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"He cannot help it," interrupted Damia with decisive abruptness. "He can do nothing to save his mother, any more than you can help being a child of twenty and bound to hold your tongue till your opinion is asked." The family of musicians had all met on board the barge which was lying at anchor in the lake, off the ship-yard.
The waiting-woman proceeded to pick them up: but Damia again became unconscious. Gorgo bathed her brow and tried to pour some wine between her teeth, but she clenched them too firmly, till the slave-woman came to her assistance and they succeeded in making Damia swallow a few drops.
Gorgo gave her a second and a third draught which Damia drank with equal eagerness; then, with a deep breath, she looked up fully conscious, at her granddaughter. "Thank you, child," she said. "Now I shall do very well for a little while. The material world and all that belongs to it weighs us down and clings to us like iron fetters.
She was dreaming of the infuriated mob who had snatched the garland from her hair she saw Marcus suddenly interfere to protect her and rescue her from her persecutors then she thought she had fallen off the gangway that led from the land to the barge, and was in the water while old Damia stood on the shore and laughed at her without trying to help her.
You can do it I know, and if you do well, I make no promises; but on the day when all Alexandria is talking of that woman's son as wandering out, night after night, to watch under the window of the fair Dada, the heathen singer when he drives you out in the face of day and in his own chariot, down the Canopic Way and past his mother's door then child, ask, claim whatever you will, and old Damia will not refuse it."
You can do it I know, and if you do well, I make no promises; but on the day when all Alexandria is talking of that woman's son as wandering out, night after night, to watch under the window of the fair Dada, the heathen singer when he drives you out in the face of day and in his own chariot, down the Canopic Way and past his mother's door then child, ask, claim whatever you will, and old Damia will not refuse it."
Damia had sent a slave-girl down to say that they might leave off work and rest till next day if they chose. She had ordered that wine should be distributed to them in the great hall, as freely as at the great festival of Dionysus. All was silent in the Gynaeconitis.
This mysterious passage had lately been secretly cleared out, and it was now to be used for the transport of the arms to the temple precincts. Damia had been present at the brief but vehement interview between her son and Olympius, and had thrown in a word now and again: "It is serious, very serious!" or, "Fight it out no quarter!"
Damia was furious as she heard it, and trembled with rage as she railed at the wild hordes who disgraced and desecrated Alexandria, the sacred home of the Muses; then she began to speak once more of the young captain, Mary's son, to whom the troupe of singers owed their lives. "Marcus," said she, "is said to be a paragon of chastity.
If they fall upon us before Barkas can join us, all is lost; if, on the contrary, Barkas comes at once and in time, there is still some hope; all may yet be well. What can a party of monks do? And as yet only our Constantine's heavy cavalry have come to the assistance of the two legions of the garrison." "Our Constantine!" shrieked Damia. "Whose? I ask you, whose?
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