostom, rising. 'But since you
   will none of my reproof, I must say to you, in the words of the prophet
   Isaiah:

   "Take heed, ye women that are at ease; hear my words, ye careless
   daughters." Until I see in you less worldliness, and more proofs of a
   life such as becomes widows professing godliness, I must close the
   doors of the Sacrarium against you, and will not admit you to Holy
   Communion.'

   There are other churches in Constantinople besides St. Sophia,' said
   Marsa.

   If by that you mean the churches of heretics,' said Chrysostom, the
   guilt be on your own soul. I have but done my duty. Would that in
   departing I could give you my episcopal blessing; but it would be a
   mockery to-day.'

   We do not desire it,' said Epigraphia; we should prefer to be without
   it. And I trust,' she added, with a low courtsey, that your Religiosity
   will not trouble yourself with another visit. If you do, you may chance
   to find the door closed against you.'

   He bowed and left them. Isaac the Monk visited them a few moments
   later. He passed Chrysostom unnoticed, except by a scowl, and entered,
   filling the room with the scent of his carefully curled, essenced, and
   gilded hair. He found the three widows fuming in almost speechless
   rage. He heaped upon their wrath the fuel of every bitter calumny
   against the Archbishop of which he could think, and went out rubbing
   his hands, in the joyful conviction that his day of vengeance would
   soon be near.

   But it was not only with male dandyism or female coquetry that
   Chrysostom became embroiled. It was with the whole world of wealth. He
   was naturally shocked by the contrast between boundless possessions
   squandered in vain ostentation, and poverty which had no refuge for
   sickness, and knew not where to provide a meal. Convinced of the
   brevity of life and the smallness of man's needs, he regarded the
   excesses of luxury and extravagance as an offence which cried to
   Heaven. If even a Pagan moralist could say, 'Cur eget indignus
   quisquam, te divite?' (Why is any undeserving person in need whilst
   thou art rich?') Chrysostom felt the force of the question in its full
   intensity. And, thus feeling it, and finding it always difficult to
   raise sufficient sums for his schemes of systematic benevolence, his
   hospitals, and his missions, he denounced display and gluttony and
   avarice with all his might. He asked the rich whether they ought not to
   be ashamed to starve provinces at a meal, and sweep land and sea to
   provide their unwholesome dainties, and whether it would not be wiser
   and better to enjoy the healthiness of temperance? He ridiculed the
   fashion of having a way made for them in the streets as though they
   were dangerous tigers. He satirised the vulgar fondness for gold, which
   was so lavish that he believed there were some who, already filling
   their houses with every sort of golden furniture, would, if they could,
   have the very sky and the very air of gold. He asked whether, with the
   utmost expenditure of lavishness, they could find tapestries lovelier
   than the ground broidered with vernal blossoms, or fretted roofs so
   beautiful as the blue or the starry skies?

   Tired of these expostulations, of which the novel piquancy was soon
   exhausted, and to which they never had the smallest intention of paying
   respect, the rich began to desert St. Sophia. Their attendance had
   never been very regular, and even on the great festivals a spicy
   Atellane interlude in the Theatre, or a good programme in the
   Hippodrome, had quite sufficient attraction to make them turn their
   backs on services and communions. In coming to hear the Archbishop at
   first, they thought that they had done the civil thing,' and that their
   presence among his auditors was an act of condescension, for which he
   was insufficiently grateful. He had to say plainly in the pulpit that,
   if such were the views and objects with which they came, he was only
   too glad to dispense with their presence. He professed open preference
   for the simple services, in which the nave was thronged with his eager
   congregation of the poor. In praising them he took too readily his own
   ideal of what they should be for what they were. Perhaps, too, he did
   not in his own mind sufficiently notice that the phrase, the poor,' in
   Scripture is often employed in the sense in which it had been used by
   the prophets and by Christ to describe the anavim (the poor in spirit,
   the meek and lowly in heart), a class to which even the rich might
   belong. His language was not always prudent. Regarding himself,
   rightly, as 'the common father of all,' it was unwise to praise the
   needy too unreservedly, and to say after an earthquake, without further
   making his meaning clear, that the city, which had been nearly
   destroyed by the vices of the rich, had been only saved by the prayers
   and virtues of the poor.

   On one occasion Chrysostom told a striking anecdote. There had been a
   long drought, causing widespread famine and distress. There had been
   many prayers and litanies for rain, and at last, to the intense joy and
   relief of the multitude, rain began to fall, and they thronged into the
   churches to thank God. But in the midst of the general gladness they
   met a man utterly downcast and miserable.

   Why do you not come with us,' they asked, to our joyous thanksgiving?'

   I hate it!' he said. I had laid up ten thousand measures of wheat to
   sell at higher and higher prices. Now it has all become useless.'

   Such an anecdote might fairly be told to call forth execration against
   cases of individual hardness and greed; but it would have been well to
   point out that not all the rich were monsters such as this, and not all
   the poor were paragons of virtue. He did, indeed, find it necessary to
   defend himself by pointing out that he did not regard wealth as a crime
   in itself, but the wrong use of wealth. But one who spoke with generous
   breadth and conviction did not always safeguard his words in the
   fashion adopted by the lukewarm, the Laodiceans, and the half-in-half.
   He was not in the habit of trimming and of paring away his principles
   by exceptions and limitations until it was difficult to say whether
   they meant anything at all.

   The result of all this was that the wealthy and the upper classes were
   grievously offended. And, in addition to the other overwhelming grudges
   which he had excited, Chrysostom was now openly denounced as a Gracchus
   in the pulpit, a seditious demagogue, a flaming anarchist, a man who
   for his own evil purposes preached socialism and set class against
   class. The rich as a body did not take the trouble to understand him,
   or to learn the lesson which he was endeavouring to teach; but the
   poor, who, as always, formed the vast majority, saw that he himself, in
   the midst of enormous wealth, lived in severe simplicity, and cared
   nothing for money, except to spend it for the good of those who had
   need. Admiring his consistency, grateful for his protection, they
   sustained and cheered him, and, for a time at least, by the passionate
   enthusiasm of their devoted love, delayed the success of the clerical
   and social plots formed for his destruction.

   But, among these many enemies, Chrysostom made one whose enmity was
   more fatal than that of all the rest. The Empress Eudoxia, proud,
   passionate, impulsive, domineering, intolerant of any rival in her
   power or any barrier to her slightest wish, had become not only
   alienated from the Patriarch, but strongly inimical to him. Since the
   death of Eutropius she had ruled Arcadius with a rod of iron. What he
   did was simply what she demanded. The only partial counterpoise to her
   autocracy lay in the rank and independence of the Patriarch as head of
   the Eastern Church. As soon as she saw that neither she nor anyone else
   could make a tool of him, or induce him either by fear or flattery or
   self-interest, to deflect a hair's-breadth beyond the line of rigid
   duty, she began to feel uneasy. But when the arrows of his harangues
   against luxury and oppression began to fall, or even to seem as if they
   glanced off, upon her, she grew hot with indignation and offended
   pride. Sometimes a sermon or an appeal smote through the joints of the
   harness of her conventional religiosity; but she hardened her heart.
   Two circumstances made her indignation flame into implacable wrath. One
   was her belief--a belief without any foundation--that Chrysostom had on
   some occasion betrayed to the soldiery the hiding-place of her
   favourite, Count John; for whom, on the contrary, he had earnestly
   pleaded, and whose life he had probably saved by his intervention. The
   other was the fancy that, in preaching about Jezebel, and Naboth's
   vineyard, the Patriarch had intentionally described a piece of
   dishonourable chicanery by which she had robbed a poor widow named
   Calliotropa of her estate. Now Chrysostom must undoubtedly have said
   something which admitted of this construction, for we are told so by
   his visitor, Bishop Porphyry of Gaza. And this at least is certain,
   that there has never been an age in which the prophets and saints of
   God have not been called upon to take their stand against the rich and
   the ruling. So Abraham in the old Jewish legend defied Nimrod; so
   Isaiah resisted Ahaz; and Jeremiah withstood Jehoiakin and Zedekiah;
   and Daniel braved the wrath of Belshazzar and Darius; and John the
   Baptist rebuked Herod. Athanasius had stood up against Constantine,
   Basil had resisted Julian and Valens, and Ambrose had braved the
   authority of the Empress Justina and the Emperor Theodosius. So, in
   later days, St. Columban defied Thierry, and St. Anselm resisted Rufus,
   and Savonarola rebuked Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Luther faced
   Charles V. at the Diet of Worms. If there was any truth in the report
   of Eudoxia's misdeeds, Chrysostom was the last man who would have
   shrunk from denouncing them.

   The contemporary account written by Marcus, the companion of Porphyry,
   Bishop of Gaza, on the occasion of their visit to Constantinople gives
   us a glimpse of the state of things. It was early in the year 401.
   Porphyry had come to procure from Arcadius an edict to suppress the
   turbulent tyranny of the heathen at Gaza, and he asked Chrysostom to
   help him.

   My intercession would be useless,' said Chrysostom; 'for the Emperor
   practically means the Empress, and the Empress is embittered against me
   because she supposes that I compared her to Jezebel in a sermon about
   Naboth's vineyard, But I will procure you an interview with her through
   her Chamberlain, the excellent Amantius.'

   Accordingly, Porphyry and his brother-bishop were admitted. They found
   Eudoxia seated on a golden sofa, and she apologised for not rising to
   greet them because she was speedily expecting to become a mother. She
   was pleased with the rustic dignity of these provincial bishops, gave
   them through Amantius a large sum of money for their diocese, and
   appointed another interview with them next morning.

   When they came, she told them that the Emperor had been put out by the
   petition, because Gaza paid its taxes with remarkable regularity, and
   he was afraid that by interfering with the heathen he would retard the
   replenishment of his treasury. Still,' she said, I will continue to do
   my best.' Then she asked for their blessing and their prayers; and they
   blessed her, and moved her to a transport of gratitude by promising
   that, having been the mother of three little daughters, she would now
   become the mother of a son.

   The promise was fulfilled, for a few days later was born Theodosius
   II., the first Porphyrogenitus, or prince born in the purple, since the
   days of Constantine. Eudoxia attributed her happy motherhood to their
   supplications. As speedily as possible the child was baptised with all
   splendour.

   As the procession came out of the Cathedral a pretty little comedy was
   enacted, whereby Eudoxia gained her own ends; which, indeed, in these
   days, were rarely left unfulfilled. The Bishop, who was carrying the
   infant in his arms, stopped by pre-arrangement, while Porphyry placed
   his petition in the little hands. Arcadius took it from his child and
   read it. I cannot,' he said, 'refuse the first commands of my little
   son.'

   The infant boy was at once dignified with the title of Augustus; and,
   much to the displeasure of the whole Western world, the Empress
   also--who was now wielding all the old power of Rufinus and Eutropius,
   and wielding it with equal greed and baseness--received the title of
   Augusta. It was not to the mere title of Augusta that the Roman world
   objected, but to the fact that the Eastern Empire, in its abject
   subjection, now to an eunuch, and now to a woman, seemed to recall the
   old days of a Bagoas or a Semiramis, and to have lost the stately and
   virile virtues of ancient Rome.

   And thus, by the stratagem of Eudoxia, an edict was passed refusing any
   further tolerance to heathendom in the old Philistian city. But such
   repressive and persecuting edicts were not in accordance with the old
   spirit of Christianity. The rule of the primitive Christians was 'Force
   is hateful to God'; the town-clerk of Ephesus could appeal to the whole
   people in witness that St. Paul and his companions had never been
   blasphemers of their goddess, and in Athens the Apostle had pointed to
   the Unknown God, whom, though in ignorance, they worshipped, and Who is
   the Father of us all.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  FRESH TROUBLES

     The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of
     the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds,
     and bruises, and festering sores: they have not been closed, neither
     bound up, neither mollified with oil.--Isaiah i. 5-6.

   We have already seen enough to show the intense and all but universal
   corruption which ruined the true work of the Church in Antioch, and
   still more in Constantinople. It is distressing to find the same moral
   apostasy, the same revolting unreality, prevailing like a pestilence
   over the whole of Thrace, Asia Minor, and Pontus--indeed, over the
   whole of that region to which St. Peter and St. James had addressed
   their oecumenical Epistles. As far back as the beginning of the second
   century the Church, on Pliny's testimony, had so far conquered the
   world, even in remote Bithynia, as to empty the ancient temples of the
   gods; but now those gods and the vices they represented--Ares and
   Aphrodite, Plutus and Cybele, Moloch and Ashtoreth, Mammon and
   Belial--were reinstated in Christian sanctuaries under the disguise of
   the holiest names, and that by the clergy themselves. There is abundant
   proof of the like intrusion of the world, the flesh, and the devil
   among myriads of professing Churchmen throughout Northern Africa; and
   if it were within the scope of our purpose to look at all closely at
   the Western world, we should see that Rome was as Constantinople, and
   Milan as Ephesus, and Ravenna as Alexandria. All the faithful might
   sigh, The Church has triumphed--but where is holiness? The Church is
   splendid, dominant, orthodox, oppressive; services are numerous,
   ritualism elaborate; women kneel to priests and kiss their hands; the
   Holy Supper has become a gorgeous and magic sacrifice, ending in the
   creation of a material idol--but where is the Christ of Nazareth and of
   Calvary?' Pagans like Eunapius, and Libanius, and Zosimus, said freely
   among themselves, Christianity, at first so sweet and simple in its
   moral ideal, has degenerated into a more intolerant and no less immoral
   paganism; it has incorporated the old superstitions which we had flung
   away; it has become more material, and more abject in its corruption,
   than our Neo-platonism; it has worthy sons, but most of its votaries
   have lost our manlier virtues, and have not failed to assimilate our
   acknowledged vices.' In Egypt, for instance, there was many an honest
   waverer who saw far more beauty and goodness in the life of the heathen
   Hypatia than in that of a hypocritic tyrant like the Christian
   Patriarch, Theophilus of Alexandria.

   Christians who were Christians indeed felt their darker hours troubled
   by misgivings which were almost intolerable. They looked upon the
   abhorrent worldliness and falsity--which often seemed to them to be the
   falling away' of which St. Paul prophesied--as a sign of the nearness
   of the Antichrist. No language came more naturally to their lips than
   that of the Hebrew prophets. A century had not yet passed since the
   conversion of the first Christian Emperor and the assembling of the
   first OEcumenical Council; four centuries had barely passed since, on
   that first radiant Christmas Eve, the angels had sung,

   'Peace on earth, goodwill towards men,' and already the chief living
   saint and most learned writer of the day had left Rome with a curse
   upon his lips against her Babylonian wickedness. And if such was the
   condition of the Church in the so-called See of St. Peter, what was the
   state of things elsewhere? Egypt was in a turmoil with barbarous
   bishops and brutal monks. The pilgrimages to Jerusalem were, as Gregory
   of Nyssa had testified, scenes of vulgar debauchery. The Holy City
   itself was a carnival of violence and littleness. Carthage and its
   daughter dioceses were not only trembling under the tyranny of wicked
   governors, but were torn with the alternate turbulence and persecution
   of Donatists and Circumcellions, between whom and many of the champions
   of Catholicism there was but little to choose. Asia was in the
   deplorable condition which we shall see immediately. And here, in the
   New Rome of Constantinople, there was a weak Emperor with the soul of a
   slave; a Frankish Empress domineering and unscrupulous as a Semiramis;
   a Court steeped in frivolity and guile; a world of officialism cankered
   through and through with bribery, greed, and oppression; swarms of sham
   monks and clerical adventurers; intrigue and simony rampant on every
   side; numbers of presbyters living with their spiritual sisters' in all
   but open concubinage; coquettish virgins, and nominal widows, and
   painted haridans; the lewdness of the theatre finding scope for its wit
   in the scandals of the clergy, and the rage of the Blue and Green
   factions of the Hippodrome uncontrolled in the smallest degree by the
   nominal Christianity of the population. Throngs of people rushed off to
   the public spectacles and wild-beast shows, even on Good Friday and
   Easter Day. On one Easter Day they saw a young charioteer, on the eve
   of his marriage, horribly trampled to death under the hoofs of the
   chariot-steeds. Avarice and licentiousness were rampant on every side.
   Among the lowest classes prevailed a mendicancy seething with atrocious
   impostures; among the upper classes, under the soft surface of
   voluptuous ostentation, there was a society rent by cliques and
   factions, bursting with splenetic malignity, and filled with such a
   universal plague of uncharitableness that, if here and there a saint
   emerged who was vexed, like Lot, with the filthy conversation and
   ungodly deeds of the wicked, he must be content to focus on himself the
   burning rays of religious,' even more than of secular, hatred, and to
   live with his head in clouds of poisonous flies. What could good men
   say of the Church in those days, as their tears fell on the page of
   Holy Writ, but '

   Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water; thy princes are
   rebellious, and companions of thieves?' '

   The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their
   means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end
   thereof?'

   Whether such reflexions be justifiable or no, whether the world had or
   had not re-intruded into the Church, whether or not the Church had
   gained from the infiltration of pagan superstitions and the oppressive
   triumph of Pharisaic externalism, the reader must judge from almost
   every page of the subsequent narrative, which, in the general picture
   presented, is a direct reflexion of the contemporary testimony of
   Christian saints.

   For now an event happened which was the first distinct dislodgment of
   the loose snowdrifts, which were soon to rush down in overwhelming
   avalanche on the doomed head of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

   It happened that a Synod of twenty-nine bishops was sitting at
   Constantinople, under the presidency of Chrysostom, to settle some
   matter of minor ecclesiastical importance. One day in September, a.d.
   400, while they were in session in one of the rooms adjoining the apse
   of St. Sophia, a bishop who was not a member of the Synod, Eusebius of
   Valentinianopolis, an obscure Cilbian village in the valley of the
   Cayster, advanced into the assembly, holding in his hand a written
   document, and with an air and tone of intense indignation cried that he
   had come to denounce a series of intolerable scandals, which had
   disgraced the Churches of Asia.

   Startled and horrified, the Synod asked for an explanation. Speaking
   with fierce anger, Eusebius said, I am here to accuse and denounce a
   bishop of Asia of seven enormous crimes--of simony, embezzlement,
   luxury, theft, malversation, misprision of murder, and incontinence.

   First, he bought his own episcopal see for an immense sum, and to
   recoup himself deliberately sells other episcopal sees at a regular
   tariff.

   Secondly, he has alienated to his own private use an estate left to the
   Church by Basilina, mother of the Emperor Julian.

   Thirdly, he has melted the silver chalices and plate of the Church to
   supply money to his son.

   Fourthly, he has taken marbles from the baptistery to inlay his own
   private baths.

   Fifthly, he has taken possession of marble pillars which had been
   prepared for the church, and has used them for the adornment of his own
   triclinium.

   Sixthly, he has, in spite of his episcopal oaths, recalled his wife,
   with whom he openly lives; and by whom, since his consecration, he has
   had several children.

   Seventhly, he has retained in his service a youth who has committed
   murder and has never, never been brought to justice or done penance.'

   Who is the offender?' asked the Patriarch.

   He is here; he is in the midst of you; he is one of the bishops of the
   highest rank in your assembly,' said Eusebius hotly. There he
   sits!'--and he pointed to Antoninus, Metropolitan of the important see
   of Ephesus, bishop of the church in which St. Paul had preached so
   long, successor of St. John, the beloved disciple, successor of that
   Angel of the Church of Ephesus to whom St. John had written in the
   Apocalypse.

   Antoninus, who knew his own guilt, turned white as a sheet, and winced
   before the pointed finger of this obscure prelate from the Cilbian
   hills; and Eusebius continued: 'Yes, and the simoniacal intruders whom
   he has appointed, these who have trafficked for their sees, these
   hucksters of sacred things, these men who have sold and bought for
   money the Holy Spirit of God, they too are here, they too are of your
   number.'

   Surely,' said Chrysostom, you must be under some mistake. What you say
   sounds incredible. Brother Paul of Heraclea, you are a personal friend
   of the Bishop of Ephesus. Will you consider the matter with him and his
   accuser, and try to reconcile the strong enmity which seems to subsist
   between them?'

   I refuse any mediation,' stormed Eusebius.

   The bishops might well be disturbed by an accusation so vehement and so
   detailed; but Chrysostom, who is often accused of reckless haste, did
   not for a moment lose his calm. He acted with consummate kindness and
   circumspection. He saw that, even if all the charges could not be
   denied, some of them might admit of explanation or palliation. The one
   which seemed most seriously circumstantial, and which, if true, could
   not under any circumstances be extenuated, was the charge of open and
   shameless simony.

   Brother of Ephesus,' he asked, what say you to this grave accusation?'

   By that time the Bishop of Ephesus had partially recovered his presence
   of mind. Summoning such fragment of dignity as was left him by his
   guilty conscience, he rose and said:

   I am entirely guiltless of all these crimes. They can be refuted. This
   man is a false accuser.'

   Eusebius,' said Chrysostom, you are evidently in a heated frame of
   mind. You seem to be influenced by personal animosity. I entreat you to
   be sure of your ground. Do not bring these tremendous indictments
   unless you can prove them. Bishop Antoninus has denied your charges. He
   says he can disprove them. Beware, then, how you bring needless scandal
   on the Church.'

   But Eusebius, who was still in towering wrath, refused to withdraw what
   he had said, and endeavoured to thrust his schedule of gravamina into
   the Patriarch's hands.

   Nay, brother,' said Chrysostom, I refuse to receive your schedule at
   this moment. We are about to enter the church. We are about to begin
   the Holy Office. Think the matter over; if, after due prayer and
   deliberation, and when you are quite calm, you think that duty, and not
   passion, requires you to accuse your brethren, then come and hand in
   your charge. The Synod is ended; let us enter the church.'

   The bishops rose; Chrysostom led the way to his episcopal chair at the
   end of the apse; and when he had pronounced the opening Benediction,
   Peace be with you,' the other prelates took their seats in a semicircle
   on either hand. The service began, when suddenly Eusebius was seen
   hurrying up the nave with great strides, and, amid the astonishment of
   the crowded congregation, he went straight up the steps of the
   sanctuary, passed the Holy table, and, stopping in front of the
   Archbishop, who was seated behind it, endeavoured once more to thrust
   the paper into his hands. As Chrysostom was still reluctant to take it,
   he broke into the most terrible appeals, adjuring the Patriarch by the
   life of the Emperor not to refuse justice in a matter which concerned
   the inmost purity of the Church. His demeanour was so tumultuous that
   the people thought he must be demanding immediate intercession for the
   life of some condemned criminal. Unwilling to prolong the unseemly
   spectacle, which was disturbing the sacred solemnity, Chrysostom took
   the paper, and the Lessons of the day were read. But when the time came
   for the Eucharist, the Archbishop found himself in a state of such
   strong mental agitation that, fearful of unworthy participation, either
   on his own part or that of the bishops, who shared his emotions, he
   begged Pausophius, Bishop of Pisidia, to consecrate the elements, and
   made a sign to the members of the Synod to follow him into the
   baptistery. Thither he summoned Eusebius, reproached him for his
   violent precipitation, and began the investigation which he so urgently
   demanded. Some witnesses were produced, but Eusebius declared that
   others, and the most essential, were in Asia, and that there he would
   produce them. 'Then,' said Chrysostom, since the honour of the Church
   is at stake, I will myself proceed to Asia to examine them.'

   Matters had now assumed a serious aspect. Antoninus felt that his
   scandalous misdoings had been too flagrant to escape condemnation at
   the hands of so pure a judge. He fell back on astute manoeuvres. The
   times were troubled. The absence of the Archbishop, in the darkness of
   the political horizon, might cause grave inconvenience. Among his other
   gross irregularities, the Bishop of Ephesus farmed an estate in Asia as
   agent for one of the great Court officials. Anxious to gain time for
   his doublings, and if possible to avoid being run to earth, this
   ecclesiastical wolf in sheep's clothing went to his patron, and begged
   him to use his influence with the Emperor to prevent permission being
   given for the Patriarch's departure. In this he was successful. But
   Chrysostom did not mean to let matters rest. Since he could not go
   himself, he sent a commission of three bishops, one of whom was his
   friend and ultimate biographer, Palladius of Helenopolis. They met at
   Hypæpæ, near Ephesus, with the bishops of the province, and summoned
   Eusebius and Antoninus to appear before them.

   Meanwhile, by fresh acts of collusive baseness, these two ecclesiastics
   had done their utmost to reduce the commission and the inquiry to a
   despicable farce. The brazen front of Antoninus was not likely to
   recoil before new villainies, and Eusebius had revealed himself in his
   true colours. The frantic denouncer of simony had himself become a
   simonist; the indignant opponent of Antoninus had become his secret
   accomplice; the accuser of misprision had accepted an enormous bribe as
   the guerdon of misprision. The judges were mocked with plausible
   excuses. 'Yes, certainly Antoninus had his witnesses who could prove
   his innocence, and Eusebius had his witnesses to support his
   contentions, but to get them together was a difficult and expensive
   matter. They were scattered over half Asia.'

   How long, then, will it take to collect them?' asked Palladius, who was
   as earnest and upright in the matter as Chrysostom himself.

   Forty days at least,' said Eusebius blandly.

   Forty days!--and that in the heat of the malarious autumn! It seemed
   evident that the delay was intentional, and that so long a period was
   fixed in the hope of tiring out the patience, perhaps of undermining
   the health of the commissioners. They waited, however--at least two of
   them, for the third, a secret ally of Antoninus, refused to act. At the
   end of the time Eusebius did not appear, and was at once excommunicated
   by the Bishops of Asia for connivance and contumacy. He had quietly
   sneaked off, and was lying hid in the slums of Constantinople. This
   exemplary personage, who, like other bishops, was saluted as 'your
   Sanctity,' had egregiously proved his wickedness and worthlessness. His
   zeal for Church discipline had been nothing more than a cloak for
   jealousy and ulterior designs. What became of his Lordship's diocese we
   do not know; but it must be borne in mind that there were scores of
   bishops in those days who, apart from their title, had not one
   hundredth part of the duty or responsibility of even a humble country
   vicar. When St. Gregory Thaumaturgus was made Bishop of Neo-Cæsarea, he
   had only six parishioners under him; and Sassima, the diocese to which
   St. Basil so unworthily and unaccountably relegated the friend of his
   youth, the great St. Gregory of Nazianzus, was a roadside
   horse-station. Probably the mountaineers of Valentinianopolis, wherever
   it was, were well rid of their scoundrelly pastor.

   The commissioners stayed a month longer to no purpose at Hypæpæ, and
   then returned. When they stumbled across Eusebius in the purlieus of
   Constantinople, and taunted him with his mischief-making perfidy, he
   coolly asserted that he had been ill.

   Meanwhile Antoninus, Metropolitan of Ephesus, had gone to his last long
   account, to stand with all his falsities, embezzlements, and simony on
   his head before the bar of that Judge whom no sinner can escape, and
   where the guilty man is also


   Himself the judge and jury, and himself

   The witness at the bar, always condemned,

   And that drags down his life.

   Among his stolen marbles and appropriated columns, and perhaps with the
   sons by his bedside whom he had endowed by sacrilege and begotten in
   perjury, the bishop by purchase of the See of St. John the Divine
   escaped the earthly tribunal to stand before the judgment-seat of
   Christ, Whose name he had covered with infamy, and of the Holy Spirit,
   Whose gifts he had bought and sold.

   And, as always in the case of those great sees--once more as at
   Antioch, as at Rome, as at Alexandria, as at Cæsarea, as at
   Constantinople--there broke out the blighting storm of base ambition
   and underground intrigue which was the normal result of the death of a
   bishop of the Church of Christ in those bad days, and which we need not
   again describe. And, as at Constantinople, and Rome, and everywhere
   else, the faithful few grew sick of this state of things, and
   interfered to cut short the mean rivalries of contending Churchmen.
   Hating the debasing turmoil, and dreading the infamies of some new
   Antoninus, some of the clergy and neighbouring bishops wrote an appeal
   to Chrysostom. For many years,' they wrote, 'all law and order have
   been violated among us. We implore your Dignity to come and reimpress
   some form of divineness on our distracted Church. Our misfortunes are
   unparalleled. On one side the Arians tear us to pieces, on the other
   many, like deadly wolves, are lying in wait to plunder our episcopal
   seat. Even now bribes are flowing among us in rivers of simony.'

   It was the dead of winter, and Chrysostom felt worn-out and ill; but he
   could not resist so solemn and anguished an appeal. The earnestness of
   his soul supplied the failing strength of his body. On January 9, 401,
   he set sail from Constantinople for Apamæa. The end of the troubles
   involved in the revolt of Gaïnas and the activity of the Arians left no
   excuse for the Court to oppose his departure.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  BAD ECCLESIASTICS AND BASE PLOTS

     The priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine
     for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say: Is not the
     Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.--Micah iii. 11.


   E furon le sue opere e le sue colpe

   Non creder leonine ma di volpe.

   Pulci, Morg. Magg. xix.

   Chrysostom would fain have taken Philip with him, for Philip grew more
   and more endeared and more and more useful to him. But Philip, as
   manager of the Archbishop's household and an assistant in all matters
   of business, could not be spared for a long absence from the
   Patriarcheion. To take Eutyches would have been pleasant, but it seemed
   undesirable to expose his youth to the inevitable hardships of rough
   travel; and Chrysostom, who hoped for the day when he might be a
   presbyter or a bishop, and all that such an officer of the Church
   should be, was unwilling to disenchant him too painfully by those
   glaring contrasts between the ideal and the reality which would
   confront him at every turn in the now corrupt, superstitious, and
   simoniacal churches of St. Paul, St. Philip, and St. John. So
   Chrysostom took with him the graver David, whom he esteemed no less
   highly for his work and character, but whose grave temperament had not
   the buoyancy and brightness which often refreshed him in the other two.
   David also was considering the question whether he could face the
   responsibilities of the presbyterate; but he had been more familiarised
   than Eutyches with the existence of ecclesiastical unworthiness by his
   longer and more varied experience.

   So Chrysostom set sail, accompanied by the Deacon Heracleides--a man of
   the highest worth--by some other presbyters and deacons, and by David.
   He had already sent before him Cyrinus of Chalcedon, Paul of Heraclea,
   and Palladius of Helenopolis, who were to act as his assessors. In the
   guileless straightforwardness of his disposition he was unaware of the
   fact that the first two were wholly out of sympathy with himself, even
   if they had not yet assumed the attitude of his open enemies. Still
   more generous and guileless was the arrangement which he made for a
   substitute to supply his place in the pulpit of St. Sophia during his
   absence. He appointed the worthless Severian of Gabala to fulfil this
   function, and Severian of Gabala was a contemptible intriguer of the
   most vulgar description.

   Gabala was a town of Galilee, and its bishop under ordinary
   circumstances would have been of less account in the great world than
   one of our obscurest country clergymen. But Severian was ambitious, and
   regarded himself as an orator. He did not mean to hide himself at so
   dreadful a depth below the surface as Gabala, and so long as he
   advanced his own position he cared very little what became of his sheep
   in the wilderness. He separated himself from them for years, with
   little loss to them, but without the smallest compunction, so long as
   he fancied he could further his private interests. Wealth, rank, fame,
   Court favour--these were the dazzling lures which the devil dangled
   before him. This clerical opportunist would hold no views which were
   not popular; would express no opinion which would tend to hinder his
   advancement; would reject no alliance, however contemptible, which
   seemed likely to elevate him ever so little in the direction of the
   inch-high dignities which he coveted, and which a diseased ambition
   represented as enormous altitudes. With the whole meanness of his soul
   he was exclusively devoted to


   This bubble world,

   Whose colours in a moment break and fly.

   He was thus in every respect the antithesis to Chrysostom, whose simple
   godliness, apostolic simplicity, and transparent guilelessness he
   despised from the whole height of his own inferiority.

   Severian's appearance reflected his character. He was unctuous and
   portly. His hair was oiled and curled in a manner which would have
   reminded our latest Laureate of an Assyrian bull. His face was broad,
   his features regular, his dress irreproachable, and he had gained a
   character for boundless affability by cultivating a smile so sunny that
   it would have ripened a peach. He could never contemplate the short
   figure, humble dress, and brusque manners of Chrysostom without an
   inward murmur against the indiscriminating obliquities of fortune. How
   much more popular and imposing a Patriarch he would himself have made!
   He could see himself, in his own ecstatic imagination, sailing through
   the small pomposities of gorgeous functions in a manner so supremely
   ornamental that, externally at least, the whole Church could not have
   failed to be edified. He would have outshone Nectarius himself! Whereas
   this John of Antioch, who wore no vestments to speak of and gave no
   banquets, relied on mere goodness and spirituality, and was only cared
   for by the poorer classes. He had been fired to struggle out of his
   provincial obscurity by the success'--for so he enviously regarded
   it--of Antiochus, Bishop of another Syrian town--Ptolemais. Antiochus
   had left his diocese for the grander and more glaring theatre of the
   capital. He had been asked to preach in St. Sophia; had created a
   certain reputation for eloquence; had for a time been 'the vogue' in
   fashionable circles; had been introduced at Court; and whenever he
   condescended to go back to his humble throne' at Ptolemais, went back
   with a purse heavily replenished, and in a blaze of popularity. And yet
   Severian was quite convinced that, as an orator, he could easily
   surpass anything which Antiochus could do.

   So he occupied himself some time in preparing and committing carefully
   to memory a stock of sermons; and when he felt sure that they were
   polished into sufficient sonorousness and inanity, he set sail for
   Constantinople, convinced that no misfortune could happen to the barque
   which carried Severian and his sermons. Arrived at the capital, he
   waited on the Archbishop, treated him with abject deference, and begged
   that he would ask him to preach in St. Sophia. The invitation was not
   difficult to obtain, for strangers, and especially bishops, were
   frequently requested to deliver the sermon; although the people were so
   much fonder of hearing Chrysostom that, even in the Cathedral, they
   would sometimes venture to clamour and remonstrate if they saw anyone
   ascend the pulpit in his place.

   So Severian was asked to preach, and, selecting the sermon which he
   regarded as most original and striking, and practising it in his
   lodging before a large silver mirror until he felt himself perfect in
   the most accidental and spontaneous gestures, he seized his chance. At
   first the people were inclined to titter at his harsh and unfamiliar
   Syrian accent; but as soon as they grew accustomed to his voice they
   were delighted with the apparently unpremeditated flow of sonorous,
   vapid, and conventional rhetoric. It tickled their ears without in the
   least disturbing their consciences, or giving them the trouble of
   thinking of anything which might interrupt their vices or ruffle their
   self-satisfaction. The aristocratic world was specially delighted.
   These sermons were charmingly short and exquisitely unctuous. One had
   time, when they were over, to go to the theatre. There were no
   offensive attacks on dress; no stringent demands for self-denial;
   nothing to disquiet the serene conventionality of routine religionism,
   or to force the hypocrite to look inwards at the many-headed monster of
   his own ill-regulated passions. Here indeed was a delightful preacher!
   Castricia, Marsa, Epigraphia, could listen to such sermons for ever
   without being tired! How immensely superior to the crude violence and
   uncourtly personalities of the Antiochene intruder, for whom they had
   no one to thank but the wicked Eutropius! Severian was such a dear man!
   The female world of Constantinople was soon at his feet.

   So the Bishop of Gabala was successful beyond his wildest dreams,
   and--heaven of heavens!--the Emperor and the Empress themselves
   actually asked that he might be presented to them. In spite of the
   obsolete canon which forbade the transference of bishops to other
   dioceses, Severian might be translated. If he could only kick down the
   humble and hated ladder by which he had ascended, he might--who
   knows?--become Patriarch of Constantinople itself! Oh! Paradise!

   Such was the man whom, in his guilelessness, Chrysostom left in his
   place to be the moral instructor of the people. It was not his fault.
   He was himself intensely humble. He was so generous a critic that,
   always seeking the good in every sermon, he thought every sermon good,
   and better than any which he could preach himself. Apart from such
   glaring evidence as could not be disputed, he would not believe that
   anyone could be actuated by rivalries so base as those of Severian; nor
   could he even conceive of a character which, under its film of
   iridescent semblance, could conceal such Dead Sea depths. No other
   bishop equally well known happened to be then present in the capital.
   Philip grumbled openly; Eutyches shook his innocent head; David would
   not breathe one syllable of approval. Serapion declared quite plainly
   that he regarded Severian as a designing hypocrite. Chrysostom's best
   and wisest presbyters--Tigrius, Germanus, Cassian--expressed their
   serious doubts about the man and his aims, and the sincerity of his
   teaching. Bishop Palladius did not hesitate to tell the Patriarch
   privately that Severian was no better than an unsavoury windbag. But
   Chrysostom's charity would think no evil; and, in deed, it was
   difficult for him to make any other provision, for the Emperor, who had
   some right to ask, had, at the instigation of Eudoxia, made it his
   personal request.

   But though he left the pulpit to Severian, he would not entrust to him
   (as he wished) the management of the diocese. He left that in the stern
   yet faithful hands of the Archdeacon Serapion.

   No sooner had he set sail than he was glad that he had not taken
   Eutyches with him, for it required a hardy frame to bear the trials of
   the journey. His ship had barely reached the Euxine when a north wind
   broke on them with unwonted fury. They had to take refuge under the
   promontory of Triton, and there for two whole days tossed at anchor in
   the storm. The delay was so unexpected that the captain had not even
   provisioned his ship, so that, to add to their misery and sea-sickness,
   they were actually starving. Then, fortunately, the wind changed, and
   they arrived safely at their destination.

   The first thing to be done was to provide Ephesus with a new and worthy
   bishop. The only way to satisfy the factions which existed was not to
   exalt one set of partisans over another by electing their candidate,
   but to appoint someone who had never coveted the office. Accordingly,
   Chrysostom presented to them his friend and fellow-traveller,
   Heracleides. Heracleides had only been a deacon for three years, but he
   was a man of mature age, of learning, piety, wisdom, and knowledge of
   the Scriptures, and for many years he had lived with an ascetic
   community in the Sketic desert. He was in every way fitted to adorn his
   high office; but he was too good a man for that age and that country,
   and the unwished-for elevation which he won by the eloquence of his
   friend only plunged him within a few years into an abyss of misery and
   ruin.

   The next step was to inquire into the case of the simoniacal bishops;
   and at this stage of the proceedings, Antoninus being dead, to whom he
   had sold his silence, the miserable Bishop of Valentinianopolis
   reappeared on the scene. I implore your Piety,' he said, to readmit me
   to communion with my brethren, and to allow me now to produce my
   witnesses against the six bishops whom I accused.' Such was the
   indulgence with which the man was treated that his excommunication was
   removed and he resumed the role of accuser. The six bishops stoutly
   asserted their innocence; but they were overwhelmed with the
   counter-testimony, not only of lay persons, both male and female, but
   of ecclesiastics. Some even of their own presbyters, in whom they had
   trusted, inculpated them with proofs of the time, place, character, and
   exact amounts of the bribes by which they had purchased the titles of
   'your Piety' and your Sanctity.' When they were no longer able to deny,
   they confessed, and humbly begged for pardon for their simony, though
   not, apparently, for their persistent lying. They could only offer a
   twofold plea, and each plea was disgraceful to the Church in general.
   First, they argued that they were not conscious of doing anything wrong
   in their trying to purchase the gifts of God with money, because it was
   a regularly established custom, so that they were very far indeed from
   being the sole offenders. Next, the reason for their offence was the
   same which existed in the case of many others. They were curiales--that
   is, they possessed farms of more than twenty-five acres in extent, and
   therefore, in the horrible pressure of taxation in troubled times and
   under an Administration at once feeble and corrupt, they were not only
   compelled to pay taxes, but to enforce the payment of them by others.
   This was a duty onerous and odious, and, being purely secular in its
   character, Constantine had excepted the clergy from the burden. The
   consequence had been that many had purchased bishoprics without a
   single call to the office, or qualification for it, solely because they
   wished to be exempted from the trouble of civic obligations. All that
   they could now say was, 'Habetis confitentes reos.' They threw
   themselves and their acknowledged guilt on the mercy of the Patriarch
   and his commissioners. Two things only they asked: the one that,
   although they forfeited their sees, they might still be allowed, as
   ex-bishops, to communicate with their episcopal brethren within the
   rail of the sacrarium; the other, that the money which they had
   simoniacally expended might be restored to them. For, they said, the
   greed of the Bishop of Ephesus had demanded large sums, and in order to
   become bishops they had been forced to strip themselves of all their
   own possessions, and even of the furniture and jewels of their wives.

   All their requests were granted; only since the Church could not repay
   them their vilely-expended money, they were allowed to recover it from
   the heirs of Antoninus in the courts of law. Chrysostom was afterwards
   accused of haste, violence, and arbitrary injustice; but so far, at any
   rate, he and his fellow-judges seem to have gone to the extreme verge
   of a too compassionate leniency.

   Whether his subsequent proceedings were less anxiously merciful, and
   more summary, we cannot judge, for we only have the testimony of his
   enemies. He was accused of having traversed Lycia, Pamphylia, Phrygia
   and Pontus, and there, with usurped jurisdiction, without even the
   excuse (as at Ephesus) of any appeal to his intervention, to have
   accused, judged, and condemned no less than sixteen bishops, one of
   whom, Proæresius of Lydia, had been accused by himself alone. It was
   said that, in spite of the canons, he had sometimes ordained as many as
   four bishops at a time, that he had appointed new bishops proprio motu,
   without even consulting the local synods, and in spite of their wishes;
   and that this had been done so carelessly that, in some instances, he
   had consecrated unenfranchised slaves of a character actually criminal.

   Probably there was no truth in any of these allegations, although it is
   possible that Chrysostom, filled with shame at the condition of the
   Church, thwarted on every side by perjury and chicanery, and anxious to
   get back to the duties of his own diocese, may have been carried into
   hasty measures by the passion of his reforming zeal. As for his
   jurisdiction in Asia Minor, it rested on prescription. It was only
   actually established fifty years later, by the Council of Chalcedon,
   but no one seems at the time either to have challenged or doubted it.
   Chrysostom clearly thought that he was acting within his rights, and
   was only obeying the painful commands of duty. As for smaller matters,
   multitudes of canons existed which, by universal consent, had come to
   be treated as obsolete almost as soon as they were enacted; and a man
   like Chrysostom, who viewed all questions in the large air of moral and
   spiritual obligations, was not likely to worry himself with the
   chicanery of niggling scrupulosities in which small and peddling minds
   find their chief delight.

   But even now this disastrous mission was not to close. On his way back
   through Bithynia, Chrysostom stopped at its capital, Nicomedia, to
   bring under his patriarchal censure this time not only a bishop, but an
   archbishop, and one of the strangest specimens whom the office could
   produce. He was an Italian named Gerontius, and had been
   half-physician, half-necromancer at Milan. He figured as a sort of
   fourth-century Paracelsus or a nineteenth-century Mahatma; but whatever
   skill or knowledge of medicine he possessed, he eked it out with
   theurgic pretences. He professed to wield a power of evoking demons and
   subjecting them to his control, and he was anxious to add sacred claims
   to those of his worldly profession. He boasted that on one occasion he
   had seen one of the horrible night-spectres known as an Onoskelis,
   which sometimes appeared in the guise of an ass. But the piercing gaze
   of Gerontius had penetrated the disguise; he had seized the ghostly
   impostor, thrown a halter over its neck, and compelled it to work in
   grinding a mill! He so completely took away the character of the
   harmless donkey that it was henceforth regarded as a subjugated demon!

   This charlatan had managed at first to deceive the great St. Ambrose,
   who had ordained him deacon, but who, on discovering his quackeries,
   had chased him out of the Church of Milan. He then transferred his
   practice to Constantinople, and used his spells and sorceries among
   Easterns, who were more deeply sunk in superstitious credulity. Here he
   in some way came across Helladius, Archbishop of Cæsarea and Exarch of
   Pontus. Having obtained a footing at Court as a physician, Gerontius,
   with an eye to future favours, had been able to render Helladius a
   service by procuring a first-rate military commission for his son.
   Helladius, by way of gratitude for this use of backstairs influence,
   was required to ordain him, first presbyter, and then Archbishop of
   Nicomedia. At Nicomedia, in his double capacity of healer of souls and
   bodies, he had acquired great popularity. Ambrose, indignant at the
   elevation of so flagrant an impostor, had written urgent letters to
   Nectarius, entreating him to free the Church from the disgrace of such
   dubious presidency. The easy-going Nectarius was too timid to incur the
   displeasure of the degenerate Christians of Bithynia. Not so
   Chrysostom. He summoned Gerontius before him, cashiered him from his
   office, and gave the Church a worthy prelate in the person of
   Pansophius, a philosopher and a Christian, who had been the tutor of
   the Empress Eudoxia. The Nicomedians, however, were anything but
   grateful. As though their city had been devastated by a pestilence,
   they went through their streets in funeral apparel, chanting doleful
   litanies over the catastrophe which had happened to them, in order to
   induce the Almighty to restore to them their bishop. Not content with
   the signs of public mourning in Bithynia, their fellow-citizens at
   Constantinople tried to excite odium against the Patriarch by there
   adopting a similar method of expressing their displeasure.

   And thus, as though the hatred which Chrysostom had created by his
   fearless righteousness in the corrupt Church of his own city had not
   been sufficient, he had now evoked hurricanes of calumny, which were
   henceforth to burst upon him from every province of Asia Minor. Every
   bad, mean, and worldly ecclesiastic gnashed upon him with his teeth, as
   it had been a ramping and a roaring lion.

   Nor was this the worst. He had bean repeatedly apprised by letters from
   his faithful Philip and Serapion that Severian was abusing his position
   to intrigue against him. Lies and sneers and misrepresentations were
   rife, and not a few of them could be traced back to Severian.

   There were in those days no religious' newspapers, but the battling
   coteries of unscrupulous partisans served the same purpose of puffing
   all their own adherents, and of blackening all who did not agree with
   them. Severian had two plans--the one to pander to his own popularity,
   and by any amount of flattery and compromise to ingratiate himself with
   the powerful; the other, to omit no opportunity of surreptitiously
   creating an unfavourable opinion of Chrysostom. By these two means he
   hoped in time to supersede him. Even his sermons, which might otherwise
   have been described as syllabubs whipped in cream,' abounded in
   innuendoes and side-allusions, which were intended to glance off and to
   wound the hearts of Chrysostom and his adherents.

   Of all this Chrysostom was warned; but he was too magnanimous to stoop
   to resentment of small annoyances, or to contentions with unworthy
   antagonists. The spirit in which he acted in the face of even the
   grossest perversions of truth as regards himself was that of the
   inscription on the wall of Marischal College, Aberdeen: 'They say. What
   say they? Let them say!' He got the thing done, and let them howl.

   But at last he was informed of an incident which demonstrated the
   unfitness of Severian for the sacred functions assigned to him, and was
   too flagrant to admit its being passed over in silence. What that was
   we shall hear a little later on.

   The machinations of his enemies throughout the Church, and above all of
   the corrupted clergy, had been deadly and incessant. Among these there
   were two who would have been willing at any moment to take his life, if
   opportunity should offer. He had excommunicated them both: one for
   detected adultery, the other, whose name was John, for murder--since
   brutality of passion had made him actually beat to death a young slave
   who had offended him. But with them were joined all those whom he
   called 'the priests who ate at Jezebel's table,' and all those whom his
   witty friend, Bishop Palladius, describes as the 'belly-worshippers,
   table-giants, and women-hawks,' who disgraced the ranks of the
   priesthood. The people, however, knew how to estimate these gentlemen
   by a very different standard from that of their own exalted spiritual
   pretensions. They showed themselves profoundly indifferent to the lies
   which false monks and cunning priests had let loose. When their weary
   Patriarch landed from his returning barque they thronged the quay and
   the streets in myriads, received him with louder bursts of acclamation
   than were ever vouchsafed to Arcadius or Eudoxia, and pressed forward
   in such countless numbers to kiss his hand that his way to his palace
   was very slow. He bade them meet him in St. Sophia, and there poured
   forth into their enraptured ears the expression of his heartfelt
   gratitude for a fidelity which had withstood the assault of so many
   open attacks and secret machinations.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XL

  A VISIT FROM VIGILANTIUS

     Quam dissimilis est nunc a se ipso populus Christianus!

   Salvian, de Gubernat. Dei.

   'Philip and David,' said Chrysostom, 'Proclus has just told
   me'--Proclus was the young deacon who helped Serapion to arrange
   audiences with the Patriarch, and he ultimately became Patriarch
   himself--'that I am to receive a visit to-day from the well-known
   presbyter, Vigilantius. He has travelled in many lands, and brings me a
   letter of introduction from the Western poet, Paulinus, Bishop of Nola.
   I think you will like to hear something about the great men whom he has
   met; so, if Eutyches will take a little of your work, you may come in
   after dinner and meet the Gaulish presbyter.

   Eutyches won't mind, I know,' said David, for there is not much to do
   to-day, and he is anxious to write a letter to his friend Walamir, who,
   as we have just heard, is now with Alaric at Æmona.'

   Very well,' said Chrysostom. 'Vigilantius will be here at noon.'

   I hope, father,' said Philip slyly, you will give him a better dinner
   than you gave to the Bishop of Beroea, or we shall have more trouble.'

   I shall never hear the last of that unhappy dinner,' said Chrysostom,
   smiling; and you know it was all your fault, Philip. But, happily, the
   Lady Olympias has now taken all that out of your hands, and I have no
   doubt she will manage much better.'

   So Vigilantius was invited. He was a Gaul, born at Convenæ, and
   afterwards settled at Calagurris. Jerome has deluged him with some of
   the--pardon the phrase, reader, which, if I dared to quote, would be
   more than amply justified--of the worst clerical and ecclesiastical
   Billingsgate. Untaught by the way in which his own heart had been
   lacerated by shameless calumnies, the eremite of Bethlehem was
   disgracefully reckless in the virulence with which he spoke of others.
   Jerome habitually calls him, not Vigilantius, the watchful,' but
   Dormitantius, the snorer,' just as, after his quarrel with the learned,
   saintly, and ascetic Rufinus, of whom originally he could speak in no
   terms of eulogy too exalted, he pursued that great man, even to his
   death, with the name of Grunnius, the grunter.' Even when he lay dead
   in Sicily, the unforgiving saint, in a commentary on Holy Scripture,
   has no better epitaph for the friend of his youth, whom he had once
   called his true colleague and brother,' than 'the Scorpion is crushed
   to the earth between Enceladus and Porphyrion, and the hydra of many
   heads has ceased to hiss against me,'--this hydra' being one of the
   holiest Churchmen of his day, whom Bishop Palladius describes as a man
   of unequalled learning and unequalled humility.'

   It is said that the father of Vigilantius was a vintner; hence Jerome
   calls him a base-born tapster, a Samaritan, a Jew, a man who belches
   forth his impure crapulousness, whose tongue ought to be cut out by
   surgeons, and his insane head healed.' But, in spite of this torrent of
   foul invective, Vigilantius is spoken of with respect by the voice of
   history. He was a man of blameless life, of bright intelligence, of
   fearless candour, and of a forgiving modesty, which is best illustrated
   by the fact that he never answered by a single syllable the rancorous
   and frantic vituperations to which he had been subjected by the
   passionate recluse. The extent to which we are forced to discount the
   invectives of Jerome may best he estimated by the fact that he has
   nothing better to say of Chrysostom, a saint whose holiness was
   incomparably superior to his own, than that he was a mad, pestilent,
   contaminated, furious, and insanely tyrannical person, who had sold his
   soul to the devil,' and an impure demon who drags along a filth of
   words like a torrent.' Jerome, it is true, only translated these words
   from a hideous libel written by Theophilus; but he lent them the
   endorsement of his Latin eloquence and his mighty name. And the other
   saint of his day--St. Ambrose--he described as a croaking raven, who,
   himself entirely dingy, laughs in marvellous fashion at the colours of
   all other birds.' There are some men, and even good men, who seem at
   once to inspire each other with mutual antipathy; there are others who
   are at once drawn to one another. Vigilantius and Jerome disliked each
   other almost from the day on which they met. Their characters and their
   temperaments were wholly dissimilar. But the Gallic presbyter felt at
   once drawn towards Chrysostom, and there was something in his frank
   impetuosity which attracted the Patriarch's sympathy.

   After their brief repast, which the simple Vigilantius thought
   excellent, though he had been warned beforehand that Chrysostom's
   entertainments were profoundly despised by connoisseurs, the two youths
   came in.

   Let me introduce to you,' said Chrysostom, two of my young secretaries,
   Philip of Antioch, and David--of Constantinople at present, but once of
   Nazareth.'

   Of Nazareth?' asked Vigilantius. I know well the village where Christ
   was born. I visited it when I was staying with the saintly Rufinus at
   Jerusalem. Never can I forget its sweet, green valleys, and the
   prospect from its hill, on whose summit the Lord Jesus in His happy
   boyhood must have stood so often.' He fixed so earnest a gaze on
   David's face that the youth was not sorry when Eutyches came in, and
   called him to settle some point in the Patriarch's correspondence about
   which he was uncertain.

   Who is that youth from Nazareth?' asked Vigilantius. 'I fear I stared
   at him too rudely, and made him blush. But my reason was that I have
   seen in the catacombs of St. Callistus, at Rome, a picture of Christ of
   which his face at once reminded me.'

   A picture of Christ!' said Chrysostom. Are there such in existence? I
   thought that we had every reason to disapprove of all attempts to
   represent Him in His human aspect. The Council of Eliberis forbade it,
   and the great Eusebius of Cæsarea was almost indignant with the Empress
   Constantia when she asked him to procure her a picture of Christ.'

   That is true,' said Vigilantius. This catacomb-picture is the earliest
   attempt to represent the Son of God, and is later than the days of
   Constantine. But in Palestine I heard that there were some dim and
   faint traditions about His human aspect, which were repeated to me,
   especially as to the wonderful sweetness of His smile; and your young
   secretary reminded me both of this description and of the picture in
   the crypt of St. Callistus.'

   Ah!' said Chrysostom, there is a something about him which, out of
   reverence and humility, he keeps in the depths of his heart; but I may
   tell you--if you will promise not to speak of it--that he is lineally
   descended from the family of the Desposyni.'

   The wonder and surprise of Vigilantius remained unexpressed, for at
   this moment David came back; but, rising from his seat, he grasped the
   youth's hand, and apologised for having stared at him, as he was
   interested in one who had been born at Nazareth.

   David readily forgave him, and Chrysostom said: 'You have mentioned to
   us the pictures in the Catacombs; are they not being also introduced
   into churches in the West?'

   The first church which I have seen painted all over with pictures,'
   said Vigilantius, is that of my kind friend Paulinus, Bishop of Nola.'

   It is a Church of St. Felix of Nola, is it not?' said Chrysostom.

   Yes, he is devoted to St. Felix. He writes a poem in his honour every
   year; he has an immense festival in his honour on the day of his
   martyrdom, and has painted the whole church with scenes from his
   history.'

   It is a serious innovation,' said Chrysostom.

   It is,' said Vigilantius, and, in my humble opinion, in these days, a
   dangerous one. Paulinus calls his pictures "The Bible of the laity,"
   but it is mainly a Bible of St. Felix.'

   Who was St. Felix of Nola, sir?' asked Philip.

   Only to think that you should not know,' said Chrysostom, whose
   intercourse with Philip was habitually playful. 'Why, even a boy like
   Eutyches would tell you that.'

   Will your Beatitude try him?' said Philip, revenging himself by a title
   which, in public, his adopted father could hardly reprove. 'Eutyches!'
   he called out, his Beatitude wants you.'

   Philip does not know who St. Felix of Nola was!' said Chrysostom. Tell
   him, Eutyches.'

   Eutyches looked puzzled. Come, Eutyches,' said Philip, 'the Patriarch
   wants you to pour out the stores of your erudition, and to shame my
   ignorance.'

   This must be one of Philip's jokes, my Lord,' said Eutyches. 'Frankly,
   I don't know.'

   Philip smiled in mischievous triumph. Well,' said Chrysostom,
   'Vigilantius will tell you.'

   Felix,' said Vigilantius, was a priest of Nola who was a confessor in
   the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, but of whom little is known
   except legends. I will tell these youths one pretty story about him. On
   one occasion he was being pursued by the soldiers during the
   persecution. He had barely time to hide himself in a cave on the
   mountain-side, and a spider instantly spun its web over the entrance.
   The pursuers, seeing the spider's web, did not enter the cave. "Ubi
   Deus est," said Felix as he came out after they had passed: "ibi aranea
   murus; ubi non est, ibi murus aranea."'

   Translate that for Philip's benefit, Eutyches,' said Chrysostom.

   "Where God is,"' said Eutyches, but Philip knows it without my
   translation--"there a spider's web is a wall; where He is not, a wall
   is but a spider's web."'

   Thank you, sir,' said Philip, and now that Eutyches has made me blush
   by his erudition'--he looked at the Patriarch with twinkling eyes he
   had better go back to his work, or we shall get behindhand.'

   Eutyches punished Philip by an unobserved pull at his ear as he went
   out, for which he was repaid afterwards.

   Tell us more about the Chapel of Paulinus,' said Chrysostom. 'Are his
   pictures really useful?'

   Far from it,' said Vigilantius. The half-Pagan rustics practically
   worship them.'

   I hope not; that were an idolatry to be abhorred of Christians. But
   surely Paulinus does not venture to paint Christ?'

   No; he stops short there,' said Vigilantius. When he wants to indicate
   Christ he paints a snow-white lamb under a bloodstained cross. Another
   of his novelties is to have endless candles burning round the shrine of
   St. Felix, even in the day time; and he undoubtedly prays to him, as if
   the saints were ubiquitous.'

   I am unwilling to say anything severe of a truly good man like my
   brother, the Bishop of Nola,' said Chrysostom, 'but I will confess to
   you that much of this seems to me to be fraught with danger, and to be
   utterly unwarranted by Holy Writ.'

   I love and honour Paulinus,' said Vigilantius, but, my lord Patriarch,
   I cannot but admit that being, as he is, a late convert from Paganism,
   he has carried into Christianity much Pagan ritual and many Pagan
   superstitions. Perhaps I speak with unbecoming freedom before your
   Dignity?'

   Speak freely,' said Chrysostom; and as for titles, I gladly exonerate
   all my visitors from using them.'

   I was going to be so bold as to say that there seems to be some truth
   in the complaint of Faustus when he says of Christians: "The sacrifices
   of the heathen you have turned into love-feasts, their idols into
   martyrs, whom you worship with similar devotion; you propitiate the
   shades of the dead with wine and vanities; the solemn days of the
   Gentiles you keep with them, and--though this, thank God! is not true
   of all--certain it is that you have changed nothing from their manner
   of life."'

   Faustus the Manichee? Was he not once a teacher of Augustine of Hippo,
   some of whose writings I have read?'

   Yes. Faustus spoke severely, but there is a terrible substratum of fact
   under his denunciations.'

   It is too true,' said the Patriarch; there is much to fear from this
   re-intrusion of Pagan ritual into the Christian Church; and the
   deplorable degeneracy from the old ideal of Christian innocence causes
   the deepest misgivings of my heart. Do you think that this
   relic-worship, this blaze of candles in daylight, these pictures, these
   martyr-festivals, have a good effect on the people?'

   None at all, or a bad one, on the testimony of Paulinus himself. I have
   heard him bitterly deplore the orgies of drunkenness, and other grave
   scandals, caused by the nightly vigils which the Council of Eliberis so
   strongly condemned, as Augustine of Hippo has also done. As for
   relic-worship, even Jerome sneers at "superstitious womanlings"
   grovelling over supposed fragments of the true Cross. If the example of
   Paulinus prevails, we shall soon have a new polytheism. What need have
   we to pray to imperfect mortals, when we can pray to Christ? Is it not
   monstrous, Bishop, to imagine that they are more compassionate than He,
   or that we need to thrust their intercession between our souls and His
   infinite tenderness? Jerome has no language too abusive to denounce me
   for holding these opinions; he taunts me with incredible ignorance; he
   expresses a pious hope that during my snores I may be destroyed like
   the firstborn of Egypt. But when he condescends to arguments, all that
   he can adduce seem to my simplicity to be so sophistically misapplied
   that even a well-taught child could answer them.'

   Ah' said the Patriarch, I am sorry that he should thus speak and write
   of you. This ferocity which cannot forgive a difference of opinion is
   the plague-spot of our Christianity. How intensely we all need the
   verse, "

   I said I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue."'

   Amen! and amen!' said Vigilantius. When I read how Jerome says that I
   am more pernicious than Cacus or Geryon, a more portentous monster than
   Leviathan or the Nemean lion, I am only sorry for him, and for the
   effect of such a style on the minds of others--not for myself. It
   cannot hurt me. His offence is more rank when he tries to blacken my
   character by a ridiculous story. He says that one night, when there was
   an earthquake at Bethlehem, I leapt out of bed, equally destitute of
   faith and clothing, and, being intoxicated, remained at night praying
   in the Cave of the Nativity as naked as Adam and Eve in Paradise. His
   falsehood that I was intoxicated--which I have never been in my
   life--is his way of reviving the untrue sneer that my father was a
   publican. May God forgive him! I am sure I do.'

   Alas!' said Chrysostom, it is language like this which makes the
   heathen say, with a sneer, "There was a day when even Christians loved
   one another." But why is he so vehemently embittered against you? Were
   you not his guest at Bethlehem?'

   I was, Bishop; and, oh! with what reverence my soul was filled when I
   was sheltered in his cave, which is close by the cave of Christ's
   nativity. I can sympathise with Jerome when he calls the village of
   Bethlehem more august than the city of Rome.'

   His must be a delightful life.'

   It might be,' said the Gaul, with a sad smile. 'The place is full of
   charm. The fields in spring are embroidered with blue and purple and
   crimson flowers, like the High Priest's ephod, and they ring with the
   songs of birds. In summer there are the shadows of the hills, and of
   groves rich in foliage. In autumn it was pleasant to pace the
   leaf-strewn walks. Even in winter there was no fear of cold, for there
   is an abundance of fuel.'

   Happy Jerome!'

   No, not happy, I fear. Yet Jerome might be as happy as anyone. He lives
   pen in hand, and has the delight of constant occupations. He daily
   teaches the two noble ladies, Paula and Eustochium, who came with him
   from Rome; he writes many letters and many books; he instructs the
   monks; he educates the boys of his monasteries, and preaches to the
   pilgrims, who swarm in hundreds to his coenobium.'

   Then how comes it that you only say his life might be happy?'

   For two reasons. First, he makes himself ill, fretful, and irritable
   with over-asceticism; and, next, he is always involving himself in a
   whirl of controversies; which he renders ten times more bitter by his
   ferocious eloquence.'

   You have not yet told us why his anger burns so hotly against you.'

   It is because I dare to hold some of the opinions which the wronged
   Jovinian also held, against which Jerome has written his fiercest
   denunciations. Jovinian, as you know, had been a monk and an ascetic,
   who wore a single rough tunic, lived on bread and water, and even went
   about in winter with bare feet. Experience convinced him that there was
   no essential moral or spiritual profit in this will-worship. He never
   married, but he held that it is only a false tradition which imposes
   celibacy on presbyters. In that he agrees with the Nicene Fathers.
   Surely marriage is in all respects as sacred as celibacy? Did not
   Clement of Alexandria say that to disparage marriage was to disparage
   the Apostles? Was not St. Peter married? Did not the holy Philip give
   his daughters in marriage? Does not St. Paul say that a bishop must be
   the husband of one wife? Did not Athanasius say that "nothing prevented
   the right of a bishop to marry if he chose"?'

   Marriage,' said Chrysostom, is honourable in all. I have myself
   ventured to say distinctly, "Enjoy the married state with due
   moderation, and you shall be first in the kingdom of heaven, and enjoy
   all blessing." But you would not disparage celibacy for such as feel
   themselves called to it?'

   No,' said Vigilantius; but when I consider the vile custom of living
   with agapetæ, with which even imperial laws have tried to grapple in
   vain, it is clear to me that the enforcement on the many of an ideal
   possible only for the few, will be in the future, as it has been in the
   past, a source of immense demoralisation and a curse to the whole
   Church of God.'

   Was this the only ground of Jerome's wrath?'

   No,' said Vigilantius. I have ventured to raise my voice against what
   seem to me to be trivialities and superstitions; and I have held this
   to be all the more incumbent on me, because herein I oppose the current
   tendencies.'

   Is it true that you have denounced fasting?'

   No; I have only said that it is nowhere enjoined as a Christian duty;
   that it cannot be intrinsically pleasing to God as an end, but only as
   a means; and that for most temperaments it makes the Christian life not
   more easy, but more difficult.'

   Here Philip ventured to interpose a question. 'Bishop,' he said, may I
   ask the Presbyter what he would say to the words,

   "But the days shall come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them.
   Then shall they fast, in those days"?'

   I could reply,' said Vigilantius, but it will be more respectful if I
   leave the answer with the Patriarch.'

   That text does not apply, Philip,' said Chrysostom. 'These are in no
   sense the days when the Bridegroom is taken from us. He is with us
   always, even to the end of the world; and much more with us than He
   could be by His bodily presence. My views about fasting have changed
   greatly since the days when I destroyed my health by it for ever.'

   As to fasting,' said Vigilantius, 'Jerome, in his too famous letter to
   Eustochium, shows how absolutely powerless it was to deliver him even
   from the temptations which he most hated. But one of the truest saints
   I ever knew told me that fasting made him irritable and ill-tempered;
   that it robbed him of command over his acts, feelings, and expressions;
   that it makes his tongue, lips, and brain no longer in his power; that
   it deprives him in many ways of all self-command, makes him use the
   wrong word for the right, makes him seem out of temper when he is not,
   and makes him smile or laugh when he ought to be serious. Worse than
   all, he said that when thoughts present themselves to his mind in
   fasting, he feels wholly unable to throw them off any more than if he
   were some dead thing, and that thus they make an impression on him
   which he is unable to resist. So far from making his prayers more
   fervent, he finds that fasting hinders him from fixing his mind upon
   them. From sheer languor and listlessness it tempts him to sloth; and,
   what is worst of all, he says that even moderate fasting is so
   undeniably a means of temptation as to expose him to thoughts from
   which he would habitually turn with shame and abhorrence. Yet he
   persists in fasting, because he says that it is enjoined by God. Surely
   this is a fatal error? We are to fly from temptation, not seek it; and
   God would never have enjoined that which is for most men a source of
   greater moral difficulties.'

   The right fasting,' said Chrysostom, is habitual moderation, and
   abstinence from evil. My predecessor, Gregory of Nazianzus, once, most
   wisely, kept his Lent by silence, because he felt himself too much
   tempted to hasty words. And in that beautiful "Shepherd," by Hermas,
   which I gave to you boys the other day, Philip--you remember what the
   good Shepherd says to Hermas?'

   Yes, sir,' said Philip. He tells Hermas that the true and acceptable
   fast is the forgiveness of injuries, and the advance in godliness.'

   That is my view,' said Vigilantius; and even if I be wrong, I hardly
   think,' he added, laughing, 'that what I have said justifies Jerome in
   his remark that I wish to reduce men to the condition of swine, or that
   I call abstinence a heresy, or that my object is to enrich my
   drinking-shops! I need hardly say that I have none; but that matters
   nothing to such controversialists.'

   My son,' said Chrysostom, do not let these assaults irritate you. There
   never yet was a good man whom some did not call Beelzebub, as they
   called our Master. Forget them.'

   When I need comfort,' said Vigilantius--'and I often do--I think of Him
   Whom men called a "

   gluttonous man and a winebibber," of Whom they said that He was a
   Samaritan, and had a devil. Jerome's writings will live, and I shall be
   handed down, it may be, to after-ages as a name of scorn. What matters
   it? God is the judge; not man.'

   But you must also forgive your slanderer.'

   I forgive him,' said the Presbyter, with all my heart. Jerome, much as
   he has wronged me, is sincere. The Church owes him much service, if
   some wrongs. I shall not answer him. I shall not defend myself. I trust
   my cause to Him that judgeth righteously. I shall retire, till my life
   ends, to the quiet duties of my office and my home. I kneel for your
   blessing, Patriarch, and thank you for your kindness to one whom the
   Church hates.'

   Farewell, Vigilantius! May God be with you!' said Chrysostom, and over
   the head of the kneeling presbyter he pronounced his blessing. 'If you
   are dear to Christ it will matter very little that you are hated by
   some who profess to be the sole true representatives of His Church.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLI

  A FAREWELL


   For I am long since weary of your storm

   Of carnage, and find, Hermod, in your life

   Something too much of war and broils which make

   Life one perpetual fight.--Matthew Arnold, Balder.

   What a long talk you have been having!' said Eutyches, when David and
   Philip came out of the study. 'Tell me all about it.'

   Well, first you told us all about St. Felix and the Bishop of Nola.'

   You witty fellow!' said Eutyches.

   Then you pulled my ears, for which you shall catch it.'

   It was less punishment than you deserved.'

   Then Vigilantius told us all about Jerome of Bethlehem, who, according
   to him, must be a singularly amiable person.'

   You are no good,' said Eutyches; 'David is ten times as patient as you,
   and is never in a hurry, as you always are. So I shall ask him all the
   rest.'

   David gave him a sketch of what had passed, though, with characteristic
   sweetness, he softened down all that seemed most unfavourable to
   Jerome. Eutyches listened with interest, and some surprise.

   Have you written to Walamir?' asked Philip. If you have, I hope you
   gave our kindliest greetings to him and Thorismund.'

   I have,' said Eutyches. One of Aurelian's soldiers happened to be
   starting for Illyricum to-morrow, and he is going to take my letter. I
   must give it him at once. I shall have to pass through the
   Chalkoprateia.'

   To the owls with your Chalkoprateia!' said Philip; 'you know I am too
   busy to come with you.'

   And when are you going to pay me that bronze what's-his-name which you
   have owed me for ever so long? I believe you go to the Chalkoprateia
   once a week, and pretend to choose it, but I have never got it; whereas
   David gave me the pentray at once, like a man.'

   I don't approve of bets,' said Philip.

   Then why are you always going to choose it at the Chalk----'

   Philip chased the boy out; and when he had started, David turned to
   him, and said, 'Philip, I want to talk to you. What do you think of all
   that Vigilantius said?'

   I agree with it heart and soul,' said Philip.

   And I,' said David; and it only deepens my conviction that I can never
   join the ranks of the clergy.'

   I came to that decision long ago,' said Philip, but it was because I
   felt no vocation. I can serve God better in other ways. But you are
   different, David. And Vigilantius quoted saints and Councils, as well
   as the Scriptures, for his views.'

   And yet,' said David, it is Paulinus, and Augustine, and Jerome who in
   some of these matters speak the voice of Rome and of the West; and
   though in these and other things their views are not those of the early
   Church, I do not wish to join a body by whom Vigilantius is treated as
   a monster, and to whom it is due that Jovinian, a profoundly good man,
   was beaten with leaded scourges, and banished to Dalmatia. I believe as
   little as Vigilantius in the exaltation of celibacy, and relic-worship,
   and the supreme meritoriousness of dirt and self-inflicted misery, and
   the trampling down of the sweet natural affections which God has given
   us. It seems to me un-Christlike and altogether unscriptural. It is
   based on human ordinances, or on false conceptions, twisted out of a
   few childishly misinterpreted texts.'

   I agree,' said Philip. Our excellent Cassian was talking to us the
   other day about monkish saintliness. He exalted one monk above
   everything because, in holy obedience, he walked three miles every day
   for years, at his abbot's order, to water an old stick. Could he find
   nothing better to do, and the abbot nothing more sane to command, in a
   world lying in wickedness? He told another story of a monk named
   Marcus, who had a little son eight years old. To wean him of the crime
   of affection for this son his brother-monks purposely left the child
   dirty and neglected, and beat him that he might be always in tears.
   Finally, the abbot told Marcus to fling the boy into a river--and he
   did! And this unnatural Paganism is exalted as superhuman virtue! And,
   all the time, our Eutyches was listening to Cassian open-mouthed with
   admiration. That is just how young souls are spoiled. I cured him
   afterwards by telling him the story of Stagirius.'

   Yes,' said David; and the strange thing is that a holy man like Cassian
   still upholds the system, though there is scarcely a monkish community,
   however small, which has not been a hotbed of enormous scandals--even
   the monastery of Jerome at Bethlehem; even the coenobium of Augustine
   at Hippo. Jerome says that in the holy frightfulness of the Nitrian
   desert he found adders as well as monks, and Augustine speaks of the
   numbers of hypocrites under the guise of hermits. Cassian himself
   dwells on the horrible liability of the monks to the principal vices
   which infest human nature--gluttony, uncleanness, avarice, anger,
   vainglory, pride--above all, that despairing and unaccountable
   melancholy which they call acedia, and describe as "the demon that
   walketh in the noonday." That is what comes of inventing our own
   sacrifices, instead of offering those with which God is well pleased.'

   But you can be a presbyter without approving of dangerous and unnatural
   asceticism,' said Philip.

   Yes,' said David; a simple, true presbyter, if that were all, as St.
   Peter, and St. Paul, and St. John are content to call themselves. But
   nowadays every presbyter will arrogate to himself the exclusive name of
   a sacrificing priest, which the New Testament never once allows them.'

   The Eucharist?' said Philip.

   Philip, is the name of "a sacrifice" so much as once given to the
   Eucharist by Christ, or the Apostles, or the Evangelists? The sacrifice
   of Christ, of His Incarnation, and His whole life, as well as His
   death, was offered once only, once for all. It cannot be re-offered.
   Three of the Evangelists record the institution of the Lord's Supper.
   In which of them is there one syllable about its being a sacrifice? How
   could it have been, when the Lord still stood a living man among His
   disciples?'

   I don't profess to be a theologian, David; but I have a profound trust
   in the Patriarch, and did not he talk in one of his homilies of
   "offering the tremendous sacrifice," and speak of "the Lord" Himself
   sacrificed and lying there, and the priest standing at the sacrifice,
   and the receiver reddened by the blood?'

   Rhetoric is not logic, Philip. I asked him about those very words, and,
   admitting at once that this was impassioned and metaphoric language, he
   pointed me to his Commentary on Heb. x. 9, where he says, "We do not
   offer another sacrifice, but we make a commemoration of a sacrifice."
   Philip, half the things which seem to me like superstitious and
   materialising aberrations from the pure and simple faith of the Gospel
   arise from teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, or from
   failure to interpret in their allegoric significance the simple
   metaphors of the East. This applies especially to the Lord's Supper.
   The elements of bread and wine have already begun to be treated as
   though they were dreadful idols--actual flesh and actual
   blood--although the body of Christ is now a Spiritual Body glorified in
   Heaven.'

   How do you understand the discourse at Capernaum?' asked Philip.

   To my mind,' said David, the fact that it was uttered two years before
   the Lord's Supper is sufficient to prove that it referred generally to
   Christ as

   the Bread of Life. The simple Eastern metaphor of "eating" expresses
   the closest spiritual union, and has been grossly misapprehended. That
   discourse, had it referred to the Lord's Supper, would at the time have
   been perfectly meaningless. It was not so because every Jew knew that
   "to

   eat of" meant "to be united with." They had read the words used about
   wisdom,

   "He that eateth Me shall even live by Me;" they knew the proverb, "To
   eat of the years of the Shechînah."'

   Philip mused awhile, and David added: 'But, dear Philip, opinions
   differ, and will differ; it is not by our opinions that Christ will
   judge us, but by our fruits. We may go to heaven with many wrong
   opinions, but not with wicked hearts. I only spoke to you about these
   things to show you why I can never become so much as a deacon. The
   feeling was rendered invincible by the disgraceful spectacle of the
   Churches of Asia, when I went there with him. But that being so---- Oh,
   Philip! I am for many reasons very sorry--but in less than a month we
   shall all leave Constantinople.'

   What!' said Philip, with a movement of sudden alarm; 'you, and your
   father, and'--he bowed his face over his hands--'and Miriam?'

   It is so, Philip; and our one pang, our sole pang, will be to part with
   the Patriarch, and Eutyches, and, above all, with you.'

   Oh, David! But why is this?'

   I will tell you. My father, being the descendant of Jude, whom Apostles
   and Evangelists called the "Lord's Brother," has never been in the
   least ashamed of his bronzesmith's shop, any more than St. Joseph was
   ashamed of the shop of the carpenter at our Nazareth. But God has
   largely prospered my father: not only our own people, but all
   Constantinople, know his integrity; and, besides his prosperous trade,
   he is employed in many transactions which make him honourably rich, far
   above our simple needs. His brother Simon has long been farming our
   lands in Galilee, but we have just had news of his death. His only son
   was slain in a recent invasion of Isaurian robbers who swept down even
   as far as Bethlehem. My father now inherits those lands and we are
   going to fix our home there. He shares my views, and approves of my
   decision never to become a presbyter in the Church as it now is.'

   Oh, David!' said Philip, who was now very pale, and into whose eyes the
   tears had rushed. 'And Miriam? You know that I love her, and I had
   hoped that she loved me.'

   She loves you, Philip. There is no levity in Miriam. She has never seen
   any youth whom she loves as she loves you, with a love pure and
   intense.'

   And yet you doom us never to meet again.'

   Why so, Philip? She is quite too young to marry yet, nor would it be
   right for you to leave him. But there are thousands of pilgrims to
   Palestine every year, and what is to hinder you from hearing constantly
   of each other? We see not how--yet my father does not doubt that the
   changing years will bring you together.'

   But to Philip at that moment the whole world seemed to have turned into
   ashes; he laid his head upon his hands, and wept.

   Do not weep, Philip,' said David. '

   God is love. Build your faith on that.'

   I lose my friend,' said Philip, and I have but few; I lose my love, and
   I never had but one--and you bid me not to weep!'

   Dear friend of my youth!' said David, rising and embracing him; but you
   still have your father, and you have Eutyches; and, more than all, you
   have duty, and you have hopes to shine on you like stars; and, most of
   all, you have God your father in heaven, and Christ your eternal
   friend.' But David was himself in tears.

   But Philip would not be comforted, and both were silent till, far off,
   they heard the voice of Eutyches in the garden, singing in his blithe
   young voice, as he approached, the Latin hymn of Ambrose:


   Veni, Redemptor gentium,

   Ostende partum Virginis;

   Miretur omne sæculum!

   Talis decet partus Deum.

   As he approached the garden-entrance of the Patriarcheion he was in
   high and happy spirits. The soldier whom Aurelian was sending back to
   Æmona had come from Illyricum, and by him Walamir had sent Eutyches an
   ancient Gothic silver ornament of great beauty, in the shape of a
   gryphon, with a brief letter and the kindest messages. Eutyches had
   just been sending to him with his own letter two little pictures which
   he knew would delight him--one, a really good likeness of the
   Patriarch, painted on a blue ground, and the other a likeness of
   Wulfila, the apostle of the Goths.

   He burst into the room full of his news, and said 'Aha, Philip! I have
   been where you would like to be--in the Chalkoprateia; and I saw by a
   certain door the veiled figure of----' He stopped short. What is this?
   You cannot conceal from me that you have both been in tears. What is
   the matter? Is it possible that David and Jonathan have been
   quarrelling?'

   The suggestion sounded so ludicrous to them that they both smiled. 'Ah!
   that is better,' said Eutyches; but, in the name of Heaven, what has
   happened?'

   My boy!' said Philip, and again his tears burst forth, 'you will never
   be able to chaff me again about my love for the Chalkoprateia. David
   has just told me that he and his father and--and my Miriam are about to
   leave us for ever.'

   For ever?' said Eutyches, thunderstruck at intelligence so wholly
   unexpected.

   For ever is a very long word, Eutyches,' said David.

   But where are you going to live?'

   In our old home, not far from Nazareth.'

   Does he know?' asked Eutyches.

   Not yet,' said David; but the plan cannot be changed.'

   My poor, poor Philip!' said Eutyches. I am so sorry that I hurt you.
   What will you do without David, and---- Oh! this is very sad.'

   He laid one hand on Philip's shoulder, and grasped his friend's other
   hand. But Philip could not trust himself to speak. It was as though all
   the brightness of his life had been quenched in sudden midnight.

   Chrysostom was deeply sorry to lose the services of David. After a long
   and solemn talk with him, and with his father Michael, he did not feel
   it right to interpose any obstacle, but he spoke anxiously about Philip
   and his love for Miriam.

   They love each other with a true love,' said Michael; 'but Miriam is
   not sixteen. She is too young to marry; nor would it be right for
   Philip to leave you yet.'

   It might be easier in a few years,' said the Patriarch. 'As far as
   means are concerned in these hard times, Philip will not be penniless.
   He is the owner of his father's house in Antioch, which is let; and
   with it he also inherited a small sum of money, which is being
   faithfully husbanded for him. Besides this, though he does not yet know
   it, I have, by my will, bequeathed to him my old house in Singon
   Street, which brings in a yearly income, and I have divided what
   remains of my own modest income between him and Eutyches. I did not
   include your David because you once told me that he was well provided
   for, and needed nothing.'

   He whose desires are few is rich, Patriarch,' said Michael; 'nor would
   there be any objection on the score of even poverty, for Miriam will
   have an ample dower. 'But----' A very troubled look passed over his
   face. 'My Lord Bishop,' he said, God sometimes gives me the power to
   look dimly into future years. I know not how or why. I only know that I
   can sometimes see something of the future as though it were present. I
   know that I am bidding you farewell for ever. I thank you for all your
   goodness and kindness to David, and to me, who am but a humble artisan
   of Jewish birth. But forgive me if I speak. As I look into the future I
   see clouds before you, and thick darkness. Fain would I avert my gaze
   from those coming years. May the Christ of God be with you! I know that
   you daily hear the Voice saying,

   "Be thou faithful unto death, and"--you will need that promise to
   sustain you--

   "and I will give thee the crown of life."'

   I know it,' said Chrysostom; but He Who for our good sends our
   calamities to purge us as gold is purged in the furnace, never fails
   also to send grace to help in time of need. Let us both kneel down, and
   pray for His blessing--even if it comes veiled in darkness--for each
   other, and for us both.'

   They knelt side by side--the Patriarch of Constantinople and the humble
   Desposynos--and they rose strengthened for any fate.

   The last day of Michael's sojourn in Constantinople came. Chrysostom,
   with a heavy and foreboding heart, had parted from David, and given him
   the kiss of peace, and blessed him. He presented him with a beautiful
   manuscript of the Commentary on the Hebrews as a token of his parting
   love. The family were to sail away at evening, and all their goods were
   on the barque which lay at anchor by the quay to take them to the port
   of Accho. With the full consent of Michael, and in his presence, Philip
   and Miriam had pledged themselves to one another in solemn and sacred
   vows, and had exchanged their gifts of betrothal. Philip had given to
   Miriam a precious jewel which had belonged to his mother, and Miriam to
   Philip one of the little carcanets of gold coins which Eastern maidens
   often wear round their hair. It had been for years a treasure in the
   family of the Desposyni; and since it consisted of the Maccabean coins
   of the High Priest Simon, stamped with the lily, had once--it was
   whispered among them--been worn by the Virgin Mother herself, and so
   had acquired in their eyes an inestimable preciousness. One coin was
   missing, and it had purposely been left unreplaced, for they saw in it
   an illustration of the woman and the lost coin,' and a sign that Christ
   would regard all His work as marred if but one soul were missing of
   those whom His Father had given Him to keep. To no one--not even to
   Philip--would Miriam have thought of entrusting this priceless treasure
   if Michael had not solemnly told her that the day would certainly come
   when Philip would restore it to her own hands again. The two lovers had
   also exchanged locks of each other's hair, to be worn on the heart till
   they met again. They had been suffered to clasp each other in one long
   embrace before they spoke the farewells which press the life out of
   young hearts.'

   Be brave, dear son,' said Michael to Philip, as he started with Miriam
   and her female attendant to the barque.

   It is through much tribulation that we must enter into the Kingdom of
   God.'

   My father! my father!' sobbed Philip; I shall see your face no more. It
   is that which makes me weep most of all.'

   Nay, Philip,' said Michael, solemnly; fear not. Something tells me,
   quite surely, that whether you and I meet again or not on this side the
   grave, you and Miriam will be one. I see dark, dark waves before us
   all--storm and tempest; but a sea of light encompasses them, and flows
   over them, and in that I behold the infinite love of God. Farewell!
   farewell!'

   David stayed on shore till the last, to make the last few final
   arrangements. The shadows of night were falling when Philip and
   Eutyches walked with him to the quay on the Bosporus. Philip had given
   David as his last gift a silver box made and beautifully chased by his
   father in Antioch, and had received from him a golden Eastern lamp of
   unknown age and perfect workmanship.

   There was no more to say. They knew each other's thoughts. They pressed
   each other to the heart. They could not speak; they parted in silent
   tears. David stepped on the deck, and the vessel spread her sails. It
   had very soon melted into the deepening dusk. The last thing which
   Philip saw was the waving of Miriam's white scarf from the ship's deck.
   Then the darkness rushed down. He turned away, and walked home with
   Eutyches in silence, only broken by the occasional sobs which shook his
   whole frame. It was not only the anguish of parting from his love, and
   from his friend, which shook him. It was an unspoken, immense
   foreboding. It was an horizon which looked to him as black as the
   gathering midnight. Eutyches knew that it was vain to try and comfort
   him. He could only press his hand in silence. The one thought which
   flapped its wings like a vulture over Philip's mind, and returned again
   and again to tear his heart with obscene beak, was, I have lost my
   friend; I have lost my love for ever--for ever; nothing remains for me
   but despair and woe.'

   Many dark days ensued. All that the Patriarch could do, all that
   Eutyches and Olympias and Nicarete could do to lighten that heavy heart
   was done; and time laid on the youth's misery a healing hand. The days
   were, fortunately, full of duties and occupations; but it was long
   before Philip's manner resumed its natural brightness and elasticity,
   and long ere those who loved him best recognised upon his face the glad
   smile which played over it like an incessant gleam of sunlight in
   happier days.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLII

  THE MISDOINGS OF SEVERIAN


   Superbia, invidia, ed avarizia sono

   Le tre faville ch' hanno i cori accesi.

   Dante, Inf. vi. 74, 75.

   A few days afterwards the Archdeacon Serapion came into the room of the
   Patriarch with a face flushed with indignation.

   I come, my Lord Archbishop,' he said, to bring a complaint of the
   utmost gravity against the Bishop of Gabala.'

   What has Severian been doing now?' asked the Patriarch.

   My Lord, I was sitting yesterday in the Thomaites with the Presbyter
   Tigrius, the Bishop Palladius, Proclus, young Eutyches, and others,
   when Severian passed into the anteroom where Philip was sitting. He
   asked for you; but you had gone to visit a sick presbyter, and he again
   passed out through the hall. Eutyches and the others rose as usual, and
   with them the Ladies Pentadia and Olympias, who were awaiting your
   return, as they had to see you on business respecting the institution
   of deaconesses. I did not rise. I happened to be writing, and did not
   observe his presence. If I had done so I should probably have risen,
   although I cannot tolerate the Bishop of Gabala.'

   It were better to rise, Serapion,' said Chrysostom. 'It is a
   conventional mark of honour paid to bishops, and has become usual.'

   I will do so in future,' said Serapion. The wish of your Dignity on the
   subject is more than sufficient for me. I cannot, indeed, stand up when
   he passes with any pleasure, and do not pretend to feel any respect for
   Severian. To me he seems to be a traitorous hypocrite.'

   I grieve that your feelings about him are so strong. You can, however,
   respect the office, even if you cannot respect the man. And should we
   not fight, Serapion, against these intense feelings of dislike and
   disdain for our fellow-men? We all have need of large forgiveness, of
   infinite forbearance. No man is all devil; something of the angel must
   be somewhere hidden in the depths of his heart. The Holy Spirit within
   us may be desecrated, but never wholly lost.'

   I bow to your reproach,' said Serapion. I will follow your exhortation,
   although my disdain has been kindled by his treachery and baseness
   towards you. But what I have to report is very serious. Seeing that I
   had not stood up, Severian glared at me, and said in a tone of fury, in
   the hearing of us all, "Christ was never made man."'

   Surely that is inconceivable, Serapion,' said Chrysostom; 'your ears
   must have deceived you.'

   Mistake was impossible,' said the Archdeacon.

   But what could he have meant?' said the Patriarch.

   What conceivable object could he have had in uttering words of
   blasphemy which, if he spoke them, would at once brand him as an
   hypocrite?'

   I cannot pretend to explain,' answered Serapion, 'but will you question
   the others? They are here.'

   Those whom Serapion had mentioned came in one by one. Olympias and
   Pentadia said that they had been seated at some distance from the table
   where Serapion sat, and the back of Bishop Severian was turned to them;
   but those words, uttered in fierce anger, they unquestionably heard.
   Proclus and Tigrius also heard them, and noticed the look and accent of
   fury with which they were spoken. Eutyches, who had been sitting by
   Serapion, and who rose as the Bishop of Gabala passed, said that the
   Bishop seemed first to mutter something which he could not hear, and
   then burst out with the blasphemous sentence.

   What did you take to be his meaning, my boy?' asked the Archbishop.

   I thought,' said Eutyches, that in his uncontrollable anger he had
   broken into a sort of oath. May I speak further?'

   Certainly.'

   Well, sir, St. Paul, when he speaks about the abuse of tongues at
   Corinth, says, "

   No man speaking by the Spirit of God says 'Jesus be anathema.'" I have
   heard you explain this to mean that in overpowering excitement men lost
   all self-control, and their tongues were then forced by evil spirits to
   call out blasphemies. The word which exploded from the wrath of
   Severian reminded me of that.'

   My boy,' said Chrysostom, I can no longer doubt that Severian did speak
   those awful words, and there may be wisdom in your suggestion about
   them. Let the Bishop be summoned into my presence.'

   Severian came, serenely unconscious of what had happened--came in with
   the airs and graces of the handsome, portly, well-groomed,
   self-satisfied ecclesiastic. Chrysostom rose to receive him, but rose
   with so stern a look upon his face that the Bishop of Gabala suddenly
   stopped short in the well-turned compliments and remarks about the
   weather into which he had begun to glide.

   Your Religiosity seems to be disturbed to-day,' he said.

   Severian,' said the Patriarch, it is reported to me by six credible
   witnesses, who could not and would not lie, that you exclaimed, in
   their hearing, "Christ has not been made man."'

   How can you listen to such vain gabble?' said Severian. 'Why, if I
   believed half, or a tenth part of the things which are daily said about
   you, I should regard you as an utter demon.'

   What may be said about me,' said Chrysostom, with contemptuous
   sternness, is not the question. If any man can witness ought against
   me, let him speak. But,' he said, with a wave of the hand, the charge
   against you is perfectly definite.'

   I never said anything of the kind,' said Severian, with brazen front.
   When and where did I say it?'

   Yesterday, in the Thomaites.'

   Who says so?'

   Serapion, Tigrius, Proclus----'

   All my enemies', said Severian.

   My young secretary, Eutyches.'

   A pert, conceited boy,' said Severian.

   Silence, Bishop!' said the Patriarch. 'Eutyches is little more than
   boy, but one more modest and one more blameless I have never seen. And,
   besides these, the ladies Olympias and Pentadia.'

   Special friends of your Sanctity,' said Severian, with an undisguised
   sneer.

   I blush for you,' said Chrysostom; would to God I could see you blush
   for yourself! You, a Christian bishop--do you so much as dare to
   insinuate that these holy presbyters, these saintly women, have
   invented a lie to injure you? Some of them may not think well of you,
   but I would answer for every one of them that they would rather die
   than lie.'

   Oh! well, if you have, in your usual manner, prejudged the case,' said
   Severian, I can but retire.'

   Again,' said Chrysostom, mastering a strong impulse to indignation, you
   seem to forget that you are here to answer a most definite accusation.
   For the moment I sit here to examine as to its truth. You will gain
   nothing by insolence towards your judge.'

   Everyone knows that you are jealous of me,' said Severian.

   Chrysostom could scarcely suppress a smile. Of all human foibles,
   jealousy, a mark of mean natures, was the one from which he was most
   exempt, and jealousy of Severian in particular was the last feeling he
   could possibly entertain.

   Suppress these irrelevancies, Bishop,' he said; the question is very
   simple and definite. Did you, or did you not, in the hearing of at
   least six persons, use the words "Christ has not been made man"?'

   The charge is preposterous,' said Severian.

   Well, then, I will summon the witnesses.'

   Oh!' said Severian, who now saw that escape was impossible, 'stop!' and
   putting his hand to his head in an affected attitude, as though he were
   trying to remember, he said slowly: I have some sort of dim
   recollection that something of this sort happened. Your archdeacon,
   Serapion, the most churlish and ill-conditioned dog I ever came
   across----'

   Such language disgraces you,' said the Patriarch. 'It is unfitting for
   a Christian, much more for a bishop, who should set an example.'

   Do not try to browbeat me,' said Severian, swelling his portly person.
   I was saying, when you interrupted me, that in passing through the
   Thomaites Serapion, that pink of politeness, that pearl of courtiers,
   sneered at me, and did not think proper to rise as the rest did. I
   suppose you have taught your underlings to insult me----'

   I have already desired him to rise in future,' said the Patriarch, whom
   the Bishop's insolence could not ruffle. He assures me--and I believe
   him--that he did not rise simply because he did not see you, being
   engaged in writing. His supposed sneer is the offspring of your
   imagination only.'

   --and in a fit of anger, utterly disgusted with the man's churlish
   impudence, I may have muttered in my wrath--for after all I am only
   human--something, to the effect that "if Serapion dies a Christian,
   then Christ was not made man." As Serapion has never lived as a
   Christian, I felt sure that he could never die as one, and I only
   express the impossibility by a strong hypothesis.'

   Enough!' said Chrysostom. You have admitted the use of the words. It
   would have been better for your truth and honesty if you had not at
   first denied them. Your explanation hardly makes them better. Your
   remark was grossly slanderous, and the form into which you threw it was
   irreverent and disgraceful. As far as Constantinople is concerned your
   stay here is ended. By my authority as Patriarch I cut you off from
   communion in any one of my churches. I inhibit you from entering them.
   You have disgraced your character and calling. Depart, and ask God if
   haply your sin may be forgiven.'

   The Empress shall hear of this,' said Severian, insolently.

   Enough!' said Chrysostom. The Emperor has authority in all things
   temporal; his sway does not extend to spiritual censures. You have for
   years been absent from your neglected diocese, pursuing here the
   designs of your ambition. I recommend you to return to it, and resume
   your duties. Philip, conduct out the Bishop of Gabala.'

   Purple with rage, Severian swung out of the room, intending at once to
   lay his complaint before the Court, where, by his intrigues and
   flatteries, he had made himself a favourite. But when he got outside
   the Patriarcheion he found a menacing crowd assembled in the Forum.
   Rumours of Severian's treacheries against their beloved Patriarch had
   been prevalent among the multitude. They had long seen through the man
   who was adored by such ladies as Epigraphia and supported by such
   reprobates as Elpidius and Isaac the Monk. It happened that during the
   interview which we have narrated some decani--humble church servants,
   who formed a branch of the parabolani, and helped to bury the poor--had
   been in the garden below, and had heard the loud voice and harsh
   accents of the Bishop of Gabala raised in objurgation. They had slipped
   out with the news that Severian was insulting the Patriarch. A crowd
   had gathered, who would have been glad at a moment's notice to lynch
   the hated Syrian. Under his habitual air of bravado Severian was an
   abject coward. He entreated Philip to conduct him through the mob, whom
   Philip succeeded in pacifying, for they all knew and loved him for his
   bright face and witty speech.

   My life is in danger here,' said Severian. 'Come with me, Philip, to
   the quay. I will take a boat to Chalcedon.'

   As these quarrels have arisen, Bishop, might it not be better if you
   left Constantinople altogether?' said Philip respectfully, as the
   rowers pushed off the boat.

   We will see to that,' said Severian.

   In point of fact he did not remain absent more than a few days. For
   Eudoxia and all her clique were furious when they heard of the
   inhibition of their favourite. It was intolerable to the Frankish
   Empress that, even in the Church, anyone should presume to exercise any
   power except herself. She sent for Chrysostom, and entreated him to
   bring back that excellent bishop. What fault can you find,' she said,
   with so eloquent, gentle, and orthodox a preacher? He is the only
   person in Constantinople to whom I, and the ladies of my Court, and the
   Emperor can listen with the smallest comfort.' And so she went on,
   infusing into every sentence the feline malice with which she hoped to
   make the Patriarch wince. She saw, however, with a pang that she could
   not even move him to anger. Chrysostom, serene in perfect integrity,
   had long acquired the habit of ignoring contemptible antagonists and
   paltry impertinences. The eagle does not worry itself about the chatter
   of jays.

   Then the Empress fairly teased the Emperor into interceding for
   Severian. By dint of taunts and tears and persistence she at last
   sitrred him sufficiently to beg the Archbishop to withdraw his
   inhibition. 'The Empress wishes it,' he said, and so, of course, do I.
   Severian's sermons do not worry us as--as some sermons do. One can
   sleep--I mean, one can listen in peace. We shall miss him.'

   As far as your wishes are concerned, Emperor, I desire profoundly to
   respect them,' said Chrysostom. I had serious misgivings about the
   Bishop of Gabala, but since you and the Empress wished it, I left him
   to fill the pulpit of St. Sophia in my absence. But the conduct for
   which I have been compelled to inhibit him was so reprehensible as to
   show his unfitness for his office. My duty to you is scarcely
   compatible with my higher duty to the Church.'

   Then I shall never hear the end of it,' said Arcadius. 'I wish you
   clergy would leave me in peace.'

   Ecclesiastical offences must be punished,' said Chrysostom, 'no less
   than secular.'

   But Eudoxia was determined at all costs to have her way. On the
   following Sunday, just before the service began, she was seen advancing
   up the nave of St. Sophia, with her attendants, and carrying in her
   arms her infant son, who was already an Augustus. The complaisance of
   the East had given to members of the Imperial Family that right to pass
   within the curtains of the sacrarium which Ambrose, with courteous
   dignity, had forbidden to Theodosius the Great in the West, when he
   pointed him to a seat below the step, and said, Emperor, this is the
   place for presbyters; your place as Emperor is below.'

   After that, even at Constantinople, Theodosius would never accept the
   invitation of Nectarius to sit inside the sacrarium. In the sight,
   however, of the whole congregation Eudoxia advanced, placed the
   imperial infant on the knees of the Patriarch, and adjured him in a
   loud voice, by the life of the Emperor and by the head of the infant
   Augustus, to recall Severian.

   To refuse would have been to create a terrible disturbance in the
   sacred building. The eyes of the Patriarch filled with tears. He bent
   down, and kissed the sweet child, whom the Empress had left in his
   arms. Thinking only of the little placid infant, his memory reverted to
   the sacred scene when the humble Virgin of Nazareth had placed the Holy
   Child in the arms of the aged Simeon, and his heart was softened. He
   could not resist the feminine persistence which had not hesitated to go
   to such strange lengths for the accomplishment of Eudoxia's purpose.
   While his judgment disapproved, the thought came over him that this was
   the wife of the Emperor, and St. Paul had required obedience to the
   powers that be, because they are ordained of God. The adjurations of
   Eudoxia were so vehement that it seemed like high treason to turn a
   deaf ear to them.

   Empress,' he said, I am scarcely justified in resisting these appeals.
   I regard the responsibility as mine no longer. On your command, which I
   understand to be that of the Emperor, I will readmit Severian to our
   Communion.'

   A swift messenger from the Empress bore the tidings to Chalcedon, and
   Severian returned, exulting in his bad heart at the Patriarch's
   humiliation. Yet even now he was dependent on the forbearance of the
   man whom he had so disgracefully endeavoured to undermine. For though
   the Empress might almost force on the Archbishop the withdrawal of his
   inhibition, the populace had a voice in the matter. They were quite
   likely to make Constantinople too hot to hold Severian, and would have
   thought but little of ejecting him by force from any Church which he
   attempted to enter. But it was not Chrysostom's way to do things by
   halves. If he were forced to recall Severian, he would cherish no
   hidden grudges. If he felt it his duty to respect the Imperial urgency
   by restoring him to Communion, he would do so without reservation.

   He therefore preached a sermon on the following Sunday with the object
   of smoothing down the antagonism of the people, and inducing them for
   his sake to abandon their hostility to the Bishop of Gabala. The head,'
   he said, must be united to the members, and so must the Church to the
   priest, the people to the Emperor. As the branch may not sever itself
   from the root, nor the river from its fountain, so sons must be one
   with their father, and disciples with their master. You have often
   shown your love for me, your obedience to me, and you have been willing
   for my sake even to jeopardise your lives. We are one in duty, one in
   affection. As my spiritual children, I counsel you to peace. We have
   had troubles among us. Let them end, let them be forgotten. Receive our
   brother Severian.'

   The discourse was straightforward, simple, and noble, and the name of
   Severian had been brought in with consummate force and skill. The vast
   congregation felt the sincerity of the speaker, and they broke into
   applause. Chrysostom thanked them for their implied assent to his
   proposal, and begged that as they agreed to receive Severian, they
   would receive him graciously. Such a triumph of brotherly love would
   bring peace to the Church and cause joy in heaven.

   To make the reconciliation complete Chrysostom invited Severian to
   preach on the following Sunday. His oration also has come down to us.
   It is rhetorical, fantastic, profoundly commonplace, and insincerity
   rings in every sentence and accent. Most of it is a sonorous
   amplification of the blessings of unity. 'In our cities,' he said, the
   pictures of the august brothers who rule the world--Arcadius and
   Honorius--are painted with the figure of Concord standing behind them,
   and embracing them in her maternal arms. Even so, now the peace of God
   embraces both of us in her throbbing bosom, and teaches us in separate
   bodies to keep a single mind. War is overthrown; peace reigns.'

   The pledge of peace was ratified before the Holy Table. Chrysostom was
   entirely true to it. Neither by words, nor deed, nor look did he break
   it. But Severian went away to continue as heretofore his lies, his
   plots, and his intrigues--the fat, affectionate smile upon his lips
   belying the rancour and jealousy of his venomous heart. And the heavens
   darkened more and more!
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK IV
     __________________________________________________________________

DEATH-GRAPPLES


   I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;

   A stage, where every man must play a part,

   And mine a sad one.

   Merchant of Venice, I. 1.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLIII

  'ECCE ITERUM CRISPINUS!'


   Quanti si tengon or lassù gran regi,

   Che qui staranno come porci in brago,

   Di sè lasciando orribili dispregi!

   Dante, Inf. viii. 49-51.

   'Philip,' said Eutyches one morning as he came in to the day's work,
   there are four of the strangest beings you ever saw in the Thomaites.'

   Ghosts or angels--which?' asked Philip. Are they like those you
   frightened the Goths with on the Palace walls?'

   Neither, you trifler from Antioch!' answered Eutyches, laughing; but
   they look like spectres. They are old, but astonishingly tall, and look
   gaunt, wretched, and half-starved. They are dressed only in white
   sheepskins and sandals. Their black locks are long and matted. Their
   arms and legs are bare, and are covered with the marks of scars; and
   one of them has lost an ear.'

   What do they want?'

   They will only say that they have come to throw themselves on the
   protection of the Patriarch. Proclus has told them that he is engaged,
   but that they shall be admitted in a few minutes. Do go, and take a
   glance at them.'

   Philip went into the Thomaites, and saw the four strange figures which
   Eutyches had described. They stood together, with downcast eyes, at the
   end of the hall, leaning on their staves. Their appearance as they
   stalked through the streets was so unusual that a crowd of soldiers and
   street-boys had accompanied them to the entrance of the Patriarcheion,
   and some of these were peeping in through the open gates. But the
   strangers seemed to be unconscious of the attention they excited, and
   stood silent, as if they were absorbed in their own thoughts. Their
   lips moved as in silent prayer.

   I guessed whom they must be from your description, Eutyches,' said
   Philip. A glance showed me that they were hermits from the desert of
   Nitria. They can be no other than the four celebrated Tall Brothers.
   But what can they be doing here? I hope that their presence is not
   ominous. They belong to that--saving his Sanctity--that bad Patriarch
   of Alexandria, and I have heard that they have been most infamously
   persecuted by him.'

   Tell me something about them.'

   I will tell you the little I know, Eutyches. The eldest is Ammonius. He
   was the companion of the great St. Athanasius when he was exiled in
   341, near sixty years ago, and fled to Italy. He was the first monk
   whom Rome had seen. He was then a youth from a desert monastery. The
   soft Romans were amazed at his gigantic size, his splendid figure, his
   sheepskins, his utter simplicity of life; for, amid their gorgeous
   gluttonies, he ate nothing but bread and vegetables, and drank only
   water. It was owing to the strange impulse of envy and admiration
   excited at Rome by his complete indifference to the world that
   monasteries have been introduced into Italy by Ambrose. When Athanasius
   went back Ammonius became a hermit.'

   How did he lose his ear?'

   He cut it off; and that is why he is called Parotes.'

   Why? Did he think one ear enough?' asked Eutyches, laughing.

   No; but in those days Theophilus pretended immensely to admire these
   Tall Brothers, and wanted to seize him by force and make him a bishop.
   He hated the thought of it, and only desired to live far away from a
   corrupted Church and an evil world. So he fled into the depths of the
   Libyan desert. But even thither the agents of Theophilus pursued him.
   Finding that he could not escape, he cut off his ear, and, going out to
   meet them, said, "Go! your purpose is vain. The canons forbid any man
   who is mutilated to be ordained"--and he pointed to his bleeding ear.'

   What a man!' said Eutyches. But what are those scars on their arms and
   legs?'

   The Brothers are confessors,' said Philip. Those are the stigmata left
   on them by the tortures of the Arian Valens.'

   And the three others?'

   'Theophilus, urging on them the duty of obedience, made two of them
   come and work as presbyters in Alexandria. The third, Dioscorus, he
   seized by force, gagged him that he might not appeal to Christ against
   his ordination, and consecrated him Bishop of Thermopolis.'

   What! Is he a bishop? No one rises when he enters, or takes any notice
   of him. And where is Thermopolis?'

   It is only a squalid village of a few huts near the deserts, and,
   practically, Dioscorus never ceased to be a hermit; but he is no longer
   bishop. Theophilus degraded and expelled him, and has done his best to
   degrade, to defame, and even to murder these Brothers.'

   Why? Is he a Pharaoh?' asked Eutyches.

   A Pharaoh!' said Philip, passionately. Yes, and a Nebuchadnezzar, and a
   Caiaphas, an Annas, and a Judas all in one; a whited wall, a whited
   sepulchre, full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. God forgive me
   if I err in speaking so of one of the four chief bishops of the faith!
   But Truth has her claims as well as Charity. Jeremiah cursed the priest
   Pashur, and Isaiah spoke thunder and lightnings against the drunken,
   hiccoughing priests of Jerusalem. The Prophets are full of the
   denunciation of the priests, and multitudes of them are as bad and
   false in these days as then.'

   What makes you so very hot against Theophilus?' asked Eutyches. 'Oh,
   Philip! since you lost David, and since Miriam went away, you are so
   much sadder and more gloomy. I wish I could ease your troubled heart.'

   Eutyches,' said Philip,' you are very dear to me. But for you and
   him--my father--I know not how I could bear life, for all around us is
   blackness and falsity and wickedness. But the reason why my anger burns
   against this Theophilus is because I know that he is moving earth and
   hell to wreak his vengeance and jealousy on him. And oh!' said Philip,
   wringing his hands, something tells me that he will prevail. Our
   Patriarch beside him is but as a guileless child. He is no match for
   deceit and treachery. They paralyse him with the same sort of horrible
   fascination which makes the bird drop into the serpent's jaws.'

   God forbid!' said the boy, making the sign of averting the evil eye,
   which is, in the East, of immemorial antiquity.

   Amen!' said Philip; but this Patriarch of Alexandria, this successor of
   Athanasius, is the wickedest man I ever heard of, even in the
   Church--and that is saying a good deal when one thinks of Severian,
   John the Deacon, Antoninus of Ephesus, the sorcerer Gerontius, the
   bribed liar Eusebius of Valentinianopolis, Elpidius that deadly hater,
   Isaac the Monk, and a good many more.'

   Even in the Church? Oh, Philip!'

   Alas! alas that it should be so!' said Philip; but so it is. A bad
   priest seems to me the worst of men.'

   You are right, Philip,' said Serapion, who heard the last sentence as
   he entered. A bad priest is the worst curse the Church can have. He is
   pledged to meekness, and he is insolent; he professes truth, and he is
   infamously slanderous; he should be a servant of all, and he is the
   most unscrupulous of usurpers; he preaches the law of liberty, and he
   imposes the yoke of bondage; he should be an example of lowliness, and
   he lords it over God's heritage. When you are ordained, Eutyches,
   remember always that a Christian presbyter is a presbyter, and in no
   sense more a priest than every true Christian is.'

   I do not think that our Eutyches will fail in lowliness,' said Philip.
   He reserves all his impudence for me.'

   Don't believe him, Archdeacon,' said Eutyches; but now, Philip, tell me
   more about these holy Brothers.'

   It must be very briefly, then, for they will be ushered in directly.
   Ammonius and Dioscorus remained in the desert, but Theophilus insisted
   on keeping the two others at Alexandria, where they grew more and more
   miserable as they began to see the greed, tyranny, and hypocrisy of
   their Patriarch. They entreated to be allowed to return to Nitria, and
   Theophilus, who saw their mistrust of him, has hated them ever since.'

   But they must have offended him in some way.'

   Yes, Eutyches; and how do you think? Theophilus is a very idolater of
   gold. A legacy had been left to his sister for the use of the Church,
   and he declared that it had been promised to her for her own use.
   Isidore declared that he had never heard a syllable on the subject. He
   then began to defame Isidore, and appealed to the four Brothers to
   support his slander. They, on the contrary, swore that Isidore had
   always lived a holy life. Theophilus was mad with rage. He cannot
   endure being resisted. He is accustomed to treat his bishops, priests,
   and monks as the merest slaves, whom he can cashier, imprison, or put
   to death without reason at his pleasure. He can do this the more easily
   because most of the Egyptian magistrates are in his pay. But since he
   could attack the Brothers in no other way, he used his last and most
   terrible resource, which always is to charge men with heresy.'

   What heresy?'

   What he calls Origenism, the silliest and most unmeaning of all
   charges.'

   I thought that Origen was one of the saintliest Christian teachers.'

   The greatest Christian writer since the days of the Apostles. But some
   brutal and ignorant monks deem him a heretic, so Theophilus denounced
   the Brothers for Origenism.'

   What is Origenism?'

   No one has the least notion. Origen was a voluminous writer; even in
   his lifetime his writings were grossly interpolated. A bad man like
   Theophilus finds it easy to call a man an Origenist, and crush him.
   Then came the affair of Isidore.'

   What Isidore?--the one whom he wanted to make Patriarch?'

   Yes; Isidore become Hospitaller of Alexandria. A noble lady, knowing
   that Theophilus is "stone-mad" in building churches, and that much of
   his fund is grossly misapplied, gave Isidore a thousand pounds for the
   poor, on the express condition that he would not tell Theophilus. But
   Theophilus, who has hundreds of spies in his pay, heard of it, and in
   revenge trumped up a false charge against Isidore, which he suddenly
   produced at a synod of the clergy.'

   What was the charge?'

   It is too horrible to tell you, Eutyches. Isidore, who is an old man of
   eighty, challenged proof. Theophilus had bribed a youth to accuse him,
   but the consciences of the young man and of his mother smote them; they
   shrank from the wicked perjury, denied the asserted crime altogether,
   and the charge hopelessly broke down. Nevertheless, Theophilus forced
   his wretched herd of barbarous Egyptian bishops to degrade Isidore, and
   he fled to the Four Brothers in the Sketic desert. I do not know what
   happened afterwards.'

   Your story has interested me almost terribly,' said Eutyches. 'I must
   slip into the Thomaites and have another look at these famous men.'

   He went out, and found the Bishop of Helenopolis talking to the
   Brothers. Palladius came, and asked him when the Patriarch would be
   free to see his suppliants.

   In a few moments,' said Eutyches.

   Then I will come into your anteroom, if I may,' said Palladius, 'and
   will myself introduce them when they can be received.'

   When he had entered the anteroom, Philip said to him, 'My Lord,
   Eutyches is dying to ask you something about the Tall Brothers, but he
   is too modest.'

   I know all their story,' said Palladius, with whom Eutyches was a
   favourite, and I shall be happy to tell him. What does he want to
   know?'

   Tell us, Bishop,' said Eutyches, what happened to them after Isidore
   fled to them.'

   It is a very sad story, my boy,' said the Bishop. The Brothers came to
   Alexandria, and, knowing that Isidore was innocent, implored Theophilus
   to restore him. He promised that he would--and did nothing. Then they
   came again, and Ammonius reminded him that he was breaking his promise.
   Resistance to his will always drives Theophilus into demoniacal fury.
   He flung Ammonius into prison. His brothers declared that they would
   share his prison. But the Alexandrians were so horrified that they
   began to murmur. Theophilus, in alarm, had the Brothers turned out into
   the streets, and in their humility they thought it right to go to him.
   Ammonius spoke for them with perfect calmness and dignity, yet as he
   listened Theophilus sat glaring at them with fierce aspect and
   bloodshot eyes, sometimes pale, sometimes livid, and sometimes with a
   bitter sardonic smile. Then suddenly, without a word of notice, he
   sprang up, seized Ammonius by the throat, and smote him in the face so
   brutally with his heavy hand that the blood gushed out, while he kept
   yelling, "Heretic! anathematise Origen!" The mere name of Origen had
   not once been mentioned.'

   Had he never read,' said Philip, that a bishop should be no striker? It
   sounds incredible.'

   It may well do so,' said Palladius, even of a Nero or a Commodus; much
   more of a Christian Patriarch. But he then summoned in his soldiers,
   with his own hands twisted a halter round the neck of Ammonius, and
   ordered the Four Brothers, laden with chains, to be conducted back to
   Nitria.'

   At this point Chrysostom called to Philip to admit the Tall Brothers.
   Philip told him that Palladius was present, and would introduce them.

   They entered the Patriarch's presence, and with great humility kneeled,
   and kissed his hand. It is a joy to us,' they said, to see your
   Sanctity.'

   Nay, rise,' said Chrysostom. It is I who should kiss the hands of the
   friends of Athanasius, the scarred confessors under the tyranny of
   Valens. And call me only bishop, not your Sanctity.'

   Thanks,' said Ammonius; but the Patriarch of Alexandria will never
   allow himself to be addressed without endless iterations of your
   Beatitude, and your Religiousness, and your Dignity, and your Holiness.
   It will be a far easier task for our rude simplicity if you will let us
   address you more freely.'

   Speak,' said Chrysostom, as a brother to brethren, as a man to men.'

   Doubtless, sir,' said Ammonius, who as the eldest spoke for the others,
   you know our sad story up to the time when Theophilus sent us back,
   disgraced and in chains, to our brethren for no fault, bidding us
   anathematise Origen, about whom we had spoken no single word.'

   How could you at his bidding anathematise a saint of God?' asked
   Chrysostom. I thought that Theophilus himself was an admirer of the
   Adamantine?'

   He was,' said Ammonius, but he turned round in the strangest way.
   Origen held that God is a Spirit. But the illiterate monks whom they
   call "Anthropomorphites" maintained with savage fury that God has very
   hands and feet and eyes like men, and they rose in one of their
   fanatical tumults and rushed to Alexandria to murder Theophilus for not
   sharing their view. He was in great alarm, and, advancing, said to
   them, "In seeing you, holy monks, I see the very face of God."
   Delighted at this flattery, they embraced instead of killing him, and
   since then he has seen how powerful a weapon he may wield against his
   enemies, and you among them, Archbishop.'

   No man is a heretic,' said Chrysostom, because another man, in
   ignorance or in malice, may choose to call him so. But proceed.'

   We returned to Nitria chained, maltreated, slandered, excommunicated,
   covered with blood. Then an order came from the Patriarch that in every
   monastery every work of Origen was to be burned. Many of the
   manuscripts were comments on Scripture, rare, and holy, and full of
   learning.'

   To that I can testify,' said Chrysostom.

   Naturally there were some among us who, highly valuing these works,
   were reluctant to obey an order so unjust. Theophilus had his spies
   even in the Nitrian desert, who informed him of all that we did and
   said. Five of them were men of the lowest order, not worthy even to be
   porters; one of these Theophilus ordained a deacon, three of them
   presbyters, and for one he created a sham see in a miserable hamlet. He
   then entrusted to them a petition to himself, written by himself, full
   of false accusations against the Nitrian monks. After a short time
   these five spies left their cells, entered Alexandria, went straight to
   the church where the Patriarch was officiating, and, prostrating
   themselves before his throne, presented him, as though in the deepest
   grief, his own petition. Theophilus held up his hands in pretence of
   holy horror as he read the libel which his own hand had written,
   exclaiming that if heresy was to be extirpated he must visit Nitria in
   person. He sent to the magistrates to lend him a band of soldiers. To
   these he added the numerous servants of his palace and the paid bravoes
   who execute his vengeance. He deluged them with drink, and at their
   head he started for the desert, timing his visit that he might arrive
   after nightfall. It was dark when they reached the mountains and burst
   upon us. In the terror of that midnight, multitudes of the monks fled
   and hid themselves, like Elias of old, in the rocky gullies. The cells
   of the monks were given up to the brutal soldiery. Few, as you know,
   were their possessions; but their little stores of food, their lamps,
   their books, and all that they possessed, were plundered.'

   How came you to escape?'

   We were the chief mark for his vengeance. To seize us had been his main
   desire. But our small laura was built far away in the recesses of the
   hills, and a hermit, flying to us in terror, told us that a wild boar
   was ravaging the vineyard of the Lord, and that one of the assailants,
   our secret friend, had bidden him warn us that we were to be slain.
   Flight was impossible, for all the paths were blocked by these Sons of
   Gehenna. Hastily our brethren let us down with cords into a well, over
   whose mouth they heaped wood and stones. They were only just in time.
   Scarcely were we concealed than the varletry of Theophilus burst into
   our laura. In their rage at not finding us they sacked our cells, tore
   our sacred books, smashed our beds and humble furniture, pierced the
   very walls to make sure that we were not in secret hiding, and, lastly,
   heaped fuel about our dwelling and set it on fire. The flames spread
   rapidly through the wattled huts in the hot, dry, desert air. We had
   left a poor boy to save, if he could, any of our possessions. He was
   the son of one who had left all to join our community, and had been
   trained among our hills in temperance and holiness. We all loved him.
   He perished in the flames.'

   The aged face of the speaker was bathed in tears, and the Patriarch, as
   he listened to the tale of their misery, groaned aloud.

   Even the sacred vessels of the Eucharist were melted; even the holy
   elements which had been consecrated were consumed to ashes in the
   conflagration.'

   Oh, horrible!' said Chrysostom.

   Leaving nothing behind him but blackened ashes, amid which lay the
   half-calcined bones of our poor boy, Theophilus and his brigands
   departed. When we were drawn out of our well, half-dead with cold, that
   was the sight which greeted us. Whither should we go? As we walked,
   hungry and wailing, down the hill, a few fugitives came from their
   hiding-places, and told us that as Egypt could no more be a home for
   us, they would fly to Syria, and meet us at a spot to the west of the
   Red Sea. There eighty of us met. Three hundred had started, but many
   were old and infirm, and perished by hunger on the way. Among the
   survivors were abbots, presbyters, deacons, monks--some of great age,
   many branded with the marks of the tortures which they had endured as
   confessors for the faith of Christianity. We determined to make our way
   to Palestine and throw ourselves on the protection of John, the good
   Bishop of Jerusalem. Everywhere the people received us with love and
   reverence; but even here Theophilus circumvented us. He had sent a most
   haughty letter to all the bishops of Palestine, in which, as though he
   were a god----'

   It is true,' broke in Palladius. '

   He as God, sitting in the temple of God, showeth himself that he is
   God.'

   I hope not, Palladius,' said Chrysostom, for that was written of the
   Antichrist.'

   Is not that man an Antichrist, my Lord Patriarch,' said Palladius, who,
   while he assumes the place of Christ, overthrows the work of Christ?'

   Chrysostom made a sign to Ammonius to proceed.

   His brief letter to the Palestinian bishops ran thus: "You ought not,
   against my will, to receive these monks into my cities. I only pardon
   you because you have done it in ignorance. Henceforth beware how you
   admit into any place, ecclesiastical or private, those whom I
   excommunicate." Before he received this letter Bishop John desired to
   show us every kindness. But now we were hunted by Theophilus out of
   Palestine as though we were felons. We took ship at Joppa. Our number
   is now reduced to fifty, and we are come, O Patriarch! to throw
   ourselves on thy protection, knowing thee to be a lover of
   righteousness.'

   My brothers,' answered Chrysostom, weeping, I grieve for your
   misfortunes, but you are not under my jurisdiction. It behoves me to
   walk warily. A Council, whatever its character, has condemned you;
   until another Council, or your own Patriarch, has reversed your
   sentence the laws of the Church tie my hands. Reveal not why you have
   come hither till I have written to Theophilus. I may not yet
   communicate with you, but my Churches are all open to you for prayer,
   and for the supply of your bodily needs.'

   They are very small,' said Ammonius. If we can get palm-leaves, the
   mats and baskets which we make sell for prices far beyond their value,
   and buy us food.'

   Still, the deaconess Olympias and her sisterhood will see that you are
   cared for, and as your home I assign to you the precincts of the Church
   of the Resurrection, so dear to my great predecessor, Gregory of
   Nazianzus.'

   No conduct could have been more prudent or just under circumstances of
   the utmost delicacy; and in order to lose no time Chrysostom wrote to
   Theophilus in the spirit of a brother and a son, entreating him to free
   the monks from the ban of excommunication. Of this letter Theophilus
   took no notice. Meanwhile the monks, weary of their long expulsion from
   the privileges open to the humblest Christians, drew up a letter full
   of charges against Theophilus so horrible that Bishop Palladius
   declined even to mention them, because, he says, they would sound
   incredible. Unable to obtain redress for their wrongs, they threatened
   to appeal to the Emperor, and to place this document in his hands.

   Then Chrysostom again wrote to Theophilus, and told him of the step to
   which the monks would be driven in their despair. The answer of
   Theophilus was threefold. He sent some of his own creatures--a bishop
   and four monks--to Constantinople to blacken with infamy the names of
   the Tall Brothers and their companions, by calling them heretics and
   magicians. Among the superstitious populace the poor sufferers began to
   be regarded with such aversion as to be unable without insult to leave
   their cells: the precincts of the Church of the Anastasia became their
   prison. It was here that the unhappy Isidore, the Hospitaller, whom
   Theophilus had once striven his utmost to make Patriarch of
   Constantinople, and had subsequently ruined by deeds of characteristic
   infamy, died at the age of eighty-five. To Chrysostom Theophilus wrote
   a curt and arrogant letter of three lines: 'I thought you knew the
   Nicene canons which forbid bishops to judge quarrels outside their own
   dioceses. If you are ignorant of those canons, attend to them now. If I
   ought to be tried, it can only be before Egyptian bishops, not by you,
   who are seventy-five days distant.' Lastly he excommunicated the fourth
   brother, Dioscorus, had him dragged from his episcopal throne by black
   slaves, and abolished his diocese. Dioscorus fled, and rejoined his
   brothers.

   Several circumstances gave Theophilus an immense influence, even in
   Constantinople. The city depended on Alexandria for its supply of corn
   from the granaries of Africa, and for this reason the port was often
   crowded with Egyptian vessels, and the streets with Egyptian merchants
   and sailors. Theophilus was in all but name the lord of Egypt. He
   could, if he chose, reduce the capital to famine, as Athanasius had
   been accused of doing in the days of Constantine. And not only were
   these Egyptians, mostly of the lowest orders, at his disposal for
   purposes of mischief, but he used his enormous wealth to bribe every
   civil and Court official who was open to venal advances.

   But as Chrysostom was powerless the Brothers, now maddened by wrongs
   and misery, determined at last to address Arcadius. With his usual
   ill-fortune Chrysostom, who desired only to do all that was wise and
   just, had to brave the bitterness of a twofold animosity. The friends
   of the Brothers accused him of slackness in their cause, at the same
   moment that the mind of Theophilus was surcharged with venomous hatred
   against him because he had defended them.

   But now the monks secured a powerful and unexpected ally.

   The Augusta, in her manifold religiosity, was fond of paying public
   visits to every church which was regarded as specially sacred; and all
   the more as she had now turned her back on St. Sophia to show her
   dislike of Chrysostom. One day she announced her intention to visit the
   Church of St. John the Baptist at the Hebdomon, where the unhappy
   Gaïnas had prayed for deliverance from the demon who tormented him. The
   monks, headed by the Tall Brothers, placed themselves conspicuously in
   her path. She was riding in a splendid carriage surrounded by her
   guards. Seeing the strange band in their sheepskin dresses, she
   recognised by the tallness of their stature the persecuted saints, of
   whom she had heard so much. She ordered her carriage to be stopped, and
   signed to them to come forward. They placed their terrible complaint
   against Theophilus in her hands, and explained its purport. Eudoxia had
   not the least intention to be braved by Theophilus, any more than by
   Chrysostom. What were Patriarchs to her unless they obeyed her wishes?
   Her motto was, L'Empire c'est moi. 'The Patriarch of Alexandria shall
   be summoned here,' she said, and shall be tried by a Council on the
   crimes which you lay to his charge. And you, reverend fathers, pray for
   me, and for the Emperor, and for my children.'

   She kept her promise. Her chamberlain was at once despatched to
   Alexandria to summon the Patriarch to answer for the high crimes and
   misdemeanours with which he was charged. He received the command in
   savage and sinister silence. He saw in this summons the manoeuvre of a
   rival. The affair of the Tall Brothers was now beneath his notice. His
   revenge demanded the utter ruin of Chrysostom. He would come, not only
   as an accuser, but as a judge.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLIV

  EPIPHANIUS INTERVENES


   As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,

   And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!'

   Merchant of Venice, I. 1.

   One way, and one way only, was open by which the Patriarch of
   Alexandria might hope to ruin the Patriarch of Constantinople. Had
   their rôles been reversed--had the soul of Chrysostom been burning with
   unholy rage against Theophilus, he could have brought home to his
   adversary crime after crime of the deepest dye, and, by an appeal to
   the people, could easily have destroyed him. But Chrysostom held it
   better even to perish at the hands of the wicked than to use their own
   methods to overthrow them. '

   Ye have condemned, ye have killed the just; he doth not resist you.'

   Lying defamation was a weapon in the use of which Theophilus was a
   deadly expert. But he might as well have tried to throw dirt against
   heaven and stain it, as attempt to gain credence for lies which could
   induce people to believe that Chrysostom was a reprobate. How saintly
   the Patriarch's life had been was known to all. No human being attached
   importance to the slanders which bad bishops and criminous clerks
   disseminated respecting him. But surely as a youth he could not have
   been so immaculate in his white innocence as now he was? Surely some
   old, dead scandal might be raked up against him out of the fetid embers
   of bygone calumnies in the vicious purlieus of Antioch where he had
   lived till manhood?

   At any rate, it was worth trying, and Isaac the Monk was despatched on
   the loathly but congenial mission of attempting to pick up some rag of
   slander out of the long-putrescent gutters of the Syrian capital. No
   fitter emissary could have been chosen than this pestilent hypocrite;
   but his attempt failed ignominiously. He could find nothing wherewith
   to incriminate the Archbishop, even in the days of his unbaptised and
   unconverted youth. And when the Antiochenes began to suspect the object
   of all these inquiries of this unsavoury monk, he narrowly escaped
   being kicked and pelted out of the city, and had to run for his life.

   But what did that matter? If defamation of character was more difficult
   in the case of Chrysostom than of most men, nothing was less likely
   than that the prolific inventiveness of ecclesiastical hatred should
   fail to find some other means to wreak its purposes upon him. Heresy
   was a charge no less fatal than crime. In the hands of an able accuser
   it was easily manipulated; and, of all charges, that of Origenism was
   the one which filled the minds of the ignorant with the greatest amount
   of vague alarm. Chrysostom should be branded with the stigma of
   Origenism.

   But it would be highly convenient if the charge could be fixed on him
   by someone whose name would not at once, like that of Theophilus,
   excite incredulous scorn as to his sincerity. Theophilus--who had
   himself contemptuously rejected anthropomorphism until it suited his
   purpose to seem to favour it, and who had been in every sense as much
   an Origenist as Chrysostom ever was--at first thought of securing the
   services of Jerome. The mind of Jerome was intensely sensitive to the
   slightest suspicion of heresy. He had been an ardent admirer of Origen,
   had openly extolled his greatness, had translated and disseminated some
   of his books. But now, in his terror of being thought guilty of heresy,
   he turned completely round, and belied his own honesty and
   intelligence. There was a sort of basilisk power in Theophilus which
   paralysed opposition. He induced Jerome to translate into Latin the
   letter in which the Egyptian had called his rival an impure demon who
   had sold his soul to the devil'; but the timid Recluse of Bethlehem was
   obviously unqualified to take part in any active crusade.

   So Theophilus determined to make a catspaw of the aged and highly
   venerated Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, whom no one would
   suspect of ulterior objects. Epiphanius was saintly and fairly learned,
   but his simple nature had two great foibles, which made him an easy
   tool in the hands of the astute intriguer. He had written a book which
   he regarded as a sufficient answer to all heresies, and having all his
   life long entertained that rooted belief in his own theological
   infallibility which is the specialty of many ecclesiastics, he had now
   sunk into a senile vanity which made him indignant if anyone disputed
   his oracular utterances. The meddling instincts of a heresy-hunter had
   already led him to a series of gross and illegal aggressions in the
   diocese of John of Jerusalem, of which he had quite needlessly, and
   somewhat treacherously, disturbed the peace. It required all the
   gentleness of John to forgive and tolerate him; but Epiphanius,
   revelling in the incense of adoration offered by the common people to
   his saintliness, was blinded by self-conceit to the disorders and
   improprieties of which he had been guilty. What were Church canons to
   him, when he was the only man who could set the Church right on all
   matters of religious opinion? Canons of episcopal discipline could not
   apply to a man who had refuted all the heresies.

   The name of Origen acted like a red rag to the old man's self-satisfied
   infallibility. How could any man say a word in favour of the
   Adamantine, when he had shown how 'dangerous' were his views? Every
   competent observer, except himself, was well aware that he had never
   read Origen's books; that, if he had, he was incapable of understanding
   them; and that intellectually, and perhaps even morally, he was
   scarcely worthy to tie the shoes of the holiest thinker whom the Church
   had produced since the days of the Apostles.

   Theophilus knew his man. He sent him the decree of his precious
   Egyptian synod of sycophants and nobodies who had condemned Origen, and
   with it a humble, flattering letter, in which he intensely gratified
   the old bishop's egregious vanity by saying that he
   himself--Theophilus--had once been entangled in Origenistic errors,
   from which the learned wisdom of Epiphanius had liberated him as a bird
   out of the snare of the fowler. Would not the saintly Bishop of Salamis
   once more save the world and the Church by summoning a Council to
   anathematise Origen and forbid all men to read his books? Would he not,
   especially, save Constantinople and the Eastern world from its
   heretical Patriarch, who, with the Tall Brothers, was perverting his
   diocese with the Origenistic heresies which Epiphanius had long ago
   refuted?

   Epiphanius scented the heresy-hunt from afar, and went over to
   Theophilus with a bound. Egregiously duped both as to facts and
   opinions, and completely blinded to his own non-jurisdiction and
   incompetence in the matter, he summoned his suffragans, and summarily
   anathematised Origen and all his works.

   To Epiphanius the sole norm of orthodoxy was agreement with himself. If
   anyone had a religious opinion which differed from his own he was a'
   wrang, and a' wrang, and a'thegither a' wrang'; and was not only a'
   wrang, but also perverse, blind, ignorant, and presumably wicked. He is
   in this respect one of the commonest of ecclesiastical types.

   Theophilus sent the decree of this ignorant synod and of his own to
   Chrysostom with another curt and insolent letter; but he, seeing
   through the plot, and profoundly uninterested in the fury of the
   theological insects' who were crawling over the sacred dust of Origen,
   put aside the whole matter as a petty dispute which did not concern
   him, and sent no reply.

   Nettled at the unconcern which Chrysostom showed respecting his
   decisions--an unconcern due only to the fact that he was no more
   Origenistic than most of the wisest and ablest Fathers of the Church
   had been--Epiphanius now accepted the suggestion that, though he was
   eighty, he should go in person to Constantinople, and set things in
   order in the diocese of a superior in which he had not the least
   legitimate footing. He braved the dangerous winds, sailed through the
   Cyclades, and landed near the Church of St. John the Baptist at the
   Hebdomon.

   From that moment his whole career at the capital was foolish and
   disorderly. He officiated and preached at the church, and, as he had
   done in the Diocese of Jerusalem, again flagrantly violated all
   ecclesiastical rule by ordaining a deacon. In spite of this, Chrysostom
   and his clergy received him with the respect due to his age and
   saintliness, and the Patriarch invited him to share his hospitality.

   Not unless you swear to excommunicate the Tall Brothers and
   anathematise Origen,' said Epiphanius, rudely. 'Nay,' said Chrysostom,
   as regards that question we must await the decision of a General
   Council.' Very well,' said the Bishop; then I shall go to a private
   lodging prepared for me by the agents of Theophilus.'

   In spite of this petulant rebuff Chrysostom, in forbearance to a
   senility intoxicated with the sense of its own self-importance, sent
   Philip to the lodging of Epiphanius, the next morning, to invite him to
   take part in the service of St. Sophia.

   Tell your master,' said Epiphanius, that I cannot lend the sanction of
   my authority to heresy.'

   Philip was unwilling to carry back so crude an insult. Bowing and
   reddening, he asked, Has your Dignity no further answer to the request
   of the Patriarch?'

   None,' said Epiphanius.

   He may be a saint,' said Philip, indignantly, to Eutyches, who awaited
   him outside, but he is certainly a churl.'

   But Epiphanius, as if he held in his hand the keys of all the creeds,
   invited every bishop who happened to be at Constantinople, denounced
   Origen with all his might, and induced not a few of them to subscribe
   to his condemnation, though they knew as little about Origen as
   Epiphanius himself. All, however, were not so flexible. Among them was
   Theotimus, Metropolitan of Scythia, whose holiness of life and loving
   magnanimity at Tomi, on the Euxine--famous as the scene of Ovid's
   exile--had won the Goths to devout admiration, and had even softened
   his savage neighbours, the Huns, who, struck with the loving homage by
   which he was surrounded, called him, in their ignorance, the God of the
   Romans.' Saint and confessor, he had even acquired a reputation for
   working miracles, and when he rose, wearing the long locks which he had
   never cut, there was silence among the bishops. Educated in Greece,
   Theotimus had carried some of the works of Origen to his Scythian see,
   and there read them with profound advantage. He drew one of these
   manuscripts from his bosom; and read aloud page after page of teachings
   full of depth and beauty. 'Is this the man whom you want us to
   anathematise?' he asked; 'this saint, whose holy teaching abounds in
   high and orthodox instruction? To condemn him thus indiscriminately is
   to condemn the sacred books, which he expounded as no one else has done
   so wisely. If you find anything wrong in his books, reject it; but do
   not because of it obliterate all the abounding good.'

   It was, however, useless to appeal to men whose condemnation was due
   either to ignorant prejudice, opiniated misconception, or hateful ends;
   and Epiphanius himself felt that such condemnation was of very little
   avail. He wanted to appeal to the people, who received him with
   veneration, and he actually had the temerity to announce that he would
   preach a sermon against the errors of Chrysostom in one of his own
   churches--the Church of the Apostles. But even Chrysostom, with all his
   boundless forbearance towards the intrusive old man, now found it
   necessary to interfere with an act of infatuation which might well have
   caused a tumult dangerous to Epiphanius himself. He sent Serapion to
   inhibit him.

   Bishop,' said Serapion. you have acted, and are acting, with
   discourtesy and irregularity. Be warned in time, or you must take the
   consequences.'

   The firm rebuke made Epiphanius pause in his wilfulness; and he
   received another from the Empress herself. At this time her little son,
   Theodosius II., fell ill, and in her usual devotion to strange bishops
   she sent to ask the Bishop of Salamis to pray for him. 'Tell her,' said
   the old man--whom we can hardly regard as responsible for his
   actions--'that the child will live if she ceases to favour heresies and
   heretics.' The Empress was justly offended. Tell him,' she replied,
   that my child's life is in God's hands, not in his.' Such, however, was
   her superstition that she sent for one of the Tall Brothers, and asked
   him to speak to the aged Bishop.

   All four of them went to him. He had never seen one of them before.

   Has your Sanctity ever seen one of our disciples,' asked Ammonius, 'or
   read one of our books?'

   Never,' said Epiphanius.

   Ought you not, then, to have done so before you judged us?' said the
   hermit. We have done so as regards you. We have spoken to your
   disciples; we have read your "Anchor of the Faith." There are many who
   condemn you as a heretic, and we have ever maintained your orthodoxy;
   yet you vituperate us without ever having cared to ascertain our real
   opinions!'

   At last the eyes of the old man were opened. He saw that he had been
   hasty, uncharitable, unjust; he saw that he had made himself the
   deluded victim of a wicked intrigue aimed by bad men against the
   righteous and the good. The moment he was convinced of his folly he
   threw up his unintentional share in proceedings so nefarious, grieved
   that the last conspicuous act of his life should have been so little to
   his credit. He hastened to return to Salamis. Some bishops accompanied
   him to his vessel. His disillusioned bitterness found vent in his
   farewell words to them. 'I leave you,' he said, your capital, and your
   palace, and your theatrical hypocrisy. I depart from you. I haste, I
   haste away.'

   He and Chrysostom parted in mutual anger. He was the wronger;
   Chrysostom the wronged. Yet he would not apologise or admit how
   egregiously he had been in the wrong. I hope you will not die a
   bishop,' said he to Chrysostom. 'I do not think you will ever arrive at
   home,' replied the Patriarch. Let us drop a veil over the dissensions
   of saints--for even saints err. ONE only was without sin. If the words
   were ever spoken, they were sadly fulfilled.

   They are the last recorded words of Epiphanius. He did not survive the
   voyage home, but died on board ship, his death being doubtless hastened
   by chagrin at his total failure, and by self-humiliation at his
   unjustifiable and arrogant intermeddling with affairs which did not
   belong to him, and questions which he was too prejudiced and ordinary
   to understand.

   So far, then, Chrysostom had behaved with wisdom, self-repression, and
   generous forbearance, and had triumphed almost without striking a blow.
   But now he fell into one of those errors of judgment which are so
   venial, yet so fatal. A mistake in this world is often far more ruinous
   than a crime.

   For this was the unfortunate moment which he chose to launch another of
   his impassioned diatribes at the worldliness, the luxury, the
   intrigues, the meretricious bedizenment of wealthy and high-born women.
   The sermon has not come down to us; perhaps it was purposely suppressed
   by the shorthand-writers, lest it should bring them into trouble. But
   it was at once perverted and misquoted, and reported to the Augusta in
   the most malignant form, as though it had been deliberately intended
   for a flagrant attack upon herself. Indeed, Chrysostom could hardly
   allude in the most distant and historic way to Elijah and Jezebel
   without being accused of glorifying himself and fixing treasonable
   nicknames on the Empress.

   This sort of travesty of what he had said had become so normal that he
   had chosen as his third amanuensis an excellent youth, named Kallias,
   who had made himself so skilled a reporter that no swift writer' in
   Constantinople could equal him in rapidity and accuracy. Left an orphan
   in early years, he had been trained in a monastery; but finding as he
   grew to boyhood that he had no vocation for the monastic life, he had
   ardently thrown himself into the task of reporting' as a means of
   gaining a livelihood. Nothing which could be called shorthand' then
   existed, but Kallias could practically take down an entire speech or
   sermon in such a way as enabled him afterwards, by the aid of memory,
   to write it out exactly as it had been delivered. It is to Kallias that
   we owe the preservation of many of Chrysostom's later homilies; and
   sometimes, by referring to the reports of Kallias, the Archbishop was
   able effectually to refute--when he deigned to do so--the hideous
   parodies of what he really had said which were falsely attributed to
   him.

   Kallias had been with Philip and Eutyches at the delivery of the sermon
   on the sinful extravagances of women, and Philip saw at once that it
   was fraught with peril. As he walked out with the two other youths he
   said: 'We shall hear again of that sermon. Oh that our Patriarch had
   more of the serpent's wisdom with the dove's harmlessness!'

   He would say, I suppose,' answered Eutyches, as I have often heard him
   say, that he can only speak what it is given him to speak at the time.'

   Not for one moment do I presume to blame him,' said Philip. But these
   sermons will be his ruin.'

   But what can be done?' asked Eutyches. This sermon will be represented
   to Eudoxia in a way which will make her mad. What says Kallias?'

   I have done what little I could,' said Kallias. 'I noticed that the
   only other "swift writer" present was Phocas, who reports for Severian.
   I know him of old. I have observed that he purposely introduces
   malignant words and touches, or gives a turn to sentences which they
   never had in the context.'

   Oh! as for that,' said Philip, I had not been a month in Constantinople
   before I found out that the normal way of criticism was to attribute to
   an opponent something which might pass for what he said. A word or two
   here and there, culled out of separate sentences, and pieced together
   as a quotation, makes smart criticism, and a splendid basis for
   attacking a man whose real words were wholly different.'

   Exactly,' said Kallias; and that is what Phocas tries to do in the
   interests of Severian. But to-day someone has spoiled his little game.'

   How?'

   Oh! there was a great crowd as we left the Cathedral, and Phocas was
   sitting on a chair at one side, trying to write out his notes, when
   someone upset his inkstand right over all his tablets, so that he
   cannot possibly make them out.'

   Someone,' said Philip, laughing. Oh, Kallias!'

   Well,' answered Kallias, blushing a little, 'I really thought it quite
   fair after all his deliberate scoundreldom.'

   It won't prevent gossips from retailing the sermon to the Empress under
   the worst guise, I fear,' said Eutyches.

   No, Eutyches, it won't. The days are darkening round us. I expect that
   before long we shall have to say with the Maccabees,

   "Let us die in our simplicity."'

   The youths were right. Eudoxia was informed that Chrysostom had
   savagely preached at her in St. Sophia. The information, purposely
   distorted by Epigraphia and the bishops, monks, and priests, drove her
   into one of the paroxysms of rage to which she yielded without
   restraint. Hitherto she had sided with the Tall Brothers, and it was
   she who had induced Arcadius to summon Theophilus before a synod for
   judgment. Now the Tall Brothers and their wrongs were nothing to her.
   She wrote to Theophilus, urging him to come with as many Egyptian
   bishops' (so-called) as he could scrape together, and to come with the
   express object of destroying Chrysostom.

   And his bad heart exulted, and he felt sure that at last the hour for
   revenge had come!
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLV

  EPISCOPAL CONSPIRATORS


   Slander the stylus, Treason plied the knife;

   And, preaching peace, Religion practised strife.

   Lord Lytton, Chronicles and Characters.

   Theophilus sent his twenty-eight bishops by sea. Strange bishops they
   were! Men with the names of barbarous Egyptian gods, bishops of
   collections of mud huts and crocodile swamps on the banks of the Nile,
   bishops ignorant of everything in the choir of heaven and the furniture
   of earth, and so completely subservient to their wicked and terrorising
   Patriarch that at a crook of his finger they would have been prepared
   to condemn Athanasius himself. And these were the men who, at the
   instigation of his deadliest enemies, were in his own diocese to sit in
   judgment on the chief Patriarch of the East, the greatest saint,
   orator, and writer of his age, in the teeth of the decisions of the
   bishops assembled around him, more, and more honourable than
   they--among whom were seven metropolitans.

   The Egyptians were to await their Patriarch at Chalcedon, where their
   dull and blind animosities might be daily exacerbated by the diatribes
   of Bishop Cyrinus, who never spoke of Chrysostom except as the
   arrogant, the ruthless, and the heretical.

   Theophilus himself came more leisurely by land. He did this with an
   object. On the one hand, he left the evil leaven to work; on the other,
   he could gather conspirators in the Churches of Syria and Asia Minor,
   who received him with adulations because of his high rank, and to whom
   he sedulously announced that he was on his way to depose the Patriarch
   of Constantinople. His attempt, however, was not very successful. In
   addition to his twenty-eight Egyptian parasites he only inveigled seven
   others from Armenia, Persia, and Mesopotamia. It would have been well
   for the unhappy Bishop of Chalcedon if one of these had never come. It
   was Maruthas, Bishop of Mesopotamia. He was a man of slouching gait and
   elephantine proportions, who wore heavy boots. Cyrinus was sitting on a
   divan with his legs outstretched before him. Maruthas, as he came
   blundering in, trod with all his weight on one of the feet of Cyrinus.
   The Bishop uttered a shriek of pain. The points of the iron nails, with
   which the boots of Maruthas were shod, wounded his foot in four or five
   places. The result was as though all the venom in the blood of Cyrinus
   had flowed into those wounds, in order to wreak upon him the vengeance
   of God. The wounds gangrened. It became necessary to amputate his foot;
   and it must be remembered that in those days there were no anæsthetics.
   The stump gangrened again; and it was again necessary to make an
   amputation at the knee. The leg gangrened again. There was another
   amputation, and the wretched Bishop died. He took what part he could in
   the Synod of the Oak. He signed its childish and infamous decrees; but
   he was scarcely ever able to cross over to Constantinople to aid in its
   machinations, and men saw in his frightful and lingering death a mark
   of the wrath of God for the part which Cyrinus had taken in the
   destruction of His saint.

   On Thursday, at noon, in July, 403, Theophilus, accompanied by his
   twenty-eight suffragans, crossed the Bosporus, and landed at a quay
   known as the Chalcedonian Stairs. All the Egyptian corn-ships were
   decked with streamers; all the Egyptian sailors received him with
   acclamations. He traversed the city to the Pera district, where the
   Empress had assigned to his use the palace named Placidiana, on the
   other side of the Golden Horn. In passing the Patriarcheion he
   disdainfully refused the hospitality offered with all courtesy to him
   and his bishops by Chrysostom. He would not even follow the custom of
   entering the church to join in Communion. This,' said Chrysostom to his
   friends, is nothing less than a declaration of open war.'

   It is to Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis, as well as to the letter of
   Chrysostom to Pope Innocent, that we owe our knowledge of these events.
   Theophilus, says the lively Palladius, had come from Egypt like a
   dung-beetle, except that the load which he rolled before him consisted
   of the loveliest and sweetest products of Egypt and Arabia, which were
   to be used to create the stench of hatred and envy. At the Placidiana
   the Alexandrian prelate lived en prince, winning courtiers and clergy
   alike by superb banquets and subtle flatteries, and working in concert
   with the monkish, clerical, and feminine cabals which sat in permanence
   at the house of Epigraphia. He soon got hold of tools who would
   admirably serve his purpose: the deacon John, excommunicated by
   Chrysostom for murdering his servant, and another deacon who had been
   condemned for adultery. He was also effectually aided by the three
   widows--Marsa, Castricia, and Epigraphia--and their clientéle,
   consisting of Severian of Gabala, Antiochus of Ptolemais, and Acacius
   of Beroea, together with the mass of the corrupt clergy of
   Constantinople and the concubines whom they called their spiritual
   sisters.' Theophilus felt no doubt of the result, despite the scruples
   of Arcadius, to whom it seemed strange that a number of unknown
   Egyptians, headed by a Patriarch accused of enormous delinquencies,
   should have come to his own capital to accuse his own Patriarch, whom,
   whatever might be his errors, Arcadius knew to be a saint. Moreover, at
   this moment the five previous emissaries of Theophilus were under
   sentence of death for libel, and it was only by bribery that he secured
   the modification of their sentence into relegation to Proconnesus.
   This, however, was a trifle; for Eudoxia, not Arcadius, was the real
   emperor. The people, it is true, were dead against the intruders and
   their own apostate clergy; but Theophilus secured his personal safety
   by getting from the Empress a guard of honour.

   It was, nevertheless, obvious that no Council adverse to Chrysostom
   could sit at Constantinople without danger of a riot, and Severian
   recommended its transference to the neighbouring Chalcedon, where it
   could be held in the superb palace of Rufinus, possessed years
   afterwards by Belisarius. Here the murdered Minister of Arcadius had
   built a magnificent church, called the Apostolæum, in honour of St.
   Peter and St. Paul; and hither he had, ten years earlier, summoned
   Ammonius, the eldest of the Tall brothers, as the man whose reputation
   was the saintliest in the Empire, to perform his baptism. The palace
   was called The Oak,' and the synod now held there was perhaps the most
   contemptible and infamous known in all the annals of the Church. It
   proposed to take in hand three questions--the accusations against
   Chrysostom; the affair of the Tall Brothers; and a charge of having
   stolen a deacon's clothes brought against Heracleides, whom Chrysostom
   had made Metropolitan of Ephesus. This Synod of the Oak' was known as
   the Alexandrian party; the larger synod of bishops gathered round
   Chrysostom in the Thomaites was called the Johannites,' and, among
   others, comprised among its members no less than seven metropolitans.
   There was scarcely an ecclesiastical offence against the Nicene canons
   respecting episcopal jurisdiction which this paltry and wicked synod of
   the Oak, relying on Court patronage, did not openly violate. Summoning
   before it the Constantinopolitan clergy, with outrageous impudence, it
   first considered the charges against Chrysostom, preserved for us by
   the industry of St. Proclus, who was then a young reader, but who,
   thirty years afterwards, became his successor in the See of
   Constantinople.

   John, the deacon excommunicated for homicide, accused Chrysostom, among
   other things, of having fettered a monk as a demoniac; of having
   embezzled, sold, or diverted by malversation the possessions of the
   Church; of having published a book full of insults against the clergy;
   of having charged the deacons with the theft of his gallium; of having
   ordained as bishop a grave-robber named Antonius; of having betrayed
   Count John to the soldiery, of entering and leaving church without
   prayer; of receiving women alone; of ordaining men without witnesses;
   of secret Cyclopean orgies'; of violences and irregularities in Asia;
   of having smitten Memnon in the face in the Church of the Twelve
   Apostles, and made him bleed; of having put on his bishop's robes as he
   sat on his throne; and of having eaten a pastille before the Holy
   Communion.

   To these Isaac the Monk, a worthy coadjutor of the homicide, added that
   he had favoured the Origenists; that he had used such expressions as
   The Table of the Church is full of Furies'; and I am mad with love';
   and 'If you sin again, repent again'; and that 'If Christ's prayer was
   not heard, He had not prayed aright'--and that he stirred up the people
   to sedition.

   Isaac's charges were chiefly concocted out of disconnected and
   meaningless scraps fished out of the turbid waters of notes of sermons
   garbled by Phocas, the reporter, suborned by the malign influence of
   Severian of Gabala. They were about as fair and about as true as a
   criticism of an ecclesiastical opponent written by an anonymous
   clerical reviewer in a modern Church newspaper.

   These libels--a heterogeneous amalgam of frivolities and lies--were
   redacted, on the suggestion of the two renegades, by a pen skilful in
   the manipulation of slander--that of Theophilus himself. No one
   regarded these preposterous charges as anything more than convenient
   implements of unscrupulous malignity. Those which possessed even a
   shadow of foundation were obviously steeped in the venom of
   misrepresentation. Pope Innocent and the whole Catholic world
   afterwards characterised them as ridiculous and contemptible.

   There are accusations to which a noble-minded man, conscious of his own
   blameless integrity, cannot reply, because he feels them to be beneath
   his notice. To scarcely one of all these forty or more accusations did
   the Archbishop deign to allude. What need was there for the most
   abstemious man in Constantinople, whose habitual diet consisted of
   bread and vegetables, and who ordinarily drank nothing but water to
   declare that he was not given to Cyclopean orgies'? What did it boot
   for a man notoriously indifferent to money to prove that what he had
   withdrawn from luxury he had expended on beneficence? No one, except a
   couple of perjurers of notoriously bad character, pretended to vouch
   for even the least serious charges. It was only afterwards that
   Chrysostom, in a private letter, said that the immorality with which he
   was infamously charged had for him long been a physical impossibility.
   It strangely illustrates the depths of anile superstition into which
   the Church had fallen from the simplicity of the Gospel that the one
   charge which Chrysostom seemed to feel most was that of having eaten a
   lozenge before the Holy Communion. This infinitely frivolous accusation
   of a purely imaginary sin he repudiated with strong asseverations,
   although he naturally adds that, even were it true, he would have done
   nothing but what Christ and the Apostles themselves did when they
   partook of the first and holiest of all Holy Communions, at the
   immediate conclusion of a meal.

   Yet, strange to say, while the scoundrelly Synod of the Oak was
   jubilant, the more numerous band of bishops gathered round the
   Patriarch in the Thomaites was painfully depressed. The reason of this
   was their certainty that Theophilus and his hirelings were backed by
   the Court and by the majority of the evil-minded clergy. Pray for me,
   dear brethren,' said Chrysostom, when he heard the hideous list of
   charges brought against him, and knew that as regards some of them it
   would be difficult to extricate himself without injury, because A lie
   which is half a truth is ever the greatest of lies.' Pray for me, for I
   am in the toils of Satan. My God have mercy on me!' The bishops, on
   hearing these sad words, melted into tears, and, amid the sound of
   general sobbing--for they had all heard the rumour that the Patriarch
   would be executed for treason--they poured round him, kissing his eyes,
   his eloquent lips, his sacred head.

   Nay,' he said. What! mean ye to weep and to break my heart? What is
   life but a dream, a shadow, a vapour, a nothing less than nothing? Have
   I not sold this world that I may win eternal life? Does my lot differ
   in any respect, in its miseries and persecutions, from that of the
   Patriarchs, the Prophets, or the Apostles? What was the earthly reward
   of the Lord Himself at the hands of "Scribes and Pharisees,
   hypocrites," but first to be called a Samaritan and a Beelzebub, and
   then to be crucified?'

   If we weep,' said one of the bishops, it is because you leave us
   orphans and the Church a widow, while we see her laws trampled and
   wickedness triumphant.'

   Enough, my brother,' answered Chrysostom, bringing down his right
   finger on the palm of his left hand. Do not leave your churches because
   of me. The Church never lacks a head. If you behead Paul, you leave
   Timothy, and many more.'

   Ah! but,' exclaimed another bishop, they will never leave us our
   churches without forcing us to communicate with them, and subscribe to
   your condemnation.'

   Communicate with them,' said Chrysostom, lest there should be a schism
   in the Church, but subscribe not, for I am innocent, and you would be
   setting your names to a lie.'

   At this moment arrived two young Libyans from the Synod of the Oak,
   commanding John--to whom they did not even give his title of bishop--to
   appear before them, accompanied by Serapion and Tigrius.

   The Council of the Patriarch sent their answer to Theophilus alone.
   Cease,' they said, to break the laws of the Church by intermeddling,
   contrary to thine own express letter, in a jurisdiction not thine own.
   Come thou before us. We are forty bishops, of whom seven are
   metropolitans. You are but thirty-six, of which twenty-nine are
   Egyptians.'

   But to the Synod of the Oak--though more than three-fourths of its
   members were ignorant creatures of Theophilus, without name, without
   knowledge, without conscience, or consecrated only to multiply
   dishonest and dictated votes--Chrysostom wrote in his own name. He said
   that while he disdained their accusations, and denied their rights, he
   would yet appear in person before them if they would exclude from their
   body his avowed and open foes--Theophilus, Acacius, Antiochus, and
   Severian. Otherwise they might summon him a thousand times, and it
   would be vain.

   Three of Chrysostom's bishops and two priests were sent with these
   replies. Then came a message from the Palace with an order from
   Arcadius that 'John was to appear before the Synod.' Chrysostom gave
   his reasons for refusing. Next entered the monk Isaac and a priest of
   Constantinople, Eugenius--whose treachery to his master had been
   rewarded with a bishopric--who once more curtly cited him. It is well
   that he did not go, for the synod of bishops at the Oak had been
   transformed, like the robber-synod of Ephesus in later days, into an
   assembly of brutal assassins. One of Chrysostom's three episcopal
   envoys was beaten; the dress of the second was torn off his back; the
   third was fettered with the chains which had been intended for
   Chrysostom himself, and was sent adrift in a boat among the currents of
   the Bosporus!--These were your Christian bishops!

   But as Arcadius seemed to be wavering they now pressed Chrysostom with
   the charge brought by the monk Isaac, that he had been guilty of high
   treason by calling Eudoxia 'Jezebel.' He had called her nothing of the
   kind, though, having lauded her merits with earnest warmth when she
   seemed worthy of praise, he had warned her of the perils of her
   imperious passion. In its twelfth session the wretched Synod
   unanimously condemned the Patriarch, and sent their condemnation to the
   Emperor, saying, in a style of hypocritic ecclesiastical tenderness
   worthy of Torquemada and the Holy' Inquisition, that while they
   dethroned John for contumacy in refusing to appear before them, they
   would leave the Emperor to deal with the capital charge of high
   treason. In Spanish Papal fashion they handed him over--so kind and
   tender were these holy men!--to the secular arm.

   The next matter for them to settle was the affair of the Tall Brothers.
   By this time the Presbyter Isidore was dead; the Bishop Dioscorus was
   also dead; Ammonius was fast dying, and could not answer the citation
   of the Synod. Theophilus went through the grotesque comedy of a
   reconciliation with the two surviving brothers, who were of the least
   courage and of little comparative account. He beslobbered them with
   crocodile tears; allowed them to return to the monastery of Skete;
   afforded them his gracious forgiveness for the murderous wrongs which
   he had inflicted upon them; and declared that he had never met so
   admirable a monk as their brother, Ammonius! After this abhorrent farce
   the absence of Heracleides of Ephesus prevented them from proceeding
   any further with his case. And as for Origen, Theophilus resumed his
   former studies of the Alexandrian exegete, and being one day caught
   reading one of the treatises which on pain of excommunication he had
   ordered to be everywhere burnt, pleasantly remarked that in reading
   Origen he culled the flowers and neglected the thorns!

   Meanwhile Arcadius ordered Chrysostom to depart, but took no step to
   insure the fulfilment of the order, because the multitude in their
   serried ranks protected the Patriarcheion day and night, exactly as
   they had protected Ambrose at Milan from the troops of the Empress
   Justina. Before the palace-gates of Arcadius they shouted, We will have
   a true Council! We will have a General Council to try and acquit the
   Archbishop.' They also filled the streets and churches with the wail of
   their entreating litanies.

   The second day after the sentence of the Synod, the showy hypocrite
   Severian had the impudence to mount a pulpit in one of the churches and
   declaim against Chrysostom, saying that he ought to be deposed for his
   pride alone, if for nothing else, since--so said this peculiarly humble
   conspirator!--pride is of all things most hateful to God. Such was the
   fury of the congregation at this barefaced effrontery that they rose in
   a mass and chased the wily, oily impostor out of the city so
   precipitately that he barely had time to make his way back to the
   Bosporus, and fly with all speed to the diocese on which he considered
   his brilliant talents to be so miserably thrown away.

   But on the way he thought better of it. Gabala was not yet to enjoy the
   light of his countenance. In hopes of a reaction he hid himself, with
   his precious colleagues, Antiochus and Acacius, in the house of
   Cyrinus. The gangrene of which the Bishop of Chalcedon was dying by
   inches was hardly more intolerable than the black thoughts of these
   episcopal conspirators.

   Chrysostom, on the other hand, was escorted by the multitude from his
   palace to the Basilica, and there addressed them. My brethren,' he
   said, the waves beat on the rock, but they can only shatter themselves
   to foam on its impregnable bases. The billows curl over the ship; how
   can they submerge it when Jesus is on board? Fear not for me. What have
   I to fear? Death? To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain! Exile?
   The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. The plundering of my
   goods? I brought nothing into this world, and certainly I shall carry
   nothing out. I despise that which makes many tremble. I laugh at the
   riches and the honours which many covet. Wealth and poverty to me are
   both alike; and if I desire to live, it is solely if I may be of use to
   you. God has united us. Tyrants have endeavoured ere now to crush the
   Church. Where are they now? They have sunk to silence and oblivion, but
   the sun still flames in the zenith even where clouds have overshadowed
   it. Tyrants have tried to subdue even young maidens with iron teeth,
   and their faith remained unshaken by torture. Believe me, these storms
   and threatenings are but as a spider's web. As for the Empire and its
   laws, all is turning to dishonour----'

   The word had scarcely passed his lips when a sort of wave of emotion
   which passed over the people showed him that the word adoxia, which he
   had unwittingly used for 'dishonour,' was capable of being regarded as
   a deadly insult to the Empress Eudoxia; though he had not in the least
   intended it. It was so reported to her, and the next morning a Count of
   the Palace came to demand, in the name of the Emperor, the instant
   departure of the Patriarch. A boat, he was informed, awaited him at the
   'Chalcedonian Stairs,' and, if he resisted, the spearmen were ready to
   carry him off by force.'

   By force! Chrysostom saw at once that the attempt to use force would
   mean a bloody battle between the troops and the populace, perhaps even
   a terrible revolution. He could not tolerate the thought that blood
   should be shed on his account. He determined to surrender himself
   secretly. He sent Philip to the Count of the Palace to inform him of
   his determination. The Count entrusted the management of the affair to
   a detective. There seems to be no better word for the officer who is
   called a curiosus. Under his guardianship Chrysostom slipped out of a
   secret gate at the back of St. Sophia about noon, and, accompanied only
   by Philip, was placed in hiding in a neighbouring house. At nightfall
   the detective led them to the boat, where the Count awaited them. They
   were recognised, but the Patriarch by his authority suppressed all
   attempts at a rescue, though multitudes attended him to the vessel and
   broke into loud cries against the Empress and the Court.

   It was now the end of September, 403. Next morning the whole city was
   like a church, for the poor of every age and of both sexes poured out
   of their houses with tears and lamentations. In the midst of this wild
   excitement the victorious Theophilus, with his guard of soldiers, took
   possession of Constantinople like a conqueror, scattering
   excommunications among the friends of Chrysostom, and bishoprics or
   other dignities among his own adherents. He ordered the perjured
   priests who had betrayed their Patriarch to take re-possession of the
   churches from which they had been expelled; but the crowd prevented
   their ingress, and each church was barricaded like a citadel. His own
   attempt to enter St. Sophia led to a violent outbreak. The monks, whose
   vices and furies Chrysostom had so scathingly exposed, were all on the
   side of the Egyptian, and fought for him. The soldiers turned against
   the black men,' as they contemptuously called them. Blood flowed like
   water in the sanctuaries, yells of fury resounded in the place of
   prayer and hymns, the very baptismal fonts were stained with blood. The
   Patriarch of Alexandria, coward no less than tyrant, was filled with
   terror. The people were shouting after him, and declaring that they
   would without hesitation pitch him into the sea. He fled in disguise
   and in horrible alarm to Chalcedon, and there, hastily embarking with
   his twenty-eight miserable suffragans, fled back to Egypt.


   Ipse suum cor edens, hominum vestigia vitans.

   The detestable arch-monk, Isaac, accompanied him in his flight, and
   thenceforth, to our relief, vanishes into the midnight, with the
   scourge of an accusing conscience sounding over him and the clutch of
   the demons on his gilded and essenced hair.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLVI

  THE EARTHQUAKE


   Ktupese men Zeus chthonios, hai de parthenoi

   rhigesan hos ekousan.--Sophocles, OEd. Col. 1606.

   Philip had been permitted to accompany his beloved father and master
   when he was conveyed by the Count of the Palace across the Bosporus;
   and his heart was full of an anguish too deep for tears. All the long
   future seemed for him to be not only uncertain, but smitten with a
   blight. What would come of this banishment? Would Chrysostom ever be
   recalled? Where would be his future? He could never desert the
   Patriarch while his services were so indispensable; but thoughts of
   Miriam, and doubts whether he should ever see her again, mingled with
   his more unselfish grief.

   He was amazed at the cheerfulness of the Patriarch. Here he was, hurled
   from his high estate, defeated by his enemies, an exile, horribly
   calumniated, not knowing what a day might bring forth, and yet he
   uttered no word of lamentation, and could speak to Philip with a smile.

   But Philip was aware that what supported his master was the
   strong-siding champion, conscience.' He might have made, he had made,
   many errors of judgment; he had yielded to occasional impatience and
   irritability, caused chiefly by his severe bodily self-denial, both in
   the past and in the present; but of any sins such as those with which
   he had been charged by the foul Synod of Theophilus and its hired
   assassins of the truth he was wholly innocent. He felt that but for his
   magnanimity and self-repression nothing would have been more inevitable
   than a massacre in the capital, a revolution in the Empire, a schism in
   the Church. This had only been averted by his voluntary surrender.

   They were landed at a place called The Shrine,' not far from Chalcedon.
   The Count remained; the guards went back across the Bosporus. When they
   were alone, Chrysostom said to Philip, My son, I do not like to remain
   in this place. It is too near Chalcedon. In the neighbourhood of
   Cyrinus and Severian I do not feel my life secure. If you will go and
   hire me a boat, dark as it is, we can sail at once to Proenetus, on the
   Gulf of Astacus, opposite Nicomedia. There my friend Palladius has two
   relatives who own a little farm, and there we shall be safe.'

   Not a moment was to be lost. Philip found a boat. Wind and current were
   favourable, and before midnight they found themselves hospitably
   sheltered in the farm, and treated by the relatives of Palladius with
   the utmost courtesy and reverence.

   But Philip's heart was heavy. My father,' he asked, what will Kallias
   do, and poor Eutyches, and old Phlegon, and your servants? Will the
   Emperor and the clergy appoint a new Patriarch? Where will you live?'

   My boy,' said Chrysostom, when you have reached my age you will learn
   to say with all your heart, "

   Be not over-anxious about to-morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the
   evil thereof." As for you, and Kallias, and Eutyches, and my old
   servants, perhaps--who knows?--we may all be allowed to go back to
   Antioch, and live in Singon Street. I cannot tell. God will provide.'

   Oh! that will be like heaven after that horrible, guilty city,' said
   Philip; and then he became sad and silent.

   Now, Philip,' said the Patriarch, cheerfully, 'turn your attention for
   the moment to this excellent supper which our friends have provided. It
   is much better than you would have had at the Patriarcheion, and a
   young appetite like yours should be ready for it, since it is long
   since you broke your fast.'

   I am thinking,' said Philip, that you will no longer be the great
   Patriarch of Constantinople.'

   Nay, Philip, grieve not for my sake on that account. There can never be
   real greatness for anyone except such as is inherent in himself.
   Honours and titles cannot make a little man great, nor can the
   deprivation of them make a great man little. And what are we at the
   best but dust and ashes? Can gilding add to their true value? If it be
   so, God will have relieved me of an enormous burden. My elevation was
   the worst misfortune which ever befell me. And what are rank or wealth
   to one whose chosen home was once a damp cavern? Tell me, Philip, don't
   you think we were much happier in the little house at Antioch?'

   Yes, father, I look back to those blessed days. There you were not
   surrounded by the hatred of the bad and the lies of the contemptible.
   Whenever I think of Constantinople, it seems to me like that monster,
   composed of hissing serpents, which Hannibal saw crashing after him in
   his dreams.'

   Well, then, let us kneel down, my boy, and I will pray for you, and
   myself, and our beloved Desposyni, and Eutyches, and all of us; and
   then we will sleep as peacefully as happy children who have laid all
   their cares on God.'

   They knelt. He poured out his soul aloud in simple prayer. Then they
   retired to rest, and slept long and soundly--the youth sleeping at his
   father's feet.

   It was high dawn when they awoke refreshed, and prepared for whatever
   the day might bring forth.

   How differently had been the night spent by their enemies! Theophilus,
   sick in body and sick in heart, was tossing on the stormy waves with
   his twenty-eight creatures, feeling foiled and humiliated for all his
   semblable victory, and still hearing in his dreams the howls of the
   angry populace, emphasising the unrest of his own conscience, which
   barked within him like a furious Cerberus. Severian, as he tossed on
   his sleepless couch, farther (it seemed) than ever from the
   accomplishment of his personal ambitions, felt, with agony of mind,
   that he was a mean and degraded impostor. Cyrinus lay sick, body and
   soul, nigh unto death, with the anguish of his amputation, which was
   beginning to gangrene afresh. Qualms of conscience disturbed the
   slumbers of Antiochus of Ptolemais. The old Acacius of Beroea wished,
   with a sigh, that his long white hair and venerable aspect could gain
   from himself the reverence which it won from others. All were troubled;
   but none of them repented. And in the palace of the Emperor and Empress
   all night long there was tumult and wild affright.

   For about the time that they retired to rest they heard from the
   Hebdomon the first moaning rumblings of an earthquake, and felt that
   first, indescribable shivering of the ground which, more than any other
   power of Nature, reduces man to imbecility and paralyses him with
   terror. The shocks increased in violence as they moved towards the
   centre of the city, and at last, again and again, the Palace was shaken
   as though its walls were smitten with palsy. To Eudoxia the bodily
   alarm was tenfold intensified by superstitious horror. Was it not
   obvious, she thought, that this earthquake was sent by God in vengeance
   upon her for the wrongs which she had inflicted on His servant, the
   Patriarch? The violence of the earthquake, which reduced their Imperial
   Eternities to the level of the humblest slaves in their palace, seemed
   to concentrate itself in the bedchamber of Eudoxia. She lay pale and
   palpitating, too agitated even to pray, suffering in her terror a
   thousand deaths, till at last, at a shock more violent than those
   before, she heard the wall of her chamber crack terrifically, her bed
   was tilted over, and she fell shrieking on the floor.

   Her attendants, pale and horror-stricken as herself, came rushing in to
   her assistance.

   Throw my upper robes over me,' she gasped. Take me, take me to the
   Emperor!'

   Arcadius had also been roused from his slumbers by the earthquake, and
   was sitting by his bedside limp and abject, with some of his trembling
   chamberlains around him, when Eudoxia burst in, half-dressed, with
   streaming hair, and, wildly clasping his knees, entreated him at once
   to recall the Patriarch. It is for our wickedness to him,' she cried
   and sobbed, that God has sent this earthquake to swallow us up quick
   like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who plotted against God's High Priest.'

   Our wickedness?' said the Emperor with intense pettishness. 'I never
   had any quarrel with John. He has always been loyal to me. I believe
   him to be a holy man. I respect him more than the whole crew of
   hypocrites. But for you, and your Korahs, Dathans, and Abirams like
   Severian and this dark-browed Egyptian meddler, the Patriarch and I
   would have been the best of friends. I never really supposed that he
   called you Jezebel, and so on. All that was the malignant nonsense of
   your widows and your priestly satellites.'

   Oh, recall him! recall him!' cried Eudoxia, or we shall all perish.
   This very moment let us send.'

   Another rumble and shock, which seemed to make the Palace quiver to its
   foundations, left her shrieking and sobbing at the Emperor's feet.

   How can we send this very moment?' he answered, irritably. 'It is the
   dead of night; you hear outside the crash of falling buildings.'

   Well, then,' she said, by earliest dawn. Perhaps by that time the
   earthquake will have ceased. It may only have been meant to warn us.'

   There seemed to be a pause in the shocks, and Eudoxia, a dishevelled
   and pitiable object, returned, not to her half-dismantled chamber, but
   to another which seemed to promise more security. No sooner had she
   gone than Arcadius angrily muttered to himself words which, had she
   heard them, might have cost him his life by poison or the dagger.

   This woman worries me,' he muttered. She gives me no rest; she keeps me
   in a ferment and a turmoil. I was never half so much worried in the
   days of Eutropius. With her one has no peace for a day at a time.
   Tumults and riots by day, earthquakes by night. She banishes the good
   Patriarch with curses one day, and recalls him with entreaties the
   next. I wish I had married Rufinus's daughter after all.'

   And with such reflexions the miserable ruler of the world flung himself
   back upon his bed--but to sleep no more.

   At earliest dawn the Empress despatched a messenger to the Patriarch at
   the Hieron with a letter in which, with sublime self-deceit and
   disregard of facts, she wrote: Let not your Sanctity think that I am
   responsible for what has happened to you. I am innocent of your blood.
   Bishops and wicked men have devised this plot against you. God, whom I
   serve, is the witness of the tears I shed for you. I forget not that by
   your hands my children have been baptised.'

   But the messenger did not return, for he searched the Hieron for
   Chrysostom in vain. Then she sent another, and neither did he return.
   Then she despatched a third; and at last, in despair, she sent her
   Chamberlain Briso himself, who would, she knew, be welcome to
   Chrysostom as one of his personal friends. Briso was lucky enough to
   light on the boatman who had conveyed Chrysostom so quietly to
   Proenetus, and he set sail to the Gulf of Astacus to find him.

   Meanwhile the populace, wild with joy, heard that their beloved
   Patriarch was to be recalled, and that messengers had been sent to find
   him. They were disturbed and rendered suspicious by the non-return of
   the messengers, and determined to search for the Patriarch themselves.
   They hired every boat they could find, and, hearing that be was no
   longer at the Hieron, sailed to port after port in the neighbourhood.

   There had been no earthquake at Proenetus. Philip had awaked in a less
   gloomy mood from a refreshing sleep, and, as he dressed himself, he saw
   Chrysostom still placidly slumbering, with a smile upon his face. '

   Thou shalt keep him in peace--peace,' he murmured, '

   whose mind is stayed on Thee; because he trusteth in Thee.'

   Going into the open air, he saw the waters of the Propontis sparkling
   in the morning sunlight, and white with unnumbered sails. He was
   perplexed. Something had evidently happened, though he could not
   conjecture what it was; but that they were searching for someone was
   evident, for they steered into one after another the ports which
   abounded on that populous shore. Was it for good or for evil? Who could
   say?

   At last he saw a sail making all speed for Proenetus. 'Now,' he
   thought, we shall know,' and he hurried in to tell his master.

   Look,' he said, Father, at all those sails! I cannot make out the cause
   of the excitement, but something must have occurred at Constantinople.
   We shall know in a few minutes, for a boat is even now pushing its beak
   into the port.'

   Go and meet it, Philip. Use your own judgment as to what is best to say
   or do, to make known or to conceal. I am prepared for whatever God may
   send.'

   Philip went down to the shore, and gave a shout of joy, for on the prow
   of the boat stood Briso, waving an olive-branch. The kind-hearted
   eunuch recognised him with smiles which could betoken nothing but
   good-fortune.

   Briso told the good news to Philip, who took him straight to the little
   farm. He handed to Chrysostom the letter of the Empress, and, barely
   waiting to snatch a hurried breakfast with them, insisted that
   Chrysostom should at once accompany him. He had already despatched
   messengers on every side to say that the Patriarch was found. Boats
   came flocking into the port, and when the Chamberlain and the Patriarch
   embarked, it was in the midst of an attendant flotilla of hundreds of
   shallops, of which the little crews burst into cheers as he passed. He
   was fully determined not to enter Constantinople itself, for there was
   the canon of a Council--though only an Arian Council, held at Antioch
   in 341--which forbade a bishop who had been deposed from entering his
   see until he was absolved by another Council. He therefore stopped in
   one of the suburbs named Mariana, where the Empress had a palace, which
   she placed at his disposal. The multitude was not, however, content
   with this, and being still in a state of excitement, continued to shout
   invectives against the Emperor and Empress. Eudoxia therefore sent him
   a most humbly earnest entreaty to lay aside his scruples; and Briso
   represented to him that the Antiochene canon could not in any case
   apply to the decision of a trumpery and violently irregular synod of
   intruders like the Synod of the Oak; that, even if it did, a larger
   number of bishops had absolved him; and that, in any case, the Imperial
   fiat was, under the circumstances, sufficient. Philip indignantly took
   the same view. 'Condemned by a Council, indeed!' he said. 'Begging your
   Beatitude's pardon--rubbish!' Philip always addressed his master as
   your Beatitude' when he was in bright spirits, and he laughed at the
   forefinger which Chrysostom shook at him in reproof.

   The people settled the question by carrying off the Patriarch almost by
   force. By this time it was evening. They flocked out in myriads to
   escort him, and as every hand carried a torch, the procession looked
   like a river of fire. At their head was the Empress herself. She not
   only welcomed the Patriarch with effusion, but almost seemed to be
   joining in the festive dances and cries of joy; and, strange to say, in
   the sight of all the people, she actually flung her arms round his
   neck! His return was splendid triumph. The Emperor was represented by
   his chief secretary. Hymns were sung which had been hastily written or
   adapted for the occasion. The general feeling towards the clergy who
   had betrayed and tried to ruin him was shown by the shouts of 'Bishop,
   purge thy clergy! Chase away the traitors.' No less than thirty bishops
   were among those who formed his escort. He was swept along by the
   rejoicing throng until they had entered the vast nave of St. Sophia.
   There, kneeling, and actually prostrate on the marble floor, they
   entreated him to give them his episcopal blessing. At last he did so,
   and promised to address them on the following morning. That evening his
   triumph seemed to be completed by his receipt of another letter from
   the Empress, in which she wrote in her impassioned way, My prayer is
   fulfilled; I have attained my purpose. It is to me a richer ornament
   than my diadem. I have brought back the priest. I have restored to the
   body its head, the pilot to the ship, the bridegroom to the bridal
   chamber.'

   But, amid all this intoxication of enthusiasm, nothing more deeply
   moved the tender heart of the Archbishop than the unspeakable joy which
   his return caused in his own home and among his dearest friends. Most
   of these had been unable to get near him amid the dense and surging
   crowds. But now, in the Thomaites, stood old Phlegon and his dear,
   familiar servants, who dropped on their knees for his blessing; and
   Serapion, and Tigrius, and Germanus, and Proclus, and Cassian, and
   Bishop Palladius embraced him in their arms; and the youths who, like
   Philip, would have died for him--Kallias and Eutyches--kneeled down,
   took possession of either hand, covered them with kisses, and bathed
   them in tears, until he raised them up, and gave them with a full heart
   the kiss of peace.

   On the following morning he addressed to a vast congregation the
   still-extant Homily after Return.' He spoke very sternly, yet not
   intemperately, of the brutal intrusion and violences of Theophilus. Of
   his many other enemies he took no notice, but passed them over in
   complete silence. Entirely deceived in the simplicity of his heart by
   the frantic simulation and dissimulation of Eudoxia, he spoke of her in
   terms of high eulogy. To his own faithful people he poured forth his
   soul in warmest gratitude.

   After his sermon Eutyches, who was now an ordained 'reader,' took off
   the Archbishop's pallium, and hung it, as was the custom, round the
   neck of one of the statues of the Apostles. It was a band woven of the
   finest lambswool, three fingers broad, at the end of which hung thin
   flakes of lead, covered with black silk, on which were woven four
   crosses in red. It was fastened on each shoulder by three golden pins.

   Two days ago,' said the Patriarch, with a smile, 'I little deemed that
   I should ever again wear the episcopal pallium in this place. God has
   been very good to me.'

   I hope that I may help many a time to robe and disrobe your Dignity,'
   said the young reader.

   In truth, at that moment the Emperor himself was hardly so powerful in
   his own capital as was the Patriarch. He at once resumed with all his
   accustomed strenuousness his manifold episcopal duties. To purge his
   clergy of scoundrels and traitors was an immediate necessity, and he
   did so with a firm hand; while at the same time he rewarded the true
   and faithful. The Deacon Tigrius was raised to the priesthood. Serapion
   was elavated to the Bishopric of Heraclea, vacant by the flight or
   deposition of Paul, whom, with a crocodile semblance of impartiality,
   Theophilus had nominally appointed president of the Synod of the Oak on
   the day when Chrysostom had been deposed.
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK V
     __________________________________________________________________

DEFEAT IN VICTORY

AND

VICTORY IN DEFEAT


   Signor, non sotto l' ombra in piaggia molle,

   Tra fonti e fior, tra Ninfe e tra Sirene,

   Ma in cima all' erto a faticoso colle

   Della virtù riposto è il nostro bene.

   Tasso, Gir. Lib. 17. St. 61.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLVII

  EUDOXIA'S STATUE


   Envie is lavender to the Court alway,

   For she departeth neither night nor day

   Out of the house of Cæsar.

   Chaucer, Prologue, Good Women.

   Alas! the seeming peace was but the placidi pellacia ponti; it was but


   A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff,

   When all the vales are drowned in azure gloom

   Of thundershower;

   for, on the one hand, Eudoxia was still Eudoxia, and between her and
   the Patriarch, so antipathetic to her in character and temperament, it
   was impossible that there should be long-continued amity. What lasting
   concord could there be between a woman of insane and insatiable pride,
   whose Court reeked with intrigue and worldliness, and an Archbishop of
   dauntless courage and inflexible righteousness? And, on the other hand,
   Theophilus defeated all Chrysostom's attempts to secure by a competent
   General Council the reversal of the judgment passed upon him by the
   hateful Synod of the Oak. Arcadius summoned Theophilus to come to a
   General Council and answer the charges brought against him. But the
   Egyptian had not the least intention of again imperilling his sacred
   Hypocrisy among a populace intoxicated by affection for their
   Archbishop. He wrote back that, after having been driven out of
   Constantinople by mobs which threatened to fling him into the sea, he
   could not visit the city again; and that his own people were so
   devotedly attached to him that his departure would cause a riot at
   Alexandria!

   So for two months things went on. A multitude of bishops to the number
   of sixty, as they could not be gathered in formal Council, declared
   informally their sense of Chrysostom's innocence, and of the wicked
   nullity of the proceedings in the Synod of the Oak. Feeling that he had
   now done everything in his power to obey the laws of the Church and
   maintain its honour, Chrysostom devoted himself simply to the duties of
   his office.

   But in September, 403, Eudoxia, whose ambition needed the burning of
   ever-fresh incense, procured for herself an honour of unheard-of
   extravagance which precipitated the destined catastrophe.

   A person ignorant of human nature might have imagined that a
   half-barbarian lady, daughter of a Frankish soldier, elevated by the
   intrigue of an eunuch to share the empire of the world, would have been
   reasonably satisfied. Further than this, she was mated to an indolent
   weakling, and had asserted over him an immense dominance. If she was
   not content with the actual autocracy, but wanted all its acknowledged
   paraphernalia, she had now obtained from her husband the highly coveted
   title of Augusta, which even the stately wife of the first Augustus had
   not received till late in life. She had also worried out of Arcadius
   the privilege of being adored' as well as himself. This half-pagan
   adoration was in reality a survival from the days when the emperor, as
   a sort of incarnation of the people, shared the worship addressed to
   the goddess Rome. This worship had never yet been accorded to a woman.
   The wives or other nearest female relatives of emperors were only
   supposed to gleam with a reflected lustre, and to receive from him any
   sacro-sanctity which they might possess. The concession of such a
   distinction to a semi-barbarous nobody like Eudoxia involved the
   parading of her statue for something barely distinguishable from Divine
   honours in every city of the Empire. This might be tolerated in the
   sluggish and servile East, but it so utterly offended the sensitive
   dignity of the Western world that Honorius made it a subject of
   energetic remonstrance with his elder brother--a remonstrance which
   Arcadius treated with his usual masterly inactivity and with sullen
   contempt.

   But even this did not suffice Eudoxia. Working on Simplicius, the
   Præfect of the City, and on the leading senators, she induced the
   Senate to vote her a statue of unsurpassed magnificence in the most
   prominent site of the whole city.

   It was in the Augusteum itself, between the Imperial Palace and the
   Cathedral of St. Sophia, from which it was only separated by the
   breadth of the grandest thoroughfare in the capital. It was reared on a
   platform of many-coloured marble, where stood the Rostra, from which on
   great occasions the Emperor addressed the Senate, the people, and the
   army.

   Here, then, the statue was erected. First there was a massive
   stylobate. It still exists, for it was dug up in 1848. It preserves, on
   one side in Latin prose, on the other in Greek hexameters, the fulsome
   laudations of the upstart and eminently undeserving Empress. On this
   pedestal was reared a column of porphyry; and on the summit of the
   column stood a figure of Eudoxia in solid silver, menacing Church and
   Senate, and populace and city, with her gesture of command.

   It was customary, as we learn from a law of Theodosius II., to
   inaugurate the statues of imperial personages on Sundays or feast-days;
   and the sort of semi-idolatrous cult bestowed upon them so deeply
   scandalised the Christian conscience that, in the days of Eudoxia's
   son, it was forbidden by edict. Further than this, we learn from the
   extant discussion between a Christian and Apollonius, a philosopher,
   that the abject honour paid to such statues made the heathen ask, with
   indignant scorn, 'Why Christian priests permitted this idolatry of
   royal images, when they condemned the worship of Pagan statues.' 'Why,'
   they scornfully demanded, do you give to men, and even to women, the
   honour which you preach should be given to God alone?'

   On every ground, then, both the statue and the homage paid to it were
   inexpressibly distasteful to Chrysostom. These honours, however, were
   part of the universal custom of the Eastern Empire; and as they had
   been passively condoned by the Church, he could not interfere with
   them. But the orgiastic dances, loose mimes, and noisily lewd songs and
   buffooneries of every kind which attended the unveiling of this hateful
   memorial of a woman's pride could not be left without rebuke. The
   principal day for the inauguration of Eudoxia's image--the day when the
   noises were most irreverently loud and most obscenely offensive--was
   the Sunday. On that day it became impossible adequately to conduct the
   service and Holy Communion of St. Sophia. The voices of the choir ware
   drowned in shrill shrieks of amusement and coarse bursts of laughter at
   the comedies which were going on in the vulgar fair. When Chrysostom
   attempted to preach his voice was rendered inaudible by the indecent
   tumult just outside the Cathedral doors. Profoundly irritated,
   Chrysostom appealed to the Præfect of the city. He, however, being a
   Manichee, and a foe to the Patriarch, was secretly delighted with the
   chance of affronting with impunity the Catholic party. So far from
   taking any step to interfere with the worst developments of the
   inauguration observances, he carried to the Empress an exaggerated
   account of Chrysostom's opposition, and falsely reported that
   Chrysostom had sworn to deprive the Empress's statue of all popular
   observance. Eudoxia was already vexed at the rebuke which Arcadius had
   received from his younger brother of the West. With Honorius she could
   not deal; but it was intolerable to her that she should be constantly
   thwarted and reprehended by the Patriarch in her own capital, and that,
   while every other official was at her feet, this indomitable prelate
   should confront her at every turn with the incomparably superior
   majesty of the moral law. She burst into unmeasured expressions of
   hatred, anger, and bitterness against him, and, being rapidly made
   aware of this, the fury-intoxicated phalanx' (as Palladius calls them)
   of his enemies soon closed him in on every side. The Marsas, Castricias
   and Epigraphias were soon joined by Annas, and Caiaphas, and the
   priests and hypocrites, in the persons of Severian, Cyrinus, Antiochus,
   and the rest.

   Nothing is more probable than that, on the following Sunday,
   Chrysostom, in his sermon, gave some expression to the profound disgust
   with which his heart was full; and, judging from what has happened in
   similar cases in all ages, his thoughts so far coloured his expressions
   as to lead him into phrases which might easily be distorted into direct
   personalities. But he was not prepared for the frightful trick played
   him by his episcopal enemies.

   Kallias had, as usual, taken down his master's sermon, and Chrysostom,
   when it was written out, read it, and was glad to find that, though he
   had spoken strongly of idolatrous profanation of the Sabbath, and of
   the perils of overweening pride and ambition, he lead not been hurried
   by the fire of oratory into any remarks which exceeded the bounds of
   duty or of moderation. He had been the more careful because Philip,
   whose intense love for him he knew, had, in the modesty of fearful
   duty, ventured to ask him not to show too much wrath at the recent turn
   of events. My father,' he had ventured to say, the world cannot be
   converted at one stroke; and surely we cannot be held responsible for
   events which we could in no way prevent?'

   But the other tachygraph, Phocas, over whose report Kallias had
   accidentally-on-purpose spilled his inkstand on a previous occasion,
   had also reported this sermon, and subjected it to the sly
   manipulations suggested to him by his patron, Severian. He took his
   report to the house of Epigraphia, where, as he expected, he found
   Acacius, Severian, Antiochus, and two new foes of Chrysostom--Leontius
   of Ancyra, a dark intriguer of the Theophilus type, and Ammonius of
   Burnt-Phrygia, who, as Palladius says, had come from Burnt-up Phrygia
   to burn up the Church.

   Severian glanced at the manuscript, and saw his opportunity to strike a
   fatal blow.

   Come with me,' he said to Leontius. You will, I feel sure, agree with
   me that this Patriarch, who defies the canons of the Church, and has
   been condemned by a synod for crimes and misdemeanours, must be got rid
   of. Until he is, there will be neither peace nor harmony, and the
   Church of Christ will suffer.'

   I agree with you,' said the Syrian metropolitan in his gruff voice.

   Well, glance at this report of his sermon.'

   Leontius glanced at it, and shrugged his shoulders. 'One or two strong
   expressions,' he said, but nothing to lay hold of seriously.'

   Yes,' said the conspirator; but might we not in this matter exercise a
   little of "oeconomy," or management, a little of the wisdom of the
   serpent, of that deceiving others for their good and the good of the
   Church--in short, of that falsitas dispensativa--the permissibility of
   which, as a hallowed instrument of warfare with evil, has been
   generally admitted by priests?'

   The Metropolitan of Ancyra was not shocked. He was quite familiar with
   the laxity, as regards both untruthfulness and degraded casuistry,
   which in the East prevailed even among high ecclesiastics--as it has
   often prevailed also at home, having found deliberate defenders among
   her canonised casuists. The Church had not yet quite arrived at the
   moral views of Escobar or 'St.' Alphonso de Liguori; yet Leontius was
   far too familiar with the grossly unscrupulous methods which over and
   over again were adopted, even in episcopal circles, to have the least
   doubt as to the meaning of the Bishop of Gabala. He knew how many there
   were who did not regard evil as evil if it were meant to be subservient
   to their own ends, which they always identified with the good of the
   Church.' He could recall scores of instances in which bishops had, with
   these views, manipulated truth into falsehood, and not disdained to
   utilise absolute crime for the suppression of the opponents whom they
   dubbed heretical or dangerous.

   If you take bits of mosaic and rearrange them,' he said, 'you can turn
   the image of a king into that of a reptile or a dog. But I do not see
   that much can be made of this sermon.'

   I will manage it,' said Severian, and John's doom is sealed.'

   He went home to compose his forgery. He headed it with the one sentence
   which report attributed to Chrysostom:--'Again Herodias maddens, again
   she dances, again she demands the head of John.' He appended a number
   of loose sentences, many of which, in some form or other, Chrysostom
   may very likely have used on that or other occasions; and then, getting
   tired of his task, took down a Syriac manuscript of his countryman,
   Ephræm Syrus, translated half of it into Greek, and tacked it on to the
   end of his miserable patchwork. Then he had this forgery copied out by
   Phocas. And this was the manuscript which he submitted to Eudoxia as a
   verbatim report of Chrysostom's latest sermon!

   It is still extant among the spurious works of St. Chrysostom, and,
   fortunately, bears on the face of it the proof that it is an unblushing
   forgery.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  THE FORGED SERMON


   Tu, licet extremos late dominere per Indos,

   Te Medus, te mollis Arabs, te Seres adorent:

   Si metuis, si prava cupis, si duceris ira,

   Servitii patiere jugum, tolerabis iniquas

   Interius leges. Tune omnia jure tenebis

   Cum poteris rex esse tui.

   Claud. IV. Cons. Honor. 257-62.

   No sooner had she read the first sentence than the haughty, passionate
   woman flamed into uncontrollable rage. She knew that Chrysostom,
   because his name was John, and his life was that of an ascetic, and his
   moral attitude inflexible, was often compared with John the Baptist.
   The free street-cries of Constantinople could not leave her unaware
   that she was often called Jezebel and Herodias. She did not suspect the
   deceit which the Bishop of Gabala had practised upon her credulity, and
   she had so few opportunities of seeing the world, except through the
   medium of contaminated minds, that she rarely arrived at the real
   truth. She accepted the report as genuine; and that such language
   should be used of her in St. Sophia, and by the man whom she had
   recalled two months earlier, and who had then lauded her piety and
   beneficence, was a fact which lay on her heart like a spark of fire.
   Severian, as he observed how hate and rage and wounded pride changed
   her face from red to pale and pale to red, and how her bosom heaved and
   her breath quivered and hissed as she turned over the leaves, felt that
   now at last his work was finally and effectually done, and exulted in
   his abominable heart.

   Leaving his lie to produce its full effect, he took his leave; and she,
   knowing that the Emperor was alone, burst unannounced into his
   presence.

   There was nothing which more shook the nerves and worried the immobile
   passivity of Arcadius than these sudden inroads from Eudoxia. Eutropius
   had formerly protected him from them, but now they were matters of
   constant occurrence. If we could imagine what would be the feelings of
   an automaton which found itself mated with a whirlwind we can realise
   what he felt.

   When they were in public the Emperor and Empress never neglected the
   most rigid conventions of imperial etiquette. Were they not both
   august, and their infant already an Augustus? Were they not both
   adored'? Did not their courtiers cover their eyes with their hands as
   they approached them, as though to shield themselves from the too
   sun-like radiance? In their public relations nothing disturbed the
   quotidian ague and frozen routine of gorgeous Byzantinism elaborated by
   Oriental servility. But when they were alone they indemnified
   themselves for this ponderous parade of functional ineptitude by
   relapsing into interchanges of spleen as frankly human as those of the
   meanest of their subjects. Slaves, eunuchs, pages, chamberlains, and
   courtiers heard from the inmost recesses of the purple chambers voices
   raised into tones of the shrillest vehemence, and sometimes even scraps
   of objurgation with which they were not unfamiliar at the Chalcedonian
   Stairs and other resorts of ordinary human clay.

   Arcadius knew that he had to prepare for the worst whenever Eudoxia
   invaded his privacy unaccompanied by any of her children. At certain
   times of the day, above all when she entered his room with a certain
   flounce of her imperial robes, as she did on this occasion, he made up
   his mind for a bad quarter of an hour.

   It is intolerable!' she began, flinging herself down on a golden chair;
   it is quite sickeningly intolerable! I would rather be a drudge in the
   bazaar than the Augusta if I am to submit to this.'

   What is the matter now?' asked Arcadius with an air of weary and
   irritated displeasure.

   The matter is that you are no longer Emperor of the East,' she said,
   with frigid scorn.

   Indeed!' replied Arcadius with studied indifference. 'Then who is
   Emperor?'

   That man!' she almost screamed; and until you get rid of that man
   neither city, nor Church, nor Empire will have a moment's peace!'

   That man being----?'

   That Patriarch, that John of Antioch, who has been condemned by a synod
   of all sorts of crimes, and yet comes back!'

   Why, it is but two months,' said Arcadius, since you yourself were here
   on your knees, screeching and sobbing that night of the earthquake, and
   saying that God was destroying us because we had driven out that saint.
   It was you who drove him out----',

   I never did!' said Eudoxia defiantly.

   I know you said you did not,' replied the Emperor; 'but, if so, who
   did? You wrote to Theophilus; you were daily caballing with the
   bishops; you got him banished by falsehoods----'

   This is too much,' said the Empress, as she listened with tightened
   lips.

   Then you summoned him back all in a hurry; you sent messenger after
   messenger for him; you went out to meet him; you kissed and hugged
   him----'

   Oh!' shrieked Eudoxia, is there no one to avenge me?'

   And now,' said Arcadius, continuing his placid course with no regard to
   these interruptions, and feeling that for once he was, to use a vulgar
   expression, scoring--'and now you come raging and shrieking again, and
   want him banished; and then, after another earthquake, I feel no doubt
   you will rage and shriek again to have him recalled. I hate these
   scenes!'

   Very well,' she exclaimed, livid with wrath; so Arcadius is such a
   pale-blooded phantom as to suffer the wife who has borne him four
   children to be publicly called a Jezebel and an Herodias before the
   lewd, seditious mob in his own church, not a stone's-throw from his own
   palace. Would God,' she muttered, I had but married a man!'

   Arcadius was about to adopt his usual plan, of doing nothing, and
   letting affairs take their course; but after a pause, in which Eudoxia
   had been indulging in inarticulate sobs, she started up, and flung the
   spurious sermon at his feet in a perfect storm of passion.

   Read that!' she said.

   Arcadius, in a helpless way, picked it up, glanced at it, and let it
   drop, as if it did not particularly interest him.

   What are you going to do?'

   Arcadius did not answer.

   Am I to be thus grossly and daily insulted with impunity?'

   Still the same sullen silence, more maddening to Eudoxia than any
   speech.

   Are you a man, or a dastard?'

   Are you a woman, or a fury?'

   Would that I had never left the house of Promotus!'

   One thing only is clear to me,' said the Emperor: 'which is, that I was
   quite infinitely less worried in the days of Eutropius.'

   Then choose out some slave from the dregs of your eunuchs, and make him
   lord over you,' screamed Eudoxia; 'but understand that you will be made
   the veiled joke of the comedians in the theatre. The meanest clown in
   Constantinople will sneer at the man who is more cowardly than himself;
   for even such a clown would hit the man who insulted his wife.'

   Do what you like; have it your own way; only leave me in peace,' said
   Arcadius in a tone of unspeakable disgust. He sank back on the cushions
   of his divan, utterly wretched, and closed his heavy eyes. He was much
   to be pitied. Had his wife been the sweet and gentle woman that his
   mother had been he might have been a better ruler and a less miserable
   man. But--


   Look you, the grey mare

   Is ill to live with when her whinny shrills

   From tile to scullery, and her small goodman

   Shrinks in his armchair, while the fires of hell

   Mix with his hearth.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER XLIX

  INTRIGUE TRIUMPHANT


   Of all malicious acts abhorred in heaven

   The end is injury; and all such end

   Either by force or fraud works others' woe;

   But fraud, because of man's peculiar evil,

   To God is more displeasing.--Dante, Inf. xi. 23.

   It soon became patent to all the world that Eudoxia was leaving no
   stone unturned to ruin the Patriarch, and darkest clouds of misgiving
   closed over the last smile of brief sunshine in the hearts of his
   friends. The Empress had again invoked the aid of Theophilus, and
   though he would not come in person, he was sending three miserable
   Egyptians' to act in his name. All the other bishops and ecclesiastics
   to whom Chrysostom's very virtues were a reproach were speeding like
   vultures to a feast. Another Council was to be held, about which two
   things were clear--that it would not be the General Council which the
   Patriarch had demanded; and that, under the terrifying influence of the
   Court, it would be all but exclusively composed of the Patriarch's
   opponents.

   Those who were not in the secret could not understand the rush and
   blare of the new thunderstorm. Chrysostom had only shared the feeling
   of every sincere Christian in the city in deploring the Pagan
   profanities which accompanied the Sunday inauguration of Eudoxia's
   statue, and surely his disapprobation could not have created an offence
   so deadly as to cause his destruction to be determined. Philip and
   Kallias alone divined the secret. Kallias knew that ere now spurious
   sermons, attributed to Chrysostom, had been handed about. He sorely
   suspected a plot between the reporter Phocas and his patron, Severian;
   and Philip agreed with him. Philip determined to take the bull by the
   horns, and walked with Eutyches to the lodging of Phocas. Philip never
   attempted a ruse. If he carried a point, it was always by frank
   forthrightness.

   Phocas,' he said, we love the Patriarch, and have reason to fear that
   the present exasperation of the Court against him must be based on
   travesties of what he really said about the Augusta's statue. Would you
   mind lending us your verbatim report?'

   That you may compare it with that of your friend Kallias,' said Phocas,
   with a touch of professional jealousy, and injure my reputation as a
   tachygraphist, to his advantage.'

   Nay,' said Eutyches, with the frank smile which disarmed opposition.
   'We really are not capable of such small tricks. Philip has told you
   that we have reasons for suspecting that he whom we regard as a father
   is being ruined by subterranean plots. It may help us and save him if
   by two reports--Kallias's and yours together--we can prove that he said
   nothing wrong. No reporter in Constantinople comes near you two.'

   That boy knows how to flatter,' said Phocas, disarmed. 'Well, you shall
   see my report.'

   They saw it, and found that while in a few expressions it had been a
   little coloured, it agreed in the main with that of their friend.

   Was this the report which, as people say, Severian showed to the
   Empress?' asked Philip.

   That I don't know,' answered Phocas; but Severian paid me for a copy.'

   They thanked him, and parted good friends; but Philip determined to
   push his inquiries a little further.

   He went to Amantius; but though Amantius was Eudoxia's chamberlain, she
   never shared her secrets with him. He could give no information. Nor
   could Briso. He had seen a manuscript, in a handwriting which he knew
   to be Severian's, lying on the table of the Empress's room. He knew no
   more.

   Could you not get me a glimpse of it?' asked Philip.

   Any attempt to do so, my good youth, might simply cost us our heads,'
   said Briso; and I doubt whether any good would result from it.'

   Philip's plans were defeated. Unless God threw His shield of protection
   over his beloved master he could now see no hope.

   The bishops who were hurrying to Constantinople were deliberately
   poisoned against Chrysostom by his enemies, or won over by the bribes
   and threats of Eudoxia's agents. One honest man, Theodotus of Tyana,
   finding that he was expected to take part, not in a trial, but in a
   conspiracy, turned his back on the capital and returned to his own
   diocese.

   Christmas was now close at hand, and on Christmas Day the Emperor and
   Empress always attended St. Sophia in state. Now, however, Arcadius
   announced that he could not again communicate with Chrysostom until he
   had cleared himself of the heavy charges against him. Chrysostom
   replied that to clear himself was what he had always longed for, and
   that whenever the Emperor would summon a fair and free Council he would
   with the utmost pleasure appear before it. Even before the packed
   assemblage, which it was ridiculous to describe as a Council, he was
   ready to appear as soon as they formulated their charges and adduced
   their witnesses.

   The boldness of his innocence alarmed his adversaries. What if he
   should appear in person, and by his innocence, his eloquence, his
   popularity, his array of overwhelming refutation, should scatter their
   trumpery falsehoods and trivialities to the four winds, and emerge from
   the storm more invincible than ever? This would not at all suit them.
   They wrote to Theophilus for counsel, and he advised them to rely
   exclusively on a canon of the Antiochene Council of 341 which forbade a
   bishop dispossessed by a synod to return to his see until he had been
   recalled by another synod. According to that canon, said Theophilus,
   John had no right whatever to be in Constantinople.

   The answer of Chrysostom to this pretext was overwhelming. The Synod of
   the Oak was wholly incompetent; it broke every conceivable law of
   ecclesiastical discipline and of common equity; it was composed of
   Egyptian hangers-on of Theophilus. Its assembling in his own diocese to
   sit in judgment upon him was a direct violation of rules of the Council
   of Nice, on which nobody had insisted more strongly than Theophilus
   himself.

   Next, even if the Synod of the Oak had been valid, its decrees had at
   the time been rejected by a much larger synod of bishops sitting with
   Chrysostom, including seven metropolitans.

   Thirdly, Chrysostom's return had since then been approved and his
   entire innocence asserted by an agreement of at least sixty
   bishops--nearly double the number which had voted at the Oak.

   Fourthly, Chrysostom had not returned of his own accord at all, but had
   been carried back, almost by violence, by his people, and in obedience
   to the commands of the Imperial Court.

   Fifthly, the Council of Antioch which passed the canon now adduced
   against him was an heretical Council, of which the authority was
   repudiated by the Church; and this very canon could have no better
   proof of its worthlessness than that it had been forged as an implement
   of oppression to overthrow the holy Athanasius.

   Against these decisive considerations the episcopal conspirators raged
   in vain. At last they urged the Emperor to hear the matter pleaded by
   ten bishops on either side. What Severian's party lacked in argument
   they compensated by a noise and bluster so unseemly as to threaten
   scenes of violence in the Emperor's very presence. Awaiting a moment's
   lull in the wild storm, Elpidius, Bishop of Laodicea--an aged and
   blameless prelate, with white hair and beard, and venerable aspect, who
   was on the side of Chrysostom--arose. He said in his quiet voice:
   Emperor, will you ask Severian and his party whether they are ready to
   subscribe to the creed of the Council of Antioch? If they cannot do
   this the Council was heretical and its canons are invalid.' The
   opponents of Chrysostom were thunderstruck by this very simple but
   unexpected proposal, which Arcadius, with a smile, declared to be
   excellent. They stood silent; but at last, out of mere bravado, they
   said they would subscribe to the faith of the Council of Antioch, and
   broke up the discussion. They never dared to do what they had promised,
   and excused themselves by the monstrous pretence that the promise had
   only been extorted by force.

   This might have seemed a triumph for the Patriarch; but it was
   fruitless. Eudoxia had decided to expel Chrysostom, if not by
   semi-legal methods, then by open tyranny. Might should be right; and if
   any of the bishops who were friendly to him refused to succumb either
   to bribes or menaces, then the Patriarch should be expelled in spite of
   them, and with complete disregard to their remonstrances.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER L

  PROLONGED AGONY

     The history of the Byzantine Empire is a monotonous story of the
     intrigues of priests, women, and eunuchs; of poisonings, of
     conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude, of perpetual patricides.

     Lecky, European Morals, ii. 14.

   The year blossomed into Lent, and all things still remained in a
   condition of trouble and uncertainty. The state of things at
   Constantinople was as when two armies watch each other for months from
   opposite heights, and neither dares to attack the other; and there
   seemed no hope of peace or of any return to normal duties.

   It was the party of unscrupulous episcopal malcontents, envenomed by
   their own jealousy and goaded forward by the furies of Eudoxia, who
   were most afraid. Easter was approaching. They dreaded lest the Emperor
   would on that great festal day go to St. Sophia, and be impressed by
   the passionate love and fidelity with which the multitude clung to
   their great pastor. This must be prevented at all hazards. They went to
   Arcadius, headed as usual by Severian, and begged that as Chrysostom
   was entirely defeated, and had been condemned by two synods, he might
   be expelled from the church. But had Chrysostom been so defeated, so
   condemned? Arcadius, in his somewhat constipated intellect, felt
   considerable doubts as to the truth of either assertion, and expressed
   them.

   You should believe us,' said Severian; we are bishops, and a true
   bishop cannot lie.'

   It depends on how you define a true bishop,' thought Arcadius; but he
   was, as a rule, at the mercy of the last speaker, and usually adopted
   the course which cost him least trouble at the moment. He therefore so
   far yielded as to send a message to Chrysostom that, as he had been
   condemned, he must keep at a distance from his church.

   I received the Church from God, my Redeemer,' answered the Patriarch,
   for the care of His people. Therefore I may not abandon it. If you wish
   to drive me out by violence, it is, of course, in your power to do so.'

   Arcadius wavered. It might,' he said, cause another earthquake. I will
   confine him to the Patriarcheion. Then, if God gives any sign of anger,
   I can send him back to his church.'

   This was truly to seek after a sign! Chrysostom might dispute the
   Emperor's right to deliver such a command, but it reduced him to the
   condition of a prisoner in his own palace. Yet, even so, it was clear
   that the populace was in an excited state, and, fearing some terrible
   outbreak of their wrath at this treatment of the one man whom they
   loved and trusted, Arcadius, in extreme misgiving, sent for Acacius and
   Antiochus. He would not send for Severian, for whom he had acquired a
   complete disgust, although he continued to be to Eudoxia the trusted
   agent of all scoundrelism. The Bishops of Beroea and Ptolemais--the
   dotard, whose dignity had been offended, and the adventurer, who hated
   a virtue so far above his own--urged the wavering Emperor to depose the
   Patriarch.

   Like Pilate, he still hesitated.

   And, like Annas and Caiaphas, they cried, On us be the guilt!'

   But there were still forty bishops who were in daily communion with the
   Patriarch, and they determined to make one more effort to save him.
   They are but the fewest whom a good cause stirs to the activity which
   the votaries of evil display for their bad ends. The devil, as a rule,
   receives from his servants an energy of devotion which is often lacking
   in the servants of Christ. Men who have yielded themselves slaves to
   envy leap and bound upon their errands like steeds at the crack of a
   whip, while at the trumpet-call of duty men crawl like snails. The
   strenuousness of malice spurred Severian and his abettors to ardent
   vigour; the wrongs outpoured on righteousness evoked little more than
   murmurs of 'What a shame!'

   The Johannite' bishops, as Chrysostom's friends were called, heard that
   the Emperor and Empress were going to prayers at the Church of the
   Martyrs, and went forth in a body to meet them. With tears they
   besought their Majesties to restore the pastor to his church for the
   great Easter festival. They met with a curt refusal, for by the side of
   the more pliable Arcadius sat his evil genius in the person of Eudoxia.
   Then Paul, Bishop of Crateia, plucked up courage, and cried, 'Eudoxia,
   fear God! have pity on thy children! Stain not with bloodshed the high
   feast of our Lord.'

   Their appeals were dashed to pieces like weak waves on the rock of her
   hatred. She would not yield, but was only the more hardened, provoking
   the doom which so speedily awaited her.

   Easter Eve was the great season for baptisms. On that Easter Eve, a.d.
   404, no fewer than 3,000 were to be admitted into the Church of God.
   All these catechumens were assembled in the Baptistery, and the sacred
   service had begun, amid ringing hymns and holy rejoicing, as the
   white-robed candidates stood ready to enter the holy font under the
   light of many lamps. It was at that moment that a rabble of
   Chrysostom's enemies, headed by the Bishop of Gabala, and protected by
   a band of soldiers, many of them Pagans, Arians, and unbaptised, burst
   in with the purpose of seizing the Cathedral, that it might not be
   occupied by the faithful on Easter Day. A frightful tumult arose. The
   brutal soldiery rushed upon the catechumens. Many of them were women;
   many of them were boys or youths; most of them were partially
   undressed, preparatory to immersion. They were driven to hasty flight
   without even having time to snatch up their most necessary garments.
   The priests and deacons who were taking part in the ceremony were
   seized, and their sacred garments torn off their backs. Many were
   severely wounded. The lustral water of the font blushed with the horrid
   taint of blood. In the plunder the soldiers profaned the Holy Table,
   and the dress of coarse legionaries was incarnadined with consecrated
   wine scattered over them from upturned chalices of the grapes of God.

   Undismayed by so terrific a violation of all sanctities, the faithful
   flock of Chrysostom, after they had been scattered from the Baptistery,
   assembled in the Baths of Constantine to complete the sacred ceremony
   of initiation. It was now past midnight, and nothing would less serve
   the purpose of Severian and Acacius than that the Emperor should, the
   next morning, find the Cathedral perfectly deserted, from the
   indignation of a people deprived of their true shepherd. They therefore
   determined that the multitude should be driven into St. Sophia by
   violence, and begged Arcadius for a body of troops to carry out their
   abhorrent purpose. With the fear of Eudoxia before his eyes the
   helpless ruler of the world acceded to their request. Once more the
   palace troops were put into requisition. A body of Thracian
   shield-bearers stormed the church which the catechumens had improvised
   in the Baths of Constantine. Their leader, Lucius, had been bidden by
   Arcadius to abstain from extremes; but as they would not disperse, he
   was bribed by Severian and Acacius to use force. He did so, nothing
   loth, and set the example to his rude Thracians by banging about him
   with a truncheon, which, without the smallest remorse, he brought down
   with equal indifference on the white hair of aged men and on the bright
   locks of young catechumens, and wielded with equal impartiality against
   the clergy and the laity. Scenes then took place even grosser than
   before. The faithful were scattered; wounds were dealt freely on every
   side; the clergy were savagely beaten; and the soldiers looted
   everything on which they could lay their hands, not even excluding the
   holy vessels. Next morning the public places were placarded with
   notices threatening exemplary vengeance on all who would not renounce
   communion with Chrysostom.

   It was thus that the holy Bishops of Gabala, Beroea and Ptolemais
   glutted their execrable passions in the name of Christianity, and
   disgraced the Gospel of Peace with infamous barbarities.

   But the faithful were still undaunted. They would not desert their
   Patriarch; they would not join the vile phalanx of his enemies. As they
   might not worship God in St. Sophia, they streamed out of the city in a
   body to worship Him, under green trees and the shadows of wooded hills,
   on a spot set apart by Constantine for the Circensian games. It
   happened that the Emperor had gone to a church outside the city for his
   Easter service, and on his return caught sight of a great crowd of
   white-robed catechumens and other worshippers. He asked, in
   astonishment, who they were. 'Oh! they are heretics,' said some of his
   lying attendants; and when he returned, Severian and his
   fellow-conspirators asked permission to have them scattered and their
   teachers arrested. The permission was granted. Again the imperial
   myrmidons, rejoicing at their task, fell upon the innocent worshippers.
   They tore the valuable earrings out of the ears of the women, often
   tearing a part of the ears with them. The clergy, the eminent laymen,
   the leading members of the congregation, were seized, and flung into
   the common prisons. Thus the very prisons were turned into churches,
   and rang with holy hymns. And still the great mass of the people
   remained unshaken in their allegiance to their Bishop, for whose sake
   multitudes were ready to brave martyrdom itself.

   Such were the successive tidings which troubled to their inmost depths
   the hearts of Chrysostom and of the friendly prelates who still
   surrounded him. And it may well be imagined that his three young
   secretaries--Philip, Kallias, and Eutyches--were plunged into a grief
   which crushed their spirits into the dust.

   Father,' said Philip, this life must be unspeakably dreary to you; our
   hearts bleed for you.'

   It is not so much that it is unspeakably dreary,' said the Patriarch,
   or even that there is a heavy trial in its uncertainty. I am not the
   first of Christ's servants, nor shall I be the last by many millions,
   to find that it is truly a misery to live upon earth. Job experienced,
   a thousand years ago, that "

   man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards." But all this personal
   misfortune I can endure with fortitude. The grief which will not be
   healed is my grief for the Church and for my people. They are a
   vineyard which whole troops of wild boars are laying waste. And I
   cannot tell--oh! I cannot tell--what the end will be. But it must be
   near at hand.'

   Would that I had the gift of insight, as Michael had,' said Philip. He
   warned us of calamities at hand.'

   We need not prophesy, my Philip. In the long run, "

   Say ye to the righteous, it shall be well with him"; but we were warned
   that the hundredfold reward should be "

   with persecutions."'

   As though to emphasise their words there sounded in the room a tumult
   from without. Philip ran to inquire what it was. He learnt too soon. A
   man who pretended to be a maniac had made his way to the porch, and was
   brandishing a huge dagger, and swearing that he would murder
   Chrysostom. He had been seized, and would have been torn to pieces by
   the mob, but the Patriarch despatched Philip to the City Præfect, who
   was close at hand. The man was taken red-handed. No one doubted either
   that his madness was simulated or that he was an agent of the devilish
   wickedness of the clerics who thirsted for the Patriarch's blood. The
   Præfect ordered him to be examined by torture; but before it was
   applied Chrysostom sent some bishops to intercede for him, and to set
   him free. He hoped even against hope that his enemies might be overcome
   by his immense forbearance.

   He hoped in vain! Ecclesiastical malice is the bitterest and most
   unscrupulous form of malice known to the human race. It was very
   shortly after this act of mercy that Eutyches came running into the
   anteroom with a white face to tell Philip and Kallias that a murderer
   with a dagger was raging at large in the Thomaites. The youths jumped
   up at once, and Philip seized a club which, in these dangerous days, he
   had thought it safe to keep in a corner of the room. In the great hall
   was a scene of terror and confusion. A slave with a dagger had forced
   his way in, and, on being confronted by one of the Patriarch's
   servants, had stabbed him. He had wounded a second, who fled from him
   with loud cries. He had stricken to the earth with his weapon a third
   who tried to stop him; and as by this time a universal tumult had
   arisen, he fled, and with reckless fury dealt wounds more or less
   deadly upon four others. Thus, when the two young men ran into the hall
   the assassin had already killed or wounded no less than seven persons
   of the household of Chrysostom.

   Rushing upon him, Philip brought down the club with all his might upon
   the wretch's shoulder, and the blow was so strong and so well dealt
   that he was smitten to the ground by the shock of it. At the same
   instant Kallias seized him by the right hand, dealt him a blow on the
   temple, and wrenched the dagger, which was streaming with blood, out of
   his grasp. Gasping and utterly discomfited, he was bound, and dragged
   into the Patriarch's presence.

   Conscious of his frightful guilt, the bravo, who had shown courage
   enough so far as personal recklessness was concerned, was cowed into
   inconceivable abjectness in the holy presence of the Archbishop whom he
   had designed for his victim. His knees trembled under him, his face
   grew ashen with deadly pallor, his teeth chattered in such a way as to
   render his words almost unintelligible. Would the Patriarch strike him
   dead with a glance? Would he curse him with a sign into madness and
   hideous leprosy, and send him


   Unhouselled, unanointed, unaneled,

   No reckoning made, but sent to his account

   With all his imperfections on his head,

   into the horror of some inconceivable and endless hell?

   Pardon! pardon! pardon!' he shrieked. It was not my doing. I was sent
   to murder you. I received a bribe.'

   For what bribe did you sell your guilty soul?' asked Chrysostom.

   For fifty gold pieces.'

   Did Judas profit by the thirty pieces of silver for which he sold his
   Lord?'

   Oh! send me not to hell,' shrieked the wretch again, trying to fling
   himself prostrate, and crawl, grovelling in the dust, to the
   Patriarch's feet. I am not so bad as he who sent me.'

   Who sent you?'

   One of your own presbyters.'

   Say who it was, you foul murderer,' said Philip, clutching him by the
   hair.

   Gently, Philip, gently,' said Chrysostom.

   Yes; but, father, four of the villain's murdered innocent victims lie
   dead on the floor of the hall, and who can tell whether even the three
   others who are badly wounded will survive?'

   I will tell you who bribed me to murder,' said the wretch sullenly. 'It
   was the priest Elpidius. I am his slave. If holy priests bribe slaves
   to murder, how can ignorant slaves resist? Curse him! Curse him! May
   God curse him!'

   His was the greater crime,' said Chrysostom. As for your attempt upon
   my own life, I forgive it. May God also forgive it! But you have
   murdered four, perhaps seven, innocent men, and it would be a sin to
   set you free. Take him to the Præfect.'

   Oh!' said Philip to the assassin, I dare not trust my own rage to drag
   you to justice. Tell your master, if ever you see his face again, that
   he is an infinitely viler reptile even than you. I hope that he may
   never cross my path, or I know not how I could abstain from throttling
   him, priest or no priest.'

   Philip! Philip!' said Chrysostom to the passionately excited youth,
   control your anger. You are a Christian, a true Christian; be not
   transported beyond yourself, even for my sake.

   The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.'

   Pardon, my father,' said Philip, kneeling, and forgive me. Bless me,
   even me also, oh my father!'

   You need little forgiveness, my son. Your anger was generous. Only, let
   it burn no more. I give you my best blessing. God will reward your
   faithful love for me. The world is forsaking me, but you----'

   He could not finish the sentence.

   We--I, Eutyches, Kallias--yes, and some even among the bishops and the
   clergy--we will never forsake you, even to the death,' sobbed the
   remorseful youth.

   But now that the people of Constantinople felt that the life of their
   idol was no longer safe from the burning fury of Eudoxia and the
   murderous malice of priests and bishops, they determined to watch for
   him, and protect him day and night, as the people of Milan had defended
   Ambrose. They divided themselves into relays, and guarded every private
   and public gate which led into the Bishop's palace.

   But it had been only necessary to defend for a few days the life of
   Ambrose. A bishop could not be protected in his house by his people
   from Court and clergy day and night for ever; nor could everything in
   the Church and in the City remain in this state of unstable
   equilibrium. The fact that neither the priest Elpidius, nor the slave
   whom he had bribed to assassinate Chrysostom--who had actually murdered
   seven perfectly innocent victims--were punished, showed the horrible
   demoralisation of imperial justice. But Chrysostom still lived, and was
   still in the Patriarcheion. It became intolerable to the conspiring
   prelates that they should be unable to snatch the spoils of their
   victory; nor was the frenzy of Eudoxia and her Jezebels yet sated with
   vengeance. Things went on in this dreary way from Easter till it was
   nearly Whitsuntide. No one felt more deeply than Chrysostom that it
   could not last. He had for some time been secretly making up his mind
   to sate by voluntary sacrifice the episcopal tigers who were thirsting
   for his blood. Since their wrath was so fierce and their hatred so
   implacable, he would voluntarily end the strife, and make way for
   another. He did not object to the loss of his rank or state; he was
   content to be driven by force from his home and from his see; he was
   ready to offer his life in sacrifice; and, if it were God's will, he
   could lay it down as lightly as a pin. One thing he would maintain till
   death--it was his stainless innocence; it was that his character had
   been void of offence towards God and towards man.

   From the execrable corruption dominant in the Church of the East he
   turned to what he trusted was, in some respects, the purer Church of
   the West. He wrote to Innocent I., Bishop of Rome, to Chromatius,
   Bishop of Aquileia, and to Venerius, who now occupied the episcopal
   throne of Milan. He might hope that, through the law-abiding justice of
   the West, the Church might be delivered from the licentious turbulence
   into which the intrigues of Theophilus and his fellow-conspirators,
   fostered by the overweening arrogance of a semi-barbarian Empress, had
   plunged the disordered East. In this letter, after describing the
   scenes of riot and oppression which had dragged down the Church of
   Constantinople, he entreated them to put an end to this condition of
   frightful confusion; to declare his pretended condemnation to have been
   tyrannous, irregular, null, and void; and to censure those who, in
   committing these iniquities, had treated him with more violent
   injustice than even Scythians or Sarmatians would have ventured to
   commit.

   It required a bold and trusty messenger to bear this letter; and as the
   movements of a bishop, or even of a deacon, might be more jealously
   watched and impeded, he determined to send Kallias, for whom he felt a
   warm regard. He could take the letters secretly; his movements, as he
   was a mere youth, would not be regarded with suspicion; his talents as
   a tachygraph might prove useful; his blameless and ingenuous character
   would be a passport through all difficulties. Eutyches was too young
   and inexperienced. Philip could not be spared. Kallias was instructed
   to visit first the three great bishops to whom the letter was
   addressed, and then to see any other eminent prelate to whom he could
   find access, and, if possible, to enlist the sympathies of the great
   Stilico and of the Emperor Honorius himself. All details were left to
   his faithfulness and ingenuity, and a sum of money was entrusted to him
   to meet all his probable expenses. Kallias, before he started, had many
   a long and earnest conversation with Philip, and agreed at every
   possible opportunity to send news of his doings.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LI

  DRIVEN FORTH

     'I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in
     exile.'

     Gregory VII.

   Thus miserably did things drag on till Whitsunday, while civil
   oppression, animated by the burning passions of Eudoxia and the
   vitriolic malignity of the bishops, permitted scenes of shame and
   brutality to violate even the sanctuary of God. The fury of oaths, the
   screams of the tortured, the whistling of scourges, were heard even in
   churches, while the attempt was made to coerce the faithful to
   anathematise the holy pastor whom they loved. Men recalled the language
   of the Gospels--'

   And there shall be signs in sun, and moon, and stars; and upon earth
   distress of nations in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the
   billows; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for expectation of the
   things which are coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens
   shall be shaken.' Nor was their dread unreasonable. The defeat,
   deposition, exile, and martyrdom--for martyrdom to all intents and
   purposes it was--of the saintly Patriarch of Constantinople led to
   age-long consequences, both in the East and in the West. In the West,
   the events which issued from it tended to establish the influence of
   the Bishop of Rome at a period when that influence was in many respects
   for the advantage of mankind, and before it had been distorted by
   forged donations and false decretals into a cruel and pernicious
   tyranny. In the East, it degraded the Church into an abject
   subservience, in which she abdicated her functions as a denouncer of
   luxury and oppression, and submitted to the Cæsaro-papism' of wavering
   despots.

   The days of trouble and rebuke and blasphemy, in which, to use the
   image of the prophet,

   the children were brought to the birth, and there was not strength to
   bring forth, dragged on amid alarms, tumults, and attempted
   assassinations till Whitsuntide, June 5, 404. Eudoxia and her priestly
   instigators felt that any further delay in the consummation of their
   plots would be fraught with peril. In the plenitude of autocracy they
   still felt the terror of the guilt which trembles before unarmed
   innocence. The passionate enthusiasm of the people for their Bishop
   might still triumph over the conscientious timidity of the Emperor.
   Their hideous plots of murder had been frustrated; it might happen that
   truth and righteousness would still triumph, and so their dark webs of
   lies and bribery be torn to shreds. Arcadius, terrified lest the crime
   of his connivance in accusations which he knew to be the perjuries of
   jealousy and hatred should provoke the intervention of Heaven, had been
   waiting for some admonitory eclipse and earthquake which might once
   more frighten Eudoxia. This would have given him the excuse for
   dismissing the episcopal intriguers to their neglected sees and
   restoring Chrysostom to his Patriarchal throne. But in those burning
   days of June no thunderbolt fell, no storm disturbed the azure sleep of
   heaven. Meanwhile the passionate importunities of the Empress disturbed
   his abnegation of all effectual power. His conduct was finally decided
   by the four worst bishops who were leaders of the Empress's party.
   These men--Antiochus, Acacius, Cyrinus, and Severian--urged by Eudoxia,
   demanded an audience, and came into his presence. Arcadius was no match
   for these sanctimonious criminals, though even his obtuseness saw to
   the depths of their villainy. Emperor!' they said to him---for it was
   their snake-like policy to enslime their victim ere they
   gorged--'Emperor! thou hast been appointed ruler by God that all may
   obey thee, and that thou mayst act according to thy will. Be not more
   compassionate than priests, more holy than bishops! We have said before
   all the world, "Let the deposition of John be on our heads." Do not
   destroy us all that thou mayst spare one.'

   Well,' replied the Emperor, if yours is the crime, yours be the
   penalty. I hold John to be innocent and orthodox; if you force me to
   offend Heaven by wronging him, let his blood fall on your heads.'

   Then they said of Christ's servant as the priests of old had said of
   Christ Himself:

   'His blood be on us and our children'; and Arcadius, like Pilate,
   practically washed his hands of the matter, and said,

   'I am innocent of the blood of this just person. See ye to it!'

   At noon that day Patricius, the principal notary of the Emperor, was a
   bearer of a note to the Patriarch in which Arcadius said: The four
   bishops make themselves responsible for your deposition. Commend your
   affairs to God, and depart hence without delay.'

   Commend your affairs to God!' Even in that phrase the Emperor betrayed
   the fact that his rescript was the outcome, not of his convictions, but
   of his imbecility.

   Clearly, however, the order was meant to be final; and it was precise.
   Chrysostom, anxious to put an end to intolerable complications, which
   threatened to have a terrible ending, and deeming it a duty in the last
   extreme to submit to the powers that be, prepared to obey. A group of
   bishops and clergy were with him in the Patriarcheion. He read them the
   Emperor's letter, and told them that he would be willing in a few
   moments to go with them to the Cathedral, and thence to depart he knew
   not whither.

   Then he went into his study, and called Philip and Eutyches to him.

   My sons,' he said to them, controlling his deep emotion by a strong
   effort, the destined hour has struck. The Emperor has sent me his
   decree of banishment, which I can resist no longer. I depart hence, and
   a voice tells me that when in a few moments I leave this home, which
   men call my palace, I leave it for ever. My place shall know me no
   more. I am in God's hands. His will be done, not mine.'

   He paused, lest he should break into uncontrollable weeping; for the
   two youths had kneeled at his feet and had grasped his either hand, and
   could not speak, but were kissing his hands and bathing them with their
   tears.

   Gently he disengaged his hands, and laid them in blessing on the dark
   locks of Philip and the short, fair hair of Eutyches. My dear, dear
   sons,' he said, I have seen day by day your goodness, and faithfulness,
   and love to me. It costs me a keener pang to part from you than from
   any others. You have been utterly true to me. Dear Philip, for years
   you have brightened my days, you have lightened my labours. I always
   knew that whatever I trusted to you would be done, and well done. I had
   but to mention it to you, and then I could dismiss it from my mind. And
   you, dear Eutyches, I have rejoiced to see you growing up in holiness,
   "

   like the flower of roses in the spring of the year, and like lilies by
   the watercourses." Farewell! farewell, my children! and the God of
   mercy and of peace be with you!'

   They had hidden their faces in their hands, and he made over them the
   sign of benediction; but then Philip sprang up impetuously.

   Nay, my father,' he said, bid us not leave you. We will go where you
   go, we will die where you die. As your God is our God, so your trials
   shall be ours.'

   Not so, my sons,' he said gently. Your sympathy, your service, would
   indeed be to me an immense consolation. But how can I suffer you to
   blight your youth for my sake? I am an old man; my days are spent; my
   work is done; mine enemies have triumphed. I go, like St. Paul, knowing
   nothing, save that in every city bonds and imprisonment await me. The
   dark days which Michael foresaw have come; I know not even whether for
   me in this world at eventide there shall be light. But as for you--live
   out your lives in God's faith and fear, and may He give you, of His
   goodness, many happy days!'

   We cannot leave you, father,' sobbed Eutyches. Better trial and
   persecution with you than to know that you were in trouble, and that we
   were far away, and could do nothing to lighten your griefs.'

   Ah! my dear son, Eutyches, it may not be,' said the Patriarch. It would
   not be permitted, even if I could desire it. But take comfort, my boy.
   To know that you are well and happy will be a far deeper alleviation to
   me than to see your young lives devastated for my sake with premature
   anguish. And oh! cease, cease, my sons. By your weeping you break my
   heart. Believe me, even in this hour, even in the midst of my grief, I
   am happy, for I am innocent. If you grow up to suffer, may you grow up
   also to know and feel that to suffer with Christ is not to suffer.'

   But when he saw that neither of them could speak, he added, very
   calmly, Nay, my sons, give not way too much to grief. To do so were to
   doubt the goodness of God. You, my Philip, stay to look after my few
   possessions, and to see that the dear old servants of my youth are
   conducted safely back to my home at Antioch. And you, my beloved
   Eutyches, when I am gone, Philip and Olympias will see that you lack
   nothing till you become a presbyter. I have left you both provided for,
   in the present and in the future, as this paper will show you, Philip.
   Farewell! Farewell!'

   He lifted them from their kneeling attitude, kissed them on both
   cheeks, and, with his face still bathed in tears, went out to the
   bishops and presbyters in the Thomaites.

   Come,' he said to them; let us go to pray for the last time, and to bid
   farewell to the Angel of the Church.'

   The distance was short, and they walked to St. Sophia under an escort
   of the palace guards. They found many assembled in the church, and an
   immense multitude, dimly cognisant that some great crisis was at hand,
   crowded all the streets and avenues. Chrysostom and his friends passed
   up the ambo-stairs, behind the curtains of the Sacrarium. He had
   scarcely entered when a note from his friend Aurelian was put into his
   hands. 'Hasten!' it said; the brutal ruffian, Lucius, is posted with a
   company of soldiers in the Baths of Zeuxippus. He swears that if you
   linger he will drag you out of the church by force. Leave the church
   secretly, or there will be a collision between the troops and the
   people, and the streets will run with blood.'

   He read the note aloud, and added: Never, if I can prevent it. My
   servants have ordered my mule to be caparisoned at the western gate. I
   will slip out in secret through a postern at the east. Farewell, dear
   friends!'

   He gave to two of the bishops his farewell kiss of peace, but could
   proceed no further. Farewell all of you!' he said; it would unman me
   too much to embrace you all. A few moments in the Baptistery to recover
   my calm, and I will set forth.'

   But in the Baptistery four of his holiest, noblest, and most beloved
   deaconesses--Olympias, Pentadia, Ampriecte, and Salvina--awaited him,
   and there was another harrowing scene of parting.

   Listen to me, my daughters,' he said to them. All is over; I have
   finished my course. You will see my face no more. If my successor is
   duly and rightly appointed, respect and obey him. Let not the Church of
   God lose your services--and oh! think of me in your prayers.'

   The noble ladies flung themselves on the marble floor, and kissed his
   feet and bathed them with their tears.

   Conduct them hence,' he said, with a broken voice, to Bishop Eulysius,
   who had volunteered to accompany him, 'for I feel utterly unmanned, and
   the sight of their anguish may haply excite the fury of the people.'

   Very gently the friendly bishop took the princesses Olympias and
   Salvina by the hand, and, bidding the others follow, led them out of
   the Baptistery. Then Chrysostom went out by the small eastern door,
   evading the throngs of people who were expecting to see him mount his
   mule at the western gate.

   He went forth,' says Bishop Palladius, 'and the Angel of the Church
   went forth with him.'

   A little band of soldiers, under two young and noble officers,
   Anatolius and Theodosius, had been bidden to await him there. Attended
   by the Bishops Eulysius and Cyriacus and some honest presbyters, who
   desired to accompany him on his journey across the Bosporus, and at
   least as far as Nicæa, he placed himself in the hands of the guards,
   and, avoiding the most frequented streets, they made their may to the
   Chalcedonian Stairs. To escape observation as far as possible
   Chrysostom concealed his face in the folds of his robe; but a few of
   the people, full of alarm and suspicion, recognised and followed him.
   Their numbers increased, and nothing but the drawn swords and firm
   bearing of the Prætorians overawed their menacing attitude, and
   prevented them from attempting a rescue. But there certainly would have
   been bloodshed if the Patriarch himself had not stepped forward and
   said My dear and faithful people, I am departing willingly. Let us obey
   the will of God and the edict of the Emperor. You will fill me with
   anguish if so much as one drop of blood is shed on my behalf. To God's
   gracious mercy and protection I commit you all. Farewell!'

   He raised his hand in benediction. The crowd knelt to receive it, and
   were calmed.

   But Philip and Eutyches could not be content to stay in the
   Patriarcheion while their father was being hurried into unknown exile.
   How could he even expect such love as theirs to abandon him, when they
   felt his loss like the parting of the Shechinah from the temple of
   their young lives? After a moment's hesitation, lest they should cause
   him needless pain, they said with one voice, 'Let us go, and, if need
   be, die with him.' Unperceived--for they had thrown over their ordinary
   dress the brown robe of the parabolani--they followed Chrysostom to St.
   Sophia, entered with others of the people, and saw him ascend to the
   Sacrarium. Then Philip, familiar with the church, and suspecting what
   would happen, went with Eutyches to the quiet eastern door, saw the
   Patriarch come out, and followed his escort of guards to the quay.
   Chrysostom went on board the vessel which was awaiting him, and both he
   and Philip involuntarily recalled at that moment with what different
   feelings they had twice before arrived at the Chalcedonian steps--once
   in the gilded, dragon-prowed, imperial barge, rowed by palace servants,
   when, with Amantius and Aurelian, he had been welcomed by the shouting
   populace; and once when, after his first exile, the flower-crowned
   multitude, robed in white, had poured forth in myriads to receive him
   with overpowering acclamations. And now he was being hurried away in
   secrecy, amid the fading twilight--hurried to his ruin by wolves in
   sheep's clothing, choked in a chaos of hatreds, entangled in a network
   of odious chicanery and wicked lies.

   Philip pressed forward out of the crowd and endeavoured to go on board.
   The soldiers barred his way with crossed spears, and told him, with
   objurgations, that no personal attendant was permitted to go with the
   Archbishop. Then Philip made an intense appeal to the two young
   officers

   Oh, sirs!' he said, the holy Patriarch is ill and weak, and knows not
   how to care for himself. I have been accustomed to wait on him since my
   boyhood. I entreat you to let me go with him. I will meet my own
   expenses. I will give no trouble.'

   And let me go, too,' said Eutyches, wringing his hands. I am one of his
   secretaries.'

   The officers, who had none but the kindliest feelings and intentions
   towards their illustrious captive, were visibly affected, but
   Anatolius, the senior of the two, laid his hand kindly on Philip's
   shoulder, and said, 'My good youths, we are sorry for you. But the
   Emperor's orders are stringent, and you must not come.'

   They stepped on board; the oars dipped in the deep blue waters; and the
   youths caught their last glimpse of their friend and father as he stood
   on the deck. He had heard their voices; he saw them stretching out to
   him their appealing hands, and was weeping; but he cried to them, Oh!
   my sons, why did you not spare me this fresh pang?'

   But Philip now felt utterly beside himself. My father! my father!' he
   cried, I cannot, I will not leave you,' and he made a spring towards
   the boat.

   He barely failed to reach it, but fell short into the water, and one of
   the oars struck him on the head. He sank under the waves, and
   Chrysostom and Eutyches both gave a cry. A sailor from one of the many
   boats plunged after the drowning youth, drew him safely to shore, and
   handed his fainting form to Eutyches. But the blow which he had
   received was slight. The shock of the cold water revived him. In a few
   moments he had recovered consciousness, and, leaning on the boy's arm,
   with bent head and aching heart he walked back to the Patriarcheion in
   his dripping weeds.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LII

  CONFLAGRATION


   A coal-black, giant flower of hell.--Browning.

   Meanwhile, as though things were not black enough already, an event had
   happened which was fraught with unutterable disaster to the guilty
   city.

   As the little boat which carried Chrysostom to the Bithynian shore
   furrowed its way through the starlit waves the rowers and soldiers
   raised a sudden exclamation of curiosity and amazement. Startled from
   his moody grief, the Patriarch looked up, and saw a huge blaze shooting
   up into the air, broadening in area, deepening in vividness and
   intensity, and at last reddening the evening sky with terrible
   illumination. What could it mean? What had caused it? That the
   Cathedral should be in flames seemed inconceivable; but was it possible
   that there could have been a revolution at Constantinople? Had the
   populace, in wild grief at the loss of their Archbishop, risen against
   the Emperor, and burnt to ashes the buildings on either side of the
   superb oblong forum known as the Augusteum, and the Imperial Palace
   itself? They learnt too soon the fatal truth, but meanwhile they had to
   repress their devouring anxiety and press forward on their way.

   No sooner had the crowd outside St. Sophia begun to suspect that
   treachery was intended, and that their beloved Patriarch was being
   forced away from them, than they endeavoured to force their way into
   the church, of which they found that the western gates had now been
   locked and barred. Rushing round the cloisters to find some other
   entrance, they found the eastern ingress defended by soldiers of the
   Court, who opposed their ingress. A fight began, and though many were
   killed, the crowd succeeded in bursting in. Meanwhile, the multitudes
   who thronged the western Galilee, ignorant of what was taking place,
   and imagining that their bishop was being seized by violence, began to
   batter furiously upon the principal gates, which at last they partly
   burst open, and partly shattered to fragments. Rushing in, they again
   found themselves confronted by the soldiery, who, alarmed by the fury
   of the mob, drew their swords. The Jews and Pagans whom curiosity had
   attracted to the scene looked on with sneers and bitter ridicule while
   the mob and the soldiers stood face to face. Maddened by their insults,
   the crowd rushed forward, another bloody fight ensued, and the
   many-coloured marbles of the sacred pavement were soon heaped with
   corpses and incarnadined with blood. To add to the general horror, a
   storm had rolled in from the Euxine, whirling before it so dense a mass
   of clouds as to cause a blackness which, to the excited minds of the
   spectators, seemed inexplicable and miraculous. Stunned by the sudden
   roar of the hurricane, soldiers and populace alike stood silent in a
   co-instantaneous pause of horror which had in it something sublime. The
   fighting ceased, and the multitude, haunted by supernatural awe, began
   to steal out of the sacred edifice; when suddenly, as though a
   thunderbolt from heaven had smitten the roof, a crack was heard, and
   from the Patriarch's throne a jet of fire leaped upwards with
   inconceivable fury. The cry of Fire! Fire!' had scarcely been raised
   when it seemed too late to check the strangely precipitous ravages of
   the conflagration. The timbers of the building were dry with the
   scorching heat of many summers. The spout of fire leaped up as high as
   the roof, and, spreading among beams and rafters, presented the aspect
   of a colossal tree of red flame. Then, from the boughs and the leaves
   of this awful tree it seemed as if myriads of fiery serpents darted in
   every direction, wreathing about pillars and architraves, melting the
   iron of the roofs and the chains of the great lamps, which fell with
   crash after crash and shattered themselves to pieces on the tessellated
   floors. The crowd and the soldiers alike, seized by the same panic,
   rushed promiscuously into the open air, reduced to peace by common
   terror. Many were crushed to death or had their limbs broken in the
   wild effort to escape, and barely had they emerged into safety when the
   whole cathedral seemed to be blazing like a furnace of demons, beyond
   all hope of preservation. Of the metropolitan edifice, one of the
   stateliest churches in the world, nothing was left but a heap of
   blackened ruins, half-calcined by the fierce heat, and one little
   side-chapel, which had not been so much as scathed by the flames.

   But this was not the whole extent of the mischief. Driven before the
   fierce wind great flakes of fire and of burning material were swept
   southward to the adjacent buildings. Strange to say, they did not light
   on the Patriarcheion, which stood nearest to the church. For
   this--though it was not known--thanks were due to Philip, who, roused
   by the awful spectacle from the stupor of his grief, employed the
   servants in deluging the roof with bucket after bucket of water,
   extinguishing each flake and brand as it fell. There was no one to take
   similar care of the two next buildings, the Senate-house and the Baths
   of Zeuxippus. The consequence was that they too were speedily raging
   like huge furnaces of inextinguishable fire. The flames shot high into
   the air and, beaten along by the wind, they met in gigantic burning
   arches overhead; while beneath them, as between two labouring
   volcanoes, streamed the myriads of the people, whose hearts were swept
   by strange extremes of emotion. Every citizen who had any patriotism
   mourned for the loss of the two loveliest edifices in the Imperial
   City. If the Christians felt inclined to taunt the Pagans with the
   destruction of their idols, the Pagans could sneer at the Christians
   for the reduction to ashes of the huge basilica where they worshipped
   the pale Galilean.' But Pagans and Christians alike felt that the
   Church, indeed, could be rebuilt--as it was soon rebuilt, with even
   greater magnificence--but that nothing could replace the choicest works
   of Greek sculpture. The famous statues of the Nine Muses, which
   Constantine had carried from Helicon to adorn his new capital, were
   calcined into dust. What wonder!' exclaimed the æsthetic Pagans. What
   did the Muses care for the new religion, with its uncultured
   barbarism?' But the Zeus of Dodona, the Athene of Lindus, the
   Amphitrite of Rhodes, the Pan which the Greeks had consecrated in
   memory of the battle of Salamis--all perished indiscriminately; and the
   skill which had produced them had vanished from the world. They had
   sunk amid the lava streams of molten metal, or had been crushed by the
   masses of superincumbent ruin. The Zeus and the Athene had been
   preserved, though desperately injured, by the melted lead which had
   streamed over and encased them; and the Pagan historian, Zosimus,
   consoles himself with the inference that Zeus and Athene had determined
   under no circumstances of Christian provocation to abandon for ever the
   city which was the New Rome. But his consolation is soon overshadowed
   by the no less strong conviction that the share of these deities in
   human affairs is unaccountable; that they do whatever pleases them, and
   for the most part


   Lie beside their nectar, and the clouds are curled

   Round about their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.


   And they hear a lamentation and a wail of ancient wrong,

   Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.

   Thus all the inhabitants of the great city had cause to mourn, and
   cause far deeper than any of which they were aware; for when Chrysostom
   went forth, not only had the Angel of the Church gone forth with him,
   but gone forth never to return. The golden candlestick of the
   Patriarchate was removed out of its place. There was, indeed, a long
   succession of archbishops, but the majority of them were nullities, who
   raised no voice against religious folly and worldly iniquity. The
   Patriarcheion became for all practical purposes a mere appanage of the
   Imperial Palace; Christians took their religion--orthodox or heretical
   as the chance might be--from the dictate of emperors, and set before
   themselves no loftier ideal of morals than they saw in the tyranny, the
   corruption, and the boundless luxury of the Palace and its despicable
   little human gods.

   Who kindled that thrice-disastrous conflagration? The answer to that
   question will never be known till the great day, when the secrets of
   all hearts shall be revealed.

   Some, in their excited imagination, declared that it had been
   supernatural. They said that they had heard the crash, and seen the
   rush of a descending thunderbolt, which had shattered the
   Archiepiscopal throne as a sign of God's wrath and judgment, and in
   order that no bad or mean successor should defile with his presence the
   seat on which the holy John had sat.

   Others laid the blame on the Jews and Pagans, who, they said, had with
   fiendish malignity seized the moment when the Christians were
   distracted with anguish to destroy their famous church, and, if
   possible, to consume some of the worshippers in its ashes.

   Others fomented the preposterous calumny that Chrysostom himself was
   the guilty incendiary. But even the rage of Eudoxia, even the stolidity
   of Arcadius, found that charge too wickedly absurd. Every fact of the
   case, as well as the testimony of hundreds of witnesses and the holy
   character of the Patriarch, rendered the charge as ridiculous as it was
   infamous. The brutal Pagan præfect and magistrates, eager as they were
   to seize every weapon of destruction against men whom they detested,
   abandoned this pretence from the first. They left it to be cherished
   exclusively by the venomous falsity of the hostile bishops, who had the
   effrontery to assert it in their letter to Pope Innocent as though it
   were an indisputable fact.

   The commonest view--though there was no tittle of evidence produced in
   its favour--was that it was the work of the Johannites.' It may be
   regarded as certain that this was not the case. Had any such plot
   existed, it cannot be doubted that in the tortures and persecutions
   which followed it would have become known.

   The conflagration may have been due to accident pure and simple, so
   that not one person in Constantinople was aware how it arose. Or,
   again, it may have been the work of some one wild partisan of the
   Patriarch, driven half-mad by despair and a sense of injustice. If so,
   the secret remained locked in his own bosom. How vast a forest that
   first tiny spark enkindled!

   There was only one alleviation of the calamity caused by the fire. A
   small chapel had marvellously escaped when the rest of the great
   cathedral had been consumed to ashes. It was the Sacristy, and in it
   were contained the precious gold and silver vessels and other treasures
   of the church. In this circumstance the friends of Chrysostom saw a
   Divine interposition. For one of the charges brought against him was
   that he had sold, alienated, embezzled, and diverted to his own
   purposes the possessions of the church. Had the Sacristy and its
   contents been consumed in the conflagration, it would not only have
   been impossible to scatter this calumny to the winds, but it would have
   been urged that John had consumed the building to conceal the evidence
   of his own defalcations. As it was, all the treasures could be produced
   intact. An accurate inventory of them existed; this was placed in the
   hands of the Præfect Studius and a committee of high official
   assessors. Two friends of Chrysostom--the presbyters Germanus and
   Cassian--went through it before the legal authorities, handed over the
   sacred vessels, were furnished with a receipt in full, and carried this
   receipt with them to Pope Innocent at Rome, as a triumphant vindication
   of the Patriarch's integrity. The providential preservation of the
   Sacristy robbed unscrupulous slanderers of what would otherwise have
   been their most fatal weapon.

   The resultant anguish fell first, and most heavily, on Chrysostom
   himself. Accompanied by the Bishops Eulysius and Cyriacus and a few
   presbyters, he was making his sad journey to Nicæa, where he was to be
   informed of his ultimate destination. Their hearts were full of
   heaviness at the news that St. Sophia had been reduced to heaps of
   ruins, when they were thunderstruck by the arrival of an officer,
   despatched under the orders of the Court by Studius, the præfect, to
   charge the two bishops with incendiarism, to throw them and the
   presbyters into chains, and to conduct them back to prison in the city.
   Chrysostom, indignant at the wicked charge, said that they were as
   innocent as himself--that he could not separate his cause from theirs.
   As a matter of the barest justice, he demanded to be heard in his own
   defence and that of his friends. But not even the Empress had dared to
   include the Patriarch in the odious accusation. The emissaries could
   only act on their orders. They fettered Eulysius, Cyriacus, and their
   companions, and they were carried off to prison, first to Chalcedon,
   then to Constantinople. The trial showed that there was not a tittle of
   evidence to inculpate them; but even under these circumstances they
   were banished from Constantinople, and forbidden ever again to enter
   its precincts.

   Chrysostom, almost crushed with grief, continued his journey. He had
   not been allowed to take with him a single personal attendant. But God
   was merciful to him. The hearts of the rough soldiers were touched by
   his dignity and his misfortunes, and they and their officers treated
   him with affectionate respect, and did what they could to supply his
   needs.

   They reached Nicæa, and there for a while they rested till the will of
   the Emperor was known. Chrysostom was a little refreshed by the
   comforts of the city and the soft breezes of Lake Ascanius, and he
   ventured to hope, in his innocence, that some tolerable place of exile
   like Sebaste, in Armenia, would be appointed for him as a residence,
   where he could spend in peace the rest of his days--those années plus
   pâles et moins courannées, which would not seem dim to a soul which had
   never been enchanted by the ambitions of the world. But it was a bitter
   blow to him to hear that he was to be banished--thanks to Eudoxia--to
   the half-desert town of Cucusus, at the end of a wild valley of the
   Taurus range. It was a place of wretched climate, liable to incessant
   assaults of Isaurian marauders, into which, as though he were dead
   already, he was to be flung aside as into a living tomb. In vain had
   his friends pleaded for a less intolerable place of banishment.
   Notorious criminals constantly secured for themselves a comfortable
   abode; but the hate of the Empress was as an axe whose edge could not
   be turned, and the paltry Armenian hamlet, whose only boast was the
   tomb of a former Archbishop of Constantinople--Paulus, who had been
   martyred by the Arians--was now to be immortalised by furnishing a rude
   shelter to the last years of the best saint and greatest Father of the
   fourth century.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LIII

  DRAGGED ON HIS WAY


   Contenti nel fuoco.--Dante, Inf. i. 115.

   The melancholy journey began on July 4, 404, and its hardships nearly
   produced the effect so ardently desired by the Empress and her priestly
   abettors--the precipitation of the martyrdom of him who had become
   their enemy because he told them the truth.

   Not that the indomitable spirit of the Patriarch succumbed even for a
   day. With wise heroism he determined--accused, banished, loaded with
   calumnies as he was--to render every service to the Church of God which
   was still in any way possible to him. Uncertain of his destiny, he
   occupied himself with ardent efforts to further his missionary
   enterprises in Phoenicia and other countries. At Nicæa lived a hermit
   who, in the ignoble perversion of the religious ideal, had walled
   himself up in a mountain cavern, where he had sworn to die. Chrysostom
   visited him, bade him to cancel his immoral oath and redeem his sterile
   life by taking his staff, going to the good priest Constantius at
   Antioch, and offering himself as a missionary to overthrow the
   Phoenician idols. He also occupied his leisure by writing letters of
   consolation, which breathed the undaunted spirit and holy resignation
   of St. Paul, to alleviate the sorrows of Philip, of Olympias, and his
   other friends.

   Then the escort started. No sooner had they plunged into the black
   district of Burnt-Phrygia than Chrysostom was attacked with chronic
   fever, caused partly by fatigue, partly by the impossibility of
   procuring the daily bath which was essential for his feeble health,
   partly by the foul water and black, malodorous bread which was often
   the only nourishment which they could procure. For their orders were to
   avoid the towns on their route, perhaps because the Court was afraid of
   the effect of public demonstrations in the Patriarch's favour. As long
   as they were in the Diocese of Pessinus, of which the bishop,
   Demetrius, was his friend, they were not liable to molestation; but
   when they entered the diocese of Leontius of Ancyra, that bad
   ecclesiastic, untouched by the misfortunes of his innocent superior,
   harassed him with menaces which hinted even at murder. When they had
   struggled through this region into Cappadocia, the population flocked
   out of the towns and villages in throngs to honour him; but here again
   he was subject to the villainies of Pharetrius, Bishop of Cæsarea,
   whose cruelty was rendered more atrocious by his execrable hypocrisy.
   This man sent a message of unctuous affection to the Patriarch, saying
   how much he longed to embrace him, and how he had assembled multitudes
   of monks and nuns to do him honour. The miserable opportunist wanted to
   run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; he did not wish to offend
   his clergy, who honoured John, and still less did he care to embroil
   himself with the Empress. A lodging was provided at the extremity of
   the city; but Pharetrius was maddened with spite when he heard how the
   inhabitants surrounded the exile with marks of pity and of honour. He
   was worn out with forced travels night and day. Two physicians showed
   him special kindness, and ill as he was, he greatly needed their care.
   One of them even volunteered to accompany him to Cucusus, and, if
   possible, to save him from dying of sufferings which, as he wrote to
   the deaconess Theodora, were more severe than those of felons condemned
   to chains or to the mines. An additional torture was the absence of
   letters from Tigrius, or Philip, or Olympias. Happily for him he did
   not know, and never fully knew--such was the sacred tenderness of their
   reticence--the causes which had made it impossible for them to write.

   Meanwhile Bishop Pharetrius was driven into ferocity by mingled
   jealousy and alarm. It was intolerable to him to see the illustrious
   exile treated by the great men of the city with an honour which they
   never deigned to show to his miserable self; and he was afraid lest the
   enemies of Chrysostom should take him to task for his hospitality,
   niggard, ungracious, and uncharitable as it had been. Like all base
   natures, he betook himself to plots. Chrysostom had still one hundred
   and twenty-eight miles to travel, and was too ill to brave the perils
   of the mountain roads; but just when the escort was on the point of
   starting the journey was impeded by an alarm that the Isaurians were
   ravaging the country. All the inhabitants of Cæsarea, even the old men
   and the boys, were impressed to defend the walls of the city. Seizing
   the opportunity, Pharetrius sent hordes of monks, armed with stones and
   clubs, to surround the lodging of Chrysostom, with threats that they
   would burn him and his escort alive unless they instantly departed.
   They even went so far in their holy brutality as to beat many of the
   Prætorian soldiers, who were too few to resist them; the præfect of the
   city was appealed to, but his intervention failed to repress the
   monkish hordes. Pharetrius would not even permit a respite of two days.
   At last the officer of the escort said to Chrysostom, We must at all
   costs start; the Pagan brigands are less dangerous than these monks.'
   It was burning noon, and Chrysostom was hurried into his litter. One of
   the weeping presbyters who witnessed his forced departure came to him,
   and said, Your life here is no longer safe. The Isaurians themselves
   would treat you better than these wretches!'

   At this crisis a lady named Seleucia offered to the sick and suffering
   martyr the shelter of her villa, which was five miles distant. He
   gratefully accepted the offer, and Seleucia armed her slaves to repel
   the possibility of a midnight attack. Pharetrius sent her a fierce
   menace if she did not dismiss her guest; but the brave lady persisted
   in her work of kindness. A second and more threatening mandate
   terrified her. Chrysostom was awaked at midnight, his effects were
   hastily huddled together, he was told that the Isaurians were at hand,
   and that the servants of Seleucia had fled and hidden themselves. He
   found his mule harnessed and the escort ready. The night was wild and
   starless. He ordered that torches should be lit; but the presbyter
   Evethius, who had accompanied him from Cæsarea, bade that they should
   be extinguished, lest they should attract the barbarians. The guide led
   them through rocky and desert mountain paths. The mule stumbled at
   every step. At last it fell, and Chrysostom was flung to the ground,
   terribly shaken and half-dead. Evethius thought that he had expired;
   but he revived, and as he could ride no longer, the presbyter seized
   his hand, and dragged him along over the stones in an agony of pain.
   They escaped the Isaurians--if Isaurians there were, and if the whole
   alarm had not been due to a scoundrelly invention. All the next day
   they continued their bleak course over torrents and rough rocks, and at
   last, on the seventieth day after they had left Constantinople, they
   arrived at Cucusus. But that night of terror and anguish remained
   deeply graven on the Patriarch's memory. 'Light sorrows speak; great
   griefs are dumb.' He told his miseries to no one except Olympias, and
   begged her not to talk of them. From Cucusus he wrote to her, and said,
   I am safe at present from the Isaurians; they have retired into their
   own domains. I am safer here than at Cæsarea, for, with few exceptions,
   I fear no one so much as the bishops.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LIV

  A REIGN OF TERROR


   O, he is bold, and blushes not at death:--

   Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!

   Shakespeare, King John, IV. 3.

   Scarcely had Chrysostom been sent on his way to his deplorable place of
   exile than a reign of terror began at Constantinople.

   The election and consecration of his successor were accomplished with
   startling rapidity. Apparently neither the bishops, nor the clergy, nor
   the people were consulted. Within a week of the burning of their church
   the inhabitants of Constantinople learnt, with stupefaction, that their
   new Patriarch by the grace of Eudoxia was the presbyter Arsacius!

   He was an old man of past eighty, totally without ability or
   distinction. Maddened by the independence of Chrysostom, Eudoxia had
   determined that her next Patriarch should be a fainéant in the depths
   of senility. Arsacius was the brother of Nectarius, the predecessor of
   Chrysostom, and he was dull in intellect, timid in action, feeble in
   speech; muter,' says the lively Palladius, than a fish, and less
   competent for business than a frog.' Rumour said that when his brother
   Nectarius had wished to make him Bishop of Tarsus, and he had declined,
   the Patriarch had accused him of coveting the See of Constantinople and
   waiting for dead men's shoes; and that he had sworn on the Gospels that
   he would never accept episcopal ordination. But then he had one supreme
   merit in the eyes of Eudoxia. The silent contrast between the energetic
   and self-denying patriarchate of Chrysostom and the luxurious indolence
   of his brother Nectarius had filled Arsacius with jealousy, and he had
   disgraced his hoary hairs by coming forward to accuse John of
   embezzlement of Church property at the infamous Synod of the Oak.

   He was hurriedly consecrated by Severian and his clique in the Church
   of the Apostles, which served for the time as a pro-cathedral.

   But he found himself a bishop of empty churches. The people, devoted to
   Chrysostom, and accustomed to his fiery and varied eloquence, did not
   choose to countenance the wolf in sheep's clothing' who had been
   illegally thrust upon them, or to listen to a man whom they regarded as
   few removes above an imbecile. The result of his superannuated ambition
   was only to cause him a year of humiliation, followed by a death of
   disgrace. His patriarchate, undistinguished by a single merit, was
   rendered infamous by two diabolical persecutions, for both of which he
   must bear his portion of the blame. Unable to win even ordinary respect
   either by ability or kindness, he did not interfere to alleviate the
   first persecution, and by his appeal to the Court became the immediate
   cause of the second.

   The first persecution turned nominally on the charge of incendiarism
   against the Johannites,' and to equal its cruel infamy we have to come
   down to the darkest days which ever brought down the wrath of Heaven on
   a guilty Church: the dark and horrible days of religious persecution in
   its most baleful guise, when devils wore the garb of the Holy Office';
   the days when 'Saint' Pope Pius V., that perfect priest,' sent, with
   his blessing, a jewelled sword to Alva, the cold-blooded butcher of the
   Netherlands; the days when Torquemada and his successors daily filled
   the prisons of Spain with the shrieks of those whom, in the name of the
   merciful Jesus, they tortured with rack and thumbscrew,--blackened the
   blue heavens of Spain with the Tophet-smoke of their bale-fires, and
   laded the winds with the ashes of God's faithful worshippers; the days


   When persecuting zeal made royal sport

   Of murdered innocence at Mary's Court;

   the days when Pope Gregory XIII. consecrated the vilest form of
   assassination by singing Hallelujahs and striking medals in honour of
   the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. That such deeds of hell were possible
   as early as the fourth century is alone a sufficient proof of the
   hideous corruption of the Church caused by the usurpation of priests;
   of the dark and deadly superstition, half-Pagan, half-Jewish, which had
   polluted with turbid influences the pure river of the Water of Life; of
   the unspeakable degeneration from the religion of Him Whose name was
   Love, and who placed in love the fulfilling simplicity the law. The
   early Church, in the days of her simplicity and sincerity, would have
   revolted in unspeakable loathing from devilish cruelties, born of
   ambition and intolerance, which for so many subsequent centuries were
   committed in her name. Her doctrine, taught with absolute firmness by
   her early saints, was, Violence is hateful to God.' Could the Angels of
   the Church of the first and second centuries have witnessed the horrors
   perpetrated in later days by those who called themselves her champions,
   would they not have appealed to her Lord, and cried:


   Face, loved of little children long ago,

   Head, hated of the Scribes and teachers then--

   Say, was not this Thy passion--to foreknow

   In thy death's hour the deeds of Christian men?
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LV

  A BURNING, FIERY FURNACE


   elaune, kinei, phonion exiei kalou.--Eur. Herc. Fur. 837.

   The examination of the two good bishops, Eulysius and Cyriacus, who had
   gone forth with Chrysostom, had fallen to Studius, the Præfect of the
   city. It was impossible for the vilest of tribunals to condemn men
   whose innocence was alike transparent and demonstrable; so, after their
   bonds and imprisonment, they were gratuitously banished from the city.
   Apparently their escape was not to the liking of the heroes of the
   Synod of the Oak. They thought that Studius was not half cruel or
   unscrupulous enough in the violation of the law. Eudoxia agreed with
   them. Studius was cashiered, and Optatus, a Pagan--the Judge Jeffreys
   of the fourth century--was put in his place. He was sufficiently brutal
   and tyrannous to satisfy even Bishops Severian and Antiochus.

   One of the first to be brought before this villainous tribunal was the
   presbyter Tigrius. His history was a touching one. He had been a
   barbarian, a slave, and a eunuch, whose fidelity had been rewarded by
   manumission. When he became free, piety and charity had marked him out
   for the diaconate, and he had ultimately been ordained presbyter. He
   had been one of Chrysostom's most faithful friends, and had become
   universally known as a man who was gentle, generous, and kind to the
   poor. Charged with being one of the authors of the conflagration, he of
   course declared his innocence; but the vengeance of his enemies was not
   to be baulked by such a trifle. He was a Johannite,' and that was
   enough. He was stripped of his clothing, and laid face downwards. Then
   he was beaten with scourges of leaded hide. Next--for every method of
   the Holy Office' was anticipated with all the that her amateur remedies
   were often more efficacious than their own. She, too, in her
   simplicity, had to go through the same horrors to which Pentadia had
   been subjected. The loud murmurs of the poor, who loved her, restrained
   Optatus from the severest measures; but he tyrannously enforced upon
   her a mulct of nearly all her property. The court liked money. Arcadius
   was by no means indifferent to the enjoyment of huge fines. The
   extravagances of Eudoxia required unlimited supplies. So the wealth of
   Nicarete, which for so many years had wandered, Heaven-directed, to the
   poor,' was now forfeited to Byzantine ostentation. Yet she would not be
   baulked of her charity. Reducing the expenditure of herself and of her
   once large household to the barest minimum, she was still enabled to
   enjoy that luxury of doing good which was the only pleasure towards
   which she had the smallest inclination. Even so she excited the small
   jealousies of Arsacius and his ecclesiastics. They knew that in her
   heart she had not the least respect for any one of them, and remained
   faithful to the memory of Chrysostom. Subject to incessant annoyances,
   she too left the scene of her bountiful liberalities, and retired to
   end her days in her native Bithynia.

   So the reign of terror went on, and not only multitudes of men, but of
   women also--many a monk, and many a virgin, and many a deaconess--were
   fined, scourged, imprisoned, tortured under eyes that gloated on their
   sufferings, in order that the dumb dotage of Arsacius might have some
   shadow of a congregation to listen to his inane platitudes. It was in
   vain. Men like Severian and Arsacius and Optatus, women like Eudoxia
   and her loose-minded entourage of widows intriguing with sham monks and
   bad priests, may wield all the powers of an empire, and may arm
   themselves with the snakes and torches of the Furies, but they cannot
   subjugate free souls by burning and torturing frail bodies. The friends
   of Chrysostom would have nothing to do with services rendered abhorrent
   by guilt and congregations assembled under dread of confiscation,
   anguish, and ruin. They gathered secretly in unknown houses and distant
   fields, and worshipped the God of their fathers in solitude, where the
   feet of wicked priests and more wicked bishops could not intrude.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LVI

  EUTYCHES AND PHILIP IN PROFUNDIS


   O death, made proud by pure and princely beauty!

   Shakespeare, King John, IV. 3.

   The bishops and metropolitans--Severian, Cyrinus, Antiochus, Arsacius,
   and tous ces garçons-là--felt a little discouraged. They kept on
   asseverating that John had set fire to his own cathedral, but not one
   human being believed them. They asserted in the most savage terms of
   assurance that, if John had not done it, the Johannites had at least
   done it at his instigation; but though they had gone down, as it were,
   to hell to find some means of enforcing evidence, not even the enginery
   of that slaughterhouse of everlasting vivisection, as they imagined it
   to be, had sufficed to wring from crushed men and scourged maidens one
   single incriminating word. Optatus and his myrmidons enjoyed the
   spectacle of burning flesh, and liked to hear the yells of sufferers
   whom they hated for their very innocence; but they could not but be
   sensible that they had gained very little personally by the
   gratification of their spite and rage, and that the execrations which
   they had roused against themselves in thousands of hearts, if not loud,
   were deep.

   For a moment they were reduced to a standstill. They might continue to
   whip, and thumbscrew, and rack, and burn, and torture for months; they
   might turn Constantinople into shambles, and kindle the unspeakable
   abhorrence of every noble soul throughout the world; but it was too
   pitiful to see all their charges break down, and all their lies rebound
   with tenfold violence on their own guilty heads.

   Then a brilliant thought suggested itself to Elpidius, the murderous
   priest, and Johannes, the adulterous deacon. Why had not Optatus tried
   his hand on those two young fellows who lived in the Patriarcheion, of
   whom the exiled John was so fond, who were so entirely devoted to him?
   Surely, if there was misprision of arson anywhere, they must have been
   guilty of it. In any case, it was a strange oversight of the
   bishop-inquisitors to have overlooked them. To torture, imprison, and
   possibly kill them would be a malicious phase of vengeance, because it
   would bring to the heart of the exile an anguish hardly second to that
   which they hoped he would have suffered from hearing of the treatment
   accorded to his beloved deaconesses. Besides this, youths--and Eutyches
   was little more than a boy--might easily prove more pliant, in the
   blithe morn of a life unaccustomed to grief and anguish, even than
   women over whose long years had passed many a wave and storm. So the
   two ecclesiastics--the murderer and the adulterer--went to Severian,
   and gave him a hint; which he and Cyrinus seized with rapture. Against
   Philip, in particular, they had old grudges to wipe off. It would be
   delightful to see him fainting on the rack, and to hear him screaming
   under the knife and the scourge; and as for Eutyches, it was little
   likely that a delicate and beautiful boy would be able to hold out
   long; and from the anguish of a frame so tender some inculpations
   against the Patriarch might very probably be wrung.

   Philip himself had often wondered why he had not been arrested, for it
   had never occurred to him as possible that the conspirators would think
   of arresting an innocent and harmless lad like his loved Eutyches, so
   modest, so blameless, so inoffensive, so kind to all. Philip himself
   lived and moved as in a dream. Sometimes it seemed to him--fatherless,
   motherless, almost friendless; with David gone, and Miriam gone, and
   his father driven into cruel and calumniated banishment; separated,
   perhaps for ever, from Kallias and the two young Goths who had been his
   companions; and with none who dared to advise or help him--it seemed to
   him as if the bitterness of death were passed. He was so terribly sick
   at heart that he would not venture into the law-courts, lest some
   sudden burst of indignation should transport him out of himself, and
   damage the cause of those he loved. But when it was told him how
   Tigrius had fared, and Serapion, and Heracleides, and all that had been
   gone through by Olympias, Pentadia, Nicarete, and the sufferings and
   ruin of all who were most faithful among the monks, virgins, and
   presbyters, his heart became like lead. To these sources of misery
   others were added. For some time he had not heard from the Desposynos
   Michael, and he had received no line from David, no message from his
   beloved and lovely Miriam. He knew that communication had become very
   difficult in that uncertain and troubled epoch; and rumours had reached
   him of raids of Isaurians, who had swept through Palestine itself from
   north to south. Not for one moment did he doubt of the faith and love
   of these dear friends; but what had happened to them? Were they still
   living? Yes; something told him that they were, they must be, still
   living; and if so, oh! why did they not send him some line or letter,
   some words of message and of cheer? And, beyond this incessant
   disquietude, he had heard of the anguish of Chrysostom's soul in the
   long, trying journey to Cucusus, and none but Philip could fully
   realise what his frail frame and delicate health must have suffered in
   the absence of the barest needs of life in that terrible night at
   Cæsarea, in those alarmed and hurried journeys through bleak Galatia,
   in those drear journeys among the robber-haunted crags and gorges of
   Armenia, and now in the cold imperilled, dreary ugliness of the
   wretched hamlet which malice had assigned as his prison-house. Yes;
   surely for Philip the bitterness of death was over. They might arrest
   him, or not arrest him. If they killed him--so much the better. What
   was life?--a vapour, and a poisonous one. Already for him every golden
   dream of youth had vanished with swift wings into the midnight; already
   the sun of life, which for a time had gleamed so brightly, had become
   red as blood, and had plunged into a sea of despair and death.

   When life has lost all its joys it, happily, has still its duties.
   Philip had been saved from succumbing utterly to his gloomy fancies by
   the necessity for bestirring himself in the cause of his beloved
   master. No sooner had Chrysostom started than he set about collecting
   his effects, and making arrangements for his servants to return to
   their old home at Antioch. Although barely ten days had elapsed before
   Arsacius had entered into the Archbishopric, Philip had already used
   his time well. The furniture and personal property which had belonged
   to the true Patriarch were simple, and Arsacius, pompous and purpureal
   as his luxurious brother had been, was only too glad to give every
   facility for removing all that rubbish,' as he called it. He was eager
   to reinvest the Patriarcheion with the sumptuous carpets and Tyrian
   hangings which had adorned it in his brother's days, to renew the old
   aristocratic banquets, and to make all the dwelling-rooms gleam with
   choice statuary and gold and silver plate. As for Chrysostom's study,
   he was not going to abide in such a hole as that. He did not feel the
   smallest interest in Chrysostom's manuscripts, and could not imagine
   how any man of position could tolerate having such brown, ugly, dusty
   things about him. The only books Arsacius possessed, beyond the
   fashionable current literature, were a few commentaries, catenæ, and
   such loitering gear,' out of which he elaborated his extremely rare and
   very platitudinous discourses.

   So all had been speedily packed, and Philip had sent to Antioch the
   sad-hearted servants, who had all known him from his early boyhood. He
   had consoled their sorrow by telling them that the Patriarch had
   assigned to him and Eutyches the dear old house in Singon Street, and
   that they would come together and live there as soon as their work in
   Constantinople was over and circumstances permitted. But at present he
   had a duty to perform in helping to prepare the letters and evidence
   which Palladius, Germanus, and Cassian were about to take with them to
   Innocent, the Pope of Rome. From Antioch Philip hoped ere long to make
   his way to Cucusus, and still to devote his young life to the beloved
   service of his father and master, rejoining Eutyches when it should be
   possible, and in any case paying him an occasional visit. Alas! man
   proposes, God disposes. Yet, why should we say alas!'


   All is best, though we oft doubt

   What the unsearchable dispose

   Of highest wisdom brings about:--

   And ever best found at the close.

   So Philip and Eutyches hired a little lodging together in the suburb of
   the city known as the Peratic deme, on the other side of the Golden
   Horn. There they lived very quietly, for they thought it best not to
   thrust themselves wilfully into a danger which was only too imminent;
   and they wanted to see as little as possible of Arsacius, and not to go
   near the Church of the Apostles, where he held his dismal and scantily
   attended services. In a few days they hoped to have made all their
   arrangements, and to start for Antioch.

   In their little room Eutyches was the most delightful of companions;
   nor could Philip have had anyone with him better adapted to dispel the
   breadths of ever-deepening gloom which were beginning to settle on his
   own young, ruined life. The life of Eutyches was still in its May, and


   all is joyous then;

   The waves speak music, and the flowers breathe odour;

   The very breeze has mirth in it.

   The trials of life had not yet touched him half so heavily as they had
   fallen on Philip, and the sorrows which had befallen him were
   brightened by the invincible faith which shone in a soul of stainless
   purity. He had an exquisite voice, and had often been asked to sing in
   St. Sophia when a solo was required. His charm as a singer was so great
   that if ever it became known that he was to sing there was sure to be a
   crowd. He now used his skill to soothe the unhappiness of his friend.
   Every night before they retired to rest they sang a Psalm and a hymn
   together, and often when they went walks in the wild, distant parts of
   the lovely shore, Eutyches would raise his voice in some fine lilt or
   fragment of Greek or Roman song, and charm away the wrath which Philip
   nurtured against the world of Constantinople.

   And though the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,' its sorrows
   are soon exorcised, and its spirit of hope is inextinguishable. Philip
   was looking forward to days when even yet he might be comforted by the
   dawn of brighter circumstances, when suddenly the thunderbolt fell upon
   them both.

   The Bishop of Gabala had obtained an order for their arrest. They were
   returning from one of their seaside strolls and a bathe in the blue
   waters of the Bosporus when, as they turned the corner of the street in
   which they were domiciled, Eutyches suddenly clutched Philip by the
   arm, and pointed.

   Two of the Palatini, in full armour, with their tall spears in their
   hands, stood before the door of their abode.

   To turn and fly was useless. Where could they go? Who would shelter
   them? Was it not certain that they would be overtaken and arrested?
   There was no help for it. Clasping each other by the hand, they
   advanced. The Palatini at once crossed their spears before the
   entrance, forbade their ingress, and arrested them in the Emperor's
   name.

   Show me the order of arrest,' said Philip. The soldiers showed it. The
   charge that they were incendiaries and virulent Johannites was
   countersigned with the loathly autograph of Severian.

   They gave themselves up. Fetters were placed on their wrists, and, with
   a soldier on either side holding the end of the chain, they were led
   off to the common prison. As they passed along the streets they were
   repeatedly seen and recognised. The crowd gave free expression to their
   pity, and, with their usual license, uttered fierce execrations against
   Eudoxia, against Optatus, against Severian and his tools. But they did
   not dare to attempt a rescue, for there were patrols of soldiery in
   almost every street, through the midst of whom Lucius, their
   commandant, often strode in full armour, with a threatening scowl upon
   his hard features.

   Flung into prison, with its stifling atmosphere and comfortless
   foulness, they were left there many days with the express object of
   weakening their spirits and making them look squalid and haggard, until
   the bright colour of youth should have faded from their pinched cheeks
   and the buoyancy of youth from their unflinching hearts. But the base
   plan did not succeed. There was a certain sense of inspired and
   inspiring exaltation in the soul of Eutyches, as though, in his
   innocence, he fed on manna dews and drank the milk of Paradise.' And
   when they were led together before the tribunal--the dark-eyed youth
   with his high and dauntless bearing, and the fair lad whose face was
   the face of an angel--not looking squalid and haggard, as their
   accusers hoped they would, but only pallid, an involuntary murmur of
   pity and admiration was heard among the throng. This did not improve
   either the temper of the pagan præfect, or of the Christian bishop
   whose portly presence seemed to occupy so large a place by his side.

   That boy will be cowed easily enough,' whispered Optatus to the Bishop.

   We will try it, at any rate,' said the pitiless prelate.

   What induced such a young ne'er-do-well as you to set fire to our great
   church?' said Optatus, bending on Eutyches his most savage frown.

   I would rather cut off my right hand, sir,' said Eutyches modestly,
   'than set fire to a church of God.'

   Oh! ay, you talk, you accursed young hypocrite!' said the judge, but we
   know you to be a rebellious Johannite, for all your white, simpering
   prettiness. Come, let us have no nonsense!' he shouted, or we will tear
   the truth out of you somehow. If you didn't set the church on fire
   yourself, the court has no manner of doubt that you know who did.'

   I do not know, sir, in the least,' said Eutyches. 'Our hearts ached to
   see our beloved church in flames, and no one who really loved the
   Patriarch can have committed such a crime.'

   The Patriarch, you impudent chatterer! Do you mean his Beatitude the
   Patriarch Arsacius, or the thieving, blaspheming, railing man whom his
   Eternity the Emperor has sent off to rot at Cucusus?'

   Shame!' shouted some of the auditors.

   Shame!' roared the Præfect. I'll have you canaille arrested and flogged
   wholesale in batches if you speak another word. Answer, prisoner!'

   Sir,' said Eutyches, I meant the late Patriarch John, whom I ever
   reverenced as a most holy man.'

   Oh! that is your line, is it? Now, anathematise the ruffian John, and
   we will believe that you are innocent, and set you free.'

   Stand firm, my Eutyches,' whispered Philip, who stood beside him in the
   dock.

   The boy's only answer was to turn towards him with a radiant and
   half-reproving smile. Could Philip imagine for a moment that he would
   quail?

   Optatus did not relish this by-play. You other prisoner,' he shouted,
   'speak another word before you are questioned, and you shall be whipped
   with leaded ropes by way of preliminary to your examination! Now, boy,
   curse the ex-Patriarch John.'

   I cannot, sir,' said Eutyches, and I never will. He was my benefactor,
   almost my father. I was an orphan, and he gave me a home. I owe to him
   my very soul.'

   Oh! you cannot, cannot you? Look, boy. Do you see those things? Jailer,
   show him some of those pretty playthings.'

   The jailer drew a curtain, touched the boy on the shoulder, and
   pointed.

   There Eutyches saw a collection of the instruments of torture. They
   scarcely differed in any respect--except that they were not refined by
   science to such entire perfection--from the instruments which the
   Papacy so often wielded with such frightful and long-continued
   malignity in many lands to coerce the free consciences of men and women
   and boys who would not sell their souls for a lie. There was a burning
   brasier, in which various iron instruments were being heated red hot;
   there were gridirons, like that on which St. Lawrence was martyred;
   there were pincers and thumbscrews to crush the fingers and tear away
   the nails; there were racks; there was the wooden horse, with its back
   cut in sharp ridges, on which prisoners were tied with heavy weights
   attached to them; there were pincers to twist and rend the limbs; there
   were strips of rhinoceros-hide weighted with nails and lumps of lead;
   there were the abhorrent ungulæ, with long handles and sharp claws,
   with which the executioner carved the flesh into bloody furrows.

   Eutyches turned his gaze towards them, and for a moment grew pale.

   Do you see them?' said Optatus; pretty, aren't they? Do you want to
   feel them, too?'

   The boy only turned his eyes to heaven and murmured an inaudible
   prayer; while Philip again murmured, 'Courage, my Eutyches!'

   Strike that impudent scoundrel on the mouth, soldier,' said Optatus, in
   a fury; say one word more, and your tongue shall be torn out.' The
   Prætorian dealt a fierce buffet on the face of Philip, which grew livid
   under the blow; while Eutyches, as he saw it, started and uttered a
   cry. And you, you young dog of a prisoner!' shouted the judge, don't
   think to come over us with pretty airs of martyrdom. Once more,
   anathematise John, or----' His cruel finger pointed to the instruments
   of hell.

   I cannot,' said Eutyches in his low, sweet voice, which thrilled all
   hearts. I may not! I will not! Lord Jesus, help me!'

   Do not deceive yourself, boy,' said Severian, with unctuous piety; '"

   though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth
   me nothing."'

   Eutyches turned on him his pure glance, while over his face passed an
   involuntary shade of contempt, and through his body ran an involuntary
   shudder of aversion.

   We waste time,' said Optatus. Strip him bare.'

   They tore off his clothes.

   Lash him with the scutica.'

   The dread scourge whistled through the air, and made horrible blue
   wheals as it fell on the boy's white back. But he spoke no word, and
   there was a lustre as of heaven in his blue eyes.

   Once more, anathematise John.' Eutyches could not speak, but he shook
   his head.

   If that is not enough to break down his stubbornness, lay him on the
   rack.'

   They laid his swollen and lacerated limbs on the sharp points of the
   wooden horse.

   Now try the ungulæ on him.'

   Philip's heart was full even to bursting; he was sobbing
   uncontrollably, convulsively, hiding his face in his hands.

   The torturer drew the ungulæ down the side of Eutyches, tearing the
   flesh into deep gashes.

   Philip! Philip!' he moaned under the anguish, and stretched out his
   hand. Philip grasped it, and pressed it, till the executioner tore his
   hand away and smote it hard on the knuckles. But Eutyches had been
   thinking more of his friend's anguish than of his own, and now his soul
   passed into a sort of trance of exaltation. He felt as though white
   angels were standing by him; as though Christ Himself were now holding
   and pressing his hand. When the executioner rasped the horrible ungulæ
   down the other side he was scarcely conscious of it; a sea of light
   seemed to encompass and roll over the sea of darkness; agony was merged
   in an ecstatic and pain-obliterating rapture. He uttered not a word.

   Pretty creature!' said Optatus. Executioner, you must spoil his beauty
   a little. Try the ungulæ on the forehead.'

   The man tore off the skin of the lad's forehead, tearing off the
   eyebrows with it. The blood deluged and blinded his eyes, and clotted
   the curls of his fair hair. But he spoke no word.

   Speak you shall!' said Optatus.

   Hold a torch for half a minute to the wounds on his side,' whispered
   Severian, mad with impotent spite; he will speak then.'

   It was only said in a whisper, but Philip, whose senses were strained
   by excitement and horror to intense acuteness, heard it, and was swept
   away by a mighty storm of passion.

   Oh, you fell dog!' he cried, leaping to his feet and uplifting his
   hands, on which the fetters clanked. Oh, monster of wickedness and
   cruelty! A bishop--you? Nay, surely the very devils must blush for you!
   God be judge between you and us! God smite thee and curse thee, thou
   whited wall, and may this mystery of iniquity haunt thee till thou art
   a

   magor-missabib
   , a terror to thyself on every side.'

   The words of Philip's curse smote like hail on the ear of the guilty
   Bishop. He visibly recoiled and trembled before them, and for all his
   rubicund portliness seemed to shrink into nothing, and held up his hand
   between himself and Philip's avenging glance. But Optatus only turned
   on the youth his lurid smile, and said, It will be your turn next,
   young man. But we have not done with the other yet. Executioner, hold
   the torch to his side.' The fire touched him. He half-raised himself,
   and then cried in a voice of thrilling joy, I see Cherubim and
   Seraphim!--and--Thine own self--Oh, Lord Jesus!' He fell back. The man
   held the torch to the wounds, but Eutyches winced not, moved not, spoke
   no word more. They looked at him with amazement. He lay there
   unconscious; his torn skin hung over his features; his beauty was
   defaced; his bright hair was dabbled and clotted with blood; his white
   skin was covered with crimson stains. They unbound him. He was dead.

   An awful hush of horror fell on the assembly, and in that hush many
   afterwards averred--for they were intensely excited--that they had
   distinctly seen the flashing of angels' wings, that they had distinctly
   heard the melody of angel-harps.

   The hush was broken by the hoarse tones of Optatus. 'Take that carrion
   away! Now for the second prisoner. He seems likely to give us sport.'

   Ah! let us drop the curtain on these deeds of hell, commuted by men who
   called themselves Christians, and in the name of religion!--for some of
   the clergy sat with Severian, as assessors, in the interest of
   Arsacius, abetting, as such men have often done, the vilest works of
   the devil in the holy name of Christ.

   Philip was stripped of his clothes; he was beaten with the leaded
   thongs; his sides were torn with the ungulæ. Then he was laid upon the
   rack and his arms were, joint by joint, dislocated till they left but
   his right hand which was not out of joint; and that for the same reason
   as they did it in the case of Savonarola--that he might be forced to
   sign some incriminating statement later on.

   But their malice wholly failed. They could not wring from Philip one
   single word of any kind. It would have been a relief and a delight to
   them if only he would have moaned, or unpacked his heart in curses. But
   he spoke neither good nor bad, and it became monotonously horrible to
   hear in silence the clank of his fetters, the scraping of the ungulæ,
   and the grinding of the rack, while the sufferer did not so much as
   emit a single groan.

   They were proceeding to still worse extremities, which could not have
   left him with his life, when there rose among the spectators so savage
   and wrathful a murmur that the very executioners trembled, and
   hesitated in their task. Even the judges by this time had supped full
   of horrors; and it became manifest that the multitude, sickened,
   enraged, maddened by the fate of the innocent Eutyches, might break at
   any moment into furious riot, might slay the torturers, and the
   Præfect, and wreck the entire building. So there was an involuntary
   pause. Philip still lay on the rack as one dead. He did not hear that
   hoarse hum of the multitude, as of a sea murmuring under the first rush
   of the cyclone; and he said afterwards--long afterwards, in happy days,
   when he could bear for once just to allude to these things--that he
   doubted whether he was really sensible of the anguish. There are states
   of tension in which the soul has become unconscious of the body, just
   as the soldier is often unconscious of the throbbing of his wounds, or
   even that he has been wounded at all, till the battle is over. And
   Philip's mind had been so excited, so maddened, and then so stupefied,
   by watching the atrocities inflicted upon Eutyches, and afterwards so
   wafted into the seventh heaven by what he himself believed that he had
   seen--a vision of seraphs and a sound of their heavenly harps--that
   every other sense was deadened. They might have tortured him till he,
   too, sank dead; but finding themselves hopelessly and finally foiled,
   and no longer able to overlook the cries of fierce menace which rose
   from every part of the hall of justice, they adjourned the session of
   the court.

   Unbind him,' said Optatus, sullenly. Toss him back into the prison.'

   He has long been unconscious, you vile murderer and impure demon!'
   shouted a youth from the crowd who had known Philip, and had often
   delighted in his bright smile of welcome and genial words of greeting.

   Who was that?' roared the Præfect. Bring him here; scourge him; stretch
   him on the rack; tear him with the ungulæ. What! you can't tell which
   of the crowd it was? Liars, you want scourging yourselves! Soldiers,
   clear the court! Use your swords, if you like. I will be your warrant.'

   But the very soldiers had by this time grown utterly disgusted. They
   did not even pretend to use force, and the people, as they dispersed,
   greeted the Præfect and his assessors with yells of Demons' and
   Murderers.' Severian was the special mark of their abhorrence. They
   insulted him in spite of his escort of soldiers, who, indeed, loathed
   him so much themselves that they hardly took the trouble to defend him.
   They yelled at him; they hissed at him, and spat upon him on all sides;
   they pelted him; they hit him on the head with stones; they aimed blows
   at him with staves and clubs, and the soldiers only laughed. He began
   to think that, even with the Empress to protect his iniquities, he had
   made Constantinople too hot to hold him. He slunk away by night, to
   fill up the cup of his iniquities at Antioch and elsewhere. But never
   again thereafter was he anything but a terribly haunted man. He seemed
   ever to hear footsteps behind him. It was to him as though the earth
   was made of glass, as though the very stars looked down upon him like
   burning and innumerable witnesses. He constantly started, as at voices
   prophesying woe. He heard the howls as of bandogs following him. The
   face of Eutyches looked in upon him; and sometimes, if he sat alone,


   There came wandering by

   A shadow like an angel, with bright hair

   Dabbled in blood;

   and sometimes at night he woke up with a scream, and saw the angel
   pointing him out to Megæra faces, which glared at him and shook torches
   before his bloodshot eyes. And all the time the brand of Cain became
   more and more visible upon him. When he slunk back to his deserted
   sheep in the wilderness in the wild gorges which enclosed the wretched
   Galilean village of Gabala it was as a foiled, hated, disgraced,
   haunted, beaten man--a man who had sold himself for futile and
   unfulfilled ambitions--a man who had entangled himself in hateful and
   intolerable crimes. The fate of Ananias of Bethel, the fate of Pashur
   of Jerusalem fell on him, and hunted him pitilessly down the vale of
   his remaining years.

   When the jailers had carried the body of Eutyches out of the court they
   did not feel quite sure that he was dead; but by the time they had
   passed into the open air it became plain that they were only carrying
   the crimson spoils of his martyrdom.

   What is to be done with him?' said one. We cannot take a corpse back to
   the crowded prison.'

   Those fellows had better take care,' said his comrade, pointing back
   with his thumb over his shoulder to the place where the clerics sat. A
   good many in the city knew this young lad, and if they saw him as he is
   now some persons' lives would not be too safe.'

   Best let the priests know,' said the first.

   A message was sent to the judges' bench, and several presbyters hurried
   out. We must bury him ourselves,' they said. Quick, somebody, fetch a
   sheet, and throw it over his face.'

   No sheet was at hand, but one of them, glad to hide a spectacle which
   pained even their eyes, flung his upper robe over the boy's remains,
   and then they hurried with the bier to a burial-place. They attempted
   to say some words of prayer over the shallow and hasty grave. But their
   tongues stuttered and stumbled, and they felt as if angel voices rang
   in their ears, which said in words like those of the modern poet:


   How shall the funeral rite be said, the funeral song be sung

   By you--by yours, the evil eye, by yours, the slanderous tongue

   Which did to death the innocence which died, and died so young?

   They tried to say no more; but they confidently affirmed to others,
   when the name of Eutyches was added to the Martyrology, that they had
   heard celestial music, which floated and hovered above the lowly
   resting-place where his beautiful body mingled with the unremembered
   dust.

   But Philip's unconscious and cruelly mangled form was hurried back into
   the prison--for he still lived--and was flung down, carelessly, in the
   corner of the dungeon, on a heap of rotten straw, which formed his only
   bed. It was there that the charitable wife of Aurelian found him; for a
   voice seemed ever to ring in her ears: '

   I was sick, and in prison, and ye did not visit me.' Her heart ached to
   see the unhappy youth, of whom in the bright days of Chrysostom's first
   arrival at Antioch her noble husband had so often spoken to her as his
   lively and modest companion. There he lay, among the crowded,
   despairing prisoners--each daily expecting the same or a similar
   fate--untended, though the fluttering remains of what poor life was
   left to him seemed to require such careful and loving tendance night
   and day.

   Poor, poor youth!' exclaimed Aurelian with a sigh when she had told in
   what condition she had found him. 'These are dreary and terrible days,
   my Claudia. I remember how gay, how modest, how faithful that
   dark-haired youth was when he almost forced Amantius and me, against
   our wills, to let him accompany his master to this evil city; and I
   remember with what blythe cheerfulness, often with happy songs upon
   their lips, he and that other dear lad, Eutyches, the chorister, whom I
   hear they brutally tortured to death to-day, used to traverse the city
   streets on errands of service and of mercy.'

   Could you not plead with the Emperor for him?'

   Dear Claudia, Arcadius, as you know, means Eudoxia, and what Eudoxia
   is, when her hate is aroused, you also know.'

   Yet, surely even she would not object to the effort to snatch from
   death one cruelly tortured youth. Oh, Aurelian! risk something and try
   to save him.'

   I will go, and that instantly,' said the Prætorian Præfect. 'What is
   life, after all, but service?'

   He put on his purple mandye and went at once. His high rank secured him
   an immediate audience, and Arcadius, who sincerely honoured him, was
   glad to see him. He briefly mentioned his request, while the Emperor
   shifted about uneasily in his chair.

   I wish these days were over,' said Arcadius in a peevish tone. I am
   naturally kind-hearted, yet one seems to be listening all day long to
   the whistle of scourges, and the sullen people scowl at me even on my
   way to the churches. The very Amphitheatre is affected with elements of
   wrath and regret.'

   Can you not end this persecution of the Johannites, sire?' said the
   Præfect, falling on one knee.

   What can I do?' answered the miserable ruler of the world. I wish I had
   never listened to the plot of those bad bishops--for they are bad
   bishops, and the Patriarch was a holy man. And now the whole horizon
   looks black. God will be sending us another earthquake. But what can I
   do? Here is that old dotard of a Patriarch, on one side, urging me to
   find congregations for him; and on the other side is Eudoxia, goading
   me to fresh banishments and fresh executions. I wish----' The wish,
   whatever it was, died away unspoken.

   I am sure that if your Eternity would but express a strong desire, this
   cruel persecution of the innocent Johannites would cease. It is a shame
   to your beneficence that men should be daily stretched on the rack, and
   women scourged, and boys torn to death.'

   Express a desire? Ah! you little know. But this youth's life, at any
   rate, shall be saved, if it can be done. I will write an order for his
   release, and sign it here and now.'

   He sat down, and, dipping the stylus into his great golden inkstand,
   wrote the order in the clear, beautiful handwriting which was his sole
   accomplishment.

   Aurelian hurried home exulting; and when Claudia had ordered her
   easiest litter to be got ready and filled with the softest cushions,
   Aurelian accompanied her to the prison with the best physician in
   Constantinople. The body of Philip was lifted with the utmost care and
   tenderness upon a bank of cushions, and he was carried to the sedan.
   Then the physician did all that skill could do to set his wrenched
   arms, and he was gently conveyed to the palace of Aurelian. There, in a
   large and airy room which caught the breeze of the sea and tempered the
   burning heat of midsummer, he was laid on a princely couch, and tended
   with every service which skill and solicitude could render.

   He lay unconscious, hovering between life and death, for many weary
   days.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LVII

  GLEAMS OF RETURNING DAWN


   The grey secret lingering in the East.

   Coventry Patmore.

   For many weary days--but youth triumphed, and life won the supremacy,
   aided by the sound influence of a pure and healthy frame.

   Hitherto, since the cruelty to which he had been subjected, he had
   never awakened to clear thought. It was as if a red mist had ever been
   floating before his eyes, and for some time nothing but his feeble
   breath and slight movements had proved that he was alive. But now he
   began to show signs that he would recover.

   One day Aurelian and his wife, Claudia, stood by his bedside with the
   physician, who was a kindly Christian man. Aurelian was looking at
   Philip somewhat sadly. 'How changed,' he said, from the bright youth of
   six years ago! Will the colour ever return to that pale cheek, or the
   old strength and swiftness to those suffering limbs?'

   Yes,' said the physician, I have expended my best skill upon him, and,
   with God's blessing, it has not been in vain. But when he awakes to
   full consciousness there may be a reaction of despair and mental agony,
   which I greatly dread.'

   What do you advise?'

   He would be better in the country. When he is able to think and to
   remember, the tramp of soldiers in your courtyard below will trouble
   him, Præfect; and, assiduous as the Lady Claudia has been in her
   kindnesses, he will need someone to tend him day and night.'

   Olympias would gladly nurse him till his recovery,' said Claudia. She
   came to see him, not without danger to herself, a few days since. She
   often used to talk to him in the house of the Patriarch.'

   Nothing could be better,' said the physician. In the island-city of
   Cyzicus, where Olympias now lives, he would breathe the pure air of the
   Propontis. The Lady Olympias is a skilled and devoted nurse, and it
   will be good for her, as well as for him, that he should be under her
   care, and help to dispel her overwhelming melancholy by the pressure of
   kindly duties to be done.'

   The next day Philip woke sane. Claudia was sitting by his bedside. He
   did not recognise her. His eye wandered round the unfamiliar chamber.
   He could hardly recall who he was, or form any distinct recollection of
   the past. Claudia laid her hand on his forehead. 'What place is this?'
   he asked in a low voice. It does not look like the prison.'

   You are in the house of Aurelian, the Prætorian Præfect.'

   And you, lady?'

   I am Claudia, the Patrician's wife. We have been nursing you.'

   A long pause followed.

   And he? Is he alive? Where is he?'

   Do you mean the Consular Aurelian? He is in the next room.'

   No! He--the Patriarch John.'

   He is well; he is at Cucusus.'

   Oh! I remember; I remember all. And Eutych----?'

   His voice was choked as he tried to utter the word.

   Do not talk or think now, Philip. All you have to do is to get well.'

   But does he live?'

   Yes, Philip--he lives in that land where God wipes all tears from off
   all faces.'

   He will never wipe them from mine,' said Philip in a faint whisper;
   and, indeed, the silent tears which he was too weak to wipe away were
   coursing each other down his hollow cheeks.

   Shall I ever rise from this sick-bed?'

   Yes, Philip, and be strong again, and well, and happy.'

   Never happy,' he said, with a low moan.

   Yes, happy, dear youth,' said the physician, who entered at that
   moment--'if only you will now dismiss all trouble from your mind, and
   rest.'

   For a week after that time he talked little; but it was so evident that
   his mind was working, and that he was sinking deep into a sea of gloom,
   that they thought it advisable to remove him, with the utmost care and
   caution, to the villa of Olympias. Accompanied by the physician, and
   proceeding by easy stages, amid every comfort, he gained rather than
   suffered by the journey to Cyzicus. In the course of a few days he
   could lie on his couch in the open air, amid the gardens and groves and
   orchards which embowered the villa of Olympias; and before long he
   could walk again, and the tide of youthful life began once more to pour
   through his veins.

   But, as the physician dreaded, the frightful memory of his recent
   experiences weighed on him like lead. Was it not a hopelessly
   unaccountable thing that wickedness, and lies, and mean intrigues, and
   sham religion, could have triumphed, and that the reward of innocence
   and righteousness should have been defeat, humiliation, exile, torture?
   Chrysostom was in a bleak and frightful Armenian village, harassed by
   the raids of brigands, overwhelmed with hatred and victorious calumny;
   Olympias, Pentadia, Nicarete, exiled, fined, humiliated; the faithful
   Johannites beaten, imprisoned, tortured; Eutyches barbarously murdered;
   Michael, David, Miriam absent and silent; he himself racked, buffeted,
   all but killed, every hope frustrated, every gleam of happiness for
   ever dead. No one was triumphant but Eudoxia, and Severian, and
   Theophilus of Alexandria. Had God removed into His infinite blue
   heaven, far away from the wickedness of the hypocrites and the misery
   of the good? Did Christ, after all, hear prayer? or---- And there
   Philip seemed to drown in a subterranean Erebus of doubt and
   despondency, and did not so much as wish to live.

   Slowly but surely hope came back, and God's consolations increased upon
   his soul with the gentleness of a sea that caresses the shore it
   covers.'

   He had become very taciturn; and Olympias herself had been so crushed
   by calamities that her mind, too, was all darkened with clouds, through
   which no star looked. But one day he asked her: Has he inquired after
   me? Does he know? Has he written?'

   Olympias knew whom he meant, and said: 'Yes, the Patriarch has again
   and again inquired about you. For his own dear sake we concealed from
   him all we could; but a sword pierced his heart when we could not but
   tell him that Eutyches had been martyred, and that you were lying
   between life and death. He might say, with David, "

   All thy waves and storms have gone over me." But he has written to you,
   and now that you are well enough to read his letter, I will hand it to
   you.'

   Philip took the letter with a trembling hand, and retired into the
   garden to read it by himself.

   My heart bleeds for you, my Philip,' so the letter ran. 'I have heard
   from Olympias what shame and agony God has called on you to endure for
   my poor sake--let me say, rather, for the sake of truth and duty. When
   I heard of your sufferings, and of the death of our beloved Eutyches, I
   wept as if my heart would break, and I found no comfort till I had
   poured out my soul before God. I cannot weep any more for him, though
   it is sad to think that we shall see his face and hear his sweet voice
   no more. But why should we weep for one whom the world can never more
   stain or torment, and who is now a happy spirit in the nearer presence
   of his God? For you, whom I have ever loved as a son, I have never
   ceased to grieve, and no day passes that you are not mentioned in my
   prayers. Never, never shall I forget you, and all your goodness and
   love to me--first, in those dear days at Antioch, and then amid the
   troubles of Constantinople.

   Olympias tells me, dear Philip, that your recovery might be complete if
   it were not retarded by the oppression of sorrow. Your sorrow is most
   natural. Nevertheless, trust thou still upon God, and hope in Him, for
   He is, and will be, the light of thy countenance, and thy God. You have
   often seen the black clouds roll up from the Euxine and obliterate the
   azure; but did you not always know that they were only the clouds of
   earth and of our lower atmosphere--that they were themselves created by
   the sun itself, and that, behind them, the sun was still flaming,
   though for the time he was hidden? My Philip! God is that sun; and He
   knows no setting; He is for ever in the zenith. For He is light, and
   with Him is no darkness at all.

   So cheer up, my Philip; God will never leave you nor forsake you, if
   you put your trust in Him. Write and tell me that your heart is not
   overwhelmed. Write to me, if you can, in that happy mood which has
   helped to brighten so many years. Of myself I will say nothing now, for
   our beloved Olympias knows my concerns, and she will tell you how I
   fare in this far-distant place of exile.'

   The letter comforted him, though he could not yet embrace its deeper
   topics of consolation. And as the messenger would start the next day
   with many letters to the banished Patriarch from his friends in
   Constantinople, Philip entrusted to him a few lines.

   My father,' he wrote, I am still too weak, and my right hand shaken too
   much, to write more than this greeting. Oh! we have gone through dark
   and cruel times. Pray for me, father, that my faith fail not. By the
   time that your next letter reaches me I hope to be well again. Bid me
   come to you to Cucusus, and I will fly as on the wings of the wind. It
   would be joy indeed to hear your voice once more, to sit at your feet,
   and serve you, and devote my life to you.'

   Another comfort helped to dispel Philip's gloom. As yet the one horror
   which constantly overcame him was the thought of Eutyches--first, the
   memory of so many mirthful and innocent hours spent with him and David
   in the dear anteroom of the Patriarcheion; and then the indelible
   spectacle of that face and figure on the bloodstained rack. It was this
   vision which Philip sometimes thought would drive him mad. One day it
   had specially tormented him, and had seemed to push him back into
   drowning whirlpools. He was sitting on a grey, lichened rock under the
   trees. The tears burst again and again through the fingers of his
   hands, on which he rested his weary head. And then, in his anguish, he
   cried to God to exorcise this phantom, and enable him only to think of
   his lost friend as he was before that cruel scene. As again and again
   he repeated the cry a sudden conviction came over him that his prayer
   had been heard. That night he sank to peaceful sleep; and, while he
   slept, happy dreams waved their light mugs over his head. He seemed to
   see the golden ladder between heaven and earth, and angels ascending
   and descending upon it, and over it the face of the Son of Man. He
   seemed to see the midnight sky bursting open to its depths, and bright
   spirits, amid the glory, carolling as they carolled on the first
   Christmas night. He seemed to see the Elders and the Immortalities, the
   lucent Seraphim of knowledge, the burning Cherubim of Love, casting
   their cravens of amaranth before the sapphire-coloured throne. And amid
   all these radiances he saw always the face of Eutyches innocent,
   beautiful, happy--more innocent, more beautiful, more happy than he had
   ever seen it in his most joyous hours. Then he thought he had raised
   his outstretched hands, yearning to speak to him; and in white robes, a
   palm-branch in his hand, the boy had stood by his bedside, and said to
   him, 'Philip, why should you grieve so much for me? I am often very
   near you; and

   eye hath not seen nor ear heard the blessings of heaven, our home.
   Grieve no more for me, Philip, and so live that we may all meet in this
   land, where there are no more tears.'

   With these words still sounding like music in his ears Philip woke, and
   it seemed to him as if the room were still full of light and peace. His
   prayer had been heard. He never mentioned the dream to anyone but
   Olympias, but he was inwardly convinced that it was something more than
   an illusion of the night. Thenceforth, whenever the image of Eutyches
   recurred to his thoughts, it was as an image, not of horror, but of
   beauty and of peace.

   And then one more blessing exorcised the incubus of his despair.

   What, he often thought, was to be his future? As to his means of living
   he was spared all anxiety, for he was well provided for. Chrysostom had
   handed over to him and Eutyches his property in Antioch, and that alone
   would suffice him. A friend of Chrysostom, the good priest Constantius
   at Antioch, saw that this heredity was duly administered, and had also
   taken charge of the house and money left by Hermas, Philip's father. To
   these two sources of maintenance there had been a gratifying addition
   from a very exalted quarter.

   Ever since Aurelian, the Prætorian Præfect, had interceded with
   Arcadius for Philip, the Emperor, whose impulses were far from unkindly
   when he was left to himself, had felt an unwonted interest in the
   youth. He had encouraged Aurelian to talk about him when Eudoxia was
   not present, and so had learnt the story of the way in which the quick
   resource of Philip and Eutyches had devised the masque which terrified
   the marauding Goths of Gaïnas, who would otherwise, beyond all doubt,
   have sacked his Palace, and perhaps have sacrificed his own life and
   that of his Empress, and even have changed the destinies of the Empire.
   For this service he could not but feel intensely indebted, and he was
   struck with the nobly modest reticence which had never even mentioned
   so memorable a proof of loyalty. With what frightful ingratitude had
   the poor youth been requited, when so many of the corrupt, the
   worthless, and the disloyal had been crowned with honours which they
   did but abuse! Arcadius sent for his Count of the Imperial Largesses,
   and ordered him to see that privately, but without fail, Philip was
   supplied with a yearly pension of a hundred aurei. He further desired
   the Count, without mentioning the fact to anyone, to keep an eye on
   Philip, and to use any opportunity which might occur to further his
   interests. In case of his complete recovery the Emperor commanded that
   the young man should be summoned to a private audience.

   This was communicated to Philip, and he was now at ease as regards his
   future sustenance. God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, was
   beginning to show mercy upon him after such heavy strokes of calamity.
   But, even now, what was a future without friends and without love? Oh!
   if he could but hope that one day the lot of Miriam would be linked
   with his!

   The return of perfect health was still retarded by these thoughts, when
   one day one of the slaves of Olympias came to tell him that a friend
   was asking for him, and awaited him in the tablinum.

   A friend!' said Philip, with a sigh. What friend is left me in
   Constantinople? All whom I loved are dead, or in prison, or in exile.'

   But the friend, sir, told me to tell you that he came from Palestine.'

   From Palestine!' Philip's heart gave a great leap, and he followed the
   slave to the room.

   A tall, graceful youth was standing with his back to the door, gazing
   on the boats which furrowed the blue Propontis.

   He turned round as Philip entered.

   David!' exclaimed Philip; and in one moment their arms were round each
   other's neck, their heads on each other's shoulders.

   Philip was the first who found voice to speak.

   Oh, David!' he sobbed for joy. Is all well? Is Miriam well--but your
   smile and your happy face have already told me that all is well.'

   Yes, Philip, with us all is well, thank God!'

   Your father? Miriam? Oh, David! does she love me still?'

   She loves you, Philip, with a love as strong, as pure, as faithful as
   your own.'

   David! David! why did none of you write to me?'

   You cannot think that we did not, Philip. We have written at every
   opportunity in our power; but you had left no message at the
   Patriarcheion. I traced you to your lodging by the Chrysoceras; I
   traced you to the prison. There I learnt that you had been set free by
   the Emperor's order, and only from Aurelian did I learn the secret that
   you were here.'

   Oh, David! we have gone through awful times and awful scenes.
   Eutyches----'

   I know all,' said David, tears in his voice and in his eyes. Before
   letting you know that I was here I had seen the Lady Olympias. Ah!
   God!----'

   Philip hung his head. God's ways are strange,' he said. We have been
   scattered as with hot thunderbolts. The happy days are over for ever.'

   For ever is a very long word, my Philip. But oh! how pinched, how
   haggard you look--in no wise less beloved, but more tenderly
   beloved--but oh! how unlike that old, beloved Philip.'

   I have been cruelly tortured, David; I am but a wreck of my former
   self. All mirth is quenched, all health gone. Miriam can never wed me
   now----' And the poor youth burst into uncontrollable weeping.

   Nay, nay, my Philip. Cheer up!' said David. My sister is yours, your
   betrothed; yours in sickness and in health, in life and in death. Fear
   not!'

   But as Philip would not be comforted, he led him gently by the hand
   into the garden, and sat down with him under one of the great trees.

   Listen, Philip,' he said; you know my father. You know that, perhaps
   from the holy purity of his faith, God sometimes vouchsafes to him to
   see what shall be. You will remember that he foresaw these days of
   anguish. He seemed to be suffering with you in spirit while he prayed
   for you. His last words to me were, "David, my son, you will find
   Philip. Tell him that all will yet be well with him. He will recover
   perfect health. Miriam, by the traditions always kept among us, is too
   young to marry, and I would fain have the blessing and the sunlight of
   her presence a little longer. But Philip is her betrothed, and in two
   years, if he will come to us, he shall wed Miriam and take her to his
   home."'

   God grant it! God grant it!' murmured Philip; and hope seemed already
   to have rekindled a lustre in his eye and a faint flush of colour on
   his wan cheek.

   Olympias invited David to stay at her villa; but duty and work recalled
   him home, and he could only stay for ten days. Those were Philip's
   first happy days since the great disasters, and every day seemed to
   bring him more of strength and life, as he strolled about or sailed on
   the Propontis with Miriam's brother, the friend of his own age whom he
   loved most on earth. The winter of his life began to melt into the
   promise of a new spring.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LVIII

  THE RETURN OF KALLIAS


   As on the sun-scorched lily's bell

   The silver dew descends,

   So on my weary spirit fell

   The sympathy of friends.

   Two letters, together with the course of circumstances, indicated for
   Philip the immediate direction of his life.

   If Chrysostom would allow him to come to Cucusus he felt that he should
   go there as soon as it was possible for him to travel. It might look
   like the obliteration of all pleasure and of all youthful ambition to
   make his home in that squalid Armenian hamlet, and in due time to ask
   Miriam to share with him its dangers and privations. But Chrysostom was
   his father, and his more than father, and, where duty summoned him,
   there would God bless his life.

   But before David took his departure the Patriarch's answer came to him.

   It was a deep pleasure to hear from you, my beloved Philip,' he wrote,
   and to see one more proof of the depth of your love towards me. And
   indeed, dear son, no earthly pleasure would be greater to me than to
   enjoy as in the old days the support of your youthful strength, the
   cheer of your youthful brightness. But it would be utter selfishness in
   me to doom you to years, perhaps, of dreary inactivity in this chill,
   wild place, so dull, so poverty-stricken, so liable to perpetual
   alarms. I was ever so constituted that, while I could bear whatever God
   sent to me, and thank Him for all things, my sorrows were beyond
   measure intensified if I felt that through me others were brought to
   suffering. And therefore, my Philip, you must not come. My love for you
   would make it a torment for me to see you dragged down into my misery.
   No! your life is before you. Think of me; write very often to me; pray
   for me; do all that you can for me, your poor father, in other
   ways--but I cannot accept the sacrifice of your young life. It is
   adapted for larger and nobler ends--which in due time God will make
   plain to you--than the service of one infirm old man. And even in my
   exile God has not forsaken me. I have found unexpected alleviations
   here. The humble Bishop of Cucusus has been very kind. He even wished
   to resign his see in my favour. The chief burgher of this little town
   has entirely given up to me the use of his own house. My relative, the
   Deaconess Sabiniana, is with me, and looks after my wants. And you must
   not think that I am idle. My correspondence is large. Oh! how I
   sometimes long for you and David, and Eutyches and Kallias, again! But
   it may not be. I am trying to establish missions among the Goths, among
   the Phoenicians, among the Persians. Even here and now God suffers me
   to be in some sense a guide and leader of His Church.

   What, then, are you to do? I can think of nothing better than that you
   should go to Antioch, and live in our old house. It is, as you know, a
   delightful city. There are many there who know and love you, or will
   soon learn to know and love you; and there, if it be God's will, you
   can serve Him for many years in Church and State. God bless you, and
   restore you to perfect health, and keep you in His faith and fear, my
   own Philip, until--if we meet no more on earth--we meet in His many
   mansions beyond the grave!'

   Philip talked over this letter with Olympias, and she concurred in its
   advice. She knew that Chrysostom had prevented many other friends from
   joining him at Cucusus, where the sight of their life, surrounded by
   troubles and hardships, would only aggravate his sufferings. Antioch
   was the home of Philip's early years. It would be best for him to go
   there, and he would now be soon quite well.

   I knew that your health would return, Philip,' she said, when some of
   your happiness returned. Since that dream of which you told me, and
   still more since David's visit, you have made amazing progress. You
   will soon look like the happy Philip whom I first saw with our saintly
   Patriarch, and with your young companions, six years and more ago.'

   But Philip soon found that his departure to Antioch had better for the
   present be delayed.

   For the good old Bishop Flavian had died, full of years and full of
   honours. The wish of all the city and of every good man throughout the
   East was that the excellent Presbyter Constantius should be elected in
   his place. But this would not at all suit the plots and purposes of
   Severian of Gabala and his episcopal allies. For Constantius had been
   for years the ardent friend and admirer of the true Patriarch of
   Constantinople. This cabal of alien bishops not only interfered with
   the election, but did so in the most monstrous manner, which ended in
   intruding upon that long-afflicted see a man no less pernicious, if
   possible, than themselves.

   This was an ambitious ecclesiastic named Porphyry. He first intrigued
   and bribed to get Constantius banished, and then tricked the Christians
   by going to the church with a handful of bishops and people when the
   vast mass of the citizens were at some Olympian games at Daphne. The
   doors were locked, and Porphyry was hurriedly ordained with a mutilated
   service by Acacius, Severian, and Antiochus, who, knowing that their
   gross trick would awaken the vengeance of the inhabitants, fled from
   the city with precipitation. But the mischief had been done, however
   infamously, and it was vain for the people to threaten to burn
   Porphyry's house over his head. He obtained from Constantinople the
   assistance of a body of troops, seized the church by violence, and
   furnished one more instance of the mad greed of episcopal ambition in
   those corrupted days.

   Such being the state of things at Antioch, Philip saw that it would be
   unwise for him to face once more, and in vain, the horrors of
   sacerdotal wickedness which had wrought such havoc at Constantinople.
   He must postpone his settlement in the home of his childhood until
   there had been such subsidence of the storms of persecution in the
   Christian community as might promise him a reasonable safety. All was
   uncertain. Whither could he turn during the two years which must elapse
   before he could make Miriam his own?

   God usually makes the way of His children plain before their face, and
   Philip's plans for the present were decided by a letter from Kallias.

   Kallias, it will be remembered, had been sent by Chrysostom, before his
   exile, with despatches to the Bishops of Aquileia, Milan, and Rome,
   informing them of the terrible condition to which the Church at
   Constantinople had been reduced, and entreating their sympathy and
   assistance. He had written several letters; but in the troubled state
   of Italy and Illyricum, and the recent changes and excitements, his
   letters had failed to find their destination, and no answer had come to
   him in return. But now a few lines from him reached the hands of
   Philip. They were written from Rome, and briefly stated that he had
   delivered the various documents entrusted to him by Chrysostom into the
   hands of Pope Innocent, and had been sent back by him with letters to
   Aurelian, Briso, Amantius, Anthemius, who was now Consul, and other
   powerful friends of the exiled Patriarch. He was requested to procure
   further evidence and to secure their co-operation in the endeavour to
   obtain the Patriarch's recall. Kallias said that he hoped to see Philip
   very soon after the day when the letter would reach him, and that he
   would then tell him all further news.

   Philip eagerly awaited his arrival, and was standing to receive him
   with warm welcome on the little quay at Cyzicus, from which he had
   recognised him as his boat drew near. So much had passed since they
   last met that at first they could only grasp each other's hands in
   silence as they walked to the villa of Olympias. After supper Philip,
   in broken words, told his friend of the course of events in
   Constantinople, of which he had only heard the vaguest rumours. The
   tears of Kallias flowed fast as Philip told him of the banishment of
   the Patriarch, the conflagration, the cruel persecution which followed,
   the martyrdom of Eutyches, and his own sufferings. But Kallias could
   impart the good news that the great bishops of the West were heart and
   soul opposed to the lies and brutalities of Theophilus and his
   myrmidons. He had been most kindly received. Chromatius, the venerable
   Bishop of Aquileia, the friend of Ambrose, of Rufinus, and of Jerome,
   had given him a cordial welcome there. He had gone to Venerius, Bishop
   of Milan, who had shown him the very basilica in which the people had
   watched over Ambrose, and in which, on that occasion, Ambrose had first
   introduced the antiphonal chanting of the West; the font in which he
   had baptised Augustine; the gates from which he had repelled Theodosius
   when he came with his conscience burning with the guilt of the massacre
   of Thessalonica; the pulpit in which he had preached the funeral
   sermons of the young murdered Emperors Gratian and Valentinian III.
   Lastly, he had seen the smoke, and wealth, and tumult of Rome; and
   there the great Pope Innocent had expressed himself in private with
   almost passionate indignation against the wicked, intriguing Patriarch
   of Alexandria and in favour of the saintly exile. More than this,
   Innocent needed a secretary for his vast correspondence, and, struck
   with the tachygraphy of Kallias, had asked him to return to Rome after
   he had delivered his missives, and to take a permanent place in his
   household.

   Did you see Alaric? did you see my friends Thorismund and Walamir? did
   you see Stilico? did you see the Emperor Honorius?' asked Philip
   eagerly. 'I am sick of the East. How much I should like to see that
   Western world!'

   I saw them all,' said Kallias, and the beautiful, stately Serena, wife
   of Stilico; and, if the Lady Olympias permits me, I will give you some
   little account of my journey.'

   Yes, but that had better be to-morrow,' said Olympias, 'for Philip is
   still far from strong, and it is time for him to go to rest.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LIX

  WALAMIR AND ST. TELEMACHUS


   Ah me! how stern and terrible he looks!

   He hath a princely countenance.

   Philip von Artevelde.

   Olympias at this time was subject to fits of overwhelming depression,
   in which the wheels of life seemed to stand still. She did not leave
   her room the next day, and asked Philip and Kallias to excuse her
   absence.

   It is a lovely day,' said Philip, and I know, Kallias, that you are
   fond of fishing. Let us take one of the boats. While you fish I will
   lie lazily in the stern, and then we can talk to our hearts' content.
   The fish won't matter much,' he added, with one of his old smiles.

   Ah!' said Kallias, I see you still pretend to be sceptical about my
   skill as a fisherman. Well, I shall refute your chaff by bringing home
   a big basketful of thunnies for the Lady Olympias, and you shall not
   have one.'

   Then I shall talk loud, and drive the thunnies away,' said Philip, as
   he took his place at the helm, while Kallias rowed the painted shallop
   over the bright blue waters, which flashed in the morning sunlight.

   Did you ever see "the unnumbered laughter of the sea" to greater
   perfection?' said Philip. Now, here is a delightful spot to anchor,
   under this wooded hill; so fish away, Kallias, and talk at the same
   time. Where did you make your first resting-place after you left us?'

   I travelled as fast as I could to the Court of Alaric at Æmona, and
   there I saw----'

   Thorismund and Walamir,' said Philip. I want very much to hear about
   them.'

   Thorismund,' said Kallias, but, alas! not Walamir.'

   Alas? Why alas? Are there more miseries to tell? What a world it is!'

   You shall hear. Thorismund's first question--for he had seen me at the
   Patriarcheion in old days, and recognised me--was about you. He has
   always loved and admired you since that old wrestling-bout at Antioch,
   when you both were boys. As I told him the state of things in
   Constantinople he fretted and fumed with indignation. He loathes the
   very name of Constantinople. His eyes flash with anger when he speaks
   of it. Then he asked after Eutyches, and I did not disguise from him
   the gloomy aspect of our affairs. "But where," I asked, "is your
   brother Walamir? His soul was knit to that of Eutyches in one of the
   closest friendships I have ever seen." He bent his eyes down, and said,
   "We none of us know where my beloved brother is. We were both with King
   Alaric when he invaded Italy, and when he retreated from Pollentia and
   reached Verona. But at Verona we were surprised by the forces of
   Stilico, and his Alan auxiliaries fell on us so furiously that Alaric
   himself was nearly taken. He escaped by the swiftness of his warhorse,
   and I was with him. We were not really defeated; all our forces
   retreated in perfect order beyond the Alps. But, alas! my brother
   Walamir was taken captive, perhaps slain. We have not heard of him
   since."

   A pang shot through my heart as I heard this, Philip, for I thought how
   deeply it would grieve Eutyches; but I murmured to Thorismund some
   words of hope.

   "Yes," he answered, "he may still be alive; but if so, it is in
   slavery, and that is worse than death."

   "Would he not have written to you?" I asked.

   "No; the boy's proud spirit would prevent him from writing, even if it
   were possible, from amid the degradation of slavery."

   I had no more to say, but promised that, as I was on my way to Italy, I
   would make every possible inquiry, and might perhaps be able to secure
   the ransom of Walamir if he still lived.

   "If not," said Thorismund, passionately, "there is still revenge."

   Alaric had heard that there was a messenger from the Patriarcheion at
   Constantinople, and sent to ask me to his evening banquet. He is a
   splendid young king, a far finer type of Goth than Gaïnas. He has an
   air of natural nobleness, and the Visigoths say that when they elevated
   him on their shields no chieftain ever looked braver and worthier; but
   he keeps no state, and talked with me familiarly about the Patriarch,
   whom he greatly reveres, and about himself. He is convinced that he
   shall live to sack the Eternal City. He told me, as he told his
   long-haired chiefs, that before his first invasion of Italy he had
   heard the voice, as of an Archangel, cry to him from the depths of a
   grove, "Speed! Speed, Alaric! Thou shalt penetrate to the City."

   I suppose that the warrior read the doubt in my face, for he smiled and
   said, "And I did penetrate, ad Urbem; not, indeed, this time to the
   Eternal Urbs, but to the river Urbis, on which Pollentia stands! Tell
   them at Constantinople that, in spite of the brag of Stilico's bard,
   Claudian, we were not beaten at Pollentia. The dwarfish Alan,
   Saulus--whom God destroy!--burst on us upon Good Friday--the ugly
   heathen Tartar! They seized some plunder, and recovered the old purple
   robe stained with the blood of the Emperor Valens at Adrianople; but we
   were unbroken, and Stilico made a treaty with us."

   I never saw anyone so swift to read thoughts as Alaric, Philip. I
   suppose he read the word "Verona" in my face, for he added, "No, nor
   were we beaten at Verona either. And the prophecy to me will be
   fulfilled. Italy has not yet heard the name of Rhadagais. They will
   hear it next year; and whether I shall help him to ravage Italy, or
   not, depends on circumstances; and," he added in a low voice, "on
   Stilico and Honorius."

   Then he began to talk with imprudent frankness, as I thought, of
   Stilico and of both the Emperors. For Stilico he has an immense
   admiration, and more than half shares his view that the best thing the
   Goths can do is to amalgamate faithfully with the Romans as one nation,
   and found a nobler race. He thinks that Stilico is a born king among a
   nation of intriguers and drivellers, besotted with a superstition which
   is but the caricature of genuine Christianity, and slaves to abject
   despots. He feels unbounded scorn for both their Sublimities, Arcadius
   and Honorius. He regards them both as pale-blooded weaklings, the
   puppets of their own eunuchs. He calls Arcadius a devotee only fit to
   grovel over sham relics, and be led by the nose; and he regards the
   impotent Honorius as a mixture of timidity, cruelty, and slyness. These
   Goths rarely conceal their opinions. He actually showed at his
   table--and with me, an unknown reporter, present--a coin which had been
   struck as a caricature of Honorius, which represents, not the old Roman
   she-wolf suckling the immortal twins, but a she-ass suckling a hen! It
   is meant partly, perhaps, as an insult against the Christians under the
   old calumny of their being asinarii, but chiefly to ridicule Honorius's
   paltry propensity to make pets of hens, in feeding which he spends half
   his time. "It is the only thing the phantom is fit for," said Alaric.

   I left Æmona the next day, and, amid various adventures, of which we
   may talk another time, I made my way in the course of two or three
   months to Aquileia, Milan, and Rome. I found Rome in a state of anxiety
   and alarm. You know how full the air is of rumours when communications
   are interrupted. There had been a long drought, and the Romans, who
   fancied that Alaric would soon be on his way against them, had placed
   their chief hope in his inability to cross the swollen rivers of
   Lombardy. One day vast clouds of dust proclaimed the approach of an
   armed band. The Romans cowered behind their newbuilt walls, and not
   even a scout would venture to reconnoitre. Then, as the poet Claudian
   has since described it, the people, gazing from the walls, saw amid the
   dust the good white head which all men knew--the noble face of Stilico,
   shining like a star out of the storm. You can imagine how they shouted.
   With Stilico among them they felt that Rome was free.'

   Were you present at the great triumph one has heard of?' asked Philip.

   Yes, and I never saw, or hope to see, anything so magnificent. Honorius
   came on purpose to celebrate the triumph, with Stilico, his
   father-in-law. They had raised a triumphal arch for the occasion, on
   which they spoke of "The Goths subjugated for ever." I am told that
   Alaric and his chiefs roared with laughing when this was reported to
   them. Honorius was made Consul for the sixth time, and as Rome had only
   three times seen an emperor during the century, they made the most
   sumptuous preparations.'

   What did they think of their Emperor?'

   'Stilico had given him his cue, and he laid himself out to win their
   hearts. He would not allow the senators to walk before his triumphal
   car. He looked unusually well, for a flush was on his sallow cheek, and
   he wore the diadem, and a jewelled trabea, and strings of Arabian
   emeralds round his neck. But there were some old Romans who rather
   despised his jewellery. "Cincinnatus, and Marius, and Julius Cæsar did
   not ride in that bedizenment; all that pernicious rubbish came in with
   Constantine," I heard one old officer mutter to the Senator Lampridius,
   who stood by him; and Lampridius murmured in reply two savage lines of
   Sidonius on Constantine:


   Saturni aurea sæcla quis requiret?

   Sunt hæc gemmea, sed Neroniana.'

   'Where were you?'

   Pope Innocent had kindly secured me a place on the steps of the Julian
   Basilici, so that I saw the procession wind all along the Sacred Way,
   and up the Capitoline Hill, amid all those temples and palaces. Every
   roof was densely crowded, and there fell a perfect snow of roses and
   garlands before the horses' feet.'

   Was the Emperor alone in the chariot?'

   No; Stilico was by his side in plain armour, but looking every inch a
   hero; and more than half the enthusiasm of the Romans was for him.
   Behind them rode the young Empress Maria, daughter of Stilico--a virgin
   wife, they say--looking like a flower of perfect loveliness; and beside
   her, in a very simple attire, her noble brother, Eucherius, who has a
   great future before him.'

   I say, Kallias,' said Philip; you see it is high noon. How about those
   thunny fish for Olympias?'

   You scamp!' said Kallias; I should have caught two dozen at least if
   you had not frightened them away by making me talk so much. We'll have
   some lunch now, and then I won't tell you a word more till I've caught
   enough. And, to punish you, I assure you that what I have still in
   store will surprise and interest you immensely.'

   Oh! I say, that is too bad!' said Philip; I have a great mind to give
   you no lunch at all till you have told me.'

   They opened the basket which the slaves of Olympias had put into the
   boat, and found it full of delicious grapes and figs, cakes, and a
   bottle of rich Thasian wine--for though she was herself abstemious to
   the utmost austerity, their hostess insisted on dieting Philip in the
   way which she regarded as most likely to restore his strength.

   After their refreshment Kallias told Philip that he had the orders of
   Olympias to make him rest awhile and take a siesta, and Philip
   reluctantly obeyed. While he slept Kallias steadily fished on, often
   glancing at his slumbering features, sometimes with sorrow to see how
   wasted they were, but with more hope, because he was gradually
   returning to his normal strength and brightness.

   By the time Philip awoke, Kallias had caught as many fish as would
   serve the whole household of Olympias, and triumphantly showed them to
   his companion, who at first declared that he must have bought them of
   some fisherman on the sly, until Kallias punished him by making him
   wait for the rest of his story till he had caught half a dozen more.

   Then he laid his rod and net aside, and proposed that they should row
   in, and finish his narrative at home, as there were things which
   perhaps Olympias would like to hear.

   They found the lady a little less dejected, and Kallias was glad to
   help in diverting her melancholy thoughts.

   Resuming his account of the triumph of Honorius, he said: 'Philip, I
   have kept back from you what interested me more deeply than all the
   imperial pageantry. I told you that Honorius exempted the senators from
   pacing before him; but immediately behind his chariot walked,
   two-and-two, a long line of Gothic captives; and first in the row,
   showing that he was of noble birth, I saw----'

   Philip started up and grasped the hand of Kallias.

   You saw---- Oh! I guess it.'

   Yes,' said Kallias, I saw young Walamir, the friend of our Eutyches. He
   was walking with his looks cast on the ground, in the deepest
   dejection. But as he passed the steps of the Basilica I attracted his
   attention. He recognised me; for one instant his face brightened, and
   then the light faded from it, as though he were ashamed to be seen in
   the guise of a captive and a slave. But I determined not to lose sight
   of him, and threaded my way through the crowds which closed behind the
   procession. I once more got close to him on the summit of the Capitol.
   I asked where I could see him, but he only shook his head; he did not
   know.

   Several days passed, and I sought for him in vain. At the close of a
   week of pageants, thanksgivings, pæans, and festivities there was to be
   a splendid gladiatorial show, at which Honorius himself was to preside,
   with Stilico beside him. Constantine had discouraged gladiatorial
   shows, and many of our great Christian saints and Fathers had
   indignantly denounced the butchery of human beings for amusement in the
   presence of a gloating multitude. But Rome is still a half-pagan, or
   more than half-pagan, city, and the Flavian Amphitheatre has
   perpetuated the bad tradition. Honorius, half-curious to see so
   world-famed a spectacle, offered but a languid resistance to what was
   deemed a politic concession; and, worst of all, a gladiatorial show
   afforded the easiest means of getting rid of many of the Gothic
   captives.

   Of course, Philip, you and the Lady Olympias will believe me when I say
   that I had not the least intention to be present, lest I, like the
   young Alypius whose story is told by Augustine, should be brutalised
   and carried away by the horrible excitement. I stood by the Arch of
   Titus to watch the motley, eager crowd rolling its vast volume into the
   many doors of that colossal amphitheatre. Then a strange thing
   happened.

   An Eastern monk in the sheepskin of a hermit passed me, attracting many
   eyes; for hermits are a far rarer sight in Rome than in our East. He
   was tall and gaunt, and his hair was grey, and his sheepskin mantle was
   squalid and tattered. He saw me standing by the Arch, not hurrying
   forward with the crowd, and, fixing on me his eyes, which seemed to
   burn with an inspired lustre, he said in Syriac, "Youth, I see that
   thou art a Christian, who wilt not follow the multitude to do evil; yet
   I bid thee come with me into yon revel of demons; it may be that thou
   shalt see strange things to-day."

   "Who art thou, Father?" I asked.

   "Men call me Telemachus," he said. "I am a hermit from Zagba. Few in
   this city speak Syriac; none know me. If any seek to know my name
   hereafter, thou canst tell them who I am and whence I came."

   I could not help accompanying him, for his words seemed to have in them
   a Divine command. We entered the Amphitheatre, which was already so
   densely crowded that we could only get places among the slaves and the
   poorest of the people at the summit. I confess it was a splendid sight.
   The sun shone down on that vast building and the 80,000 people whom it
   held. The vast silken awning flapped against its straining cords
   overhead. The gala-dress of multitudes of women variegated the scene,
   and they looked like beds of flowers among the white togas of the men.
   The great area of the floor was strewn with dazzling sand. In the
   podium, in their richest pomp, sat the Emperor and Empress, with
   Stilico, and Eucherius, and the Princesses Serena and Thermantia,
   arrayed in pearls and precious stones, which flashed as they moved. All
   the senators and aristocracy of Rome were there. I saw, and blushed to
   see, many even of the clergy present. One chief element of expectation
   was the news that the general contests after the single combats were to
   be sine missione--that is, that they were only to be terminated by the
   death of the combatants; and that a young and beautiful Goth of the
   noble family of the Amalings would fight among the captives. My heart
   was sick with fear, for I knew that this must be no other than
   Walamir.'

   Here Philip, in his excitement, seized the arm of Kallias, and gazed
   open-mouthed on his face.

   The first part of the show was harmlessly magnificent. Some of the
   Palatini had a sham cavalry fight, and went through manoeuvres on their
   pawing steeds. There were allegorical scenes and processions. Then wild
   beasts--lions, tigers, ostriches, even camelopards--were exhibited, and
   I, who had never seen these strange and beautiful creatures, was
   intensely interested.

   But then began the wickedness to which the huge mass of spectators had
   been looking forward with a sort of unspoken passion. The first of the
   gladiatorial fights was proclaimed by the herald's voice:

   "Satyrus, the gladiator, will now be matched against Walamir, the young
   Gothic Amal, each with swords and in full armour."

   As I heard the herald's sonorous tones my heart burned within me with
   hot indignation; for Walamir was little more than a boy, and it was
   monstrous to match him, as they had done, against the most renowned and
   most successful gladiator of Italy, who had been trained in the schools
   of the lanistæ from his earliest years, and had gained many crowns.

   I looked at the hermit, but he seemed to be lost in prayer, and utterly
   oblivious to everything around him.

   The two marched round the arena. They saluted the Emperor with uplifted
   swords. I thought that I detected a note of defiance and despair in
   Walamir's voice, as he joined in the heroic customary chant, "Ave
   Cæsar, morituri te salutamus."

   Then they stood nearly in the centre, and all those eighty thousand
   eyes were bent upon them, and the clash of swords began. And still
   Telemachus neither spoke nor moved.

   The strength, courage, and agility displayed by Walamir would have
   stirred the heart of Alaric himself with pride; but I saw from the
   first that he neither was nor could be an equal antagonist to the cool,
   trained giant of mature age, consummate skill, and herculean strength
   against whom he had been pitted. The only marvel to me, as I sat there
   sick with dread, trembling with excitement, and thinking of you and
   Eutyches, was that he sustained so long the unequal struggle.

   Then rose the indescribable panting shriek of "Habet" as Satyrus
   inflicted his first wound, and the red stream rushed over Walamir's
   armour. That shout seemed to awaken Telemachus. He sprang up, flung one
   glance around him, and then stalked with swift strides down the
   ambulatories. I did not know at first what he intended to do; and the
   spectators were far too intent on the combat to notice him, for Satyrus
   had only inflicted a flesh wound, and Walamir, with undaunted spirit,
   was renewing the hopeless strife.

   But just as Telemachus had nearly reached the cancelli--the gilded
   barriers erected to prevent any wild beast from leaping up among the
   people, as had once occurred--a blow on Walamir's helmet smote him to
   the ground, and instantly Satyrus was striding over him with uplifted
   sword, and looked up at the spectators as he awaited the signal to slay
   or save.

   Usually the thumb was uplifted and the life spared if the defeated
   combatant had shown conspicuous heroism; and it might have been thought
   that the youth, the beauty, the bravery of the young Amal would have
   pleaded for him. But no; he was one of the dreaded, hated Goths, and
   without an instant's hesitation twenty thousand thumbs were ruthlessly
   turned down, to demand that Satyrus should plunge the sword into his
   throat or breast.

   Then it was that, to the utter amazement of everyone present, from the
   Emperor to the meanest slave, Telemachus, like one inspired, sprang
   over the cancelli, and, rushing forward with a cry, strode over the
   prostrate Ostrogoth, and with a gesture of command confronted the
   victorious gladiator.

   Satyrus sprang back astonished, as though he had seen a spirit, and
   lowered his sword-point. A nominal Christian, he felt a sort of
   overpowering awe in presence of the strange figure, emaciated face, and
   flashing eyes of the tall, gaunt hermit. But at the same instant the
   multitude had recognised the stranger's purpose, and a yell of rage and
   disappointment arose, as though all the demons had been let loose.
   Satyrus had drawn back to the wall of the arena staring, with
   wide-opened eyes, apparently in superstitious dread. Walamir had risen
   to his feet. Telemachus stood alone between them. But at once every
   conceivable missile on which the people could lay hands was hurled at
   him; and then many, quite mad with wrath, had themselves sprung over
   the barrier and were striking at him with staves. They hurled him to
   the ground, they kicked and smote him, and flung stones on him. I, too,
   had leaped the barrier, but I was one among hundreds. What could I do?

   It soon appeared that he was dead; and then a wave of remorse swept
   over the minds of the assailants, and a hush followed. "Who was he?"
   was murmured from lip to lip. The Emperor was himself as agitated as
   was possible to his lympathic temperament. He had risen from his seat,
   and beckoned the herald to bid anyone who knew the murdered monk to say
   who he was. I was too much excited to be afraid, and, striding under
   the Emperor's box, I shouted, "Emperor, he was Telemachus, the hermit
   of Zagba."

   It seemed, even to myself, as though I had spoken in a voice of
   unnatural power, and also as if my few words had produced an impression
   far more intense than seemed proportionate to their simple purport. An
   awful contagious excitement seized the minds of the multitude. They
   shrank back on all sides from the body of the murdered saint. It lay in
   the hot sunlight, dark on the dazzling white sand with which the arena
   had been strewn, and the blood from his many wounds had dyed his robes;
   men declared that it lay encircled by an aureole. The Emperor and his
   attendants rose; but before he left the Amphitheatre he ordered the
   heralds to proclaim that the games were ended, and would not be
   resumed, and that the corpse of Telemachus, the hermit of Zagba, was to
   be honoured as that of a saint and martyr.

   The awestruck multitude streamed out of the vomitoria, and went home
   with a sense of supernatural terror in their hearts; but many
   re-entered the actual arena, until it was thronged throughout its huge
   ellipse, to gaze more closely on the man who had died to save the lives
   of men. While their feelings were thus absorbed to the exclusion of
   every other thought I looked out for Walamir. He was leaning against
   the wall under the podium, pale and faint from loss of blood. I asked
   him about his wound.

   "It is nothing," he said, "though I have bled so much. But oh! Kallias,
   my soul is sick with horror and hatred. Can you not help me to escape
   to my own people?"

   The thought had occurred to me before he spoke. Very near us was the
   door of the spoliarium, into which the dead bodies were dragged after a
   fight. I whispered to him to slip into it while no one was looking, and
   I stole in immediately afterwards. It was empty. The attendants had
   been attracted to see what was going on; and, most fortunately, the
   farther exit was also unlocked, for they had expected to have to deal
   with many corpses. We were standing unobserved in the shadow of the
   mighty pile. I know not what strange premonition or unformed surmise
   had made me put in my wallet the thin overdress of a parabolanus. But I
   had done so, and suggested to him to throw off his armour and put on
   the disguise, folding the cowl over his head. Then he leant on my arm,
   and we walked by bypaths to my lodgings, which the Bishop had assigned
   to me near the Lateran. Our steps were marked with blood; but that was
   unavoidable, and very few people were in the side-streets. On the way
   we passed a little barber's shop, and by a sudden inspiration I went in
   and bought a plain black wig, which I placed on the short, sunny curls
   of the Amal. He was thus effectually concealed from notice, and I took
   him direct to my own cubicle, and brought him food.

   It was not yet noon; but as not a moment was to be lost, and as escape
   was hopeless without aid, I decided to go straight to the palace of
   Stilico and to enlist his sympathies for Walamir.

   It would, I knew, be hard to get an audience with the mighty Vandal,
   who was at once Prime Minister and Generalissimo, the husband of the
   Princess Serena, the father of the Empress Maria, and the official
   guardian both of Arcadius and Honorius. But God's unseen providence
   favoured me; for in the hall of the palace I saw the noble young
   Eucherius, Stilico's son. Jealousy raged on every side of the great
   Vandal like a furnace, and he was therefore most careful to bestow no
   great offices on his son, and to surround him with no splendour;
   although even these precautions did not avert the rumour that he was
   secretly plotting to make him an emperor. As Eucherius came forward I
   held forth my hand in sign of appeal. He stopped, and I asked him to
   grant a private interview of five minutes. He granted it, and I briefly
   told him the story of Walamir. He is not nearly so Romanised as his
   father, and I knew that his sympathy with the Goths was strong. Touched
   by the story, and by the bravery of the young Ostrogoth in his combat
   with Satyrus of which he had been a witness in the Colosseum, he said:
   "To-morrow the Emperor and my father are sending letters to
   Constantinople. The messengers will go by ship from Ostia to
   Dyrrachium. The Bishop of Rome, in whose protection you are, will be
   doubtless glad to send you back with answers to the letters you have
   brought to him from the Patriarch John. Let the young Goth be
   disguised, and accompany you as a subordinate. I will furnish him with
   a pass." I thanked him warmly and kissed his hand. Walamir was
   overjoyed. All went well; and it was worth all the risk to observe his
   passionate delight when the ship was well out of sight of land, and he
   was able to strip off the disguise. You would have laughed to see him
   toss the black wig into the sea, and emerge in his own bright hair.'

   Did he get over his wounds so soon?' asked Philip.

   Yes; and he attributes it to the hardy temperance of his training.
   Aware of the propensity of his nation to excess, neither he nor
   Thorismund ever touch wine; hence their wounds heal far sooner than
   those of their comrades.

   Thanks in part to what he learned from Eutyches, Walamir has before his
   mind the loftiest ideal of what the Goths should be. He thinks that if
   they ever come to ruin, it can only be through their own faults and
   vices. He sets them a high example, and, when opportunity offers, he
   tells them his convictions. And now I have no more to narrate, and I
   feel sure that the Lady Olympias must be tired.'

   Did Walamir get safely to the Court of Alaric?'

   Yes, and I had the happiness of seeing his meeting with his brother.
   They are in truth a par nobile fratrum.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LX

  THE VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN


   Raro antecedentem scelestum

   Deseruit pede Poena claudo.--Horace.

   Before we resume the story of Philip and Chrysostom let us pause to
   observe whether the wickedness of their enemies ultimately prospered;
   for those enemies will henceforth disappear from our pages.

   The overthrow of the saintly Patriarch was due, as we have seen, to the
   combined hatred of the Empress; of the corrupt, worldly, frivolous
   society of Constantinople; of evil-hearted women, headed by a clique of
   painted and bejewelled widows; of large multitudes of bad priests and
   deacons, false monks, false nuns, false virgins, constituting the main
   section of the ecclesiastical world in Constantinople; of the agapetæ,
   or ladies who lived in the houses of the clergy under the thinly veiled
   name of spiritual sisters; and, most of all, of Theophilus, the wicked
   Patriarch of Alexandria, and the group of ambitious, intriguing,
   envious, unscrupulous, and slanderous bishops, of whom Severian and
   Cyrinus were among the worst, who constituted the execrable Synod of
   the Oak.

   The ways of God with men are often very difficult to decipher. It is
   only when we are able to trace on a large scale the workings of Divine
   Providence that we can watch


   God's terrible and fiery finger

   Shrivel the falsehood from the souls of men.

   The apparent prosperity of the wicked, the apparently crushing and
   miserable overthrow of the just, have been sore problems since the
   earliest ages of the world. The Psalmist and other saints found comfort
   in the general fact that, though the wicked seem to flourish like a
   green bay-tree, it was frequently seen that they perished suddenly, and
   came to a fearful end; and that, as a rule, the righteous were not
   forsaken, nor did his seed beg their bread. But this law of averages
   was liable to tremendous exceptions, and hardly met the case of saints
   who died in the midst of affliction, or even perished in the flames of
   martyrdom. It remained for later ages to find new and deeper solutions
   of the problem, and to view it with untroubled faith, in the twofold
   conviction that holiness in itself is happiness, and sin is of its own
   nature retributive and penal; and that there is a world beyond the
   grave, where the false weights and imperfect balances of earth shall be
   redressed. It is not possible for man to furnish perfect theoretic
   explanations of the state of things in a world so full of sin and death
   and woe. Job sat in his leprosy, upon his dunghill, a bereaved, abject,
   humiliated pauper, on whom the very drunkards made their songs. The
   sanctimonious infallibility of his orthodox friends made them pour oil
   of vitriol upon his wounds by assuming that his misery was the penalty
   of secret guilt. Their cruel and infallible orthodoxies awoke the
   thunder of God's disapproval, and, even if Job had never been uplifted
   out of the overwhelming deeps into the sunshine of prosperity, men
   would not have been entitled to adduce his anguish in proof that God
   cares not for the souls which He has made, and thinks no more of right
   and wrong upon this atom globe than of a trouble of ants in a million
   millions of worlds.' All that we should be entitled to say, if such
   cases as that of Job appeared to be the rule, and not the exception,
   would be, in the wail of the blameless king:


   I saw God in the shining of His stars,

   I saw Him in the flowering of His fields;

   But in His ways with men I found Him not.

   But when men of the stamp of Theophilus pointed to the exile of
   Chrysostom, the martyrdom of Eutyches, the affliction of Olympias, and
   the tortures of Tigrius and Serapion, in proof that God had declared
   Himself against John and the Johannites, they did not deceive either
   themselves or the world. On the one hand, men saw Chrysostom ruined and
   yet happy; calumniated and yet happy; exiled and yet happy--sick, and
   persecuted, and suffering, and yet happy--and they would not have
   exchanged his trials for the gorgeous criminality of the Patriarch of
   Alexandria, or the full-fed unctuousness of Severian, with his heart
   fat as brawn, cold as ice, and hard as the nether millstone. Nor was
   there one woman in Constantinople--not Epigraphia, in her gilded
   boudoir, amid her clerical votaries, nor the most voluptuous of the
   nuns and spiritual sisters; not even Eudoxia herself in her imperial
   purple--who would not have been glad to lay aside her unhallowed ease
   if hers might have been the heart, the life, and the ultimate reward of
   good Nicarete or woe-worn Olympias. There was enough in the outward
   colour of events to make men sure that, amid the apparent silence and
   indifference of the Eternal, they could sometimes see the gleam of His
   avenging thunderbolts upon transgressors, and the Angel of the Dew
   standing in the furnace to beat back the flames from His beloved.

   If there was one person to whom, more even than to Theophilus, the ruin
   of Chrysostom was due, it was to the Empress Eudoxia. She blindly
   abandoned herself to the furies of hatred and ambition. Well had it
   been for the daughter of Bauto if she had married in her own rank; if
   Eutropius had never intrigued against Rufinus, and had never shown her
   portrait to the susceptible Arcadius. Intoxicated by her dizzy
   elevation, she indulged without stint her passion for flattery and for
   the exercise of power. Nothing would sate her pride but the burning of
   perpetual incense. Half of her rage against Eutropius was due to her
   belief that he helped to delay her investiture with the title and
   dignities of an Augusta and her claims to statues and universal
   adoration throughout the provinces, which had caused such disgust
   throughout the Western world.

   In overthrowing Chrysostom because of the real severity of his
   remonstrances against her faults, and the purely imaginary insults
   against her with which he was charged by forgers and slanderers, the
   Empress was acting against the admonitions of her own conscience. This
   had been shown by the terrified insistency with which she had demanded
   his recall from his first banishment, when her superstitious fears had
   been aroused by the earthquake which shook her chamber. It is not too
   much to say that after his second expulsion she never enjoyed a happy
   hour. She was in a perpetual tremor of alarm, and, as she was again
   expecting to become a mother, her condition became truly pitiable.

   The Patriarch had been banished on June 20, 401. Then followed the
   horrible persecution of the Johannites. On September 30 there burst
   over Constantinople the unusual trouble of a furious storm of hail so
   terrific and so disastrous that men were killed in the streets, and
   many buildings were seriously damaged. Eudoxia saw in this storm the
   wrath of God. She became more and more pale, more and more miserable,
   and the anguish of remorse decided her fate. She was but thirty-one
   years old, yet on September 30--less than three and a half months after
   the departure of Chrysostom--the beautiful Augusta had died a miserable
   death.

   For her troubled mind brought on the pangs of a miscarriage. The
   infant--such was the terrified whisper of the multitude--had ceased to
   live three months before its birth, and the dead burden caused her an
   indescribable agony. There was no strength to bring forth. Then,
   desparing of all holy or lawful aid, she entreated her wretched husband
   to send secretly for a magician to the Palace. The sorcerer came, and
   muttered over her his incantations, and laid magic writing on her
   breast. The infant was born dead, and the hapless mother died. It was
   not strange that men should attribute to a visitation of God so
   untimely and so deplorable an end.

   Among the most envenomed opponents of the Patriarch, as we have seen,
   had been the Egyptian Cyrinus, cousin of Theophilus, and Bishop of
   Chalcedon. Chrysostom had treated him with kindness and confidence, and
   had even appointed him one of his three assessors in Asia Minor, whence
   he lad returned an unpitying foe and accuser of his metropolitan. Very
   swift was the retribution--if retribution it were--which fell upon him.
   He never recovered from the wounds made on his foot by the heavy tread
   of Maruthas, Bishop of Mesopotamia, at the meeting preliminary to the
   Synod of the Oak. The fierce inflammation and incessant agony did not
   prevent him from pushing his animosities to the bitter end. He was one
   of the most violent agitators. He was one of the four who took on their
   own heads the criminal responsibility from which Arcadius shrank. He
   was one of the bishops who signed the letter to Pope Innocent
   containing the lying charge that Chrysostom had set fire to his own
   church, which letter they had thought fit to send by the dwarfish,
   deformed, and half-inarticulate presbyter, Paternus. But during the
   rest of his short life the body of Cyrinus became as inflamed and
   gangrened as his mind. His foot was amputated, and still the gangrene
   spread; his leg was amputated, and it still spread. In the following
   year he died in agonies so indescribable as to be an object of pity
   even to his enemies.

   What happened to Severian of Gabala, and how the lurid sun of his
   ambition set while it yet was day, leaving him a foiled and haunted
   man, we have already seen.

   Nor did others of the leading conspirators long escape to vaunt their
   nefarious victory. Though Palladius, Bishop of Helenopolis, drops the
   veil of oblivion over their names, they were perfectly well known to
   him and his contemporaries.

   One of these, a notorious calumniator of Chrysostom, died of a quinsy,
   in which his tongue became so swollen that he could no longer speak. In
   this condition he made a sign that he wanted his tablets, and when they
   were handed to him he wrote on them a confession of his evil deeds.

   Another, seized shortly after with a sort of virulent pyæmia, was eaten
   of worms, and died a loathsome death.

   Another fell violently down a staircase, and was killed by the fall.

   Another, seized with chronic gout, found the worst aggravation of his
   malady in the supernatural terrors which haunted his miserable soul.

   Antiochus, Bishop of Ptolemais, after amassing great wealth by the
   neglect of his duties and his see, employed himself in writing a
   treatise against avarice, and died despised in his hypocritical
   worldliness.

   Arsacius, the intruded Patriarch of Constantinople, after a year of
   miserable and disputed power, embittered by contemptuous opposition,
   repudiated by all that was best and holiest in Constantinople and in
   the whole Western world, terminated an easy life by but a single year
   of dishonoured age, and died on November 11, 405.

   And Theophilus of Antioch, the arch-criminal, the arch-conspirator, the
   arch-apostate?

   He lived--for a continued life is sometimes a chief element in God's
   punishments. He lived to feel that his jealous fury against a saint of
   God would overwhelm his name with infamy, and, in causing his many
   other crimes to glare under the full light of publicity, would hand him
   down to an immortality of execration.

   He lived to hear the Alexandrians, over whom he tyrannised with a rod
   of iron, heap their reproaches on him in the streets for his base
   intrigues.

   He lived to know that the fulsome adulation of the pitiable bishops
   whom he had consecrated to serve his own ends could not drown one howl
   of the conscience which he had transformed into a bandog within him.

   He lived to revile the name of Chrysostom in a written invective as a
   frantic tyrant of hardened forehead; the sacrilegious patron of
   sacrilege; not only not a Christian, but worse than a Belshazzar; a
   hypocrite whose guilt transcended all possible penalties, but would
   incur everlasting damnation hereafter, and be cast out by Christ into
   outer darkness.

   He lived to imbue his nephew and like-minded successor, Cyril, with the
   hatred which made him say that to enter the name of John on the
   episcopal records of Constantinople would be as bad as entering the
   name of Judas. He lived to vilify the name of the saintly Olympias,
   before whom, when he hoped to get something from her, he had gone on
   his knees and kissed her hand. He lived to besmirch the holy name of
   Origen, for whom all the while he had a secret admiration.

   He lived in perpetual dread of death. What fear, and trouble, and
   anguish we have to see,' he said, 'when the soul is parted from the
   body!' He lived, in splendour and despotism, to express his envy of the
   desert hermit, Arsenius, who had ever been mindful of the hour when he
   should meet his God.

   He was found dead on his bed on October 15, 412.

   He had retired to rest from the midst of his episcopal pomp, but had
   hardly laid down to sleep before a dark and hideous figure took its
   seat by the bedside.

   Who art thou, that darest intrude into my chamber?' he cried in fury.

   That tone avails your Holiness no more,' said the figure, mockingly.
   Wicked man! thine hour has come. From this bed thou risest, from this
   chamber thou steppest forth, no more.'

   Avaunt thee, horrible fiend!' cried the Patriarch, and he made the sign
   of the cross.

   The figure laughed. Art thou, then, so foolish, O wise theologian!' it
   cried, as to think that a mechanical motion with the fingers can avert
   the retribution due to a life of pride and crime?'

   Who art thou?' gasped Theophilus.

   What! dost thou not know me?' said the fiend. 'Not know thine own
   familiar friend? Not know him who has lived so long with thee, who has
   whispered all thy masterful lies into thine ear, who has sat on thy
   shoulder, who has clutched thee by the hair for these many years?'

   I know thee not,' he moaned; I never yet saw anyone so hideous as
   thou.'

   The fiend laughed long and loud. Not know me? Whom, then, shouldest
   thou know? Thou hast created me. I am thyself! and wouldst thou now
   disown me? Nay, for the present moment I am thine, and thou art mine.
   Look at all the scenes in which we have acted, all the things that we
   have done.'

   He waved his hand, and Theophilus saw before him heaps of gold got by
   chicanery, by falsehood, by flattery, and by oppression. Does it not
   content thee?' he said. 'See, how rich we are! How useful we found it,
   you and I. How we bribed the Alexandrian officials with it. How
   effectual it was in getting the votes of priests and bishops at
   Constantinople. How it enabled us to suborn a throng of useful
   perjurers. Perhaps we shall be able to take it with us. Perhaps the
   angels may be open to a bribe.

   Look again.'

   Before the miserable eyes of the dying man rose the figure of a youth,
   bribed with fifteen pounds of gold to bring an infamous charge against
   a priest, but himself recoiling with horror from his own perjury. Yet
   the priest, in his innocence, was overwhelmed with agony, and driven to
   death in squalor and in ruin.

   Do you recognise the good Isidore, the Hospitaller?' said the ruthless
   voice. We tried once, you know, to make him Patriarch of
   Constantinople. That failed. Nevertheless, in due time we wreaked our
   grudge on him, and ruined him effectually.

   Look again.

   I need not tell you who those four Tall Brothers are. See, the face of
   one of them is bleeding from your cruel blow! What a delicious thing is
   vengeance! How you imprisoned them, slandered them, scourged them,
   robbed them, hunted them from city to city, starved them, ruined them,
   ultimately all but demoralised them, when their best force was beaten
   down by age and misery; and then you shed crocodile tears over those of
   them whom you had not already done to death. It is a pleasing sight for
   your deathbed, is it not?

   Look again.

   Who is that old man in a frightful Armenian village, liable to the
   depredations of Isaurian brigands, driven from his see; his body
   tormented, his name blackened, himself killed so slowly that no man
   might call it murder? Ah! I see that you recognise the saintly
   Patriarch of Constantinople. You branded him as an impure demon, doomed
   to an endless hell. How completely you and your Egyptian bishops'--and
   here the figure laughed again--'triumphed over him. Ah! but would you
   not exchange a thousand times your victory for his defeat?

   There is plenty more to show you of our doings--much more than the
   world knows, for by good luck we managed to get the memorial suppressed
   which the Tall Brothers presented to Arcadius about our past doings.
   But do you enjoy even thus much of the picture of your life? Farewell!'

   The figure and the pictures seemed to fade away. 'Ugh!' said
   Theophilus, it was an ugly dream.'

   But then another dark and veiled figure entered. 'Theophilus,' it said,
   thy last hour is come! Prepare to meet thy God!' The figure touched
   him. He fell back upon his pillow. Next morning they found him lying
   dead, with a horrid stare in his wide-open eyes.
     __________________________________________________________________

BOOK VI
     __________________________________________________________________

DEATH AND LIFE


   tis oiden ei to zen men esti katthanein,

   to katthanein de zen;

   Euripides.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXI

  PHILIP AND THE EMPEROR

     Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before
     kings; he shall not stand before mean men.--Prov. xxii. 29.

   Kallias stayed a fortnight under the hospitable roof of Olympias, and
   during those days he had the pleasure of seeing how greatly his honest
   and genial simplicity brightened the thoughts both of his hostess and
   of his friend. The general outline of his own future seemed now to be
   approximately settled. Like Philip, he had acquired an incurable
   disgust for Constantinople, with its turmoils, its luxury, its unreal
   Christianity, its cruel, persecuting, and deeply corrupted Church. He
   would have to learn in time that in these respects the West was as bad
   as the East, and that any peace and satisfaction which life can bring
   must depend far more upon ourselves than upon the place of our abode or
   the circumstance of our position. But in the West he found an opening
   for earning his living. His skill as a reporter was unusual, and the
   great Pope of Rome gladly offered him a liberal salary.

   Philip's ultimate future seemed also to be assured; for as soon as the
   recrudescence of episcopal trouble at Antioch had been composed he
   could live in his native city, not only in comfort, but in comparative
   affluence, and he looked forward, as to a paradise, to the enjoyment of
   happy years with the maiden of his love. But as his union with her was
   inevitably postponed, he was uncertain how to occupy the next two
   years. He would not avail himself any longer of the goodness of
   Olympias. He was now able to work, and she had so many faithful
   secretaries, agents, and dependents, that she had no need of such
   services as he could render, gladly as she would have retained them.
   Under these circumstances Kallias urged Philip to employ the time at
   his disposal by travelling in the West until he could go to claim his
   bride; and he promised him a warm welcome if he would visit Rome.

   A message from no less a personage than the Emperor Arcadius decided
   his uncertainties. The Præfect Aurelian had written to Olympias to ask
   whether Philip had recovered his health; and on hearing from her that
   he was now completely restored, Aurelian told the Emperor. Arcadius
   summoned Philip to a private audience. Philip was beyond measure
   astonished by the receipt of this mandate, for it was the
   characteristic of Byzantine imperialism to surround itself with an
   awful isolation. He might well have been terrified by the summons, if
   the kind-hearted Præfect had not assured him that the visit was to be
   kept entirely private, but that good, and not harm, was intended
   towards him.

   Three days afterwards he made his way to Chalcedon. He was conveyed in
   an imperial galley to the Stairs, was driven in a covered chariot to
   the palace-gate, and saw once more, with long and irrepressible
   shudders, the Patriarcheion, and the burnt area where once had towered
   the stately architecture of the Senate-house and of St. Sophia.

   Aurelian conducted him into the presence, and the Emperor intimated
   that he wished to talk to the young man alone. Arcadius had been much
   softened since the loss of his passionate and domineering Empress. With
   his habitual indolence, he still permitted the continuance of a
   persecution at once ignoble, cruel, and unjust against the innocent
   Johannites; but this was mainly because he had become somewhat shy of
   meddling with ecclesiastical dignitaries, and had not the energy to
   interfere with the new Patriarch, Arsacius, and his successor, Atticus.
   The conviction grew ever stronger in his mind that, though he was too
   weak to throw off the tyranny of his bishops and their partisans, yet
   Chrysostom was worth all the rest of the corrupted clergy of the
   capital. In spite of the haughty letter of Theophilus and the decrees
   of the Synod of the Oak, Pope Innocent and the bishops of the West had
   declared Chrysostom innocent, had treated the calumnies against him as
   monstrous perjuries, and had refused to renounce communion with him.
   Even in his exile and humiliation he remained an acknowledged leader of
   the Church, and took a larger share than his enemies in her holiest
   efforts. It is true that Arcadius had not only rejected the bishops and
   presbyters whom Innocent sent to him to request the recall of the
   Patriarch--among whom was Palladius of Helenopolis--but had even
   allowed them to be treated with a rudeness and cruelty which disgraced
   his rule; but this was more the work of his agents than of himself, and
   he might have roused himself to interfere but for the fierce and
   indignant jealousy which he felt towards his younger brother, Honorius,
   who, though several years his junior, had taken upon himself more than
   once to rebuke Arcadius sharply, and thereby to kindle the most intense
   resentment of which his mind was capable. The presumption of Honorius
   seemed so intolerable to his elder brother that it helped to smother
   all his better feelings under the smouldering fumes of sullen wrath.

   But meanwhile things had not gone well with him. He was still living in
   constant dread of the wrath of Heaven--a miserable man. The deaths of
   Eudoxia, Arsacius, Cyrinus, and others, had terrified him. Besides the
   terrible hailstorm, another violent earthquake had shaken
   Constantinople. Pestilence and famine had appeared in the Eastern
   Empire, and its peace was constantly disturbed by the armed menace of
   Alaric and Stilico--for both of whom Arcadius felt an intense
   aversion--and also by the rumours and the actual devastating advance of
   swarms of barbarians under Rhadagais. He thought that by showing
   well-deserved gratitude and kindness to Philip, who was so dear a
   friend of Chrysostom, he might avert impending ruin. He looked on this
   as a tardy and partial reparation; and he wanted to talk to Philip
   about many things.

   Arcadius often felt very weary of the stereotyped officialism of his
   Court and the intriguing slyness of his kotowing slaves. He longed to
   converse with a fellow-man on more natural and simple terms. He had
   seen Philip with Chrysostom in former days, and had been struck by his
   air of bright and honest manliness. He began at once by thanking him
   for the loyal resourcefulness with which he had averted a double peril
   from the designs of Gaïnas, and, assuring him of future favour, told
   him of the pension which he had set apart to reward his services.

   Philip bowed low, and Arcadius was not slow to catch the tone of
   sincerity which rang through the expression of his gratitude. And now,'
   he said, lay aside all ceremony, for I wish to talk freely to you. Call
   me simply "sir." You know the Patriarch well?'

   I lived under his roof,' said Philip, as a son for many years. Oh,
   sire!' he added passionately, would that your Imperial mind had never
   been abused by false tales about him. Never was there a more innocent
   or a holier man.'

   Arcadius was quite unaccustomed to hear himself addressed in language
   of such frank simplicity; but it was a pleasant experience, though he
   hardly knew what to say in reply. After a little pause, he said, You
   are quite right to speak to me without reserve.' Then he added, 'I fear
   you have suffered for your faithfulness to him.'

   I have suffered fearfully, sir,' said Philip, the tears rushing to his
   eyes; but it would all be nothing if your Sublimity would recall him
   from his cruel exile.'

   Emperors cannot always do what they will, any more than other men,'
   said Arcadius, with a sigh. If I had better bishops near me, it might
   be so. But power is much more a semblance than a reality. I speak to
   you unreservedly, and I know that you will respect my confidence. But
   though it is impossible for me to recall the Patriarch John, I can at
   least do something for you, who are his friend. Shall you still live
   here?'

   Oh! sir, I could not live here,' said Philip. Every street teems for me
   with terrible memories. When things are a little settled at Antioch,
   God will suffer me, I trust, to return to the city of my birth.'

   Are you married?'

   No,' said Philip, with a blush; but----'

   I see,' said Arcadius, with a smile. Is she a lady of Constantinople?'

   She was the daughter, sir, of Michael, of whom your Majesty has heard,
   in the Chalkoprateia; but they are now living near the holy Nazareth.'

   Then listen,' said the Emperor. 'These are dangerous days. The
   barbarian Rhadagais is marching with hosts of Alans and Ostrogoths to
   ravage Italy. The Isaurians make fierce incursions into Palestine. Amid
   these troubles I want to consult the holy Nilus. I am sending a letter
   to him by the Chamberlain Briso, who will travel with an escort. But I
   want some man of resource to travel with him. You shall go, if you
   will; and then you can go on to Nazareth.'

   Philip eagerly thanked him, and embraced the offer.

   I will not forget you when you return with your bride to Antioch; you
   shall be under my protection,' said Arcadius, kindly. But now tell me
   about your Patriarch. Is he very wretched at Cucusus?'

   No, sire,' said Philip. The place is bleak and frightful and dangerous;
   but he has found many friends, and is still engaged in holy works, and
   all who are best in the church of Christ still look up to him.'

   Arcadius sighed again. Oh that I could recall what has happened!' he
   said. But the bishops, and clergy, and all society united against him;
   and I was helpless. It was not my fault. Severian and the others took
   the guilt on their own heads. Does the Patriarch hate me? Does he curse
   me? Is that why these calamities befall me?'

   Nay, sire,' said Philip, you know him not; so far from cursing you, he
   daily prays for you. There is no word of Christ that he quotes more
   often than "

   Forgive your enemies; love them that hate you; pray for them that
   despitefully use you and persecute you."'

   I thank you for those words,' said Arcadius; 'they are a comfort to me.
   Do you ever write to him?'

   Yes, sir,' said Philip; as often as opportunity occurs.'

   Then tell him--but privately, you understand--that the Emperor asks
   both his pardon and his prayers. Oh that Eudoxia could but have been
   reconciled to him before her sad death!'

   The eyes of the Emperor filled with tears. I have spoken to you very
   openly, Philip,' he cried; but I can always recognise one whom I may
   trust. I have been glad to talk with you. I will not forget you.' He
   held out his hand, and Philip, sinking on his knee, kissed it. Arcadius
   seemed unwilling to part with him. It was very long since he had ever
   held any frank, human intercourse with anyone, and he enjoyed it.

   Is it quite impossible to retain you in my service?' he asked.

   Oh, sir, it is your right to command, and gladly would I do my very
   utmost to serve you. But may it not be elsewhere, not in this terrible
   city, and among the clergy who have tortured me, my father, and my
   friends?'

   Be it so, then; though I am sorry. Yet, is there nothing more I can do
   for you now?'

   Sir, Antioch is thrown into confusion under the new bishop whom
   Severian has thrust upon her. He hates the Patriarch John, and would
   persecute me. One line from you to Anthemius, the Patrician, the
   Præfect of the East, would secure my peace and safety.'

   You shall have it,' said the Emperor, and, dipping his stylus in the
   huge golden inkstand on the table, inlaid with lapis lazuli, which
   stood beside his gorgeous chair, he wrote on a strip of vellum, in the
   delicate calligraphy for which his little son also afterwards became
   famous:

   On pain of our displeasure we forbid all to molest our servant, Philip.
   He may communicate with whom he will.--Signed, Arcadius.'

   There!' said the Emperor; and now kiss my hand once more. But do not
   let this be the last time I see you.'

   The autograph was in the famous purple ink which none but emperors
   might use on pain of death.

   Philip poured forth his thanks, bent his knee, kissed once more the
   sallow hand of the Emperor, and retired.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXII

  PHILIP VISITS ST. NILUS


   Let Sinai tell, for she beheld His might,

   and God's own darkness veiled her awful height.--Heber.

   Briso and the escort were to start with the letter to St. Nilus in ten
   days. Philip wrote to Chrysostom, cheered his heart with the
   confidential account of his interview with the Emperor, and said that
   he would write as often as was possible. Then he bade an affectionate
   and deeply grateful farewell to Olympias. To you, lady,' he said, I owe
   my very life. Never shall I kneel to God in prayer without remembering
   your name. May He lighten your burden of sorrow, and brighten the
   clouds around your heart with His eternal rainbow!'

   Farewell, Philip,' said Olympias; our Patriarch has taught me not to
   find a fatal stumbling-block in my adversities; and my parting present
   to you shall be his treatise to me on the truth--which may well be a
   guide to you throughout your life--that "No one is injured save by
   himself."'

   Philip's keen interest in seeing the world, and the near prospect of
   meeting Miriam once more, made the voyage full of delight to him. Briso
   was a kind, pleasant companion. Sailing down the Propontis, and past
   the blue Symplegades, and then along the coast of the Troad and Lesbos,
   they touched first at the port of Ephesus, and saw the scene of the
   labours of St. Paul. Then they sailed among the isles of Greece, and
   across the Mediterranean to Alexandria. It was well for them that they
   were bearers of letters from the Emperor, and had an escort, for this
   secured them from the deadly machinations of Theophilus. After catching
   a rapid glimpse of the marvels of Egypt, they crossed the desert, and
   Philip gazed up with undescribable awe on the bare crags of Sinai from
   under its purple shadows. The cell which Nilus had built for himself
   was on the little plateau in which is the cleft in the rock where
   tradition says that Elijah hid himself when he heard the voice of the
   Lord. It is a hollow enclosed by granite cliffs, and with one tall
   cypress in the centre, pointing, as it were, heavenwards with funereal
   finger.

   The story of Nilus singularly illustrates the strange vicissitudes and
   intense religious emotions of the fourth century. He was a man of tall
   stature, stately presence, and masculine beauty, who had entered into
   the career of official life, had won great successes at Constantinople,
   and had even reached the lofty position of Præfect of the East. He had
   married, and was the father of two sons, and there seemed no doubt that
   he would die a statesman, wealthy, full of years, and crowned with
   civic honours. Suddenly, however, the convictions of religious life
   took hold of him, and in the overpowering contemplation of the three
   last things--death, judgment, and eternity--all that the world could
   offer seemed to slip into dust and ashes. In 390, without a word of
   public warning, he renounced the world, and, taking with him his son
   Theodulus, retired to the desert of Mount Sinai. Like the great
   Arsenius, the tutor of Arcadius and Honorius, who followed his example
   four years later, he had up to that time lived amid the splendour of a
   luxurious Court, attended by 'slaves in silken garments with golden
   girths.' Now he abandoned wealth and place, and retired to Mount Sinai,
   there to acquire a new and far more extraordinary power as the fearless
   oracle of the Christian world. But he had not escaped from severe
   trials. He found that even on Mount Sinai he had to wrestle with the
   demons of temptation no less than in the world. Barbarous marauders
   invaded the desert, and carried off many of the hermits, and among them
   Nilus and his son. They dismissed Nilus, but reserved the young
   Theodulus to sacrifice him to the Morning Star. But after the carouse
   of the night the barbarians overslept themselves, and the propitious
   hour of morning twilight was lost. To save themselves trouble they sold
   Theodulus into slavery, and in time he fell into the hands of a bishop,
   with whom Nilus found him. Struck with admiration for their goodness,
   the bishop compelled them both to accept ordination.

   Briso and Philip, with the escort, climbed the steep ascent of Sinai,
   and Philip had often to lend his arm laughingly to the panting eunuch,
   who, accustomed to the luxurious ease of the palace, grumbled at the
   unwonted hardships to which he was exposed. When they reached the
   plateau where the cell of Nilus stood, beside a single almond-tree of
   which the pink blossoms were shining in the dawn of spring, the
   far-famed hermit and his son came out, and gave them a courteous
   welcome. Briso presented the Emperor's letter, and Nilus said that he
   would write and seal his answer that evening. During the day he talked
   long and earnestly with Philip about Chrysostom, for whom he had the
   highest admiration, which the dangerous vicinity of Theophilus did not
   prevent him from expressing. Surely,' he said, if, by giving up the
   world, a hermit has not learnt fearlessness in the cause of God, he has
   gained nothing.' He did not hesitate to express extreme disapproval of
   the conduct of Arcadius. And why does he send to me?' he asked
   indignantly. 'Arsenius is near us, in the Sketic desert. That truly
   great and holy man was his tutor and godfather, and is far worthier
   than I to advise and to pray for him.'

   His Eternity the Emperor----' said Briso.

   Tush! you are not in the Palace, but in the cell of Nilus, on Mount
   Sinai.'

   Well, his Clemency Arcadius never liked the great Arsenius.'

   Because he did his duty to him, and chastised him,' said Nilus, which
   Arcadius was too little-minded to forgive.'

   Briso shuddered, and raised up a deprecating hand. Was it not high
   treason to listen to such remarks?

   But what could one expect of a training in which mere children like
   Arcadius and Honorius sat, while their tutor stood?'

   But,' said Briso, his Eternity Theodosius----'

   His Eternity is dead,' said Nilus, smiling.

   Pardon me,' said Briso; it is only a phrase which I repeat from habit.
   Theodosius came in, and seeing his boys seated while their tutor stood,
   was so angry that he indignantly deprived them both of their imperial
   ornaments.'

   Well done!' said the hermit.

   Do you think I might see the great Arsenius?' asked Philip.

   I would willingly introduce you to him,' said Nilus, kindly; 'but his
   temper is stern, his love of silence and solitude is a passion. He
   says, "I am often sorry for having spoken, never for having held my
   tongue." He would scarcely even allow the Patriarch Theophilus to visit
   him, and did not so much as offer him a seat. If the mood was on him,
   he might drive you away with stones, as he once did another visitor; or
   treat you as John the Dwarf treated him, who, though he knew how great
   Arsenius had been, merely flung him a biscuit, and let him eat it on
   his knees. No, you had better not visit him.'

   They left the next morning, and Nilus gave to Briso his answer to the
   Emperor. Had Briso known the contents of the missive he would have
   trembled to give it to Arcadius. For Nilus wrote bitter reproaches
   against the Emperor for having exiled Chrysostom. 'When I heard of his
   banishment,' said Nilus, 'I was lightning-struck with the fire of
   grief. You have quenched the lamp of truth and silenced the trumpet of
   God.'

   If the earthquakes at Constantinople had continued Arcadius would
   doubtless have been more deeply impressed by the rebukes of St. Nilus:
   but as they had ceased to shake the foundations of the Palace, he
   relapsed into his usual masterly inactivity, and let matters take their
   course.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXIII

  PHILIP AND ST. JEROME

     Augustior urbe Romana--Bethleem.--Jer. Ep. liv. 13.

   At this point Briso and Philip parted, for the Chamberlain was eager to
   return to the ease of the capital, and Philip no less eager to make his
   way to Nazareth. Theodulus, who was about his own age, kindly undertook
   to be his guide as far as Gaza, and on the way he caught a glimpse of
   not a few monasteries, and saw something of the lives of hermits. If
   Nilus and Theodulus had won his admiration, he was entirely
   disenchanted by the narrowness, dirt, ignorance, and ferocious bigotry
   which were rampant among some of those who, in virtue of a self-denial
   which cost them far less than holiness would have done, passed for
   exalted saints.

   At Gaza he was welcomed by the dear old Bishop Porphyrius, with whose
   simple and unsophisticated piety he was greatly charmed. Porphyrius
   sped him on his way rejoicing to Jerusalem, where he received the
   genial hospitality of the excellent Bishop John. His visit was rendered
   more delightful by the admiration which John both felt and expressed
   for his beloved father and master, Chrysostom. The Bishop, entering
   into the youth's enthusiasm, went with him to many of the sacred places
   round the city. The Holy Land became to Philip a fifth Gospel. He had
   seen for many years an utter perversion of the true Christian ideal, a
   staining of the crystal river of the Water of Life by turbid influxes
   of Pagan superstition and half-Pagan, half-Jewish ritual. He had been
   alienated by a combination of excited babble about incomprehensible
   formulæ, with a savage intolerance which looked with more fury on a
   barely intelligible divergence of opinion than on the most flagrant
   violation of the moral law. He had seen the whiteness of leprosy
   hypocritically parading itself as the whiteness of innocence. He had
   seen priests and bishops combining the attitude of professional
   sanctity with the abjectness of intriguing hatred, and posing as saints
   while they acted like ruffians. He had seen the most ostentatious
   Pharisaism devoid of the elementary Christian graces, and had heard men
   prate of an ideal which, in their practice, was indistinguishable from
   the most reprobate worldliness. Nothing could have repressed the
   disgust which often crept over him had it not been for the influence of
   Chrysostom, the happy innocence of his friends David and Eutyches, the
   gentle self-sacrifice of Olympias and Nicarete, and the large-hearted
   simplicity of Michael, the Desposynos. If this be Christianity,' he had
   often said to himself amid the seething ecclesiastical vileness of
   Constantinople--'if this be Christianity, it is a failure; and if this
   be the Church, then the gates of hell have largely prevailed against
   it.'

   While his mind was thus troubled the storm of ruin had burst upon him,
   and, if his faith had been but a house built upon the sand, it would
   have been swept into indistinguishable collapse. But God had spoken to
   him in his anguish, and a star had shone down upon him out of the
   midnight. He had learnt to see that the true Church was neither one
   particular organisation nor one sacerdotal caste, but that it was the
   congregation of all true Christian men throughout the world, the
   mystical body of Christ, which is the blessed company of all faithful
   people.

   In Palestine, it seemed to him as if he could better apprehend the
   eternal teachings of the very Christ, and that he could see what the
   Gospel was without having to catch mere glimpses of it through the
   lurid mists of priestly usurpation, worldly corruption, and clanging
   controversies. The few days he spent at Jerusalem were to him days of
   memorable happiness, as he gazed on the city from the spot where Christ
   had wept over it on the Mount of Olives; as he wandered to the ruins of
   the house of the two sisters, and saw the grave of Lazarus at Bethany;
   as he stood awestruck on the traditional site of Golgotha; as he knelt
   to worship in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and trod on the
   platform-site of that ruined temple where Jesus had so often taught. He
   would wander for hours by himself down the valleys of Hinnom and of
   Jehoshaphat, and round the hills which stand about Jerusalem. He mused
   for many solemn moments under the ragged and wind-swept tree on
   Aceldama, the scene of the suicide of Judas; and one night, never to be
   forgotten--it was the eve of Holy Thursday--he went through the Golden
   Gate, wandered under the huge gnarled olives in the Wady of the Kedron,
   and stood under the flood of moonlight, alone, beneath the olive-tree
   of the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, amid


   Solitary thinking such as dodge

   Conception to the very bourne of heaven,

   Then leave the naked brain.

   To move alone with his thoughts amid such scenes was to leave the
   stained river, and to bathe himself afresh in the fountains of the
   dawn. He was, naturally, anxious to visit the cavern of the Nativity,
   and the Bishop gave him a letter to St. Jerome, whose name was famous
   throughout the world. Philip shrank from meeting him, for he knew that
   Jerome had translated into Latin the shameful letter of Theophilus, and
   had thus given it vogue throughout the Western Empire. But he overcame
   this repugnance, and compelled himself to forgive an outrage which
   could, he felt, have been due to ignorance alone.

   The old scholar, who always had a kindly feeling for the young,
   received him graciously--and he could be very gracious when he chose.
   Philip would have liked to ask him some questions about the saintly
   Origen, and his larger hopes for the future of ruined man; but he was
   aware how easily the jealous suspicion of Jerome took the alarm, and
   how he was terrified out of himself by the faintest supposition that he
   could entertain any sympathy for a man whom the current religious
   ignorance denounced as heretical. But when he talked of the birth of
   Christ, and asked Jerome to lead him into the Chapel of the Nativity,
   the old man's eye grew bright. Ah!' he said, 'let me go with you. Never
   can I be weary of that most sacred spot. This cavern was the magnet
   which drew me hither from Rome. It makes Bethlehem the most august spot
   in the world, because there, as the Psalmist sings, Veritas orta est.
   Here I become little with the Little One. Here I offer to Him my sins
   for His forgiveness.'

   He took Philip by the hand, and led him from the cavern in which he
   lived, and in which he had made the great Latin version of the Bible,
   into the adjoining cavern, once the stable of the village inn at
   Bethlehem where was born


   The Child

   Whose tender, winning arts,

   Have to His little arms beguiled

   So many wounded hearts.

   With indescribable emotion the youth and the old man knelt down by the
   little silver star round which ran the inscription, Hic de Virgine
   Maria Christus natus est.

   Philip left Bethlehem with a courteous and respectful farewell to the
   world-famous eremite. Jerome had prepared for him a little collation,
   at which he had the honour of seeing the saintly Roman-ladies, Paula
   and Eustochium. They had left their gilded palaces on the Aventine to
   accompany the great man, who, when he was secretary to Pope Damasus,
   had initiated them, and so many of the noblest ladies of Rome, into the
   mysteries of Hebrew and the principles of Scriptural interpretation,
   and whom in those days everyone had expected to be elected to the
   Bishopric of Rome whenever it should fall vacant. But Jerome had
   incurred the fate of all those who are intolerant of vice and
   imposture, and, exactly as Chrysostom had done, he had made a deadly
   enemy of every dandy monk and vicious priest--and there were not a few
   of both classes--in the great city. In spite of the moral blamelessness
   of his life, he found himself enwrapped in such a sulphurous storm of
   slander that he had left the capital of Christendom denouncing her as
   Babylon, and a purple-clad harlot,' and, almost with a curse, shaking
   her dust from off his feet.

   You must be very happy here, Father?' said Philip, 'away from the storm
   and stress of Rome.'

   Happy!' answered Jerome. Who is happy? Yes, I am happy in the sense
   that, with many imperfections, I still strive to serve God, and devote
   myself to the service of His Son. I am happy in the sense that my sins
   are forgiven for Christ's sake, and I have that peace, deep within,
   which the surface hurricanes cannot shake. And I am happy in this holy
   cave, and in the shady walks of Bethlehem, and when I see the flowers
   bloom and hear the song of birds in spring. But as for what the world
   calls happiness, it is not here. If there be any sunshine within
   myself, there is little or none in my surroundings. God has not seen
   fit to preserve me from the strife of tongues, and doubtless the fault
   lies largely in myself. Ah! young man, if you seek for what this world
   calls happiness, crawl along the hedge-bottoms; lie low; never unmask
   an imposture, never rebuke a vice, never embrace an unpopular cause,
   never propound a distasteful truth; join the multitude, swim with the
   stream, answer the Church according to her idols. Then you will be
   popular, and all men will praise your moderation, and, if you take
   orders, you may even become Patriarch of your native Antioch.'

   And then----?' said Philip.

   I see,' said Jerome, I need say no more. God has taught you to estimate
   things aright. Farewell! and take with you an old man's blessing.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXIV

  PHILIP AND THE DESPOSYNI


   Those holy fields,

   Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

   Which...were nail'd

   For our advantage on the bitter cross.

   Shakespeare, Henry IV., Part I., I. 1.

   Thus far the journey of Philip had been a very happy one; and it became
   even happier. God, who had caused all His waves and storms to roll over
   the young man's head, was now leading him through sunshine in '

   green pastures and beside still waters.'

   Leaving the kindly hospitality of the Bishop of Jerusalem, he rode
   northwards, stopping with an interest which can be imagined at Bethel
   and Shiloh, and resting for an hour by Jacob's well to read from his
   manuscript of St. John's Gospel the discourse of Christ to the woman of
   Samaria. Thence he made his way to En Gannin, the turbulent Samaritan
   village on which the Sons of Thunder had desired to call down fire from
   heaven; and so into the great plain of Jezreel. At Jezreel he rested
   for a night, wandering all the evening over the hills of Gilboa, and
   visiting the fountains which were the traditional scene of Gideon's
   test of his followers, and of David's encounter with the giant. Thence,
   with Tabor in sight, and snowy Hermon, be crossed one of the streams of
   that ancient river, the river Kishon, and approached the hills of
   Galilee. Here, at the entrance of the narrow ascent in the limestone
   rocks which leads to Nazareth, he had the immense delight of seeing his
   friend David, who had come to meet him with mules and refreshments.
   They spread a carpet on the abundant green grass among the vernal
   flowers under the pomegranates, and in then happy talk, which blossomed
   with a thousand memories, David noticed with delight that though a
   shadow sometimes seemed to brood over the horizon of his friend's mind,
   he was again the bright and genial Philip of former days. In answer to
   eager questions, he told Philip that they could reach Lubiyeh, which
   was the ancient home of the Desposyni, in two days, and that there he
   would find Miriam well and happy, and looking forward to his visit with
   an anticipation which was too intense for her expression.

   The sweet, green valley, with its palms and white houses opened beneath
   them as they rode up the mountain-path; and here and there--for it
   happened to be a day of festival--they met little laughing groups of
   the bright children of Nazareth in their many-coloured tunics and
   kaftans. Then they passed the fountain by the side of which the maidens
   of Nazareth, so famed for the heritage of beauty with which the Virgin
   is said to have endowed them, were already assembled, carrying their
   earthen pitchers gracefully on their heads or on their shoulders. One
   of these, the loveliest of the band, glanced up shyly at David with
   laughter in her eyes. The radiant smile with which he met her glance
   seemed to transfigure his whole face. Philip looked inquiringly at him.
   'We will follow that maiden at a little distance,' said David,
   demurely; we are to rest at her father's house to-night.'

   Is that all, David?' said Philip. Why did you not tell me before? It
   would have added so much to my happiness.'

   You have guessed my secret,' said David, blushing like a boy. Yes,
   Philip, I am engaged to Ruth, daughter of Andrew of Nazareth. He is a
   merchant. As we are to be his guests, you will see my betrothed, who is
   more beautiful even than your Miriam.'

   That I deny,' said Philip.

   And as good.'

   That is impossible. But I congratulate you, David, with all my heart.'

   They found a delightful meal outspread for them in the cool court,
   beside a plashing fountain, and Philip was delighted at the tameness of
   the white doves, which would nestle on their shoulders, waiting to be
   fed. Everything about the house was beautiful, yet simple, and when
   David went out with him to see Nazareth, Philip was gracious enough to
   acknowledge that, though the young Ruth could not, indeed, be compared
   with Miriam, she was full of grace; and he grasped his friend's hand
   with hearty congratulation.

   They went to the shop where He had toiled whom men called the carpenter
   of Nazareth.' They saw the scenes of that sinless childhood which had
   grown up '

   in wisdom, and stature, and favour, with God and man.' David showed the
   green mound where, as legend said, the boys of Nazareth had chosen the
   boy Jesus for their King, and crowned Him with a wreath of flowers, and
   made every passer-by come and kneel to Him with homage. Then they
   climbed the hill of Nazareth, where He must have stood so often with
   the wind in His bright hair and on His cheek, as He gazed towards the
   blue Mediterranean, beyond the purple heights of Carmel, or northwards
   to snowy Hermon, or to the plain below the hills on which His village
   stood, which has ever been the battlefield of Palestine.

   Enchanted with all that he had seen, Philip was still eager to press
   on, and early the next morning, when they had breakfasted in the open
   courtyard, under its sheltering vine, the mules stood ready for them,
   and they made their way past Cana of Galilee--where were still shown
   the six water-pots of stone--to Lubiyeh. On its low hills stood the
   humble farm and hamlet which for four centuries had been handed on from
   father to son in the family of Jude, the Lord's brother. Michael stood
   at the door to meet them, and half-hidden behind him stood Miriam. It
   would require greater skill than mine to describe the rapture with
   which the long-parted lovers met; but as they were betrothed, and
   betrothal was little less sacred than marriage, Philip was allowed to
   raise the girl's veil, kiss her cheek, and fold her in his arms in one
   long embrace. Then he gently pushed her back to gaze on her face, to
   which the dawn of womanhood had added a more perfect loveliness. Not
   less earnest was her gaze on him. Seas of bitter anguish had flowed
   between them, and though the laughter of youth still lingered on the
   lips and in the eyes of Philip, an indefinable shadow, as of death, had
   passed over them; and it saddened her.

   Am I so changed, Miriam?' he asked, reading every thought which
   expressed itself on her guileless features; and as she was silent for a
   moment, he cried, 'Oh, Miriam! am I not the Philip whom you knew in
   those happy days? Have illness and grief and torture made me different
   from him whom once you loved?'

   Her only answer was to hide her face on his shoulder. 'You are changed,
   my Philip,' she murmured; but the change has left you no less
   beautiful, no less dear. Anguish has passed over that happy face, but
   has not left it less full of love. Perhaps, Philip,' she added, looking
   up--'perhaps, if God grant it, I may help to bring the old sunlight
   into it again in years to come.'

   He could not speak. He could only fold her to his heart.

   The rigid etiquette of Eastern life was a little relaxed in the simple
   home at Lubiyeh. The Gospel had elevated women. From being the slaves
   and playthings of men, thrust into dull and unintellectual seclusion,
   they had been uplifted into equals and helpmeets. They could move about
   far more freely than of old; and Miriam had never been a mere silent,
   soulless, muffled shadow in her father's house, but the light of her
   home, and the constant sharer in her father's and her brother's
   thoughts. Hence, in these days she had many opportunities to talk long
   and earnestly with Philip over the future and the past, and they found
   more and more that, not only were their hearts knit together in the
   bonds of perfect love, but also that they thought alike on many
   subjects of the deepest import. For the thoughts of Miriam about the
   most sacred and solemn things were of that large and simple character
   which, since the days of Christ, had remained unaltered in the family
   of His earthly kin.

   Those were delightful days! David showed Philip how their shepherds
   knew the sheep, and called them by name, and walked in front of them,
   followed by the flocks, and sought the lost lambs among the hills. It
   was spring-time. The branches of the palms were green; the vines gave a
   sweet smell; the voice of the turtle was heard in the land. Seated with
   Miriam and David by some fountainside, and often outstretched on the
   soft green turf, Philip was never tired of watching the eagles soaring
   overhead in the deep blue, and the white pelicans winging their way to
   the lake beneath, and the playful, crested hoopoes, and the bright
   flash of the roller-bird, which looked like a living sapphire. He would
   pluck the lilies-of-the-field, the scarlet tulips, the purple arum, the
   golden amaryllis, and bid Miriam weave a garland from them for her dark
   hair. He would watch the doves settle upon some dusty heap of the
   village potsherds, and then reflect the sunshine from every varying
   plume' as they soared upwards; and he thought of his own present
   happiness, and of the verse, '

   Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a
   dove, which is covered with silver wings and her feathers like gold.'

   But are you not afraid of the Isaurians?' he once asked suddenly, as
   though it was impossible that such peaceful happiness should continue
   on this earth.

   Not to any terrible, extent,' said David. They have made one great
   raid, but their object is not to devastate hamlets. They have a notion
   that vast treasures are hidden in Jerusalem, and specially in the tombs
   of the kings; so they sweep downwards like a torrent, and though they
   do mischief and cause anxiety, we have not suffered much from them.
   Lubiyeh lies out of their main routes, of which one leads to Tyre and
   down the coast, and the other the way of Genesareth, by Galilee of the
   Gentiles.'

   But we have been attacked by chance bands of the marauders,' said
   Miriam.

   Don't look so alarmed, Philip,' said David, laughing. 'We have scouts
   as far away as Lebanon, and whenever the Isaurians are on the march
   fires flash from the top of Hermon; and from hill to hill, in a moment,
   so that we have the amplest notice of danger.'

   Besides which we have a secret way of escape,' said Miriam; show it
   him, David, for he looks as frightened as if he saw the Isaurians now.'

   What! show our secret to this worst of Isaurian marauders, who is going
   to take you from us, Miriam?'

   Yes, do,' said Philip, and then you will not be tempted to hide Miriam
   when I come with an army to demand her, as I shall do if you don't take
   care. You forget,' he said, laughing, that his Eternity of
   Constantinople is now my warm friend, and I am his ambassador; so look
   out!'

   We can't escape this terrible personage and tremendous courtier,
   Miriam,' said David. Come along, then.'

   He led him a little way down the hill on which they were sitting, and
   showed him more than one unsuspected cavern of large dimensions, of
   which the entrances were so much hidden by tangled masses of creepers
   and foliage as to be only observable when you came close to them.

   These are our fortresses,' he said. Into one of these caverns we drive
   some of our choicest cattle. It winds under the hill, and has an
   opening out of sight on the farther side. We leave out some of our
   sheep, and some of our corn and wine and oil, for the brigands to seize
   if they like. Then we carry all that we possess which is of any real
   value into other caverns more hidden than this, in which also our women
   and children are sheltered under an armed guard. They could defend its
   entrance against hundreds of men, and it also has a secret exit if the
   worst came to the worst. But the robbers have never found their way to
   the cavern, and have been content merely to take toll as they
   passed--like you, you worse Isaurian!'

   And who is going to act the Isaurian in a certain home of Nazareth?'
   said Philip.

   Oh! that is quite different. Nazareth is near. For instance, Andrew and
   his household are coming to visit us to-day, for Ruth is a dear friend
   of Miriam's. But you are going to take off your booty to the ends of
   the earth.'

   Only to Antioch,' said Philip. If you are very good, you shall come and
   visit us there.'

   Michael was rich, and pitying from his heart the heavy trials which his
   young future son-in-law had suffered, he did his utmost to make him
   happy. He planned a delightful excursion of a week to the Sea of
   Galilee, with mules and tents and attendants, in which not only Miriam
   was to accompany them, but also the merchant Andrew and his daughter.

   They stopped first at Kurn Hattîn, the Mountain of Beatitudes, and on
   its summit read aloud the sermon on the Mount. Then they made their way
   past the little hamlet of Hattîn, where Christ had healed the leper;
   down the Vale of Doves, with the aromatic herbs scenting the air
   beneath their feet; under the caverns of the robbers whom Herod had
   driven out. Then they passed the village of Magdala, of which the ruins
   and the mud huts were covered with masses of purple convolvulus; and so
   down to the shining level of the silver inland sea. It was an intense
   joy to Philip to wander over the rich and sunny plains of Genesareth,
   to ride under the pink bowers of flowering oleander, which reminded him
   of the banks of the Orontes; to watch the black-and-white kingfishers
   seated patiently on the plumed reeds, and every now and then darting
   down on a fish which passed through the crystal waves with a gleam of
   silver or of gold. He and David bathed on the lovely strip of silver
   sand beside Bethsaida, where the fishermen Peter and Andrew and the
   sons of Zebedee had so often mended their nets. They listened to the
   twittering of the numberless little brown birds in the watercourses, of
   which, as Philip recalled, not one falleth to the ground unmarked of
   God. They visited the ruined marble synagogue, with the pot of manna
   carved over its lintel, in which Christ had preached at Capernaum. They
   stood astonished amid the maze of confused débris which were once the
   'Chorazin' on which Christ had pronounced His 'woe.' They took boats,
   and rowed and sailed across to the Wady Kerza, the scene of the healing
   of the Gergesene demoniac, and to the grassy, flowery little plain at
   the north of the Lake where Christ had fed the five thousand; and they
   climbed the hill to the summit of which He had fled to find calm and
   solitude for prayer.

   As he moved among these scenes an indescribable peace and brightness
   flowed over the soul of Philip. He seemed to recover the simplicity and
   sincerity which were in Christ Jesus, the exultation and unrippled
   surface of that pure, sweet faith which was the heritage of the early
   Christians. The corrupted Christianity of Constantinople with its
   sanctimonious hypocrisies and deeply seated worldliness, seemed to slip
   off from him, like some cope whose heavy golden broideries were stiff
   with pomp, but stained through and through with defacing stains. He saw
   the Church of Christ in her white robe and bridal flower, clad in her
   maiden purity, with the words of simple faith and simple hope upon her
   lips, and Christ's banner over her of love. He found it infinitely less
   difficult to realise the true teaching of Christ on the shores of
   Galilee than in the churches of Severian and Arsacius.

   To Philip these scenes and memories had been as a fountain in the
   wilderness, but now they were coming to an end. He shrank from another
   year of separation from Miriam amid the trials and tumults of the
   world. They were all sitting together outside their tents one lovely
   evening, while before them the Lake gleamed in the sunset:


   Clear silver water in a cup of gold

   Under the sunlit steeps of Gadara.

   It gleamed--His lake--the Sea of Chinnereth--

   The waves He loved, the waves that kissed His feet

   So many blessed days. Oh, happy waves!

   O little silver, happy sea, far-famed,

   Under the sunlit steeps of Gadara!

   He was holding Miriam's hand, and David was sitting on the grass at the
   feet of Ruth. With a sudden burst of feeling he turned to Michael and
   said, Oh, sir! Oh, father! why should you postpone our marriage for
   another year? Life is short and uncertain; the times are troubled. If I
   am to go wandering about for twelve long months, who can tell what may
   happen? The cup of innocent happiness has been at our lips; why should
   we put it down?'

   Michael mused a little. 'Philip,' he said at last, it may be that it
   would be an error to postpone your union with Miriam, and David's with
   Ruth. But ought you not at least to visit Antioch first, and to see
   that you really have a home ready for your wedded life, which, in God's
   will, may last for years to come?'

   I will fly to Antioch on wings, and make all things ready.'

   Will not Bishop Porphyry have something to say to you? Will Antioch be
   horrible Constantinople over again?'

   Philip smiled. Loyally respecting the Emperor's confidence, he had only
   told them in general terms of his visit to Arcadius, and of the pension
   bestowed upon him. Now he mysteriously opened a little embroidered bag
   which hung round his neck, and which Miriam had given him. It contained
   the carcanet of coins which was so precious a relic, and the pledge of
   their betrothal, and a strip of folded vellum. Unspreading this on the
   palm of his hand, he displayed before their astonished eyes the
   protective autograph which Arcadius had given him.

   Why, Philip,' said David, we shall yet see you Count of the East! Who
   ever heard of such condescension on the part of "his Eternity" as to
   give his edict in autograph to----?'

   To a mere clerk, you meant to say, David,' said Philip with a hearty
   laugh. But though the poor clerk is now comparatively a rich man, he
   won't quite be Count of the East. Yet, though he is not the rose, he is
   near it; for Anthemius, the new Count of the East, loves our father,
   John, and will be kind to Miriam and me for his sake.'

   Philip,' said Michael, it shall be as you say. You know that though we
   live here so simply, I still have some interest in commerce----'

   Nearly all his gains are given to the poor,' whispered David.

   --and one of my vessels will sail in a day or two for Asia. It can stop
   at Seleucia, and you can land there for Antioch. If you find your home
   in readiness, come back at once. You shall be wedded to Miriam, and
   David to Ruth, on the same day, God willing, in the Church at
   Nazareth.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXV

  TWO HAPPY BRIDALS


   The vested priest before the altar stands;

   Approach, come gladly, ye prepared, in sight

   Of God and chosen friends your troth to plight

   With the symbolic ring, and willing hands

   Solemnly joined.--Wordsworth.

   Philip was not slow to carry out the suggestions of the Desposynos. The
   ship bore him to Seleucia with soft and favouring gales. Again, as in
   his boyhood, he saw Mount Casius, crowned by the now ruinous Temple of
   Zeus, flinging its huge dark purple shadow over the Ægean. Again he
   passed the enchanting grove of Daphne, with its wilderness of roses,
   its shrine of St. Babylas, and its scathed Temple of the Sun-God. Again
   he saw the Orontes glimmering under its blossoming groves. Again he
   traversed the road over which he had followed the chariot which bore
   Chrysostom away; he passed through the Golden Gate; gazed up at the
   huge Charonium; saw the lovely statue of the Fortune of the City';
   shuddered as he rode by the Prætorium and the Court of Justice, which
   had witnessed his boyish agony; looked up at the stately building with
   which Rufinus had bribed into silence the murmurs of Antioch at the
   brutal murder of Count Lucian; saw the wild gorge of the Parthenius, up
   which he had gone in the early morning with Anthusa to the cave of
   Macedonius; and, thrilling through and through with commingling
   memories of shadow and sunshine, entered Singon Street, and stood
   before the old familiar door from which he had stepped forth less than
   eight years ago.

   Less than eight years! Yet what unfathomable seas seemed to separate
   him from the light-hearted boy whom Chrysostom and Anthusa had snatched
   from misery and death to share their home with him, and to treat him as
   a much-loved son.

   Old Phlegon opened the door at his summons, started to see him,
   trembled, and then, in the sudden rush of emotion, fell back and almost
   fainted.

   Master Philip!' he murmured.

   Ah! Phlegon,' said Philip, gaily. Cheer up, dear old friend. To you, I
   see, I am still the little boy. But, Phlegon, please God! I am coming
   here to live with you all always, and to bring back with me a blooming
   bride.'

   Miriam?' said the old man, with a faint smile.

   Yes, Miriam, about whom our Eutyches used so often to chaff me.'

   Tell me about my dear, dear master, the Patriarch.'

   He is, as you know, at Cucusus, in Armenia; but he is very active in
   God's cause, and, in spite of exile, and trouble, and cold, and
   sickness, many are kind to him, and he is happy because he trusts in
   God.'

   Oh, master Philip!' said the old slave, why do you not go to him? I
   would myself go in a moment, but I am old, and, even if I survived the
   journey, I should be useless to him.'

   Do you think I would not have shared his exile had it been possible?'
   said Philip, reproachfully. But for many weeks and months after his
   banishment I lay in helpless sickness, from which, but for Olympias, I
   could never have recovered; and when I got better he would not allow me
   join him at Cucusus. I implored him to let me come; but he said--and I
   know that he said truly--that the thought of making me unhappy--though
   I should not have been unhappy with him--would weigh him down, and add
   to the soreness of his trial. I could not join him contrary to his
   express command and wish. You know all that happened at
   Constantinople?'

   I heard that they had tortured you, master Philip. Oh! how often I have
   wept for you, and for my master. Weeping and prayer--that has been my
   life for many a long day! And--that dear young boy, Eutyches--will he
   come with you?'

   Don't you know, Phlegon? Alas! alas! how happy would he have been to be
   here with me to-day! and what lovely sunshine his presence would have
   made! Phlegon, that fair face will never be seen on earth again.'

   Did they kill him?'

   Do not ask me now, Phlegon. I cannot bear it. But I know--I know that
   his beautiful spirit is now in bliss.'

   All was in exquisite order in the old home. Until Porphyry had been
   intruded into the see Constantius, the chosen candidate of all the
   people, aided by his good sister Epiphania, had managed the property
   both of Chrysostom and of Philip. When Porphyry had driven him out of
   the city, he gladly shared the exile of Chrysostom at Cucusus, but by
   the ceaseless machinations of the bad usurper at Antioch had at last
   been driven to take refuge in Cyprus. Alexander, who ultimately
   succeeded Porphyry, and united the distracted see, had at his departure
   undertaken the same charge. Philip found the dear old home, of which
   every corner was so familiar to him, in perfect readiness to receive
   him, and his affairs were safe and flourishing.

   After a day or two devoted to making arrangements and visiting all whom
   he knew and loved in Antioch, he flew back to Seleucia. He soon found a
   ship bound for Berytus, whence he made his way at his best speed to
   Nazareth and Lubiyeh.

   Michael no longer desired to postpone the double marriage. It was to be
   celebrated at Nazareth, and Bishop John of Jerusalem undertook to come
   in person and perform it. The bright scene was long remembered. Michael
   was the chief person in the neighbourhood, and everyone in the little
   town knew and loved him. The church could not contain half the number
   of those who flocked to it, but they assembled outside, scattering
   roses of Sharon and lilies-of-the-valley before the brides and their
   maidens. Every boy in Nazareth who had any voice at all was trained to
   join in the marriage hymns, and rarely had such a volume of sound rung
   through the little basilica, and rarely had it witnessed so gay and
   bright a scene.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXVI

  PHILIP AT ANTIOCH

     Que' fu al mondo persona orgogliosa.--Dante, Inf. viii. 46.

   In the evening Michael ordered tables to be spread on the green turf
   round the fountain for the children of Nazareth, and gave them a happy
   meal. The scene--the gay dresses, the flowers, the balmy air, the
   pealing hymns, the assembled children, the beautiful maidens of
   Nazareth, of whom none were so beautiful as Miriam and Ruth--was one
   never to be forgotten; nor did the wedded pair ever forget the fervent
   and touching description of Christian homes given by Bishop John in his
   address to them.

   Whence,' he said, are we to find words enough fully to set forth the
   happiness of that marriage which the Church cements, and the oblation
   confirms, and the Benediction signs and seals--of which angels carry
   the news to heaven, which God approves? How blessed is the
   marriage-bond of two believers, sharers in one hope, in one desire, in
   one discipline, in one and the same service! Both are brothers, both
   fellow-servants; the two are one flesh and one spirit. Together they
   pray, together they prostrate themselves before the throne of grace.
   Mutually they teach, mutually they exhort, mutually they sustain each
   other. They are alike in the Church of God, at the banquet of God, in
   straits, in persecutions, in refreshments. Neither conceals aught from
   the other; neither shuns the other; neither is troublesome to the
   other. With freedom they visit the sick, they relieve the indigent.
   Their alms, their sacrifices, their daily diligence find no impediment.
   They join in "

   psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," in happy emulation of heart and
   voice. When Christ sees and hears such things, He rejoices. To them He
   sends His peace. Where the two are there is He, and where He is the
   Evil One is not.' [14]

   David and Ruth were still to live in the house of their father, for
   David was needed to relieve Michael of the cares of business and
   agriculture combined; but after a blissful week spent largely in the
   open air and under the woods beside the Sea of Galilee, Philip and his
   bride started on their journey to Antioch. They went by land, for
   Philip did not like to expose Miriam to the possible storms of the
   Mediterranean. They therefore travelled leisurely, and visited Tyre,
   and Sidon, and Damascus, and Berytus, on the way.

   The household at Antioch was assembled to meet and greet them,
   scattering roses and lilies. Miriam entered with joy upon the modest
   duties of her home, while Philip watched for an opportunity to occupy
   his talents as best he could in the service of God and man.

   He had scarcely been a month in Antioch when they were troubled by the
   imperious threats of Bishop Porphyry.

   He was well aware that Philip was living in the house which belonged to
   Chrysostom, and had been regarded by him in the light of an adopted
   son. He hated Chrysostom with the concentrated hatred of a base nature;
   and he hated Philip for his sake, and was determined to use every means
   to crush him.

   He therefore sent a priest to summon Philip into his presence, in order
   to coerce him into submission, and if he had not been under the
   immediate protection of the Emperor, Philip must either have fled from
   Antioch or suffered fresh experiences of priestly dungeons and priestly
   tortures. But as it was he knew that he was perfectly secure, and that
   Porphyry would never have dared to molest him had he been aware that he
   was under the sacrosanct shadow of Imperial kindness.

   Philip dismissed the priest, whom he astonished by the message that he
   denied the right of Bishop Porphyry to summon him, but that as a matter
   of courtesy he would go.

   Before he went, however, he thought it well to pay his respects to
   Anthemius, the Count of the East. The Count gave him a cordial welcome,
   and had the Emperor's commands to protect him. He had often seen him at
   the Patriarcheion, and knew in what high esteem he had been held by
   Chrysostom, whom he himself regarded with affectionate reverence. For
   the intruding Bishop of Antioch he felt a scarcely disguised contempt,
   and, on hearing that he meant to interfere with Philip's rights, he
   determined to surprise him by a visit at the very time at which he had
   ordered the young man to come.

   So Philip went to the Bishop's palace, where he found himself received
   in the hall with the shrugs and sneers of Porphyry's clergy. He strode
   through the midst of them with indifference, only informing the
   attendant that he had come by the Bishop's appointment.

   The attendant announced him, and came out, but Philip was not bidden to
   enter. He was left standing, and not being even asked to take a seat,
   he at last went and sat down on a bench at a distance, waiting for some
   message; but not a word was spoken to him, and there was a silence as
   of night, while the priests glowered on him with tragic countenances.
   Luncheon was going on, but he was ostentatiously ignored, as though he
   were not present at all.

   Patience had never ranked among Philip's most conspicuous virtues, and
   as the attendants came in and out, summoning others who arrived later,
   but not admitting him into the shrine' where Porphyry sat, he at last
   started up, and said in a voice indignant enough to be heard not only
   through the hall but behind Porphyry's curtain:

   Tell Bishop Porphyry that he summoned me at this hour. If he does not
   wish to see me, I shall go. I have no time to waste.'

   The priests, accustomed to the awful deference which their bishop
   demanded, were thunderstruck at the message.

   Insolent!' exclaimed one of them, advancing with a threatening gesture.

   Touch me with one of your fingers,' said Philip, and I will bring you
   before the Court of the Præfect.'

   He turned round, and was striding out of the hall, when the attendant
   hurried up, saying that he could now be admitted.

   He entered the Bishop's presence in angry mood, and as he was received
   without even the semblance of courtesy, he did not choose to go on his
   knees and kiss the Bishop's hands, but contented himself with a slight
   bow.

   How dare you!' asked Porphyry, purple in the face with rage.

   How dare I--what?'

   How dare you come into my presence without an obeisance?'

   I did not know that they were regarded as compulsory.'

   Am I not a bishop?'

   Philip was silent. You are no true bishop of Antioch,' he thought. You
   were intruded into the see, against the wishes of the people, by a
   conspiracy and a trick.'

   Porphyry read his thoughts, and angrily exclaimed:

   I have sent to order you to communicate publicly with me, or to take
   the consequences.'

   I am unable to do so,' said Philip.

   I know your fanatical devotion to that impure demon, the expelled
   Patriarch of Constantinople; nevertheless, the Emperor's decree bids
   all men to communicate with me, and you shall do it.'

   He whom, you call an impure demon,' said Philip, with flashing eyes, is
   a saint of God, whom I revere with all my heart.'

   Then you refuse to communicate with me?'

   Philip remained silent.

   Ah!' said the Bishop. We will soon tame this contumacy. You have felt
   the rack before, I think? Was it pleasant?'

   I have felt the rack, and doubtless it might be your will to inflict it
   again,' said Philip, swept away with uncontrollable passion; but it
   will not be in your power.'

   His Excellency, the Count of the East is here with his lictors,'
   announced the attendant priest.

   Admit his Excellency,' said Porphyry, and take this young man out. I
   have not done with him.' [15]

   No!' said Philip, with a smile.

   As Philip went out the Count was entering, and said to him, Come back
   with me; my visit concerns you.'

   Anthemius greeted the Bishop with cold dignity, and said, I observe
   that my secretary, Philip, has been with you. I have come to tell your
   Religiosity that he is not to be molested by ecclesiastical squabbles.'

   Ecclesiastical squabbles!' exclaimed Porphyry. The Emperor's authority
   is, I should hope, loftier than that of your Excellency, and he has
   expressly ordered everyone in his dominions to hold the faith held by
   me, Theophilus of Antioch, and Acacius of Beroea.'

   Do you question my orders?' asked Anthemius.

   I shall consult the Emperor on the subject, Count.'

   Be it so. Has your Religiosity ever seen the Emperor's autograph?'

   No.'

   Then you shall see it now. I have just received this order from him to
   take Philip into the public official service;' and Anthemius showed him
   an order written by the Emperor's own hand.

   That cannot cancel the previous edict,' said Porphyry, still resolute
   to coerce.

   But this exempts me from it,' said Philip. 'Your Religiosity will now
   be able to recognise both the purple ink and the Imperial signature.'

   He laid on the table the protective order which the Emperor had given
   him. The Count of the East,' he added, is aware of what this order
   says. After this your Beatitude will perhaps think it safer to
   persecute the unprotected, and to leave me alone.'

   Bishop Porphyry stared at the document, and grew pale. He greatly
   feared that Anthemius and Philip might make an unfavourable report of
   him to the Emperor. As he remained silent they bowed and withdrew. The
   priests, who came in expecting to receive an order from Porphyry to
   throw Philip into prison and confiscate his goods, were received by the
   discomfited Bishop with a burst of fury, and bidden never again to
   allude to the subject.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [14] See Tertullian's Ad Uxorem ad fin.

   [15] See Greg. of Nyssa, Ep. 1. He was treated exactly in this way by
   the haughty Helladius, Bishop of Cæsarea.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXVII

  THE EXILE AT CUCUSUS


   'Dirotti brevemente'--mi rispose,

   Perch' io non temo di venir qua entro;

   Temer si dee di sole quelle cose

   Ch' hanno potenza di fare altrui male:

   Dell' altre no, chè non son paurose.

   Dante, Inf. ii. 86-90.

   And now a prospect of the utmost peace and happiness seemed to open
   itself before the path of Philip. There was something about him which
   conciliated the regard of honest men, and Count Anthemius was attracted
   by his character, as the Præfect Aurelian had been, and so many others,
   including the Emperor himself. To be able to recognise capable and
   trustworthy men is one of the most valuable gifts which rulers can
   possess, and Anthemius possessed it in an eminent degree. He appointed
   Philip to a responsible and lucrative office in the Prætorium which
   placed him near his own person, gave him great influence, and offered
   opportunities for winning still higher distinction. To this public good
   fortune was added the singular happiness of Philip's home. He was
   surrounded by the household of Chrysostom, who were all Christians, and
   were of tried fidelity. Miriam, trained in refined simplicity which
   wealth had never tempted into luxury, not only proved herself an
   excellent manager of his domestic affairs, but also undertook with
   ardour those kindly offices among the poor which enabled her throughout
   life to realise how true it is that


   The high desire that others may be bless'd

   Savours of heaven.

   In due time a little son was born to them. Haunted by the memories of
   the past, and unwilling that prosperity should make him forget them,
   Philip called his boy Eutyches, and the health and beauty of the infant
   seemed of good promise for the years to come. When the child was born
   Philip made his way to the cavern in which Macedonius, the
   barley-eater, still held his dim and dreary abode. Worn and ill, and
   often weighed down by unspeakable fits of sadness, the white-haired old
   man welcomed him with eagerness, and gladly assented to his request
   that he would come down and stand as godfather at the baptismal font
   for the firstborn of the young man whose life in his early boyhood he
   had made a brave effort to save. The kind consent of Macedonius was
   fertile of further consequences, for, now that years and infirmities
   were increasing upon him like a flood, he was persuaded to leave his
   cavern, only visiting it occasionally, and to make his home in a cell
   which they built for him in the valley hard by. Here he was close
   beside their home, and here Miriam could provide for him some of the
   alleviations necessitated by his state of health.

   But never for a single day was Chrysostom absent from the thought of
   his foster-son. In one of the letters which they interchanged on every
   opportunity Philip had asked him always to be with him in spirit at
   five o'clock on every afternoon, that their mutual prayers might
   mingle, like incense in the golden censer of the great High Priest.
   Letters were often lost en route, for the brigands who infested every
   mountain-path frequently robbed the messengers, and made all
   communication precarious. Still, Chrysostom had been kept informed by
   Philip of his recovery, his travels, his marriage, his settlement in
   Antioch, his domestic felicity; and had again and again, with firm
   consideration, forbidden Philip to sacrifice his own young life--as he
   had been eager to do--by coming to Cucusus. Even this loving
   prohibition might have been unavailing if Philip had not been convinced
   that the difficulties of the Patriarch's situation were in some
   respects enhanced by the presence of every new visitor who came to see
   him in that far-away and afflicted town. Two devoted friends performed
   for him every office which a watchful love could suggest. One was his
   aunt, the Deaconess Sabiniana, his father's sister, a lady of exalted
   saintliness; the other was the good presbyter Evethius, who had
   accompanied him on his journey. A rich citizen of Cucusus, named
   Dioscorus, had given up to his use his own house, which was the best in
   the town, and had himself retired to a neighbouring villa. Adelphius,
   the excellent bishop of this out-of-the-way retreat, thought no
   kindness burdensome which he could extend to the illustrious exile.
   Sopater, the governor, waited on him like a son. At first it seemed as
   if the tranquillity of his new home and the absence of tumults and
   enemies would be better for his health and happiness than
   Constantinople, with its measureless insults and cruel persecutions.
   But when the snows began to cover the peaks of Mount Taurus, and winter
   clutched the whole region in its icy grasp, the Patriarch's sufferings
   were cruel. He was shaken by a severe cough. If he kept up large fires,
   the smoke nearly suffocated him; if he let the fire sink low, he was
   perishing with cold. Accustomed to the soft climate of Antioch and
   Constantinople, he was compelled to take to his bed, where, tormented
   with insomnia, and filled with disgust for every kind of food, he lay
   covered with blankets and only just enough alive to feel life's
   miseries. His woes were alleviated when spring returned. He could enjoy
   the beauty of the opening flowers and the balmy vernal breeze; above
   all, communication with the outer world became possible once more, and
   he could receive the letters despatched by Olympias and Philip. Yet all
   the while death was at his door. The Isaurians were a constant terror.
   They plundered the villas, they harried the cattle, they burnt the
   farmhouses on every side, they slew all who offered resistance. To take
   a walk outside the walls was to run the risk of being captured and
   carried off to the mountains, only to be redeemed, if at all, by an
   exorbitant ransom. At times the alarm was so acute that numbers fled
   for refuge to the dense woods which clothed the mountain-sides, and
   took shelter in what dens or caves they could find. On one occasion
   even Chrysostom and his little household were driven to this miserable
   resource.

   This state of things became so intolerable that it was necessary to fly
   for shelter to Arabissus, a lonely fortress on the hills twenty leagues
   distant, built on the summit of almost inaccessible rocks. There, too,
   Chrysostom met with kindness from the governor, and from Otreius, the
   bishop, or, as we should call him, the vicar of the hamlet; but the
   place was worse than a prison. He was now unable to take the daily
   exercise which was essential for his health, and could only gaze with
   indescribable sadness on the dreary prospect of icy mountain-peaks and
   leagues of unbroken snow. Soon, too, the fortress was overcrowded by
   the numbers of hapless fugitives who fled to it for safety, and famine
   and pestilence added to the accumulated forms of anguish. Nor even here
   were they safe from the hungry and ruthless bandits. Some of the more
   active--especially the young men--in sheer despair wandered into the
   forests, and tried to make their escape into more hospitable regions;
   but they paid the forfeit with their lives, and their bodies were found
   frozen to death. One night three hundred Isaurians attacked Arabissus
   itself, and were only repelled after a desperate fight. Of this peril
   Chrysostom was, happily, unconscious. He was asleep, and as they did
   not awake him, he did not hear of the averted peril till the morning
   had brought safety.

   It can easily be understood that, under circumstances so deplorable, it
   was undesirable for Chrysostom's own sake that he should be burdened
   with the anxiety of extra visitors, whose difficulties would deepen his
   distress. A young reader named Theodotus came to him from Antioch. His
   father was a man of noble birth, from whom the youth had wrung a
   reluctant consent to visit the exile. He made his way to Arabissus in
   spite of many dangers, and brought with him splendid presents from his
   father. These Chrysostom returned with a courteous letter, and sent
   back with it the young Theodotus. How could he be of any real use in
   training the young man in a scene so harassed with massacre and tumult,
   brigandage and conflagration?

   In spite of these difficulties, and the Patriarch's obvious reluctance
   to entangle others in his own calamities, so many flocked to him, and
   he occupied so exalted a position in the eyes of the Christian world,
   that he at last rekindled the undying embers of jealousy and hatred in
   the mind of Atticus, the Patriarch who had succeeded Arsacius at
   Constantinople, and still more in the cankered hearts of Severian and
   Porphyry. All Antioch is at Cucusus,' wrote Porphyry in savage
   ill-temper to Severian. 'This man, disgraced, banished, condemned, is
   directing missions to Persia and Phoenicia; preventing me from
   acquiring my just authority at Antioch; uniting the Pope of Rome and
   all the bishops of the West in a conspiracy against the Patriarch of
   Alexandria, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and myself. This dead man
   continues to be a hindrance and a terror to the living; this conquered
   heretic is getting the upper hand of us victorious Catholics. You must
   leave no stone unturned to frighten or cajole the Emperor to remove him
   to some still more distant and desolate spot of the Empire--the
   farther, the better; and if he dies, or disappears on the way, or falls
   into the hands of Huns or Isaurians, so much the better for the
   Christian world.'

   Armed with this precious missive, Severian paid a visit to Atticus,
   and, with soft murmurs of regret and ready tears of crocodilian
   magnanimity, implored him, for the sake of that peace which is so dear
   to all Christian hearts, to procure from Arcadius an edict for the
   farther banishment of the ex-Patriarch John. When the bishops had taken
   on their own heads the responsibility of Chrysostom's expulsion,
   Arcadius would fain have been rid of the matter, and the deaths,
   miseries, and earthquakes which had ensued made him still more desirous
   to meddle with it no further. But Atticus knew on which string to harp.
   He persuaded the Emperor that the name of John was being used as a
   nucleus of conspiracy of the Western against the Eastern Church, and
   that Honorius and Stilico--these were the two names which would most
   surely rouse the Emperor to sullen wrath--would make these
   ecclesiastical matters an excuse for the most dangerous political
   interference. With little difficulty, by the use of this weapon, he
   procured an edict for the removal of Chrysostom to the remotest corner
   of the entire Empire. Severian's malignity had already hit upon the
   place. It was the desperately repellent and ruined town of Pityus, on
   the Euxine. There he would find no Christians at all, and in the midst
   of Heniochs, Lazes and Huns, might eat away his heart in vain.

   The management of the affair was entrusted to Atticus and Severian. The
   two officers who had accompanied Chrysostom to his exile at
   Cucusus--young Anatolius and Theodotus--had by accident been
   kind-hearted men, who had treated the sufferer with consideration, and
   availed themselves of every alleviation of his journey which
   circumstances allowed. The bishops took care that this mistake should
   not be made a second time. The two officers selected were men in whom
   no capability for compassion was to be suspected. They had been given
   secretly to understand that the bishops would give them a handsome
   recompense and secure their early promotion if they acquitted
   themselves satisfactorily of their task. By still darker innuendoes it
   was made plain, even to their obtuseness, that it was of no great
   consequence whether Chrysostom even arrived at Pityus or no. If he
   happened' to die by the way, then reward and promotion would be
   equally, and perhaps even more, secure, while at the same time much
   annoyance and difficulty would be prevented.--The names of these two
   officers were Secundus and Cythegius.

   Pretty plain that!' said Cythegius to his comrade as he left the
   Thomaites, where the bishops had given them instructions.

   Yes,' said Secundus, with a broad grin on his hard features. It is only
   the roundabout way which their Religiosities have, and it means "murder
   him," only do it so slowly that people won't call it by the ugly name
   of murder.'

   He is worth the whole lot of them put together,' said Cythegius.

   That is no affair of ours,' replied the other, shrugging his shoulders.
   It isn't we who will have to go to hell for it.'
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXVIII

  THE MARTYRDOM

     Fateberis non illum martyrio, sed martyrium illi defuisse.

     Edd. Benedict. Vit. S. Ambrosii.

   Philip received early intelligence of the desolating news that even
   Cucusus was not regarded as remote enough to destroy the influence and
   starve out the life of his beloved father, and that in the frightful
   ruins of Pityus he was doomed to end his days. The news decided him to
   action. He thought at first of flying to Constantinople and exerting
   his whole influence with Aurelian and the Emperor to secure a recall of
   the edict. But this would have been a desperate task, and it was
   already too late. When the news reached Philip the escort which was to
   remove Chrysostom had set out upon its way.

   The only course which remained was to start for Arabissus at all costs,
   and do everything which could be done to render the exile's journey
   more tolerable, and to gain for him every possible comfort in his last
   retreat. Great as was the sacrifice involved, neither Philip nor Miriam
   felt a moment's hesitation, in the belief that this was the call of
   duty. So Philip entrusted Miriam to the watchful care of his friends at
   Antioch, Anthemius himself giving ready leave of absence, and promising
   to see that Miriam should not be molested by any subterranean plots of
   vengeance concocted by Bishop Porphyry and his priests. Philip left her
   with the less anxiety because the holy Macedonius was close at hand to
   counsel and protect her.

   Then he sped over the bleak hills and burning plains, amid numberless
   dangers, which in the absorbing eagerness of his purpose he scarcely
   noticed. Nobody who saw him with hardly any luggage, stained with
   incessant travel, and forced to content himself daily with fare much
   worse than coarse, would have conjectured that he bore on his person a
   considerable amount of gold. From any danger which might arise from
   provincial bishops or jacks-in-office he was sufficiently guarded by a
   letter which he carried with him, and by the Emperor's autograph, which
   he concealed in his clothes, to be produced only as a last resource. He
   reached Arabissus without serious mishap, and Chrysostom enjoyed one
   last gleam of earthly happiness as he pressed to his heart his loving
   and faithful son.

   Philip fretted with vain indignation at the prison-like squalor of the
   Patriarch's surroundings, which were nearly as bare as, and far less
   wholesome than, the hermit's cavern on Mount Silpius; but he was filled
   with admiration at the noble fortitude with which the Saint bore every
   hardship, and the beautiful serenity of his untroubled faith. In two
   days Secundus and Cythegius, with their quaternion of soldiers,
   arrived, and issued the surly order that next morning the journey to
   Pityus must be begun. Neither Evethius nor any servant was to be
   permitted to accompany the Patriarch or attend to his needs; and when
   the officers looked at his frail and shrunken figure, and observed how
   weak and ill he was, they felt quite certain that without an overt act
   of murder they would not miss the reward and promotion which the
   bishops had promised them.

   Come what would Philip was determined to be with Chrysostom, nor was he
   ever far from him during the last three harassed months of his friend's
   misery. The orders of the officers were to avoid all towns, lest the
   sight of their illustrious prisoner should awaken the populations to
   indignant pity. They were only to stop at wretched country villages,
   where none of the conveniences of life were to be had, where the dirt
   and vermin were an intolerable annoyance, and where even the rudest
   necessaries were barely to be procured. Philip soon divined their
   ruthless purpose when, following close upon their tracks, he observed,
   on the first day of their journey, that the escort resented the
   slightest exhibition of pity towards their prisoner, and pelted and
   insulted everyone who showed him any compassion.

   He would not start with them, for he was afraid that they might invoke
   authority to prevent this; but when they were on their way he followed
   them at no great distance, and stopped at the village where they rested
   for the night. Here he sought an interview with the two officers. He
   found that Secundus was a man of impracticably brutal character, who
   was determined to carry out his instructions to the letter. Philip saw
   that he had made up his mind that Chrysostom should never reach Pityus
   alive, and that on this consummation, regardless of conscience or
   compassion, he intended to base his claim to advancement and reward. In
   Cythegius, on the other hand, all sparks of humanity were not wholly
   quenched; but, unfortunately, Secundus was the senior officer.

   Philip asked them to allow him to accompany the expedition, and to do
   what he could to save the Patriarch from needless sufferings, which to
   one at his age and in his state of health could not but be terrible. He
   pointed out that, in endeavouring to procure little comforts for
   Chrysostom, he would be able at the same time to make the hardships of
   the way a little less intolerable to the officers themselves and their
   quaternion. Secundus was not only unwilling to make this small
   concession, but declared, with an oath, that he would not allow Philip
   to accompany them at all. He had been promised gold and a step in
   military rank if he did what was expected;' and I mean,' he said, to
   stick to my instructions.'

   There is nothing in your instructions to forbid my coming with you,'
   said Philip. I do not wish to traverse your orders; I only plead with
   you for a little ordinary humanity,'

   A fig for your humanity!' said Secundus.

   There is no harm in letting him come with us, and attend on the
   Patriarch,' said Cythegius.

   Secundus glared at him. I am senior here,' he said; 'and as for you,
   young man, clear out of this, or you may yet taste the rhinoceros-hide
   on your back.'

   Philip was in a blaze of indignation, but he felt that the bully was a
   coward. He had meant to offer the wretch a bribe, but now he determined
   rather to appeal to his fears.

   Man!' he said, you do not know to whom you are talking. I see that you
   have been bribed by Atticus and Severian practically to murder your
   prisoner, and that you expect great advantages from doing so. Take
   care! Exercise the least violence to me, and your reward shall be a
   gibbet. Did you ever hear of Anthemius, Count of the East? Yes? Then
   read that, and don't attempt to hector and swagger to me.'

   He flung on the table the safeguard of Anthemius, which Secundus read
   with some alarm.

   And perhaps you have heard of a certain Count Aurelian, Consular and
   Prætorian Præfect, who will make very short work with common men like
   you. Then read that'--and he showed him a mandate which he had obtained
   from Aurelian, that all soldiers should treat him with civility.

   Once more, it is hardly likely that a man of your stamp should ever
   have seen the purple ink and the Imperial signature; but do you think
   your bishops can save you against the sacred majesty of the Emperor?'

   He displayed before the officer's astonished eyes the autograph of
   Arcadius, and said, Your fellow-officer is a witness; and it is
   perfectly well known to many great personages that I am here, and that
   I mean to go all the way with you; and perhaps you will learn
   henceforth that it is as much as your head is worth to talk to me of
   the rhinoceros-hide again.'

   Secundus was now thoroughly crestfallen, but he retained his dogged
   sullenness. Philip took occasion that night to see Cythegius alone,
   promised him a sum of money if he would meet his wishes, and pointed
   out that he might be even more likely to gain advancement from men like
   Anthemius and Aurelian than from the Bishops Atticus and Severian.
   Cythegius promised to offer no molestation either to the Patriarch or
   to Philip, and to do all he could; but he said that he could not
   prevent any arrangements made by his senior officer.

   So Philip day by day went with Chrysostom, and exerted himself to the
   utmost to cheer and comfort him. They had many a long and delightful
   conversation about the days which were no more; and the sweetness,
   courtesy, and resignation of the afflicted victim so deeply touched the
   hearts of Cythegius and one of the soldiers that, whenever a secret
   opportunity offered, they testified to him their pity and goodwill, and
   did their best to lighten his sorrows. The old man, as he toiled along,
   nearly always on foot, used to lean on Philip's arm; and Philip was
   deeply thankful that he was able to do much in many ways to make life a
   little less cruelly intolerable to his father and benefactor. But he
   was powerless to interfere with the fell purpose and dogged malignity
   of Secundus. Even for a young and hale traveller, with all appliances
   and aids to boot, a journey over such rude paths, and byways which
   forced them to climb rocky passes and traverse torrent-beds and
   mountain-streams, would have been severely trying, especially since its
   pitiless fatigue was so tediously prolonged, and no opportunities for
   rest were given. It took them no less than three months to make their
   miserable way from Arabissus to Comana. Determined to kill his victim,
   but without actual violence, the brutal soldier availed himself of
   every change of weather to hasten his purpose. During their journey the
   roads and the country were daily burned to dust by the broiling heats
   of the summer and early autumn; but, however scorching the heat,
   Secundus would give the pitiless order to advance, and exulted to watch
   Chrysostom's fainting and stumbling footsteps as, supported by Philip's
   arm, he barely crawled along, red all over with prickly heat, and with
   the hot sun blazing on his bald, uncovered head. If violent
   thunderstorms came on a new opportunity offered itself; and he relied
   on the chance of the Patriarch's being smitten down with some deadly
   fever, as he forced him to trudge along with all his clothes wet
   through, and with streams of water trickling down his back and breast.
   It was a matter of daily astonishment to all the party that Chrysostom
   so long bore up against this frightful ill-usage; and it really seemed
   possible that under Philip's watchful care the murderous purpose of
   Secundus and his abettors might be defeated after all, and Chrysostom
   might reach Pityus alive. There were many altercations between Philip
   and the officer on the way. Philip remonstrated with the utmost
   impetuosity of his nature, and even ventured to threaten the wretch
   that he should rue his cruelty. Secundus would certainly have killed
   him if he had dared; but he trembled at the thought of the vengeance
   which would befall him from the emperor himself. For Cythegius often
   took Philip's part; and even the soldiers, won by his geniality and by
   his secret but liberal gifts, showed him their sympathy as much as they
   dared. Philip on one occasion denounced Secundus to his face, and told
   him that even if he succeeded in getting rid of the Patriarch by
   over-fatigue and cruelty, many who were in high authority should
   certainly hear of it, and they were men by whom his future chances of
   promotion were more likely to be influenced than by two bad
   ecclesiastics.

   At last the unhappy cortege arrived at Comana Pontica, in Cappadocia.
   There it would have been possible for Chrysostom to obtain some of
   those resources for health and refreshment of which he stood so sorely
   in need. But Secundus had no intention that they should rest there. He
   hurried surreptitiously through the most distant outskirts of the town,
   and did not stop till they had reached a little martyry some six miles
   beyond it. There they had to stop for the night, more because the
   officers and soldiers themselves needed rest and sleep than from any
   consideration for the sufferer.

   The little chapel of the martyry was dedicated to St. Basiliscus, a
   Bishop of Comana who, in the third century, had suffered martyrdom with
   Lucian at Antioch, at the hands of the Pagan emperor, Maximus Daza.
   Here the good provincial priest regarded it as an honour to be allowed
   to do his utmost for the Saint who was obviously not far from death. He
   gave up to him his own bed, and, to the disgust of Secundus, lavished
   on him every comfort in his power. For the last time on earth
   Chrysostom had a refreshing sleep, and in his dream the martyred
   bishop, St. Basiliscus, appeared to him with his palm-branch in his
   hand, and said, Be of good cheer, brother John; to-morrow we shall be
   together.' The priest, too, had a vision of St. Basiliscus that same
   night, who said to him, Prepare a place for our brother John, for he is
   coming to join me!' Convinced of the reality of his vision, the priest
   entreated Secundus to postpone the hour of starting at least till noon.
   The Prætorian's only answer was to give the order for instant
   departure.

   With an aching heart, Philip, in spite of Secundus, took his place
   beside his father, supporting him, and pouring into his ear the words
   of hope and tender consolation. In the extremity of his weakness and
   feverish unrest Chrysostom still showed a serene and indomitable
   courage.

   You will not be burdened with the care of me much longer, my Philip,'
   he said, I feel that my sands of life are running low.'

   Oh, my father!' he said, you do not mean it when you talk of burdening
   me. To you I owe everything--my life, all the happiness I have ever
   had--yes, my very soul.'

   Chrysostom smiled on him with a look of affection. I know your love for
   me, my boy,' he said; but I saw St. Basiliscus last night in my sleep,
   and I shall not outlive the day.'

   If we could but get you safely to Pityus,' said Philip, 'you might find
   friends there, and still have blessed and tranquil years.'

   As God will, Philip; but if to me to live is Christ, assuredly to die
   is gain. I will not ask, with Euripides, "Who knows if death be life,
   and life be death?" for we know that to those who love God death is
   life. Nor will I say, as Socrates did to his judges, "I go to death,
   and you to life, but which is the better God alone knows," for to us
   Christ has revealed which is the better, and St. Paul has told us that
   to depart and be with Christ is not only better, but "

   far, far the better."'

   But how ill can you be spared in this corrupted and distracted Church
   of Christ!'

   No man is necessary, Philip. The work goes on though the workman passes
   away. Dark times are coming on the world; but Christ has many a servant
   to labour for Him, not more sincere, I trust, by God's grace, than I
   am, but much more wise and great.'

   The words were spoken slowly and with difficulty. Chrysostom gasped for
   breath, and a few moments later sank fainting into Philip's arms. They
   had advanced about thirty furlongs from the martyry, and were compelled
   to halt.

   Fling a little water over him,' said Secundus, and press on. It is only
   a device to gain time.'

   He is dying,' said Philip. Surely you will not have the brutal
   barbarity to drag him farther? If you do, you will have to carry back a
   corpse on your shoulders to the martyry.'

   Philip, supporting the head of Chrysostom on his arm, had sprinkled a
   few drops of water over his burning face and poured a few drops of wine
   through his parched lips, and the Patriarch revived a little.

   March on!' snarled Secundus.

   March on then by yourself,' said Philip; not one step farther shall the
   Patriarch go.'

   We will see to that,' said the officer, lifting the flat of his sword
   to strike Philip in his rage.

   At your peril!' said Philip, looking at him, and the wretch cowered
   under his glance, while Cythegius and the soldiers strode forward for
   his protection.

   It is useless to advance,' said Cythegius. The Patriarch will never
   outlive to-day.'

   The assenting murmur of the four soldiers showed that they agreed with
   their junior officer.

   This is mutiny,' said Secundus savagely; you shall answer for it.'

   Cythegius took him by the arm and led him aside. 'Comrade,' he said, do
   not be an utter fool. Your only chance of getting either your reward or
   your promotion is by not driving that young man to desperation. Each of
   these soldiers--yes, and I too, if you drive me too far--would be a
   witness against you. It is as much as your head is worth not to let
   well alone.'

   March on!' he roared in a frenzy of rage.

   Not one step farther will we march with a dying man,' said the
   soldiers.

   If you persist,' said Cythegius to Secundus, we will disarm you, and
   put you under arrest.'

   Secundus cursed and swore, and stamped his feet on the ground in fury;
   but seeing that it was useless, and might be dangerous, to persevere,
   he sullenly gave the order to return to the martyry.

   Chrysostom could no longer walk, but, aided by Cythegius and the
   soldiers, Philip, now contemptuously disregardful of the orders of
   Secundus, cut down some straight branches of the wood through which
   they were passing, improvised a rude litter, heaped clothes upon it,
   and, gently lifting the half-unconscious exile, helped to carry him
   back to the chapel. When they arrived, the priest, who had foreseen
   their return, had food and cordials ready, and once more laid
   Chrysostom on his own bed.

   I am dying, presbyter,' he said; I would fain die clad in white robes,
   to remind me of the chrisom garment of my baptism.'

   The priest brought out some white vestments, and Philip helped to robe
   the dying Patriarch. As he took off his own garments, even to the
   shoes, he distributed them to those present, for whom in after-days
   they acquired the value of priceless relics. To Cythegius and the
   soldiers who had shown him any kindness he gave what little money he
   possessed and other trifling souvenirs. To the kind priest he left his
   pallium and a little golden altar-vessel. And then he asked to be left
   alone, with Philip.

   Dear son,' he said, you, whose love and loyalty have brightened many
   happy years and solaced many troubled ones, you, who have been a son,
   and almost more than a son to me, the childless old man--may God bless
   you a thousand times for all your goodness! You have passed through
   terrible trials for my sake; may He requite you with His hundredfold
   blessings! May the light of His countenance shine upon you in a happy
   home bright with children's faces! May your little Eutyches grow up to
   fill your cup with earthly happiness, and your Miriam be your joy and
   comfort even unto death!'

   Philip was kneeling by the bed, his face hidden in his hands, and he
   could not speak.

   Why should you weep so much for me, dear Philip?' said Chrysostom.
   There is no cause for sorrow here. The most troubled days of a troubled
   life, thank God! are ending. "

   I have fought the food fight. I have finished my course. I have kept
   the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness,
   which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day."

   Nay, nay, Philip, you must not weep like this. On the contrary, be glad
   for my sake; and I want you to tell Olympias, and all my old friends at
   Constantinople, and my old servants in Antioch, that I die in the faith
   and fear of God and of His Christ, and in the communion of the Spirit,
   perfectly happy. Take this gold chain off my neck, which I have always
   worn under my robe because it was left me by my mother, Anthusa. A
   golden medal hangs from it with a figure of the Good Shepherd on it.
   Wear it always, Philip, for my sake. And now, farewell, and receive my
   blessing.'

   He laid his weak hands on the head of his kneeling son, and fervently
   blessed him. Then he asked to be carried to the Holy Table and to
   receive for the last time the blessed mysteries of the Eucharist. He
   followed the brief supplications, and repeated slowly and with
   difficulty the Lord's Prayer. Then a great glory seemed to come over
   his face. He half raised himself from the bed, gazed before him with a
   look of rapture, as though he saw the heavens opened, exclaimed in a
   clear voice, Glory to God for all things! Amen!' and fell back dead
   into Philip's arms.

   He has laid aside the dust of mortality,' murmured the good priest. He
   is gathered to his fathers. Be comforted, dear youth. Which of his
   friends could wish him back again in such a world as this?'

   The next morning they laid him in his humble grave by the side of St.
   Basiliscus. The two martyrs slept together in peace.

   It was September 17, 407. Chrysostom was sixty years of age. For nearly
   seven years he had been Patriarch of Constantinople; for three years
   and three months he had been a deposed, calumniated, and banished man.
   He did not live to see the clearing of his name, the scattering to the
   winds of the lies which had been heaped upon his innocence, the deep
   repentance of the children of his murderers. Fools counted his life
   madness, and his end to be without honour. How is he counted among the
   children of God, and his lot among the Saints!
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXIX

  A LAST VISIT TO ARCADIUS

     This Falernian is only a little grape-juice, and this purple robe
     some sheep's wool dyed with the blood of a shell-fish.--Marcus
     Aurelius.

   It only remains to bid farewell to some of those whom we have learnt to
   know in these pages.

   When Philip returned to Miriam at Antioch he found her and his little
   Eutyches safe and well; and, sad as had been the last days of his
   friend and father, Chrysostom, his name soon became a happy and tender
   memory among his friends. When all is over, and a man has died in the
   defeat of misery and persecution, jealousy dies, and rancour has
   nothing left on which to feed. The Theophiluses and Severians were
   sated with successful malignity, and their own retribution, as we have
   seen, failed not to fall upon them. Meanwhile, in the unanimous
   admiration of the West the name of the Patriarch John began to shine
   with brighter and brighter lustre. Pope Innocent and all the great
   Italian bishops vindicated his innocence, denounced the vile plots of
   which he had been the victim, and, treating with indignant contempt the
   libels of Theophilus, translated by Jerome, they honoured his character
   and cherished his example as that of a saint and martyr. All that could
   now be done for his memory was to induce the Patriarch Atticus to
   restore his name to the diptychs which recorded the succession of the
   Patriarchs of Constantinople. In this, in spite of the angry opposition
   of Cyril, the nephew of Theophilus, and now Patriarch of
   Alexandria--who said that it would be as bad to record the name of
   Judas as that of John--they eventually succeeded.

   Meanwhile the fate of Chrysostom produced age-long consequences, both
   in the Eastern and Western Empires. Henceforth the Eastern Patriarchate
   produced no champion of the people against oppression, robbery, and
   wrong; no God-gifted organ-voice' of prophecy to denounce the
   ostentation of selfish luxury and the guilt of sensual corruption; no
   mighty Church leader to confront the banded unions of civil tyranny.
   The succeeding Patriarchs of Constantinople were most frequently
   commonplace nullities like the worldly Nectarius, or narrow bigots like
   John the Faster, or sticklers for the niceties of theological
   shibboleths, or at the best amiable scholars like Proclus. In the long
   lapse of the ages not one great saint or orator like Chrysostom swayed
   the diminished powers of the Church in the great Eastern metropolis.

   Further, the dispute about Chrysostom widened the breach between the
   East and the West. The ever-dwindling authority of the Western
   Emperor--till the Empire was extinguished in the feeble person of the
   poor boy who, in the singular irony of history, was known by the double
   name of Romulus Augustulus--tended to increase the ever-deepening
   influence of the Popes of Rome. A distracted age yearned for guidance,
   and, finding none from its civil rulers, looked up to the chief Bishop
   of the West, who, in the persons of men like Leo I. and Gregory the
   Great, became, almost by the natural force of circumstances, the oracle
   of a world face to face with the difficult task of reconstructing a
   civilisation which was being submerged under flood after flood of
   barbarian invaders.

   To Philip the memory of Chrysostom remained through life an ideal and
   an inspiration. He had passed through the deep water-floods in youth,
   but his manhood was peaceful and very prosperous. For, with his
   experience of life, his natural shrewdness, his ready tact, his
   knowledge of business, his conscientious diligence and unswerving
   integrity, he soon made himself indispensable to Anthemius and to his
   chief officials. An Antiochene by birth, he understood the temperament
   and knew the susceptibilities of the Syrian people among whom he
   worked; a Pagan by birth, he was quick to recognise the best and
   kindest method of winning the confidence of sincere Pagans; a Christian
   of broad sympathies, he did not carry into the civil government the
   furious spirit with which the theological insects' of the day were
   constantly endeavouring to sting one another to death. Favoured by
   Arcadius, who not infrequently inquired about him, and even
   condescended to send him messages, he rose with extraordinary rapidity
   in the political world, and before he had reached the prime of manhood
   became one of the leading personages in his native city. The brightness
   of the sunshine came to him all the more delightfully from its contrast
   with the blackness of the preceding storms.

   About six months after the death of Chrysostom the Count Anthemius sent
   Philip with important despatches to Constantinople. Accompanied by an
   imperial escort, he traversed the same ground over which he had ridden
   with the soldiers of Aurelian, when he was an unknown youth
   accompanying Chrysostom to the fulfilment of his mysterious destiny. It
   was natural that, in his altered circumstances, he should revive many
   memories; but now the happy peace of his home and the success of an
   honourable career helped to soften all thoughts of bitterness. He
   stayed for a few days at the little farm now contentedly cultivated by
   Palladius, the former Bishop of Helenopolis, who had been driven from
   his see as a Johannite. It was from Philip that Palladius mainly
   derived the vivid picture of the exile and last days of Chrysostom
   which he has embodied in his lively and famous dialogue. He also
   visited the ruined area of the church of the orthodox Goths, where he
   had been a witness of the dreadful massacre; and he watched the now
   nearly completed restorations of St. Sophia and the Senate-house. He
   received a cordial welcome from his friend Aurelian, now for the second
   time Prætorian Præfect, and from the chamberlains Amantius and Briso.
   He went, naturally, to the house in the Chalkoprateia, where he had
   first seen Miriam, the wife of his heart, and David, the friend of his
   life. He even ventured to visit the Patriarcheion, with which he had
   been so familiar. He would not visit the Patriarch Atticus; but an
   attendant showed him the Thomaites, and his old bedroom, and the
   antechamber where he and his friends had spent so many happy hours.
   Then, with bowed head and folded hands, he went into the room which had
   been Chrysostom's study. It looked very different from what it had done
   in old days. It was now a subordinate guest-chamber, richly adorned
   with tapestries and hangings, and showing all the magnificence with
   which the Palace had arrayed itself in the days of the Patriarch
   Nectarius. Philip closed the book of his old memories as with a golden
   clasp as he knelt long in silent prayer beside the obscure grave of the
   beloved young martyr, Eutyches.

   He paid his respects to Nicarete in the humble home to which
   confiscation had reduced her, and he found the dear old lady as bright
   and cheerful in her poverty as she had been in her wealth. She still
   went among the poor with her little medicine-box; and Philip, whom she
   pronounced to be as saucy as ever, chaffingly declared himself to be
   the victim of all sorts of unheard-of maladies, and demanded pills and
   simples for the certain cure of premature elephantiasis, and other
   disasters, of which he felt sure that Nicarete read the traces in his
   features, though they now shone with contumacious health.

   He never saw her again. He visited Olympias in her villa at Cyzicus,
   and she listened with eager interest to all the details of the death of
   him of whom she now always spoke as God's martyred saint.' She never
   recovered from the deeply seated melancholy which had overmastered her
   spirit amid the tremendous outburst of calamities which had accompanied
   and followed the overthrow of the Patriarch. She died in Nicomedia,
   whither she had removed from Cyzicus. The legends which grew up around
   her name related that on her deathbed she was bidden by a vision to
   order that her coffin should be cast into the sea. It was carried from
   the Propontis into the Bosporus by winds and waves, a current swept it
   away from the evil city of Constantinople, and it was cast on the
   opposite shore at Brocthi, where she was buried, and many miracles
   attested the sanctity of her tomb.

   Before he left Constantinople Philip was again summoned to a private
   interview with the Emperor. Arcadius greeted him with unusual warmth,
   and again begged him to lay aside all ceremonious formalities, and
   speak to him with perfect freedom as man to man.

   I am somewhat lonely since Eudoxia died,' he said, 'and though I am
   cheered by the prattle of my children, I do not often find anyone to
   talk to as a man talketh with his friend. I hope you are happy at
   Antioch, Philip. I told Anthemius to look after you well, and I hope
   that his Sublimity has done so.'

   He has been most kind,' said Philip, and I humbly thank your Imperial
   goodness.'

   You know I am indebted to you, Philip, and I mean to show myself
   grateful. You have seen my handwriting before. I am rather vain of it.
   Here is another specimen of it. Read it.'

   It was what we should call a patent of nobility. Philip read with
   astonishment that hereby the Emperor raised him to the rank of an
   Illustris. Arcadius watched him with a smile. He knelt on one knee,
   kissed the Emperor's extended hand, and, humbly thanking him for this
   signal mark of his favour, said that he would make it his utmost effort
   to promote the Emperor's best desires in Syria.

   You have done so already, Philip,' said Arcadius kindly. Antioch was
   never in a more quiet and satisfactory state than now; and Anthemius
   writes to me that this is due in great measure, not only to your
   capacity and faithfulness, but also to your great popularity among your
   fellow-citizens. They will be pleased as well as you by the rank I have
   conferred upon you. But now I want you to tell me all about the death
   of the poor Patriarch John.'

   Arcadius felt a little astonished by the flow of his own conversation;
   but then,' as he said to himself, I have so many intriguers,
   sycophants, place-hunters, and hypocrites about me. It is not once a
   year that I get the chance of talking to a sincere and true man.'

   Philip recounted to him the last scenes, of which he had been a
   witness, and Arcadius sighed deeply. I never intended all this,' he
   said; I gave no orders for it. It was all the doing of the bishops. I
   will order Aurelian to cashier that wretch Secundus, and to raise
   Cythegius a step.'

   You graciously accord me great freedom in speaking to your Clemency,'
   said Philip. I trust I do not abuse it if I venture to urge that you
   should order the Patriarch Atticus to restore John's name to the
   diptychs, and to bring back his remains from Comana, and have them
   buried in St. Sophia.'

   Arcadius opened his eyes wider than usual. Ah!' he said, sighing again,
   you little know what tumults and troubles that would cause. I dare not.
   Perhaps it may be done hereafter by my son. Have you ever seen my
   little Porphyrogenete?'

   I only saw him as an infant, sire,' said Philip, when he was baptised
   in the Cathedral, and when the little hand of the Augustus held the
   petition which, for his sake, you granted to my kind friend, the Bishop
   of Gaza.'

   You shall see him,' said Arcadius; and, summoning a gorgeously dressed
   slave by the tinkle of a golden bell, he ordered him to lead in the
   young Augustus.

   The little Prince--a child of six--was led in by the Count of the
   Chamber. He was dressed in purple silk embroidered with gold, and was a
   splendid little boy, in whom was reproduced the fine beauty of his
   Frankish mother rather than the poor physique of his father. Arcadius,
   who was intensely fond and proud of him, took him in his arms, and
   pressed him to his heart.

   Who is you?' said the child, when Philip had given him his respectful
   homage.

   That,' said the Emperor, is Philip, an Illustris of Antioch. When you
   sit on your father's throne, my Theodosius, you must know him and love
   him, and he will be your good servant and adviser.'

   I likes you,' said the ungrammatical child, looking at Philip with
   large eyes. I wants to kiss you.'

   Philip was alarmed by the suggestion of such an unwonted honour as a
   kiss from the lips of the august infant; but Arcadius said, Kiss him,
   my child, and remember him.'

   Philip thought of his own little Eutyches, and frankly returned his
   kiss. Then the Emperor sent the boy back to the Purple Chamber, and
   said to Philip, I used to think, after the hailstorm, and the
   earthquake which shook down the golden cross on the Capitol, and the
   famine and plague, and rumours of troubles from the East and from the
   West, that God was angry with me; but when I look at my little
   Pulcheria, Arcadia, Marina, and Theodosius, I feel sure that I am
   forgiven, though Nilus gave me no encouragement. Have you heard the
   signal mark of His mercy which God gave me a few days ago?'

   I only heard a vague rumour,' said Philip.

   I had been to worship in the Karya, the large martyry by the nut-tree
   on which the martyr Acacius was hanged. I had barely left the place,
   and all the crowd of spectators with me, when the whole building
   suddenly collapsed. Had it happened a moment or two earlier hundreds
   might have been crushed to death. The people regard it as a miracle,
   for not one was hurt. It made me feel very happy.'

   It was assuredly a marvellous deliverance, sire, and a clear mark of
   God's protection.'

   Farewell, my good Illustris,' said the Emperor. I am not well. I do not
   think that my life will be prolonged. Before you go take this, and wear
   it for my sake, and as a mark of my favour--I had almost said, of my
   affection.'

   He took off a gold ring set with immense emeralds, and slipped it on
   Philip's finger. An "Illustrious" should have ornaments suitable to his
   rank,' he said.

   I know not how sufficiently to thank your Imperial Dignity for so many
   and such great favours,' said Philip, as he again kissed the Emperor's
   hand. I will endeavour to be worthy of them, and I will daily pray to
   God for your happiness.'

   They never met again. Arcadius died on May 1, 408, seven months after
   the death of Chrysostom. He was only thirty-one, and was succeeded by
   the little Theodosius II., for whom his sister Pulcheria acted at first
   as regent.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXX

  AFFAIRS IN THE WEST


   She saw her glories star by star expire,

   And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride

   Where the car climbed the Capitol.

   Byron, Childe Harold, viii.

   So Philip returned to Antioch a great man, wearing the emerald ring of
   the Emperor, and elevated to a rank which placed him among the first
   men of the city. And to crown his felicity Miriam presented him with
   another fine little son, whom he baptised by the name of 'John.'

   Macedonius gently warned him against the peril of being intoxicated by
   such sudden and immense success. 'You are still young, Philip,' he
   said, and you are now rich and ennobled, and high in the favour of the
   Count of the East, and of the Emperor himself. You have a fair wife and
   two beautiful little boys, and your future seems to be assured. But, my
   son, "

   What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own
   soul?"'

   My father,' said Philip, Misfortune has been a blessed, if a stern,
   teacher. She has taught me to estimate things at their true value. I
   know that

   riches make to themselves wings, and fly away; I know that earthly
   fortune is more brittle than glass; I know that life is uncertain, and
   at the best but short. It is my daily prayer that no treasure on earth
   shall make me forget the treasure in heaven.'

   I believe it, my son,' said Macedonius; and may God ever keep you in
   this mind!'

   Philip received from Kallias a letter of congratulation. Kallias was
   neither so old nor so dear a friend as David was, or Eutyches had been;
   but Philip was attached to him, and knew him to be honest and true.

   Kallias in his letter, and in subsequent letters, told him some of the
   news of the West. He told him first the thrilling intelligence of the
   murder of Stilico, and the extinction of all the hopes and ambitions of
   his family; and this was of the deepest interest to Philip, because he
   had been taught by the poems of Claudian to admire the brave and
   magnificent Vandal.

   Stilico fell a victim to the vile Court intrigues of palace-cliques,
   and to the fact that he was the object of fierce jealousy as an alien.
   Men of narrow hearts and limited insight could not understand his large
   and far-sighted policy. That act of dastardly assassination was chiefly
   due to the hypocritic Olympius, whom he himself had first raised from
   the dust, who had insinuated himself into the confidence of Honorius,
   and who hid his craftiness under a Pharisaism which deceived men like
   St. Augustine. The base intrigues to overthrow the great Vandal warrior
   came to a head at Pavia, where the troops were secretly instigated to
   rise and massacre his partisans. He might have marched from Bologna,
   where he then was, might have crushed the conspiracy, and made himself
   master of the fleet. But he kept his loyalty, and thereby so deeply
   disgusted the strong and savage Gothic chieftain, Sarus, that he
   surprised Stilico's camp, killed his bodyguard of Huns, and compelled
   the Vandal to fly to Ravenna for his life. As troubles thickened around
   him he fled into the church for asylum. There his tragic end was
   brought about by one of those hideous pieces of chicanery, the
   prevalence of which shows that a nation is ripe for destruction.
   Heraclian came with a body of troops to seize him. He agreed to leave
   the sanctuary if he received the Emperor's oath that his life should be
   spared. He was shown a letter from Honorius to that effect, and went
   forth. No sooner had he stepped out of the church than a second letter
   of Honorius was produced, ordering that he should be slain as a public
   enemy. Even at that supreme moment his friends and soldiers would have
   rescued him at all costs; but he forbade and repressed their efforts,
   and, kneeling on the ground, offered his neck to the blow of the
   miserable Heraclius, who struck off his head with his sword, and for
   this brutal assassination was elevated to the rank of Count of Africa.
   He went forth to meet his own just doom thereafter.

   Stilico's ruin involved that of his family. His daughter Thermantia was
   divorced by Honorius--who had already divorced her elder sister,
   Maria--and was sent under an escort to her mother, Serena, at Rome,
   with her brother Eucherius. Eucherius was murdered by the Emperor's
   orders as soon as he reached Rome. The jealousy of the Romans, and
   their groundless dread that Serena would betray the city to Alaric,
   caused them to order her execution; and rumour said that she was
   strangled in prison, wearing on her neck the pearl necklace which she
   had taken from the statue of Vesta. Thermantia and Maria died not long
   afterwards; and with them the family of Stilico, the father-in-law of
   the Emperor, and for so long a period the chief man in the Western
   world, came to a disastrous end.

   Swift retribution fell on all concerned in this vile plot. The removal
   of the only great general who could have checked his career made the
   path of Alaric more easy. Thrice he had Rome in his grasp. On one of
   these occasions he held the memorable interview with the Roman
   ambassadors--at which Kallias was present as a reporter on behalf of
   Pope Innocent--which has been immortalised in history from the notes
   which he took. The ambassadors first assumed a grandiloquent tone,
   which did not for a moment deceive Alaric, and which (as Kallias told
   Philip) made Thorismund and Walamir break into broad smiles as they
   stood beside the royal Visigoth. They spoke boastfully of the immense
   multitudes of inhabitants in the Eternal City, and of its boundless
   resources.

   The thicker the hay, the more easily it is mown,' replied Alaric.

   What, then, will you leave us?'

   Your lives!' he answered, with a grim laugh.

   The miserable Romans, crippled by Alaric's possession of Ostia and by
   imminent starvation, were barely able to pay the ransom which Alaric
   demanded, and in order to do it were compelled--a terrible omen!--to
   melt down the statue of Virtus. It was as though they abnegated all
   right to claim the manliness' for which Rome was so famed of old.
   Kallias was the eyewitness of many other memorable scenes during that
   time of terror. He saw the investiture of the rhetorician puppet,
   Attalus--who was little more than a frivolous æsthete--with the
   imperial insignia, when Alaric thought to reduce Honorius to reason by
   setting up a rival emperor. In the dire stress of famine caused by
   Heraclian's closing of the grain stores of Africa, Kallias heard the
   multitude yelling to Attalus in the amphitheatre, 'Pone pretium carni
   humanæ' (Set a price on human flesh!'). He stood by the side of
   Walamir--who entertained towards him an intense gratitude for the aid
   which he had given to his escape from slavery--when Alaric
   contemptuously stripped Attalus of his purple and diadem, and sent them
   as a present to conciliate Honorius.

   Alaric had felt a tremendous sense that he was but an instrument in the
   hands of destiny when, for the third time, he besieged the Eternal
   City, which had never been captured for seven hundred years. A hermit
   had warned him not to be guilty of an outrage so tremendous upon the
   capital which, for a thousand years, had overwhelmed and dominated the
   world. The reply of the young Visigothic king was that, so far from
   challenging the wrath of Heaven by a deed which shook the hearts of the
   nations, he was only obeying a Divine behest, since a voice rang
   perpetually in his ears which bade him capture the city. And so on
   August 24, 410, Alaric, with Thorismund and Walamir in full armour by
   his side, burst at midnight through the Salarian Gate of Rome, and
   delivered over the city to three days of pillage.

   Although most of the Goths were Christians, and although they respected
   the asylum of sanctuaries, it was not possible that a vast horde of
   Gothic soldiers should for many days remain master of such a city as
   Rome, with its long-accumulated treasures, without the occurrence of
   many sad and cruel scenes. The two young Ostrogoths, Thorismund and
   Walamir, had hearts which burned with the sense of wrongs which their
   almost extirpated nation had suffered at the hands of a corrupt
   civilisation; but they had a deep respect for religion, and while they
   freely availed themselves of the plunder of patrician houses, they used
   their utmost exertions to prevent cruelty and massacre. Walamir knew
   the home assigned to Kallias by Pope Innocent, in the precincts of the
   Lateran, and it had been his early care to get from Alaric a safeguard
   which would secure the immunity of his friend. The Pope himself was,
   providentially, absent, for he had gone to Honorius at Ravenna, to
   induce that poor sluggard to arouse himself to defend the interests of
   his capital. Kallias, bearing letters to Innocent, accompanied the
   messenger who was despatched from Rome with the tidings--which made
   men's hearts stand still as though the end of the world had come--that


   She who was named Eternal, and arrayed

   Her warriors to conquer; she who veiled

   Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed

   E'en till the o'er-canopied horizon failed,

   Her rushing wings; oh! she who was Almighty, hailed

   was now the helpless prey of barbarians! He went with the messenger
   into the imperial palace, and a deeply agitated eunuch, with unwonted
   obliteration of etiquette, in the supreme excitement of the moment,
   pushed aside the purple curtains unbidden, and abruptly announced to
   the Emperor:

   Sire, Rome has perished!'

   Has she?' said Honorius, quite startled. How can that be? Why, she was
   quite well an hour ago, and was feeding out of my hand!'

   I do not mean Rome, your hen,' said the Chamberlain, 'but the city
   Rome.'

   Oh!' said Honorius, much relieved. I was afraid, my friend, you meant
   Rome, my favourite hen.'

   The eunuch came out with his lips tightened into a grim, sardonic
   smile. What a master,' he said, even for eunuchs to serve!'

   But when Alaric had withdrawn his forces and advanced to the south of
   Italy the condition of Rome became so wretched and uncertain--it
   presented such an aspect of squalor and desolation, and suffered so
   constantly from the pressure of famine--that Kallias longed to leave
   it. He did so the more because a beautiful Roman maiden had promised to
   be his bride. Her family had suffered severely in the Gothic pillage,
   and as there was no security that other barbarian raids might not be
   imminent, he was anxious to find for her a more secure and happy home.
   He mentioned this in a letter to Philip.

   Philip was now in the full tide of success and prosperity. He had
   Anthemius as a friend at Court, and a claim for real services, which
   was all the more prominent because officials of perfect loyalty and
   incorruptible integrity were far from common. Theodosius II. had raised
   him with unusual rapidity from the rank of an Illustris to that of a
   Spectabilis. A third son, whom he named David, had been born to him,
   and a daughter, whom he christened Anthusa. The house at Singon Street
   was now neither large enough for his requirements nor suitable to his
   high rank as one of the leading senators of Antioch. He therefore built
   himself a residence not far from the Orontes, with a garden, and a
   vineyard, and a grove, and more than one fountain tinkling musically
   into its marble basin. He was never tempted to plunge into luxury. The
   furniture and adornments of his house were refined and beautiful, but
   with no trace of vulgar ostentation. He was mindful of the duties of
   generous hospitality, and he, as well as Miriam, exercising a wise and
   watchful charity, were surrounded by the benedictions of the poor.

   He knew the ability of his old friend, and wrote to Kallias, offering
   to him the house in Singon Street for his abode, and the certainty of
   ample and honourable employment in the offices of the Præfect of the
   East. Kallias gratefully accepted the offer. He was wedded to his
   Marcia, by Pope Innocent himself, in the Lateran basilica. The Pope was
   sorry to lose his services, and gave him a handsome token of his regard
   in the form of a gilt ampulla, at the bottom of which was painted the
   picture of the Three Children in the Furnace.' But the Pope himself had
   been greatly impoverished by the sack of Rome, and was little able to
   bear the expense of a skilled secretary. He saw that far better
   prospects opened before Kallias in Antioch, and sent him to his new
   home with his patriarchal blessing. Philip and Miriam gladly welcomed
   him and his bride, and he found the house in Singon Street all that he
   could have desired.

   >From the two young Gothic Amalings Philip was separated by the wide
   diversity of their destinies, but he occasionally heard of them, and
   even from them. They followed the fortunes of Alaric, and it was ever
   their delight to temper with mercy the inevitable cruelties which
   attended the victorious raids of their countrymen. When the Goths were
   devastating Campania, they came to Nola, and seized the good Bishop
   Paulinus. The decorations which he had lavished on the church and
   monastic buildings of St. Felix made the Goths suspect that he was the
   lord of vast hidden treasures; but, as St. Augustine says of him, he
   had long ago placed his treasures in the bosom of the poor.' Of this,
   however, it was difficult to persuade his Gothic captors, and while he
   was in their hands he offered the prayer, Lord, let me not suffer
   torture for the sake of silver and gold, for whither all my goods are
   gone Thou knowest.' It was owing to the energetic remonstrance and
   interference of Walamir that he was set free by the rude soldiers and
   saved from further molestation, though he lost what little he had left,
   and was reduced from comparative opulence to extreme poverty. He was
   grateful to Walamir for that efficient act of protection, gave him his
   episcopal blessing, and said that he would pray to St. Felix for him.

   I thank you, Father,' said Walamir; but would you mind offering your
   prayer for me to God instead?'

   The brothers marched with Alaric to the town of Rhegium, witnessed his
   wild grief at the loss in the stormy straits of the fleet with which he
   had intended to sail and conquer Africa, and stood by his death-bed at
   Consentia in 410, when he passed away, at the early age of thirty-one,
   leaving so many of his vast designs still unaccomplished. Alaric had
   learnt to love and trust them more than almost any of his comrades.
   They closed his eyes; they received the last faint pressure of his
   dying hands. The Goths diverted the course of the little river
   Busentinus, raised a mound over his remains, heaped it high with
   precious spoils and trophies of Rome, and then turned the rushing
   torrent into its course again. They slew the captives who had performed
   the task, that none might know where their hero lay, or disturb or
   plunder his tumultuous resting-place.

   Thorismund and Walamir had not approved this last act of barbarity.
   Savage deeds like that made them despair of the Goths acquiring enough
   of civilisation and self-control to make them the permanent lords of
   the Kingdom of the West.

   The Goths chose Ataulph, the brave and beautiful brother-in-law of
   Alaric, as their new king, elevating him on their shields immediately
   after the burial of his kinsman.

   But there was one man against whom Thorismund cherished an intense
   feeling of wrath, and on whom he desired to inflict the vengeance which
   he regarded as his due. It was Sarus, whom Thorismund regarded as a
   traitor to his countrymen, the practical murderer of Stilico, the
   insulter and hereditary foe of Alaric. Sarus was a warrior of gigantic
   size and of herculean strength, and had been made Magister Militum for
   his treacherous services. But the same levity of spirit which had made
   him turn against Stilico caused him to desert Honorius for the usurper
   Jovinus. Ataulph heard that he was scouring the country with only a
   handful of followers. He sent a large detachment under Thorismund to
   seize him; but the chivalrous young Ostrogoth rushed upon Sarus in
   person at the head of a small contingent. Sarus and his bodyguard
   performed prodigies of valour. Thorismund spurred his horse against
   him, and wounded him with his spear, but was struck down dead by the
   chieftain's mighty arm. Seizing the opportunity of the personal
   encounter, a Goth flung some sacking over the head of Sarus; he was
   entangled in it, flung to the ground, overpowered, and dragged alive
   into the presence of Ataulph, who, after bitter reproaches, ordered him
   to be executed.

   Walamir mourned long over the dead body of his brother. He was now the
   last Amal of his race, and nothing but the higher lessons of his
   boyhood, learnt with Eutyches in the Patriarcheion, prevented him from
   sinking into sullen melancholy and despair. Ataulph loved and honoured
   him no less than Alaric had done; and he exercised over the Visigoth a
   strong influence for good. He was present at the famous marriage of
   Ataulph with the Roman princess, Placidia, at Narbonne, when the Gothic
   king presented his beautiful bride with fifty youths, clad in silver
   robes, to be her slaves, and when each youth knelt and presented her a
   golden bowl full of rubies and other priceless gems, the spoils of
   Rome. He became Ataulph's constant companion, and was by his side at
   Barcelona when he fell a victim to the murderous stab in the back by
   which the deformed slave, Wernulf, avenged the wrongs of his former
   master, Sarus. Walamir smote the murderous villain to the earth with
   his own sword. Contrary to all his wishes and to his strongest
   entreaties, the Goths chose as their new king Sigeric, the brother of
   Sarus. Sigeric cherished a fierce grudge against him. When the new
   king, who was even a worse savage than his brother Sarus, heaped
   insults on the daughter of the great Theodosius by forcing Placidia to
   walk twelve miles on foot before his chariot, Walamir so openly and
   hotly expressed his indignation, that a quarrel arose, and Sigeric in a
   fit of fury stabbed him with his own hands.

   Thus ended the race of Ostrogothic Amalings of the House of Gaïnas.
   Their lives were brief and tragic. They had taken the sword, and, like
   so many chieftains of those days, they perished by the sword.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXXI

  HAPPY CHILDREN AND PROSPEROUS DAYS

     Like the flower of roses in the spring of the year, and like lilies
     by the watercourses.--Ecclesiasticus.

   We need not chronicle the peaceful years of Philip's manhood. Michael
   passed away, and was buried in the church at Nazareth. David became
   more and more influential and respected in Northern Palestine. At the
   request of the Governor of Jerusalem he was made a deputy-governor of
   the province, and, as he was universally beloved and trusted, the
   revenues of Galilee flowed regularly and without disturbance into the
   imperial exchequer. The aid rendered by the Desposynos was so marked
   that he too received the rank of an Illustris, and was assured of the
   Emperor's approval. He paid several visits to Antioch, and Philip and
   Miriam also visited him at Lubiyeh.

   As their elder boys were of the same age, it was agreed that Philip's
   Eutyches and John should be confirmed in the Church of St. Babylas, at
   Antioch, at the same time with David's Philip and Andrew, by Bishop
   Eustathius, who, after the death of Porphyry, and after eighty-five
   years of schism, had at last united the distracted see under one
   episcopal head. On that occasion David and his family paid a long visit
   to their friends and kinsfolk at Antioch.

   On the fourteenth birthday of Philip's heir there was a little festival
   in their new house on the banks of the Orontes. Kallias and his son
   Innocent, and his little daughters Galla and Pulcheria, were invited;
   and the groves and gardens round Philip's house, and the vineyard by
   the side of the river, laden at that time with its rich purple
   clusters, rang that evening with shouts of young laughter as all the
   children played together. The boys had got up a gymnastic contest--a
   complete Pentathlon--in which they were to contend with some kinsmen in
   the second generation of Philip's own boyish friends Achillas and Eros,
   who had been executed in the terrible sedition of Antioch. The little
   girls of Kallias wreathed garlands of laurel and parsley, entwined with
   roses, with which they were to crown the victors. Philip had given his
   boys the wholesome physical training of young Greeks, so that they had
   the advantage in skill over David's lads. Of the five contests, they
   won the crown in quoit-throwing and javelin-hurling; but David's sturdy
   sons, accustomed to the free shepherd life on the hills of Galilee,
   beat them in leaping and in the race, and were their equals in the
   wrestling bout.

   Sitting by the fountain in the hall, Philip, David, and Kallias, with
   the mothers of the children, watched them with happy hearts. Philip
   thought of the day when he had wrestled with Thorismund in the garden
   of his adopted father, and as he recalled all that had happened since
   then, a wave of sadness passed over his mind.

   Ah, David!' he said, these are happy days! But when I remember the
   scenes through which we have passed, I almost shrink from the certainty
   of the trials which must befall these bright lads and little maidens.'

   Let us treasure the happiness of the present,' said David; we will not
   darken it with the forecast of days to come.'

   But Philip murmured half to himself the lines of Homer:


   Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,

   Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;

   Another race the following spring supplies:

   They fall successive, and successive rise;

   So generations in their course decay,

   So flourish these as those have passed away.

   Yes, that is as it should be,' said David. We may thank God that we are
   not immortal. We may thank Him that the good man's life, however it may
   end, is crowned by the blessed birthright of death.'

   What do you say, my silent Kallias?' asked Philip.

   I say,' said Kallias, that if we may, by God's grace, leave to our
   children the priceless heritage of character and good example, we leave
   them the best of treasures, and may be much more than content.'

   At this moment Philip's happy son burst in, the picture of health and
   gladness. Spectabilis, and Illustris,' he said, with bows of mock
   gravity to his father and David, 'and you, Mr. Secretary, and you,
   ladies, you are all bidden by the voice of the herald to come and see
   the victors crowned.'

   And who are the great Pentathlic victors?' asked Philip.

   Your eldest son, great Senator, who is fourteen years old to-day, and
   ought to be arrayed in the manly toga; and yours, illustrious sir,' he
   said, his eyes full of laughter, as he bowed to David.

   They all rose and went to the vineyard, where, in a green, open space
   by the river, they had got up a little masquerade of heralds and
   Asiarchs, and where, amid loud applause from the circle of comrades and
   schoolfellows, the little maidens of Kallias placed the garlands on the
   dark hair of the two boys, who were then clad in festal robes, and
   ceremoniously conducted in procession to the festal banquet which
   Miriam had prepared for them. And, seated not far off, under the dense
   foliage of the trees, old Macedonius himself watched them, and smiled
   as he lifted up his hands and blessed them in their happy youth.
     __________________________________________________________________

  CHAPTER LXXII

  THE GREAT REPARATION


   Only the actions of the just

   Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.--Shirley.

   There was one event in the years to come which brought a great flood of
   joy and gratitude into the hearts of the three friends who had been
   secretaries in the Patriarcheion. It came in the year 437, when they
   were all three well advanced in years. It was the triumph of innocence,
   the ultimate reward of justice to the wronged memory of their friend
   and patron, the Patriarch John of Constantinople. By that time he had
   already begun to be spoken of by the admiring title of Chrysostom, the
   Golden-mouthed, which posterity substituted for his actual name.

   He had had two successors--Arsacius, who died in 405, and Atticus, who
   died in 425. Atticus, in spite of the angry opposition of Cyril,
   Patriarch of Alexandria, had been compelled by the unanimous opinion of
   the West, as well as of all the best and holiest men of the Eastern
   Church, to restore the name of John to the diptychs of the Church of
   Constantinople. Succeeding Patriarchs were no longer fierce
   anti-Johannites; and in 434 Proclus, who had been a reader and
   secretary of Chrysostom himself, was elevated to the Patriarchal
   throne. One day in the year 437, on the festival of Chrysostom, he was
   pronouncing a panegyric upon him to the people in the great cathedral,
   when he was interrupted, not only by the loud applause of the assembled
   multitude, but also by cries, Restore to us our exiled Patriarch!
   Restore to us the body of our father John!' Proclus made known to the
   Emperor the wishes of his subjects, and Theodosius II., who had read
   with delight the writings of the great orator, and used to speak of him
   as the teacher of the universe, and the mouth of gold,' granted the
   request with alacrity. For thirty years the embalmed body of the martyr
   had been lying in its humble tomb in the Chapel of St. Basiliscus.
   Theodosius ordered it to be now removed to the capital. In every city
   through which the coffin was carried it was received by the rejoicing
   homage of multitudes of ecclesiastics, as well as of the people. At
   Chalcedon Theodosius had sent an Imperial tribune to receive it; and he
   himself awaited its arrival in the midst of his senators and high
   officials and soldiers. It was now January 27, 438. So vast was the
   concourse of vessels of all sizes that, in the rhetorical figure of the
   contemporary historian, the Propontis was transformed into a
   continent.' It was night, and the surface of the sea reflected the
   blaze of innumerable torches, as the citizens poured out in their
   myriads to welcome back the mortal remains of the Saint who had been
   expelled from their midst with ignominy and torments. The bier was
   accompanied in magnificent procession to the Church of the Apostles,
   where lay buried the former Patriarchs of Constantinople and the
   Christian emperors, and Arcadius and Eudoxia. No sooner was the coffin
   laid down than Theodosius knelt before it with his beautiful sister
   Pulcheria. Then he stripped off his purple mantle and placed it over
   the saintly relics, and, casting his eyes to the ground and leaning his
   forehead against the edge of the coffin, prayed aloud for his father
   and his mother, and that the sins of deadly ignorance which they had
   committed against God's holy servant might be forgiven them. Before
   finally enclosing the corpse in the golden shell which had been
   prepared for it, Proclus had it seated upon the episcopal chair, and a
   shout arose and reverberated along the gilded roofs, 'Receive thy
   throne once more, O Father!' Then, not far from the graves of Arcadius
   and Eudoxia, the body was reinterred, and in that great temple of
   silence and reconciliation' the mortal remains of the martyr and of his
   murderer mingled in the common dust.

   Philip and David and Kallias were all present in honoured places at
   this superb ceremony of reparation; for the Patriarch Proclus knew them
   in old days, and remembered them, and they had been expressly invited
   to be witnesses of the splendid scenes because they were among
   Chrysostom's oldest and dearest friends.

   When the service was over, Proclus received orders to conduct them to
   the palace, that they might be presented to the Emperor. He received
   them separately, and addressed them in words of the most gracious
   kindness; for he said that he could not better evince his remorseful
   reverence for the dead Saint than by showing favour to those whom he
   had loved.

   To Kallias, whose name had been favourably mentioned in a letter from
   Pope Innocent, and also by the Count of the East, he presented a golden
   inkstand which had once been used by Arcadius himself--the very one, as
   Philip remembered, into which he had seen the late Emperor dip his
   stylus at his first memorable interview with him. And he further
   conferred upon him the title and rank of Protonotary.

   He bade David mention any guerdon he desired, and thanked him for his
   able administration of Northern Palestine. David asked for, and
   immediately obtained, some enrichment of the humble Church at Nazareth,
   and a small largess for a festal day among its citizens.

   Then Philip entered, and Theodosius received him with yet warmer
   cordiality. He had heard from his oldest and most honoured officials of
   the services which Philip had rendered in the days of the Gothic peril;
   and Arcadius, among his private memoranda, had left a note requesting
   that Philip might always be regarded as one whom he loved and honoured.
   Further, the interview at which Arcadius had bidden him kiss Philip,
   when he was a little boy not seven years old, had been impressed on the
   memory of Theodosius II., because it had happened shortly before his
   father's death. It is true that in the thirty years which had elapsed
   since then the dark locks of Philip had become plentifully sprinkled
   with silver; but the Emperor still remembered his fine presence, and
   recognised the Imperial ring, with its shining emeralds, which Arcadius
   had placed upon his finger.

   Hail, my Clarissimus!' said the Emperor, smiling.

   Only a Spectabilis, by your Clemency's distinguished favour,' said
   Philip, bowing low.

   No!' said the Emperor; henceforth, after this auspicious day, no less
   than a Clarissimus. Receive the patent of your promotion; there you
   will find something more than this recognition of your services by your
   elevation to the highest rank of nobility; but you must not open it
   till you leave my presence.'

   Philip knelt and kissed the hand of his benefactor. 'But that is not
   all. We owe you a very deep debt of gratitude, both at Constantinople
   and Antioch, and I bid you to ask of me any boon that you desire.'

   Your Imperial munificence has loaded me with so many favours,' said
   Philip, and has elevated me to a rank so far above my humble birth,
   that I have nothing to ask.'

   Nevertheless, you must ask some favour for my sake, if not for your
   own.'

   Sire,' said Philip, after a moment's pause, there is a boon which
   would, I think, be most appropriate to this day of reconciliation. When
   the Patriarch John was banished, David, Kallias, and I had a very young
   fellow-secretary, named Eutyches, deeply loved by the Patriarch, as by
   all who ever knew or ever saw him.'

   I have heard of him,' said Theodosius. All who talk to me of those days
   say that he was beautiful as an angel of God.'

   And as innocent as he was beautiful, sire. He was most cruelly tortured
   to death by the Præfect Optatus, at the instigation of bad bishops and
   priests. The boon which at your Imperial command I ask is, that a
   little martyry should be built above his grave.'

   It is but just, Philip. It shall be done at once.'

   So over the humble grave of Eutyches rose in due time a little chapel
   radiant within with lustrous mosaics. Over its small apse was Christ as
   the Good Shepherd, folding a lamb in His bosom, while others of the
   feeding sheep looked up at Him. In the ornaments that ran round the
   walls were the Christian symbols of the Fish, and the Dove with the
   evergreen leaf, and the ship and palm-branch, and winged genii playing
   among green leaves and purple vine-bunches. On one wall was Daniel
   standing naked but unharmed between two lions, like the soul between
   the lions of Sin and Death. On the other the Three Children trod the
   flames of the furnace with bright faces and unscarred feet. Underneath
   the apse was a mosaic of the head of Eutyches, and under it, in Greek,
   the inscription:


   In Peace,

   In Christ,

   Eutyches, Martyr.

   He lives.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

  L'ENVOI

  CHAPTER LXXIII

  THE GOOD COUNT OF THE EAST


   Nor did he change, but kept in lofty place

   The virtues which adversity had bred.--Wordsworth.

   Philip had left the Imperial presence with his heart so tremblingly
   full of gratitude to God that he did not at once open the document by
   which the Emperor had promoted him to the highest rank of the nobility.
   He was too much absorbed in other thoughts to attend to it. How good
   had God been! In what unsearchable ways had He manifested His eternal
   purposes! The Patriarch John had suffered, as so many of God's best
   saints have been called upon to suffer, and to be purged like fine gold
   in the furnace, by God's mysterious plan. But how had the Eternal Mercy
   vindicated itself in the slow development of circumstances! Were the
   brief sufferings of the Patriarch's life to be compared to the
   exceeding and eternal weight of glory into which he now had entered?
   Were they not the conditions of his luminous and worldwide example? In
   spite of the all but universal corruption of the Eastern Church, his
   rectitude and his innocence had been conspicuously vindicated. His name
   had been restored to its honoured place in the diptychs of the
   cathedral. Philip had seen him lowered into his lowly grave in the
   far-off, humble martyry; now he had seen his golden coffin inhumed
   beside the Imperial tombs. John had been exiled and martyred by an
   Emperor and an Empress; now their son and successor, accompanied by his
   sister, had knelt over his remains with tears of penitence and prayers
   for pardon. Philip's mind was full of the confession extorted from the
   malevolent wickedness of the persecutors of God's saints in the Book of
   Wisdom: '

   We fools counted his life madness, and his end to be without honour.
   How is he set among the children of God, and his lot among the saints!'

   It was not strange that Philip should lose himself in these thoughts,
   for where was he? He was enjoying the hospitality of the Patriarcheion,
   now the palace of Proclus, who not only loved Chrysostom, but whom
   Philip could well remember as a young reader in the service of his
   master. Nay, more, Philip had asked to be accommodated in the dear old
   anteroom, next to the Patriarch's study, and close by the bedroom in
   which Eutyches had nursed the wounded Walamir. Memories crowded upon
   him, and he sank into a dreaming reverie. As he lay there, with closed
   eyes, he saw, or seemed to see, first Chrysostom, and then Eutyches,
   each in the glory of their immortality, come on either side, and take
   his hand, and look upon him with blessings and with smiles.

   He awoke and saw the Emperor's missive lying before him. He opened it,
   and there read, with a start of intense surprise, that Theodosius II.
   had not only made him a Clarissimus, but had actually appointed him
   Count of the East!

   It was a position of almost royal dignity. But Philip did not shrink
   from it. He had not sought it. It had been bestowed upon him in the
   Providence of God. He sought Count Anthemius, who was now a Patrician,
   and chief Minister of the Empire. Anthemius was already in the secret.
   He rose, with a broad smile on his handsome face, and bowing low, said,
   All happiness to the most illustrious, Count Philip!'

   What am I to do?' asked Philip.

   You are to start for Antioch in two days. You will be sent thither in
   an Imperial chariot, with an escort of Palatini, and you must remember
   that your position now requires every adjunct of state dignity which
   must surround the chief ruler in the East.'

   So Philip returned in magnificent state along the old well-known road
   which he had first traversed riding on the horse of a prætorian, beside
   the chariot which was conveying Chrysostom to his glory and his doom.

   He was received at Antioch with the rapturous acclamations of the
   assembled multitude, and he--the son of the humble tradesman--took
   official possession of the palace of the mighty and luxurious Seleucid
   kings. He gave up the house and grounds on the bank of the Orontes for
   a leper-hospital as a thank-offering to God.

   He ruled Antioch and the Præfecture of the East in honour, with
   inflexible integrity, in merciful justice, with wise tact and universal
   acceptance. He held his high office for many years. His children grew
   to manhood in the stately palace, and were a source of blessing and
   happiness to him. He was universally known as The Good Count of the
   East. He did not attain a great age, but died in the unbroken fulness
   of his powers. The admiring people would fain have honoured him with
   gorgeous obsequies, but he desired a simple funeral, and was more than
   happy in the thought that he was descending to the grave amid the
   benedictions of the poor.'

   They wanted to erect to his memory a splendid mausoleum, but he had
   ordered that his tombstone should only be a simple alabaster slab in
   the Church of St. Babylas. At each corner was a small mosaic. At the
   top the three fishes in circle, which typified at once the Lord Jesus
   and the Trinity: and the famous monogram of Christ from the Labarum of
   Constantine. Below were carved ungulæ and a leaden scourge--for had not
   Philip, too, been a confessor, almost a martyr, for the truth?--and a
   dove bearing in her beak a green leaf as from the Tree of Life. And the
   inscription was:


   In Peace,

   In Christ,

   Phillipus,

   Count of the East.

   In Christ he died,

   In Christ he lives.



   THE END
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Isaiah

   [1]1:5-6

   Micah

   [2]3:11

   Hebrews

   [3]10:9

   Sirach

   [4]50:8
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Citations

     * [5]OEdipus Coloneus
     * [6]Ad Uxorem
     * [7]Balder
     * [8]Caractacus
     * [9]Childe Harold
     * [10]Chronicles and Characters
     * [11]Cymbeline
     * [12]De Bello Gildonico
     * [13]De Gubernatione Dei
     * [14]De Laude Stilichonis
     * [15]De Quarto Consulatu Honorii
     * [16]Epistulæ
     * [17]Epistula
     * [18]European Morals
     * [19]Georgica
     * [20]Gerusalemme Liberata
     * [21]Good Women
     * [22]Hamlet
     * [23]Henry IV.
     * [24]Henry VIII.
     * [25]Hercules Furens
     * [26]In Rufinum
     * [27]In Rufinus
     * [28]Inferno
     * [29]King John
     * [30]Manfred
     * [31]Merchant of Venice
     * [32]Morgante Maggiore
     * [33]Ordo Nobilium Urbium
     * [34]Purgatorio
     * [35]Rudent
     * [36]St. Telemachus
     * [37]The Siege of Constantinople
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Names

     * [38]Æschylus
     * [39]Abiram
     * [40]Abraham
     * [41]Abundantius
     * [42]Acacius of Beroea
     * [43]Acacius, St.
     * [44]Achillas
     * [45]Adam
     * [46]Adelphius
     * [47]Agrippa
     * [48]Ahaz
     * [49]Alaric
     * [50]Alexander
     * [51]Alexander of Antioch
     * [52]Alexander the Coppersmith
     * [53]Alopecius
     * [54]Alypius
     * [55]Amantius
     * [56]Ambrose of Milan, St.
     * [57]Ammianus Marcellinus
     * [58]Ammonius
     * [59]Ammonius of Laodicea
     * [60]Amphilochius
     * [61]Ampriecte
     * [62]Ananias
     * [63]Anatolius
     * [64]Andragathius
     * [65]Andrew of Nazareth
     * [66]Andrew, St.
     * [67]Andrew, son of David
     * [68]Annas
     * [69]Anselm, St.
     * [70]Anthemius
     * [71]Anthusa
     * [72]Anthusa, daughter of Philip
     * [73]Antiochus of Ptolemais
     * [74]Antoninus of Ephesus
     * [75]Antonius
     * [76]Apollonius
     * [77]Arbogast
     * [78]Arcadia
     * [79]Arcadius
     * [80]Aretas
     * [81]Arintheus
     * [82]Arsacius
     * [83]Arsenius, St.
     * [84]Asclepias
     * [85]Asterius
     * [86]Atarbius
     * [87]Ataulph
     * [88]Athanaric
     * [89]Athanasius, St.
     * [90]Attalus
     * [91]Atticus
     * [92]Augustine of Hippo, St.
     * [93]Aurelian
     * [94]Bagoas
     * [95]Bahram IV.
     * [96]Bargus
     * [97]Barnabas, St.
     * [98]Basil of Cæsarea, St.
     * [99]Basilina
     * [100]Basiliscus, St.
     * [101]Bauto
     * [102]Belisarius
     * [103]Belshazzar
     * [104]Bonaventure, St.
     * [105]Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne
     * [106]Botheric
     * [107]Briso
     * [108]Byzas
     * [109]Cæsarius
     * [110]Coecilian
     * [111]Caiaphas
     * [112]Cain
     * [113]Caligula
     * [114]Calliotropa
     * [115]Callistus, St.
     * [116]Cassian, St.
     * [117]Castricia
     * [118]Charles V.
     * [119]Chromatius of Aquileia, St.
     * [120]Cincinnatus
     * [121]Circe
     * [122]Claudia
     * [123]Claudian
     * [124]Clement of Alexandria, St.
     * [125]Cleopatra VII.
     * [126]Columban, St.
     * [127]Commodus
     * [128]Constans I.
     * [129]Constantia
     * [130]Constantine I.
     * [131]Constantine II.
     * [132]Constantius
     * [133]Constantius II.
     * [134]Croesus
     * [135]Crispus
     * [136]Cyriacus
     * [137]Cyril of Alexandria, St.
     * [138]Cyrinus of Chalcedon
     * [139]Cythegius
     * [140]Damaris
     * [141]Damasus I., Pope St.
     * [142]Daniel
     * [143]Darius
     * [144]Dathan
     * [145]David
     * [146]David, King
     * [147]David, son of Philip
     * [148]Decius
     * [149]Demetrius of Pessinus
     * [150]Diocletian
     * [151]Diodorus of Tarsus
     * [152]Dioscorus
     * [153]Dioscorus of Cucusus
     * [154]Domitian
     * [155]Edmund of Canterbury, St.
     * [156]Elijah
     * [157]Elpidius
     * [158]Ephræm Syrus, St.
     * [159]Epigraphia
     * [160]Epiphania
     * [161]Epiphanius
     * [162]Eriulph
     * [163]Eros
     * [164]Escobar y Mendoza, Antonio
     * [165]Eucherius
     * [166]Eudoxia
     * [167]Eugenius
     * [168]Eulysius
     * [169]Eunapius
     * [170]Eunomius
     * [171]Euripides
     * [172]Eusebius
     * [173]Eusebius of Cæsarea
     * [174]Eusebius of Valentinopolis
     * [175]Eustathius, St.
     * [176]Eustochium, St.
     * [177]Eutropius
     * [178]Eutyches
     * [179]Eutyches, son of Philip
     * [180]Eve
     * [181]Evethius
     * [182]Fabiola, St.
     * [183]Faustus
     * [184]Felix of Nola, St.
     * [185]Flaccilla
     * [186]Flaccilla, Empress
     * [187]Flavian
     * [188]Francis de Sales, St.
     * [189]Fravitta
     * [190]Gaïnas
     * [191]Gabriel
     * [192]Galla
     * [193]Gallus
     * [194]Germanus
     * [195]Gerontius
     * [196]Gideon
     * [197]Gildo
     * [198]Gracchus
     * [199]Gratian
     * [200]Gregory I., Pope St.
     * [201]Gregory Thaumaturgus, St.
     * [202]Gregory XIII.
     * [203]Gregory of Nazianzus, St.
     * [204]Gregory of Nyssa, St.
     * [205]Hannibal
     * [206]Helena, St.
     * [207]Heliodorus
     * [208]Heliodorus of Eusebona
     * [209]Helladius
     * [210]Hellebichus
     * [211]Heracleides
     * [212]Heraclian
     * [213]Heraclius
     * [214]Hermas
     * [215]Herod
     * [216]Herod Antipas
     * [217]Herodias
     * [218]Hilary, St.
     * [219]Honorius
     * [220]Hoshea
     * [221]Hus, Jan
     * [222]Hypatia
     * [223]Innocent
     * [224]Innocent I.
     * [225]Isaac
     * [226]Isaiah
     * [227]Isidore
     * [228]Isidore of Pelusium, St.
     * [229]Isidore of Seville, St.
     * [230]Ithuriel
     * [231]James, St.
     * [232]Jeffreys, George
     * [233]Jehoiakin
     * [234]Jeremiah
     * [235]Jerome, St.
     * [236]Jesus of Nazareth
     * [237]Jezebel
     * [238]Job
     * [239]John Chrysostom, St.
     * [240]John of Egypt, St.
     * [241]John of Jerusalem
     * [242]John the Baptist, St.
     * [243]John the Deacon
     * [244]John the Dwarf, St.
     * [245]John the Faster
     * [246]John, Count
     * [247]John, St.
     * [248]John, son of Philip
     * [249]Jordanes
     * [250]Joseph
     * [251]Joseph, St.
     * [252]Jovian
     * [253]Jovinian
     * [254]Jovinus
     * [255]Judas
     * [256]Jude, St.
     * [257]Julian
     * [258]Julius Cæsar
     * [259]Justina
     * [260]Justinian I.
     * [261]Kallias
     * [262]Khadijah
     * [263]Kingsley
     * [264]Korah
     * [265]Lampridius
     * [266]Lawrence, St.
     * [267]Lazarus
     * [268]Leo
     * [269]Leo I., Pope St.
     * [270]Leontius of Ancyra
     * [271]Libanius
     * [272]Liguori, Alphonso de, St.
     * [273]Liuba
     * [274]Louis XIV.
     * [275]Louis XV.
     * [276]Lucian
     * [277]Lucian of Antioch, St.
     * [278]Lucius
     * [279]Lupicinus
     * [280]Luther, Martin
     * [281]Macedonius Kriptophagus, St.
     * [282]Mahatma
     * [283]Mahomet
     * [284]Mallius Theodorus
     * [285]Marcellus of Apamea, St.
     * [286]Marcia
     * [287]Marcus
     * [288]Marcus Diaconus
     * [289]Maria
     * [290]Marina
     * [291]Marius
     * [292]Marsa
     * [293]Martin of Tours, St.
     * [294]Martyrius
     * [295]Maruthas, St.
     * [296]Mary, Virgin
     * [297]Massillon, Jean-Baptiste
     * [298]Matthew, St.
     * [299]Matthias, St.
     * [300]Maximus
     * [301]Maximus Daza
     * [302]Maximus the Cynic
     * [303]Medici, Lorenzo il Magnifico
     * [304]Megæra
     * [305]Meletius of Antioch, St.
     * [306]Memnon
     * [307]Methuselah
     * [308]Michael
     * [309]Michael, Archangel
     * [310]Milton, John
     * [311]Mimas
     * [312]Miriam
     * [313]Naboth
     * [314]Nebridius
     * [315]Nebuchadnezzar
     * [316]Nectarius
     * [317]Nero
     * [318]Nicander
     * [319]Nicarete, St.
     * [320]Nilus, St.
     * [321]Nimrod
     * [322]Noah
     * [323]Olympias, St.
     * [324]Olympius
     * [325]Onias III.
     * [326]Optatus
     * [327]Origen
     * [328]Orpheus
     * [329]Osius
     * [330]Otreius
     * [331]Ovid
     * [332]Palladius
     * [333]Pansophius
     * [334]Paphnutius
     * [335]Paracelsus
     * [336]Pashur
     * [337]Paternus
     * [338]Patricius
     * [339]Paul of Crateia
     * [340]Paul of Heraclea
     * [341]Paul the Silentiary
     * [342]Paul, St.
     * [343]Paula, St.
     * [344]Paulinus of Nola, St.
     * [345]Paulus I. of Constantinople
     * [346]Pausophius
     * [347]Pentadia
     * [348]Peter, St.
     * [349]Pharetrius
     * [350]Philip
     * [351]Philip, St.
     * [352]Philip, son of David
     * [353]Phlegon
     * [354]Phocas
     * [355]Phokas, St.
     * [356]Pindar
     * [357]Pius V., Pope St.
     * [358]Placidia
     * [359]Plato
     * [360]Pliny
     * [361]Pompeius
     * [362]Porphyry
     * [363]Porphyry, St.
     * [364]Proæresius of Lydia
     * [365]Proclus, St.
     * [366]Promotus
     * [367]Ptolemy I.
     * [368]Pulcheria
     * [369]Pulcheria, St.
     * [370]Reikhild
     * [371]Rhadagais
     * [372]Rome
     * [373]Romulus Augustulus
     * [374]Rufinus
     * [375]Rufinus of Aquileia
     * [376]Ruth
     * [377]Sabiniana
     * [378]Salvina
     * [379]Sarus
     * [380]Saturninus
     * [381]Satyrus
     * [382]Saulus
     * [383]Savonarola, Girolamo
     * [384]Secundus
     * [385]Secundus, Magister Militum
     * [386]Seleucia
     * [387]Semiramis
     * [388]Serapion
     * [389]Serena
     * [390]Severian
     * [391]Sidonius
     * [392]Sigeric
     * [393]Simeon
     * [394]Simeon Stylites, St.
     * [395]Simon
     * [396]Simon, High Priest
     * [397]Simonides
     * [398]Simplicius
     * [399]Sisinnius
     * [400]Socrates
     * [401]Socrates Scholasticus
     * [402]Solomon
     * [403]Sopater
     * [404]Stagirius
     * [405]Stilico
     * [406]Studius
     * [407]Symmachus
     * [408]Synesius
     * [409]Syrus
     * [410]Tantalus
     * [411]Telemachus, St.
     * [412]Tertullian
     * [413]Theodora
     * [414]Theodore of Mopsuestia
     * [415]Theodosius
     * [416]Theodosius I.
     * [417]Theodosius II.
     * [418]Theodosius, Count
     * [419]Theodotus
     * [420]Theodotus of Tyana
     * [421]Theodulus
     * [422]Theophilus
     * [423]Theotimus, St.
     * [424]Theramenes
     * [425]Thermantia
     * [426]Thierry
     * [427]Thorismund
     * [428]Tigrius
     * [429]Timasius
     * [430]Timothy, St.
     * [431]Titus
     * [432]Torquemada, Tomás de
     * [433]Tribigild
     * [434]Tydides
     * [435]Typhos
     * [436]Uldes
     * [437]Ursicinus
     * [438]Valens
     * [439]Valentinian I.
     * [440]Valentinian II.
     * [441]Valentinian III.
     * [442]Valerian
     * [443]Venerius of Milan, St.
     * [444]Vigilantius
     * [445]Vigilius of Trent, St.
     * [446]Virgil
     * [447]Walamir
     * [448]Walpole, Robert
     * [449]Wernulf
     * [450]Whitefield, George
     * [451]William Rufus
     * [452]Witiges
     * [453]Wulfil
     * [454]Wulfila
     * [455]Xerxes
     * [456]Yazdegerd I.
     * [457]Zebedee
     * [458]Zedekiah
     * [459]Zosimus
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * [460]Abundans
     * [461]Bis domitum civile nefas, bis rupimus Alpes:
     * [462]Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello
     * [463]Desinat elatis quisquam confidere rebus,
     * [464]Est genus extremos Scythiæ vergentis in ortus
     * [465]FILIIS CARISSIMIS
     * [466]Fateberis non illum martyrio, sed martyrium illi defuisse.
       Edd. Benedict. Vit. S. Ambrosii
     * [467]Illatas Consul poenas, se consule, solvit...
     * [468]Insomnes longo veniunt examine Curæ.
     * [469]Ipse suum cor edens, hominum vestigia vitans.
     * [470]Longissima coenæ
     * [471]Phoebeæ lauri domus, Antiochia
     * [472]Quam dissimilis est nunc a se ipso populus Christianus!
     * [473]Raro antecedentem scelestum
     * [474]Rem Romanam alius circumsteterat metus totius Gothiæ.
     * [475]Sæva Necessitas,
     * [476]Saturni aurea sæcla quis requiret?
     * [477]Tolluntur in altum
     * [478]Tu, licet extremos late dominere per Indos,
     * [479]Urbs etiam magnæ dicitur æmula Romæ,
     * [480]Veni, Redemptor gentium,
     * [481]OEdipus Coloneus
     * [482]'ECCE ITERUM CRISPINUS!'
     * [483]Ad Uxorem
     * [484]Ave Cæsar, morituri te salutamus.
     * [485]Cur eget indignus quisquam, te divite?
     * [486]De Bello Gildonico
     * [487]De Gubernatione Dei
     * [488]De Laude Stilichonis
     * [489]De Quarto Consulatu Honorii
     * [490]Epistulæ
     * [491]Epistula
     * [492]Georgica
     * [493]Habet
     * [494]Habetis confitentes reos.
     * [495]Hercules Furens
     * [496]Horace
     * [497]In Rufinum
     * [498]In Rufinus
     * [499]Jerome
     * [500]Mary, Virgin
     * [501]Notumque furens quid femina possit!
     * [502]Ordo Nobilium Urbium
     * [503]Plautus
     * [504]Pone pretium carni humanæ
     * [505]Præfectus sacri cubiculi
     * [506]Quod cuncti gens una sumus.
     * [507]Tantæne animis coelestibus iræ?
     * [508]Ubi Deus est,
     * [509]Urbs
     * [510]Veritas orta est
     * [511]ad Urbem
     * [512]ibi aranea murus;
     * [513]omnia serviliter pro imperio
     * [514]par nobile fratrum
     * [515]placidi pellacia ponti
     * [516]purpurata meretrix
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of French Words and Phrases

     * [517]Ennuyons-nous ensemble!
     * [518]L'Empire c'est moi
     * [519]années plus pâles et moins courannées
     * [520]tous ces garçons-là
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [521]i  [522]ii  [523]iii  [524]iv  [525]v  [526]vi  [527]vii
   [528]viii  [529]ix  [530]x  [531]1  [532]2  [533]3  [534]4  [535]5
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     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

References

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