“What malady?”
“Faith in miracles.”
Julian shook his head.
“If there be neither miracles nor gods my whole life is a madness!... No, we won’t speak of that. And do not be too hard upon me on account of my love for ancient ceremonies. I scarcely can explain it to you. The old simple things stir tears in me; and I love the evening more than the morning, autumn better than spring. I love all that is fleeting!... even the perfume of flowers that have faded.... What would you have, my friend? The gods shaped me so!... That pleasant melancholy, that golden faery twilight, are necessary to me. In the depth of antiquity there is to me something ineffably gracious and fair such as I find in no other region—the shining of sunset on marble mellowed by time. Do not rob me of the mad love of what is no more. Everything that has been, is fairer than the thing that is! Remembrance has more power over my soul than hope....”
Julian was silent, and with a smile on his lips looked into the distance, his head leaning back against the column.
“You speak as a poet,” answered Oribazius. “But the dreams of a poet are perilous when the fate of a world is in his hands. Ought not he who reigns over men to be something more than a poet?”
“Whose life is higher?”
“That of the creator of a new life?...”
“New! new!” exclaimed Julian. “To be plain with you, your novelty sometimes strikes terror into me! It seems to me to be cold and hard as death. I tell you, my heart is in antiquity. The Galileans, like you, are always seeking novelty and stamping the old idols under foot!... Trust me, new life lies only in what is old; immortal is it and proud, however it be thus insulted!”
He drew himself up to his full height, pale and haughty, his eyes brilliant—
“They think that Hellas is dead!... And from every quarter of the compass black monks come swooping down, like ravens, on its marble body, and pick at it, joyously shrieking, ‘Hellas is dead!’ But they forget that Hellas cannot die, that Hellas is in our hearts! Hellas is the divine beauty of man upon earth. She but slumbers, and when she shall awake, woe to the crows of Galilee!”
“Julian,” murmured Oribazius, “I fear for you.... You wish to accomplish the impossible.... Crows do not feed on the living, and the dead do not rise again.... Ah, Cæsar! what if the miracle does not succeed?”
“I have no fear. My defeat shall be my victory!” exclaimed the Emperor, with so radiant a happiness on his young face that Oribazius was thrilled, as if the miracle was now to be achieved. “Glory to the rejected! Glory to the conquered! But before my destruction,” he added with a proud smile, “we will fight a good fight!... I would that my enemies were worthy of my hate, and not of my contempt!... In truth I love my enemies. They teach me to feel and measure my own force! They bring into my heart the gaiety of Dionysus. Or it shall be the old Titan, snapping his chains, and kindling anew the Promethean fire! Titan against Galilean!... Rejoice, tribes and peoples of the earth! I am the messenger of life who shall set you free! I am the Anti-Christ!”
* * *
III
In the neighbouring monastery, behind windows and doors closely sealed, solemn prayers of the religious were resounding above the distant noise of Bacchic chants. To drown them the monks joined their voices in shrill lamentation—
“Why, Lord, hast Thou abandoned us? Why has Thy anger fallen upon Thy sheep?
“Why hast Thou given us up in dishonour to the hand of the heathen?
“Why hast Thou let mankind do outrage unto Thee?“
The ancient words of the prophet Daniel took on an unwonted meaning—
“The Lord has delivered us to the evil king, the cunningest in all the earth!...“
Late in the night, when the sun had sunk upon the streets, the monks went back to their cells.
Brother Parphenas could not even think of sleeping. His face was pale and gentle, and in his great eyes, clear as a maiden’s, perplexity was visible when he spoke about worldly matters.
He spoke rarely, indistinctly, and in a fashion so quaint, on topics so childish, that it was difficult to hear him without smiling. Sometimes he laughed without cause; and austere monks would say to him—
“What are you cackling at? Is it to please the Devil?”
Then he would timidly explain that he was laughing at his own thoughts, and thus convince everybody that Parphenas was mad.
One great art he possessed—that of illuminating manuscripts; and this art of Brother Parphenas brought to the monastery not only money, but renown in the most distant provinces. Of this he had no suspicion, and if he had been able to understand what reputation means, would rather have been dismayed than delighted.
His artistic occupations, which cost him vast pains (Brother Parphenas pushed perfection of detail to an exquisite finish), were not in his eyes a labour, but an amusement. He never said, “I’m going to work.” But he always asked of the old Father Superior Pamphilus, who loved him tenderly, “Father, give me your blessing, I am going to play.”
And when he had mastered some difficult combination of ornament, he would clap his hands in self-congratulation. Brother Parphenas so enjoyed the solitude and calm of night that he had learned to work by lamp-light. He used to say that the colours took on unexpected shades, and that the yellow light did no harm to drawings in the realm of pure fancy.
In his narrow cell Parphenas lighted the earthen lamp and placed it on a plank, among his little flasks, fine brushes, and colour-boxes of vermilion, silver, and liquid gold. He crossed himself cautiously, dipped his brush, and began to paint the outspread tails of two peacocks above a frontispiece. The golden peacocks, on a green field, were drinking at a streamlet of turquoise, with raised beaks and outstretched necks. Other rolls of parchment lay by him, unfinished. His world was a supernatural and charming world. Bordering the text of the page ran an embroidery of fabulous creations; a faery architecture of fantastic trees and animals. Parphenas thought of nothing while he created these things, but a happy serenity transformed his face. Hellas, Assyria, Persia, the Indies, Byzantium idealised, and the troubled vision of future worlds, of all peoples, and of all ages; these mingled in the paradise of the monk, and shone, with a glitter as of jewels, round the initial letters of the holy books.
This one represented the Baptism. St. John was pouring water on the head of Christ, and at his elbow the Pagan god of rivers was amiably tilting a water-jar, while the former proprietor of the bank (that is to say, the Devil) held a towel in readiness to offer the Saviour after the ceremony.
Brother Parphenas in his innocence had no fear of the old gods. They used to amuse him. He regarded them as long ago converted to Christianity. He never failed to place the god of mountains, in the shape of a naked youth, on the summit of every hill. When he was drawing the passage of the Red Sea, a woman holding an oar symbolised the Sea, and a naked man, inscribed Bodos, stood for the Abyss engulfing Pharaoh, while on the bank sat a melancholy woman, in a tan-coloured tunic, denoting the Desert.
Here, there, and everywhere, in the curve of a horse’s neck, the fold of a robe, the simple pose of a god lying on his elbow, were evidences of antique grace and simplicity.
But on this night his “play” interested the artist no more. His tireless fingers were shaky, and the smile had left his lips.
Listening awhile, he opened a cedar-wood box, took out an awl used in the binding of books, crossed himself, and shielding the ruddy flame of the lamp with his hand, noiselessly issued from his cell. It was hot in the silent corridor. No sound was heard but the buzzing of a fly taken in a spider’s web.
Parphenas went down to the church, which was lighted by a single lamp, placed before the old ivory-carved diptych. Two large sapphires in the aureole of Jesus, who was sitting on the Virgin’s arm, had been carried off by the Pagans, and transferred to their original setting in the Temple of Dionysus. These black hollows in the yellow ivory were to Parphenas wounds in some living body.
“No, I cann
ot bear it,” he murmured, kissing the hand of the Infant Jesus. “I cannot bear it; ‘twould be better to die!”
These sacrilegious marks in the ivory tortured and angered him more than outrage on a human being.
In a corner of the church he discovered a rope-ladder, used in lighting chapel-lamps. Carrying this ladder he went forth into a narrow passage leading to the outer gate, in front of which the fat brother-cellarer, Chorys, was snoring on the straw. Parphenas glided past like a shadow. The lock of the door made a grinding noise. Chorys sat unblinking, and then rolled round on the straw.
Parphenas leapt over a low wall and found himself in the deserted street, into which the full moon was shining. There was a low roar of the sea. The young monk went along the Temple of Dionysus up to a point in which the wall was plunged in shadow. Thence he threw up the rope-ladder, so that it hooked itself to the metal pinnacle which decorated the corner. The ladder swung from the claw of a sphinx. The monk clambered by it to the roof.
Far off, cocks crew; a dog barked; and then again came silence, measured only by the slow sighings of the sea.
Parphenas threw the ladder down the inner wall of the temple, and descended.
The eyes of the god, two lengthy sapphires, shone with intense vividness in the moonlight, gazing down on the monk. Parphenas, thrilled by the silence, trembled and crossed himself. He clambered on to the altar where Julian had offered the sacrifice, and his heels felt the warmth of the half-extinguished embers.
The monk drew the awl from his pocket. The god’s eyes sparkled close to his face, and the artist felt the careless smile of Dionysus, and the lovely pose of the body. Even while digging out the sapphires, his admiring hand involuntarily spared the body of the marble tempter.
Finally the deed was done. The blinded Dionysus stared horribly on the monk from his hollow orbits. Terror fairly seized Parphenas. It seemed that he was watched. He leapt down from the altar, ran to the rope-ladder, climbed, threw it down the other side of the wall, without taking time to fix it properly. This cost him a fall during the latter part of the descent.
With crimson face, and clothes ragged and disordered, but griping the precious sapphires, he slunk furtively across the street, and ran to the monastery.
The porter did not wake, and Parphenas furtively entered the chapel. At the sight of the diptych, his mind grew calm again. He tried the sapphire eyes of Dionysus into the holes. They fitted admirably, and soon were glittering anew in the aureole of the Infant Jesus. He returned to his cell, lit the lamp, and went to bed. Huddling himself up, and hiding his face in his hands, he burst into a fit of muffled laughter, like a child delighted at some piece of mischief and afraid of discovery. He then straightway fell sound asleep.
When he awoke, the morning waves of the Propontic were shining through the small barred window, and the pigeons cooing and shaking their wings.
The laughter of the previous night was still in the heart of Parphenas. He ran to the painting-table and contentedly looked at his unfinished arabesque of the Earthly Paradise. Adam and Eve were seated in a meadow, glittering in the sunlight; it was a vellum tapestry of purple, blue, and gold. And so the little monk worked on, innocently investing the body of Adam with the proud antique beauty of young Dionysus.
* * *
IV
The celebrated sophist, Hekobolis, Court professor of eloquence, had begun to climb the ladder of promotion at the very lowest rungs. He had been a servant attached to the Temple of Astarte at Hieropolis. At sixteen, having stolen some articles of value, he escaped to Constantinople, lived with the dregs of the populace, soaked in every kind of rascality. Later he took to the high-roads, where, roving on ass-back from village to village, he lived from hand to mouth, in company both with respectable pilgrims and with bands of brigands—sacrificers to Dindymene, that goddess beloved of the people. Finally he reached the school of Prœres the rhetorician, and soon became a teacher of eloquence himself.
During the last years of Constantine the Great, when the Christian religion became fashionable at Court, Hekobolis became a Christian. The clergy showed him sympathy, but Hekobolis (though never inopportunely) changed his form of creed as the wind blew: from Arian he became Orthodox, from Orthodox Arian, and every conversion raised him a step in office.
The clergy pushed him up this ascent, and in turn he lent the clergy a helping hand.
His head grew grey; he became pleasantly corpulent, his sage speeches more and more honeyed and insinuating, his cheeks more rosy, his eyes more kindly and brilliant. At moments an evil irony sparkled in them, as of some cold and arrogant spirit, but the eyelids would promptly drop and the sparkle vanish. All his habits were clerical. He was a strict observer of fasts, and an exquisite judge of cookery. His lean diet was more refined than the most sumptuous course of holiday feeding; just as his ecclesiastical witticisms were keener than the frankest pleasantries of the Pagans. He used to be served with a cooling drink made of beetroot and savoured with delicious spices. Many thought it preferable to wine. When denied ordinary wheaten bread he invented cakes of a desert manna, with which, it is said, Pachomius fed himself in Egypt. Ill-natured folk insinuated that Hekobolis was a libertine, and quaint tales were told about him at Constantinople. A young woman avowed to her confessor that she had fallen from chastity—
“It is a great sin! And with whom were you guilty, my daughter?” “With Hekobolis, father!” The priestly visage cleared up. “With Hekobolis; ah, really! Well, well, the holy man is devoted to the Church! Repent, my daughter; the Lord will forgive!”
Such anedoctes were mere tittle-tattle. But his thick red lips were a trifle too prominent in the respectable shorn visage of the dignitary, although he usually kept them tightly closed, with an expression of monastic humility. Women were fond of his company.
Sometimes Hekobolis used to disappear for several days. No one fathomed the mystery, for he kept his own counsel. Neither servant nor slave accompanied him on these enigmatic journeys, from which he would return calmed and refreshed.
Under the Emperor Constantius, he received the appointment of Court rhetorician, with a superb salary, the senatorial laticlave, and the blue shoulder-ribbon, a distinction of the highest dignitaries. Nor was his ambition satisfied.
But at the moment when Hekobolis was preparing to mount a step higher, Constantius unexpectedly died. Julian, the Church’s enemy, ascended the throne. Hekobolis lost no whit of his presence of mind. He merely did what many others were doing, but did it neither too soon nor too late.
Julian, in the first days of his reign, organised a theological controversy in his palace. A young doctor of philosophy, esteemed by everybody for his uprightness and noble nature, Cæsar of Cappadocia,—brother of the famous theologian, Basil the Great,—undertook the defence of the Christian faith against the Emperor himself.
In such tournaments of learning Julian authorised an entire independence of language, and even liked to be answered with passion and complete disregard of rank.
Discussion was of the keenest kind, and considerable numbers of sophists, priests, and men of science were present. Usually the opponent little by little gave way, yielding, not to the logic of the Greek philosopher, but to the majesty of the Roman Emperor.
But on this occasion it was not so. Cæsar of Cappadocia did not yield. He was a young man, almost feminine in the grace of his movements, and with a steady clearness in his frank eyes. He denominated the Platonic philosophy “the tortuous wisdom of the serpent,” contrasting it with the heavenly wisdom of the Gospel. Julian frowned, bit his lips, bridling his anger with difficulty. The argument, like all sincere discussions, ended without results, and the Emperor, recovering his self-possession, quitted the hall with a philosophic jest, and a face of smilingly regretful magnanimity; in reality, pierced to the heart.
Precisely at this moment, Hekobolis, the rhetorician, came up. Julian, who considered him an enemy, asked him—
“What do you want?”
Hekob
olis fell on his knees, and began a confession of repentance. For long, he said, he had hesitated; but the reasonings of the Emperor had finally convinced him. He cursed the dark Galilean superstition, and his heart returned to the remembrance of his childhood and the bright gods of Olympus.
The Emperor raised the old man, and, scarcely able to speak with emotion, pressed him convulsively to his bosom, and kissed him on his shaven cheeks and thick red lips. His eyes sought out Cæsar of Cappadocia to feast on his opponent’s humiliation.
Julian kept Hekobolis near him for several days, repeating everywhere the story of his conversion, proud of his disciple as a child of a new toy, as a youth of his first mistress.
The Emperor desired to give some Court place of honour to his new friend, but Hekobolis flatly refused, alleging himself to be unworthy such distinction. He had decided to prepare his soul for the virtue of the Olympians by a long novitiate; and to purge his heart of Galilean impiety by personal service to one of the old gods.
Julian therefore nominated him chief sacrificial priest of Bithynia and Paphlagonia.
Persons bearing this title were called by the Pagans Archiepiscopts. The Archbishop Hekobolis thus governed two Asiatic provinces. Having taken the new way, he pursued it with as much success as the old, and even contributed to the conversion of many Christians to Hellenism.
Hekobolis became the high-priest to the celebrated Phœnician goddess, Astarte Atargatis, where in childhood he had served as a slave. This temple was built half-way between Chalcedon and Nicomedia, on a lofty promontory running out into the Propontic Sea. The place was called Gargarus. Pilgrims came thither from all corners of the earth to adore Aphrodite Astarte, goddess of life and love.
* * *
V
In one of the halls of his palace at Constantinople Julian was busy with affairs of state.
Between the porphyry columns on the terrace, looking out on the Bosphorus, lay a sparkling view of the pale blue sea. The young Emperor was seated at a round marble table, covered with papyri and rolls of parchment. Silentiaries of the palace stooped over the table, scribbling audibly with reed-pens. Some had a sleepy expression, not being accustomed to get up at such an early hour. Standing a little aloof, behind the colonnade, two men were exchanging observations in a low voice. These were Hekobolis and Julius Mauricus, an official with an intelligent, bilious countenance. This elegant Court sceptic, amidst general superstition, was one of the last admirers of Lucian, the satirist of Samos, author of stinging dialogues, in which he railed so pitilessly at all the idols of Olympus and Golgotha, every tradition of Greece and Rome. Julian was dictating a document to the chief priest of Galicia, Arsacius—
The Death of the Gods Page 21
