CHAPTER LVI

EUTYCHES AND PHILIP IN PROFUNDIS

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. 464 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 465 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 466 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!’

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

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 468 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 469 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 471 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 472 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 473 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 474 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 475 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,

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; 476 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:

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 477 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 478 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.