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'And now, for Pelagia. We can but try. 'Your Excellency might offend the Goth. 'Curse the Goth! He shall have his choice of all the beauties in Alexandria, and be count of Pentapolis if he likes. But a spectacle I must have; and no one but Pelagia can dance Venus Anadyomene. Philammon's blood rushed to his heart, and then back again to his brow, as he reeled with horror and shame.

A knot of gay young gentlemen, Philammon's fellow-students, pulled him down among them, with welcome and laughter; and before he could collect his thoughts, the curtain in front of the stage had fallen, and the sport began.

And he attempted a pat on Philammon's head, which, as there was a head and shoulder's difference between them, might on the whole have been considered, from a theatric point of view, as a failure. Whereon the little man seized the calabash of beer, and filling therewith a cow's horn, his thumb on the small end, raised it high in the air. 'To the Tenth Muse, and to your interview with her!

But an obstacle intervened before he could do so. A large and splendid barge had drawn up close to the platform, and shouts were heard from the tribune and from the mob which had till now looked on in breathless suspense and profound silence: "Susannah's barge!" "Look at the Nile, look at the river!" "It is the water-wagtail Philammon's rich heiress!" "A pretty sight!"

'And is she a friend of the patriarch? The porter opened his eyes very wide, put his middle finger in a careful and complicated fashion between his fore and third fingers, and extending it playfully towards Philammon, performed therewith certain mysterious signals, the effect whereof being totally lost on him, the little man stopped, took another look at Philammon's stately figure, and answered

As fate would have it, the passage by which he had entered opened close to the Prefect's chair of state, where sat Orestes, gorgeous in his robes of office, and by him to Philammon's surprise and horror Hypatia herself.

Therefore it is that when, after having come into a body, it hears such melodies as most preserve the divine footstep of harmony, it embraces such, and recollects from them that divine harmony, and is impelled to it, and finds its home in it, and shares of it as much as it can share." And therewith fell on Philammon's ear, for the first time, the mighty thunder-roll of Homer's verse

At last they reached the quay at the opposite end of the street; and there burst on Philammon's astonished eyes a vast semicircle of blue sea, ringed with palaces and towers....He stopped involuntarily; and his little guide stopped also, and looked askance at the young monk, to watch the effect which that grand panorama should produce on him. 'There! Behold our works!

Philammon, who ran like a desert ostrich, had soon outstripped all but Peter, when several more dark figures sprang out of doorways and corners and joined, or seem to join, the pursuit. Suddenly, however, after running a hundred yards, they drew up opposite the mouth of a side street; the assassin stopped also. Peter, suspecting something wrong, slackened his pace, and caught Philammon's arm.

Now why Philammon's thoughts should have been running on the next new specimen of womankind to whom he had been introduced, though only in name, let psychologists tell, but certainly, after he had walked some half-mile in silence, he suddenly woke up, as out of many meditations, and asked 'But who is this Hypatia, of whom you talk so much? 'Who is Hypatia, rustic? The queen of Alexandria!