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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Bride of the Nile, by Georg Ebers, v5
+#82 in our series by Georg Ebers
+
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+Title: The Bride of the Nile, Volume 5.
+
+Author: Georg Ebers
+
+Release Date: April, 2004  [EBook #5521]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 4, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE NILE, BY EBERS, V5 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIDE OF THE NILE
+
+By Georg Ebers
+
+Volume 5.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+During all these hours Orion had been in the solitude of his own rooms.
+Next to them was little Mary's sleeping-room; he had not seen the child
+again since leaving his father's death-bed.  He knew that she was lying
+there in a very feverish state, but he could not so far command himself
+as to enquire for her.  When, now and again, he could not help thinking
+of her, he involuntarily clenched his fists.  His soul was shaken to the
+foundations; desperate, beside himself, incapable of any thought but that
+he was the most miserable man on earth--that his father's curse had
+blighted him--that nothing could undo what had happened--that some cruel
+and inexorable power had turned his truest friend into a foe and had
+sundered them so completely that there was no possibility of atonement or
+of moving him to a word of pardon or a kindly glance--he paced the long
+room from end to end, flinging himself on his knees at intervals before
+the divan, and burying his burning face in the soft pillows.  From time
+to time he could pray, but each time he broke off; for what Power in
+Heaven or on earth could unseal those closed eyes and stir that heart to
+beat again, that tongue to speak--could vouchsafe to him, the outcast,
+the one thing for which his soul thirsted and without which he thought he
+must die: Pardon, pardon, his father's pardon!  Now and then he struck
+his forehead and heart like a man demented, with cries of anguish, curses
+and lamentations.
+
+About midnight--it was but just twelve hours since that fearful scene,
+and to him it seemed like as many days--he threw himself on the couch,
+dressed as he was in the dark mourning garments, which he had half torn
+off in his rage and despair, and broke out into such loud groans that he
+himself was almost frightened in the silence of the night.  Full of self-
+pity and horror at his own deep grief, he turned his face to the wall to
+screen his eyes from the clear, full moon, which only showed him things
+he did not want to see, while it hurt him.
+
+His torture was beginning to be quite unbearable; he fancied his soul was
+actually wounded, riven, and torn; it had even occurred to him to seize
+his sharpest sword and throw himself upon it like Ajax in his fury--and
+like Cato--and so put a sudden end to this intolerable and overwhelming
+misery.
+
+He started up for--surely it was no illusion, no mistake-the door of his
+room was softly opened and a white figure came in with noiseless, ghostly
+steps.  He was a brave man, but his blood ran cold; however, in a moment
+he recognized his nocturnal visitor as little Mary.  She came across the
+moonlight without speaking, but he exclaimed in a sharp tone:
+
+"What is the meaning of this?  What do you want?"
+
+The child started and stood still in alarm, stretching out imploring
+hands and whispering timidly:
+
+"I heard you lamenting.  Poor, poor Orion!  And it was I who brought it
+all on you, and so I could not stay in  bed any longer--I  must--I could
+not help...."  But she could say no more for sobs.  Orion exclaimed:
+
+"Very well, very well: go back to your own room and sleep.  I will try
+not to groan so loud."
+
+He ended his speech in a less rough tone, for he observed that the child
+had come to see him, though she was ill, with bare feet and only in her
+night-shift, and was trembling with cold, excitement, and grief.  Mary,
+however, stood still, shook her head, and replied, still weeping though
+less violently:
+
+"No, no.  I shall stop here and not go away till you tell me that you--
+Oh, God, you never can forgive me, but still I must say it, I must."
+
+With a sudden impulse she ran straight up to him, threw her arms round
+his neck, laid her head against his, and then, as he did not immediately
+push her away, kissed his cheeks and brow.
+
+At this a strange feeling came over him; he himself did not know what it
+was, but it was as though something within him yielded and gave way, and
+the moisture which felt warm in his eyes and on his cheeks was not from
+the child's tears but his own.  This lasted through many minutes of
+silence; but at last he took the little one's arms from about his neck,
+saying:
+
+"How hot your hands and your cheeks are, poor thing!  You are feverish,
+and the night air blows in chill--you will catch fresh cold by this mad
+behavior."
+
+He had controlled his tears with difficulty, and as he spoke, in broken
+accents, he carefully wrapped her in the black robe he had thrown off and
+said kindly:
+
+"Now, be calm, and I will try to compose myself.  You did not mean any
+harm, and I owe you no grudge.  Now go; you will not feel the draught in
+the anteroom with that wrap on.  Go; be quick."
+
+"No, no," she eagerly replied.  "You must let me say what I have to say
+or I cannot sleep.  You see I never thought of hurting you so dreadfully,
+so horribly--never, never!  I was angry with you, to be sure, because--
+but when I spoke I really and truly did not think of you, but only of
+poor Paula.  You do not know how good she is, and grandfather was so fond
+of her before you came home; and he was lying there and going to die so
+soon, and I knew that he believed Paula to be a thief and a liar, and it
+seemed to me so horrible, so unbearable to see him close his eyes with
+such a mistake in his mind, such an injustice!--Not for his sake, oh no!
+but for Paula's; so then I--Oh Orion!  the Merciful Saviour is my
+witness, I could not help it; if I had had to die for it I could not have
+helped it!  I should have died, if I had not spoken!"
+
+"And perhaps it was well that you spoke," interrupted the young man, with
+a deep sigh.  "You see, child, your lost father's miserable brother is a
+ruined man and it matters little about him; but Paula, who is a thousand
+times better than I am, has at least had justice done her; and as I love
+her far more dearly than your little heart can conceive of, I will gladly
+be friends with you again: nay, I shall be more fond of you than ever.
+That is nothing great or noble, for I need love--much love to make life
+tolerable.  The best love a man may have I have forfeited, fool that I
+am!  and now dear, good little soul, I could not bear to lose yours!  So
+there is my hand upon it; now, give me another kiss and then go to bed
+and sleep."
+
+But still Mary would not do his bidding, but only thanked him vehemently
+and then asked with sparkling eyes:
+
+"Really, truly?  Do you love Paula so dearly?"  At this point however she
+suddenly checked herself.  "And little Katharina. . ."
+
+"Never mind about that," he replied with a sigh.  "And learn a lesson
+from all this.  I, you see, in an hour of recklessness did a wrong thing;
+to hide it I had to do further wrong, till it grew to a mountain which
+fell on me and crushed me.  Now, I am the most miserable of men and I
+might perhaps have been the happiest.  I have spoilt my own life by my
+own folly, weakness, and guilt; and I have lost Paula, who is dearer to
+me than all the other creatures on earth put together.  Yes, Mary, if she
+had been mine, your poor uncle would have been the most enviable fellow
+in the world, and he might have been a fine fellow, too, a man of great
+achievements.  But as it is!--Well, what is done cannot be undone!  Now
+go to bed child; you cannot understand it all till you are older."
+
+"Oh I understand it already and much better perhaps than you suppose,"
+cried the ten years' old child.  "And if you love Paula so much why
+should not she love you?  You are so handsome, you can do so many things,
+every one likes you, and Paula would have loved you, too, if only ...
+Will you promise not to be angry with me, and may I say it?"
+
+"Speak out, little simpleton."
+
+"She cannot owe you any grudge when she knows how dreadfully you are
+suffering on her account and that you are good at heart, and only that
+once ever did--you know what.  Before you came home, grandfather said a
+hundred times over what a joy you had been to him all your life through,
+and now, now...  Well, you are my uncle, and I am only a stupid little
+girl; still, I know that it will be just the same with you as it was with
+the prodigal son in the Bible.  You and grandfather parted in anger...."
+
+"He cursed me," Orion put in gloomily.
+
+"No, no!  For I heard every word he said.  He only spoke of your evil
+deed in those dreadful words and bid you go out of his sight."
+
+"And what is the difference--Cursed or outcast?"
+
+"Oh! a very great difference!  He had good reason to be angry with you;
+but the prodigal son in the Bible became his father's best beloved, and
+he had the fatted calf slain for him and forgave him all; and so will
+grandfather in heaven forgive, if you are good again, as you used to be
+to him and to all of us.  Paula will forgive you, too; I know her--you
+will see.  Katharina loved you of course; but she, dear Heaven!  She is
+almost as much a child as I am; and if only you are kind to her and make
+her some pretty present she will soon be comforted.  She really deserves
+to be punished for bearing false witness, and her punishment cannot, at
+any rate, be so heavy as yours."
+
+These words from the lips of an innocent child could not but fall like
+seed corn on the harrowed field of the young man's tortured soul and
+refresh it as with morning dew.  Long after Mary had gone to rest he lay
+thinking them over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The funeral rites over the body of the deceased Mukaukas were performed
+on the day after the morrow.  Since the priesthood had forbidden the old
+heathen practice of mummifying the dead, and even cremation had been
+forbidden by the Antonines, the dead had to be interred soon after
+decease; only those of high rank were hastily embalmed and lay in state
+in some church or chapel to which they had contributed an endowment.
+Mukaukas George was, by his own desire, to be conveyed to Alexandria and
+there buried in the church of St. John by his father's side; but the
+carrier pigeon, by which the news of the governor's death had been sent
+to the Patriarch, had returned with instructions to deposit the body in
+the family tomb at Memphis, as there were difficulties in the way of the
+fulfillment of his wishes.
+
+Such a funeral procession had not been seen there within the memory of
+man.  Even the Moslem viceroy, the great general Amru, came over from the
+other side of the Nile, with his chief military and civil officers, to
+pay the last honors to the just and revered governor.  Their brown,
+sinewy figures, and handsome calm faces, their golden helmets and shirts
+of mail, set with precious stones--trophies of the war of destruction in
+Persia and Syria--their magnificent horses with splendid trappings, and
+the authoritative dignity of their bearing made a great impression on the
+crowd.  They arrived with slow and impressive solemnity; they returned
+like a cloud driven before the storm, galloping homewards from the
+burial-ground along the quay, and then thundering and clattering over the
+bridge of boats.  Vivid and dazzling lightnings had flashed through the
+wreaths of white dust that shrouded them, as their gold armor reflected
+the sun.  Verily, these horsemen, each of them worthy to be a prince in
+his pride, could find it no very hard task to subdue the mightiest realms
+on earth.
+
+Men and women alike had gazed at them with trembling admiration: most of
+all at the heroic stature and noble dusky face of Amru, and at the son of
+the deceased Mukaukas, who, by the Moslem's desire, rode at his side in
+mourning garb on a fiery black horse.
+
+The handsome youth, and the lordly, powerful man were a pair from whom
+the women were loth to turn their eyes; for both alike were of noble
+demeanor, both of splendid stature, both equally skilled in controlling
+the impatience of their steeds, both born to command.  Many a Memphite
+was more deeply impressed by the head of the famous warrior, erect on a
+long and massive throat, with its sharply-chiselled aquiline nose and
+flashing black eyes, than by the more regular features and fine,
+slightly-waving locks of the governor's son--the last representative of
+the oldest and proudest race in all Egypt.
+
+The Arab looked straight before him with a steady, commanding gaze; the
+youth, too, looked up and forwards, but turned from time to time to
+survey the crowd of mourners.  As he caught sight of Paula, among the
+group of women who had joined the procession, a gleam of joy passed over
+his pale face, and a faint flush tinged his cheeks; his fixed outlook had
+knit his brows and had given his features an expression of such ominous
+sternness that one and another of the bystanders whispered:
+
+"Our gay and affable young lord will make a severe ruler."
+
+The cause of his indignation had not escaped the notice either of his
+noble companion or of the crowd.  He alone knew as yet that the Patriarch
+had prohibited the removal of his father's remains to Alexandria; but
+every one could see that the larger portion of the priesthood of Memphis
+were absent from this unprecedented following.  The Bishop alone marched
+in front of the six horses drawing the catafalque on which the costly
+sarcophagus was conveyed to the burying-place, in accordance with ancient
+custom:--Bishop Plotinus, with John, a learned and courageous priest, and
+a few choristers bearing a crucifix and chanting psalms.
+
+On arriving at the Necropolis they all dismounted, and the barefooted
+runners in attendance on the Arabs came forward to hold the horses.  By
+the tomb the Bishop pronounced a few warm words of eulogy, after which
+the thin chant of the choristers sounded trivial and meagre enough; but
+scarcely had they ceased when the crowd uplifted its many thousand
+voices, and a hymn of mourning rang out so loud and grand that this
+burial ground had scarcely ever heard the like.  The remaining ceremonies
+were hasty and incomplete, since the priests who were indispensable to
+their performance had not made their appearance.
+
+Amru, whose falcon eye nothing could escape, at once noted the omission
+and exclaimed, in so loud and inconsiderate a voice that it could be
+heard even at some distance.
+
+"The dead is made to atone for what the living, in his wisdom, did for
+his country's good, hand-in-hand with us Moslems."
+
+"By the Patriarch's orders," replied Orion, and his voice quavered,
+while the veins in his forehead swelled with rage.  "But I swear, by my
+father's soul, that as surely as there is a just God, it shall be an evil
+day for Benjamin when he closes the gate of Heaven against this noblest
+of noble souls."
+
+"We carry the key of ours under our own belt," replied the general,
+striking his deep chest, while he smiled consciously and with a kindly
+eye on the young man.  "Come and see me on Saturday, my young friend; I
+have something to say to you!  I shall expect you at sundown at my house
+over there.  If I am not at home by dusk, you must wait for me."
+
+As he spoke he twisted his hand in his horse's mane and Orion prepared to
+assist him to mount; but the Arab, though a man of fifty, was too quick
+for him.  He flung himself into the saddle as lightly as a youth, and
+gave his followers the signal for departure.
+
+Paula had been standing close to the entrance of the tomb with Dame
+Neforis, and she had heard every word of the dialogue between the two
+men.  Pale, as she beheld him, in costly but simple, flowing, mourning
+robes, stricken by solemn and manly indignation, it was impossible that
+she should not confess that the events of the last days had had a
+powerful effect on the misguided youth.
+
+When Paula had led the grief-worn but tearless widow to her chariot, and
+had then returned home with Perpetua, the image of the handsome and
+wrathful youth as he lifted his powerful arm and tightly-clenched fist
+and shook them in the air, still constantly haunted her.  She had not
+failed to observe that he had seen her standing opposite to him by the
+open tomb and she had been able to avoid meeting his eye; but her heart
+had throbbed so violently that she still felt it quivering, she had not
+succeeded in thinking of the beloved dead with due devotion.
+
+Orion, as yet, had neither come near her in her peaceful retreat, nor
+sent any messenger to deliver her belongings, and this she thought very
+natural; for she needed no one to tell her how many claims there must be
+on his time.
+
+But though, before the funeral, she had firmly resolved to refuse to see
+him if he came, and had given her nurse fall powers to receive from his
+hand the whole of her property, after the ceremony this line of conduct
+no longer struck her as seemly; indeed, she considered it no more than
+her duty to the departed not to repel Orion if he should crave her
+forgiveness.
+
+And there was another thing which she owed to her uncle.  She desired to
+be the first to point out to Orion, from Philip's point of view, that
+life was a post, a duty; and then, if his heart seemed opened to this
+admonition, then--but no, this must be all that could pass between them
+--then all must be at an end, extinct, dead, like the fires in a sunken
+raft, like a soap-bubble that the wind has burst, like an echo that has
+died away--all over and utterly gone.
+
+And as to the counsel she thought of offering to the man she had once
+looked up to?  What right had she to give it?  Did he not look like a man
+quite capable of planning and living his own life in his own strength?
+Her heart thirsted for him, every fibre of her being yearned to see him
+again, to hear his voice, and it was this longing, this craving to which
+she gave the name of duty, connecting it with the gratitude she owed to
+the dead.
+
+She was so much absorbed in these reflections and doubts that she
+scarcely heard all the garrulous old nurse was saying as she walked by
+her side.
+
+Perpetua could not be easy over such a funeral ceremony as this; so
+different to anything that Memphis had been wont to see.  No priests, a
+procession on horseback, mourners riding, and among them the son even of
+the dead--while of old the survivors had always followed the body on
+foot, as was everywhere the custom!  And then a mere chirping of crickets
+at the tomb of such illustrious dead, followed by the disorderly
+squalling of an immense mob--it had nearly cracked her ears!  However,
+the citizens might be forgiven for that, since it was all in honor of
+their departed governor!--this thought touched even her resolute heart
+and brought the tears to her eyes; but it roused her wrath, too, for had
+she not seen quite humble folk buried in a more solemn manner and with
+worthier ceremonial than the great and good Mukaukas George, who had made
+such a magnificent gift to the Church.  Oh those Jacobites!  They only
+were capable of such ingratitude, only their heretical prelate could
+commit such a crime.  Every one in the Convent of St. Cecilia, from the
+abbess down to the youngest novice, knew that the Patriarch had sent word
+by a carrier pigeon forbidding the Bishop to allow the priests to take
+part in the ceremony.  Plotinus was a worthy man, and he had been highly
+indignant at these instructions; it was not in his power to contravene
+them; but at any rate he had led the procession in person, and had not
+forbidden John's accompanying him.  Orion, however, had not looked as
+though he meant to brook such an insult to his father or let it pass
+unpunished.  And whose arm was long enough to reach the Patriarch's
+throne if not....  But no, it was impossible! the mere thought of such a
+thing made her blood run cold.  Still, still...  And how graciously the
+Moslem leader had talked with him!--Merciful Heaven!  If he were to turn
+apostate from the holy Christian faith, like so many reprobate Egyptians,
+and subscribe to the wicked doctrines of the Arabian false prophet!
+It was a tempting creed for shameless men, allowing them to have half
+a dozen wives or more without regarding it as a sin.  A man like Orion
+could afford to keep them, of course; for the abbess had said that every
+one knew that the great Mukaukas was a very rich man, though even the
+chief magistrate of the city could not fully satisfy himself concerning
+the enormous amount of property left.  Well, well; God's ways were past
+finding out.  Why should He smother one under heaps of gold, while He
+gave thousands of poor creatures too little to satisfy their hunger!
+
+By the end of this torrent of words the two women had reached the house;
+and not till then was Paula clear in her own mind: Away, away with the
+passion which still strove for the mastery, whether it were in deed
+hatred or love!  For she felt that she could not rightly enjoy her
+recovered freedom, her new and quiet happiness in the pretty home she
+owed to the physician's thoughtful care, till she had finally given up
+Orion and broken the last tie that had bound her to his house.
+
+Could she desire anything more than what the present had to offer her?
+She had found a true haven of rest where she lacked for nothing that she
+could desire for herself after listening to the admonitions of Philip
+pus.  Round her were good souls who felt with and for her, many
+occupations for which she was well-fitted, and which suited her tastes,
+with ample opportunities of bestowing and winning love.  Then, a few
+steps through pleasant shades took her to the convent where she could
+every day attend divine service among pious companions of her own creed,
+as she had done in her childhood.  She had longed intensely for such food
+for the spirit, and the abbess--who was the widow of a distinguished
+patrician of Constantinople and had known Paula's parents--could supply
+it in abundance.  How gladly she talked to the girl of the goodness and
+the beauty of those to whom she owed her being and whom she had so early
+lost!  She could pour out to this motherly soul all that weighed on her
+own, and was received by her as a beloved daughter of her old age.
+
+And her hosts--what kind-hearted though singular folks! nay, in their
+way, remarkable.  She had never dreamed that there could be on earth any
+beings at once so odd and so lovable.
+
+First there was old Rufinus, the head of the house, a vigorous, hale old
+man, who, with his long silky, snow-white hair and beard, looked
+something like the aged St. John and something like a warrior grown grey
+in service.  What an amiable spirit of childlike meekness he had, in
+spite of the rough ways he sometimes fell into.  Though inclined to be
+contradictory in his intercourse with his fellow-men, he was merry and
+jocose when his views were opposed to theirs.  She had never met a more
+contented soul or a franker disposition, and she could well understand
+how much it must fret and gall such a man to live on,--day after day,
+appearing, in one respect at any rate, different from what he really was.
+For he, too, belonged to her confession; but, though he sent his wife and
+daughter to worship in the convent chapel, he himself was compelled to
+profess himself a Coptic Christian, and submit to the necessity of
+attending a Jacobite church with all his family on certain holy days,
+averse as he was to its unattractive form of worship.
+
+Rufinus possessed a sufficient fortune to secure him a comfortable
+maintenance; and yet he was hard at work, in his own way, from morning
+till night.  Not that his labors brought him any revenues; on the
+contrary, they led to claims on his resources; every one knew that he was
+a man of good means, and this would have certainly involved him in
+persecution if the Patriarch's spies had discovered him to be a Melchite,
+resulting in exile and probably the confiscation of his goods.  Hence it
+was necessary to exercise caution, and if the old man could have found a
+purchaser for his house and garden, in a city where there were ten times
+as many houses empty as occupied, he would long since have set out with
+all his household to seek a new home.
+
+Most aged people of vehement spirit and not too keen intellect, adopt a
+saying as a stop-gap or resting-place, and he was fond of using two
+phrases one of which ran:  "As sure as man is the standard of all things"
+and the other--referring to his house--"As sure as I long to be quit of
+this lumber."  But the lumber consisted of a well-built and very spacious
+dwellinghouse, with a garden which had commanded a high price in earlier
+times on account of its situation near the river.  He himself had
+acquired it at very small cost shortly before the Arab incursion,
+and--so quickly do times change--he had actually bought it from a
+Jacobite Christian who had been forced by the Melchite Patriarch Cyrus,
+then in power, to fly in haste because he had found means to convert his
+orthodox slaves to his confession.
+
+It was Philippus who had persuaded his accomplished and experienced
+friend to come to Memphis; he had clung to him faithfully, and they
+assisted each other in their works.
+
+Rufinus' wife, a frail, ailing little woman, with a small face and
+rather hollow cheeks, who must once have been very attractive and
+engaging, might have passed for his daughter; she was, in fact, twenty
+years younger than her husband.  It was evident that she had suffered
+much in the course of her life, but had taken it patiently and all for
+the best.  Her restless husband had caused her the greatest trouble and
+alarms, and yet she exerted herself to the utmost to make his life
+pleasant.  She had the art of keeping every obstacle and discomfort out
+of his way, and guessed with wonderful instinct what would help him,
+comfort him, and bring him joy.  The physician declared that her stooping
+attitude, her bent head, and the enquiring expression of her bright,
+black eyes were the result of her constant efforts to discover even a
+straw that might bring harm to Rufinus if his callous and restless foot
+should tread on it.
+
+Their daughter Pulcheria, was commonly called "Pul" for short, to save
+time, excepting when the old man spoke of her by preference as "the poor
+child."  There was at all times something compassionate in his attitude
+towards his daughter; for he rarely looked at her without asking himself
+what could become of this beloved child when he, who was so much older,
+should have closed his eyes in death and his Joanna perhaps should soon
+have followed him; while Pulcheria, seeing her mother take such care of
+her father that nothing was left for her to do, regarded herself as the
+most superfluous creature on earth and would have been ready at any time
+to lay down her life for her parents, for the abbess, for her faith, for
+the leech; nay, and though she had known her for no more than two days,
+even for Paula.  However, she was a very pretty, well-grown girl, with
+great open blue eyes and a dreamy expression, and magnificent red-gold
+hair which could hardly be matched in all Egypt.  Her father had long
+known of her desire to enter the convent as a novice and become a nursing
+sister; but though he had devoted his whole life to a similar impulse,
+he had more than once positively refused to accede to her wishes, for he
+must ere long be gathered to his fathers and then her mother, while she
+survived him, would want some one else to wear herself out for.
+
+Just now "Pul" was longing less than usual to take the veil; for she had
+found in Paula a being before whom she felt small indeed, and to whom her
+unenvious soul, yearning and striving for the highest, could look up in
+satisfied and rapturous admiration.  In addition to this, there were
+under her own roof two sufferers needing her care: Rustem, the wounded
+Masdakite, and the Persian girl.  Neforis, who since the fearful hour of
+her husband's death had seemed stunned and indifferent to all the claims
+of daily life, living only in her memories of the departed, had been more
+than willing to leave to the physician the disposal of these two and
+their removal from her house.
+
+In the evening after Paula's arrival Philippus had consulted with his
+friends as to the reception of these new guests, and the old man had
+interrupted him, as soon as he raised the question of pecuniary
+indemnification, exclaiming:
+
+"They are all very welcome.  If they have wounds, we will make them heal;
+if their heads are turned, we will screw them the right way round; if
+their souls are dark, we will light up a flame in them.  If the fair
+Paula takes a fancy to us, she and her old woman may stay as long as it
+suits her and us.  We made her welcome with all our hearts; but, on the
+other hand, you must understand that we must be free to bid her farewell
+--as free as she is to depart.  It is impossible ever to know exactly how
+such grand folks will get on with humble ones, and as sure as I long to
+be quit of this piece of lumber I might one day take it into my head to
+leave it to the owls and jackals and fare forth, staff in hand.--You know
+me.  As to indemnification--we understand each other.  A full purse hangs
+behind the sick, and the sound one has ten times more than she needs, so
+they may pay.  You must decide how much; only--for the women's sake, and
+I mean it seriously--be liberal.  You know what I need Mammon for; and it
+would be well for Joanna if she had less need to turn over every silver
+piece before she spends it in the housekeeping.  Besides, the lady
+herself will be more comfortable if she contributes to pay for the food
+and drink.  It would ill beseem the daughter of Thomas to be down every
+evening under the roof of such birds of passage as we are with thanks for
+favors received.  When each one pays his share we stand on a footing of
+give and take; and if either one feels any particular affection to
+another it is not strangled by 'thanks' or 'take it;' it is love for
+love's sake and a joy to both parties."
+
+"Amen," said the leech; and Paula had been quite satisfied by her
+friend's arrangements.
+
+By the next day she felt herself one of the household, though she every
+hour found something that could not fail to strike her as strange.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+When Paula had eaten with Rufinus and his family after the funeral
+ceremonies, she went into the garden with Pul and the old man--it had
+been impossible to induce Perpetua to sit at the same table with her
+mistress.  The sun was now low, and its level beams gave added lustre to
+the colors of the flowers and to the sheen of the thick, metallic foliage
+of the south, which the drought and scorching heat had still spared.
+A bright-hued humped ox and an ass were turning the wheel which raised
+cooling waters from the Nile and poured them into a large tank from which
+they flowed through narrow rivulets to irrigate the beds.  This toil was
+now very laborious, for the river had fallen to so low a level as to give
+cause for anxiety, even at this season of extreme ebb.  Numbers of birds
+with ruffled feathers, with little splints on their legs, or with sadly
+drooping heads, were going to roost in small cages hung from the branches
+to protect them from cats and other beasts of prey; to each, as he went
+by, Rufinus spoke a kindly word, or chirruped to encourage and cheer it.
+Aromatic odors filled the garden, and rural silence; every object shone
+in golden glory, even the black back of the negro working at the water-
+wheel, and the white and yellow skin of the ox; while the clear voices of
+the choir of nuns thrilled through the convent-grove.  Pul listened,
+turning her face to meet it, and crossing her arms over her heart.  Her
+father pointed to her as he said to Paula:
+
+"That is where her heart is.  May she ever have her God before her eyes!
+That cannot but be the best thing for a woman.  Still, among such as we
+are, we must hold to the rule:  Every man for his fellowman on earth, in
+the name of the merciful Lord!--Can our wise and reasonable Father in
+Heaven desire that brother should neglect brother, or--as in our case--a
+child forsake its parents?"
+
+"Certainly not," replied Paula.  "For my own part, nothing keeps me from
+taking the veil but my hope of finding my long-lost father; I, like your
+Pulcheria, have often longed for the peace of the cloister.  How piously
+rapt your daughter stands there!  What a sweet and touching sight!--In my
+heart all was dark and desolate; but here, among you all, it is already
+beginning to feel lighter, and here, if anywhere, I shall recover what I
+lost in my other home.--Happy child!  Could you not fancy, as she stands
+there in the evening light, that the pure devotion which fills her soul,
+radiated from her?  If I were not afraid of disturbing her, and if I were
+worthy, how gladly would I join my prayers to hers!"
+
+"You have a part in them as it is," replied the old man with a smile.
+"At this moment St. Cecilia appears to her under the guise of your
+features.  We will ask her--you will see."
+
+"No, leave her alone!"  entreated Paula with a blush, and she led Rufinus
+away to the other end of the garden.
+
+They soon reached a spot where a high hedge of thorny shrubs parted the
+old man's plot from that of Susannah.  Rufinus here pricked up his ears
+and then angrily exclaimed:
+
+"As sure as I long to be quit of this lumber, they are cutting my hedge
+again!  Only last evening I caught one of the slaves just as he was going
+to work on the branches; but how could I get at the black rascal through
+the thorns?  It was to make a peep-hole for curious eyes, or for spies,
+for the Patriarch knows how to make use of a petticoat; but I will be
+even with them!  Do you go on, pray, as if you had seen and heard
+nothing; I will fetch my whip."
+
+The old man hurried away, and Paula was about to obey him; but scarcely
+had he disappeared when she heard herself called in a shrill girl's voice
+through a gap in the hedge, and looking round, she spied a pretty face
+between the boughs which had yesterday been forced asunder by a man's
+hands--like a picture wreathed with greenery.
+
+Even in the twilight she recognized it at once, and when Katharina put
+her curly head forward, and said in a beseeching tone: "May I get
+through, and will you listen to me?"  she gladly signified her consent.
+
+The water-wagtail, heedless of Paula's hand held out to help her, slipped
+through the gap so nimbly that it was evident that she had not long
+ceased surmounting such obstacles in her games with Mary.  As swift as
+the wind she came down on her feet, holding out her arms to rush at
+Paula; but she suddenly let them fall in visible hesitancy, and drew back
+a step.  Paula, however, saw her embarrassment; she drew the girl to her,
+kissed her forehead, and gaily exclaimed:
+
+"Trespassing!  And why could you not come in by the gate?  Here comes my
+host with his hippopotamus thong.--Stop, stop, good Rufinus, for the
+breach effected in your flowery wall was intended against me and not
+against you.  There stands the hostile power, and I should be greatly
+surprised if you did not recognize her as a neighbor?"
+
+"Recognize her?" said the old man, whose wrath was quickly appeased.
+"Do we know each other, fair damsel--yes or no?  It is an open question."
+
+"Of course!"  cried Katharina, "I have seen you a hundred times from the
+gnat-tower."
+
+"You have had less pleasure than I should have had, if I had been so
+happy as to see you.--We came across each other about a year ago.  I was
+then so happy as to find you in my large peach-tree, which to this day
+takes the liberty of growing over your garden-plot."
+
+"I was but a child then," laughed Katharina, who very well remembered how
+the old man, whose handsome white head she had always particularly
+admired, had spied her out among the boughs of his peach-tree and had
+advised her, with a good-natured nod, to enjoy herself there.
+
+"A child!" repeated Rufinus.  "And now we are quite grown up and do not
+care to climb so high, but creep humbly through our neighbor's hedge."
+
+"Then you really are strangers?"  cried Paula in surprise.  "And have you
+never met Pulcheria, Katharina?"
+
+"Pul?--oh, how glad I should have been to call her!"  said Katharina.
+"I have been on the point of it a hundred times; for her mere appearance
+makes one fall in love with her,--but my mother. . . ."
+
+"Well, and what has your mother got to say against her neighbors?"  asked
+Rufinus.  "I believe we are peaceable folks who do no one any harm."
+
+"No, no, God forbid!  But my mother has her own way of viewing things;
+you and she are strangers still, and as you are so rarely to be seen in
+church. . . ."
+
+"She naturally takes us for the ungodly.  Tell her that she is mistaken,
+and if you are Paula's friend and you come to see her--but prettily,
+through the gate, and not through the hedge, for it will be closely
+twined again by to-morrow morning--if you come here, I say, you will find
+that we have a great deal to do and a great many creatures to nurse and
+care for--poor human creatures some of them, and some with fur or
+feathers, just as it comes; and man serves his Maker if he only makes
+life easier to the beings that come in his way; for He loves them all.
+Tell that to your mother, little wagtail, and come again very often."
+
+"Thank you very much.  But let me ask you, if I may, where you heard that
+odious nickname?  I hate it."
+
+"From the same person who told you the secret that my Pulcheria is called
+Pul!"  said Rufinus; he laughed and bowed and left the two girls
+together.
+
+"What a dear old man!" cried Katharina.  "Oh, I know quite well how he
+spends his Days!  And his pretty wife and Pul--I know them all.  How
+often I have watched them--I will show you the place one day!  I can see
+over the whole garden, only not what goes on near the convent on the
+other side of the house, or beyond those trees.  You know my mother;
+if she once dislikes any one...  But Pul, you understand, would be such
+a friend for me!"
+
+"Of course she would," replied Paula.  "And a girl of your age must chose
+older companions than little Mary."
+
+"Oh, you shall not say a word against her!"  cried Katharina eagerly.
+"She is only ten years old, but many a grown-up person is not so upright
+or so capable as I have found her during these last few miserable days."
+
+"Poor child!"  said Paula stroking her hair.
+
+At this a bitter sob broke suddenly and passionately from Katharina; she
+tried with all her might to suppress it, but could not succeed.  Her fit
+of weeping was so violent that she could not utter a word, till Paula had
+led her to a bench under a spreading sycamore, had induced her with
+gentle force to sit down by her side, clasping her in her arms like a
+suffering child, and speaking to her words of comfort and encouragement.
+
+Birds without number were going to rest in the dense branches overhead,
+owls and bats had begun their nocturnal raids, the sky put on its
+spangled glory of gold and silver stars, from the western end of the town
+came the jackals' bark as they left their lurking-places among the ruined
+houses and stole out in search of prey, the heavy dew, falling through
+the mild air silently covered the leaves, the grass, and the flowers; the
+garden was more powerfully fragrant now than during the day-time, and
+Paula felt that it was high time to take refuge from the mists that came
+up from the shallow stream.  But still she lingered while the little
+maiden poured out all that weighed upon her, all she repented of,
+believing she could never atone for it; and then all she had gone
+through, thinking it must break her heart, and all she still had to
+live down and drive out of her mind.
+
+She told Paula how Orion had wooed her, how much she loved him, how her
+heart had been tortured by jealousy of her, Paula, and how she had
+allowed herself to be led away into bearing false witness before the
+judges.  And then she went on to say it was Mary who had first opened her
+eyes to the abyss by which she was standing.  In the afternoon after the
+death of the Mukaukas she had gone with her mother to the governor's
+house to join in her friends' lamentations.  She had at once asked after
+Mary, but had not been allowed to see her, for she was still in bed and
+very feverish.  She was then on her way to the cool hall when she heard
+her mother's voice--not in grief, but angry and vehement--so, thinking it
+would be more becoming to keep out of the way, she wandered off into the
+pillared vestibule opening towards the Nile.  She would not for worlds
+have met Orion, and was terribly afraid she might do so, but as she went
+out, for it was still quite light, there she found him--and in what a
+state!  He was sitting all in a heap, dressed in black, with his head
+buried in his hands.  He had not observed her presence; but she pitied
+him deeply, for though it was very hot he was trembling in every limb,
+and his strong frame shuddered repeatedly.  She had therefore spoken to
+him, begging him to be comforted, at which he had started to his feet in
+dismay, and had pushed his unkempt hair back from his face, looking so
+pale, so desperate, that she had been quite terrified and could not
+manage to bring out the consoling words she had ready.  For some time
+neither of them had uttered a syllable, but at length he had pulled
+himself together as if for some great deed, he came slowly towards her
+and laid his hands on her shoulders with a solemn dignity which no one
+certainly had ever before seen in him.  He stood gazing into her face--
+his eyes were red with much weeping--and he sighed from his very heart
+the two words: "Unhappy Child!"--She could hear them still sounding in
+her ears.
+
+And he was altered: from head to foot quite different, like a stranger.
+His voice, even, sounded changed and deeper than usual as he went on:
+
+"Child, child!  Perhaps I have given much pain in my life without knowing
+it; but you have certainly suffered most through me, for I have made you,
+an innocent, trusting creature, my accomplice in crime.  The great sin we
+both committed has been visited on me alone, but the punishment is a
+hundred--a thousand times too heavy!"
+
+"And with this," Katharina went on, "he covered his face with his hands,
+threw himself on the couch again, and groaned and sighed.  Then he sprang
+up once more, crying out so loud and passionately that I felt as if I
+must die of grief and pity: 'Forgive me if you can!  Forgive me, wholly,
+freely.  I want it--you must, you must!  I was going to run up to him and
+throw my arms round him and forgive him everything, his trouble
+distressed me so much; but he gravely pushed me away--not roughly or
+sternly, and he said that there was an end of all love-making and
+betrothal between us--that I was young, and that I should be able to
+forget him.  He would still be a true friend to me and to my mother,
+and the more we required of him the more gladly would he serve us.
+
+"I was about to answer him, but he hastily interrupted me and said firmly
+and decisively: 'Lovable as you are, I cannot love you as you deserve;
+for it is my duty to tell you, I have another and a greater love in my
+heart--my first and my last; and though once in my life I have proved
+myself a wretch, still, it was but once; and I would rather endure your
+anger, and hurt both you and myself now, than continue this unrighteous
+tie and cheat you and others.'--At this I was greatly startled, and
+asked: 'Paula?'  However, he did not answer, but bent over me and touched
+my forehead with his lips, just as my father often kissed me, and then
+went quickly out into the garden.
+
+"Just then my mother came up, as red as a poppy and panting for breath:
+she took me by the hand without a word, dragged me into the chariot after
+her, and then cried out quite beside herself--she could not even shed a
+tear for rage: 'What insolence! what unheard-of behavior--How can I find
+the heart to tell you, poor sacrificed lamb. . .'"
+
+"And she would have gone on, but that I would not let her finish; I told
+her at once that I knew all, and happily I was able to keep quite calm.
+I had some bad hours at home; and when Nilus came to us yesterday, after
+the opening of the will, and brought me the pretty little gold box with
+turquoises and pearls that I have always admired, and told me that the
+good Mukaukas had written with his own hand, in his last will, that it
+was to be given to me I his bright little 'Katharina,' my mother insisted
+on my not taking it and sent it back to Neforis, though I begged and
+prayed to keep it.  And of course I shall never go to that house again;
+indeed my mother talks of quitting Memphis altogether and settling in
+Constantinople or some other city under Christian rule.  'Then our nice,
+pretty house must be given up, and our dear, lovely garden be sold to the
+peasant folk, my mother says.  It was just the same a year and a half ago
+with Memnon's palace.  His garden was turned into a corn-field, and the
+splendid ground-floor rooms, with their mosaics and pictures, are now
+dirty stables for cows and sheep, and pigs are fed in the rooms that
+belonged to Hathor and Dorothea.  Good Heavens!  And they were my
+clearest friends!  And I am never to play with Mary any more; and mother
+has not a kind word for any living soul, hardly even for me, and my old
+nurse is as deaf as a mole!  Am I not a really miserable, lonely
+creature?  And if you, even you, will have nothing to say to me, who is
+there in all Memphis whom I can trust in?  But you will not be so cruel,
+will you?  And it will not be for long, for my mother really means to go
+away.  You are older than I am, of course, and much graver and wiser...."
+
+"I will be kind to you, child; but try to make friends with Pulcheria!"
+
+"Gladly, gladly.  But then my mother!  I should get on very well by
+myself if it were not. . .  Well, you yourself heard what Orion said to
+me, that time in the avenue.  He surely loved me a little!  What sweet,
+tender names he gave me then.  Oh God!  no man can speak like that to any
+one he is not fond of!--And he is rich himself; it cannot have been only
+my fortune that bewitched him.  And does he look like a man who would
+allow himself to be parted from a girl by his mother, whether he would or
+no?"
+
+"He was always fond of me I think; but then, afterwards, he remembered
+what a high position he had to fill and regarded me as too little and too
+childish.  Oh, how many tears I have shed over being so absurdly little!
+A Water-wagtail--that is what I shall always be.  Your old host called me
+so; and if a man like Orion feels that he must have a stately wife I can
+hardly blame him.  That other one whom he thinks he loves better than he
+does me is tall and beautiful and majestic--like you; and I have always
+told myself that his future wife ought to look like you.  It is all over
+between him and me, and I will submit humbly; but at the same time I
+cannot help thinking that when he came home he thought me pretty and
+attractive, and had a real fancy and liking for me.  Yes, it was so, it
+certainly was so!--But then he saw that other one, and I cannot compare
+with her.  She is indeed the woman he wants,--and that other, Paula, is
+yourself.  Yes, indeed, you yourself; an inner voice tells me so.  And I
+tell you truly, you may quite believe me: it is a pain no doubt, but I
+can be glad of it too.  I should hate any mere girl to whom he held out
+his hand--but,  if you are that other--and if you are his wife. . ."
+
+"Nonsense," exclaimed Paula decidedly.  "Consider what you are saying.
+When Orion tempted you to perjure yourself, did he behave as my friend or
+as my foe, my bitterest and most implacable enemy?"
+
+"Before the judges, to be sure. . ."  replied the girl looking down
+thoughtfully.  But she soon looked up again, fixed her eyes on Paula's
+face with a sparkling, determined glance, and frankly and unhesitatingly
+exclaimed: "And you?--In spite of it all he is so handsome, so clever, so
+manly.  You can hardly help it--you love him!"
+
+Paula withdrew her arm, which had been round Katharina, and answered
+candidly.
+
+"Until to-day, at the funeral, I hated and abominated him; but there,
+by his father's tomb, he struck me as a new man, and I found it easy to
+forgive him in my heart."
+
+"Then you mean to say that you do not love him?"  urged Katharina,
+clasping her friend's round arm with her slender fingers.
+
+Paula started to feel how icy cold her hand was.  The moon was up, the
+stars rose higher and higher, so, simply saying: "Come away," she rose.
+"It must be within an hour of midnight," she added.  "Your mother will be
+anxious about you."
+
+"Only an hour of midnight!"  repeated the girl in alarm.  "Good Heavens,
+I shall have a scolding!  She is still playing draughts with the Bishop,
+no doubt, as she does every evening.  Good-bye then for the present.
+The shortest way is through the hedge again."
+
+"No," said Paula firmly, "you are no longer a child; you are grown up,
+and must feel it and show it.  You are not to creep through the bushes,
+but to go home by the gate.  Rufinus and I will go with you and explain
+to your mother. . ."
+
+"No, no!"  cried Katharina in terror.  "She is as angry with you as she
+is with them.  Only yesterday she forbid. . ."
+
+"Forbid you to come to me?"  asked Paula.  "Does she believe. . ."
+
+"That it was for your sake that Orion....  Yes, she is only too glad to
+lay all the blame on you.  But now that I have talked to you I....  Look,
+do you see that light?  It is in her sitting-room."
+
+And, before Paula could prevent her, she ran to the hedge and slipped
+through the gap as nimbly as a weasel.
+
+Paula looked after her with mingled feelings, and then went back to the
+house, and to bed.  Katharina's story kept her awake for a long time, and
+the suspicion--nay almost the conviction--that it was herself, indeed,
+who had aroused that "great love" in Orion's heart gave her no rest.  If
+it were she?  There, under her hand was the instrument of revenge on the
+miscreant; she could make him taste of all the bitterness he had brewed
+for her aching spirit.  But which of them would the punishment hurt most
+sorely: him or herself?  Had not the little girl's confidences revealed a
+world of rapture to her and her longing heart?  No, no.  It would be too
+humiliating to allow the same hand that had smitten her so ruthlessly to
+uplift her to heaven; it would be treason against herself.
+
+Slumber overtook her in the midst of these conflicting feelings and
+thoughts, and towards morning she had a dream which, even by daylight,
+haunted her and made her shudder.
+
+She saw Orion coming towards her, as pale as death, robed in mourning,
+pacing slowly on a coal-black horse; she had not the strength to fly, and
+without speaking to her or looking at her, he lifted her high in the air
+like a child, and placed her in front of him on the horse.  She put forth
+all her strength to get free and dismount, but he clasped her with both
+arms like iron clamps and quelled her efforts.  Life itself would not
+have seemed too great a price for escape from this constraint; but, the
+more wildly she fought, the more closely she was held by the silent and
+pitiless horseman.  At their feet flowed the swirling river, but Orion
+did not seem to notice it, and without moving his lips, he coolly guided
+the steed towards the water.  Beside herself now with horror and dread,
+she implored him to turn away; but he did not heed her, and went on
+unmoved into the midst of the stream.  Her terror increased to an
+agonizing pitch as the horse bore her deeper and deeper into the water;
+of her own free will she threw her arms round the rider's neck; his
+paleness vanished, his cheeks gained a ruddy hue, his lips sought hers in
+a kiss; and, in the midst of the very anguish of death, she felt a thrill
+of rapture that she had never known before.  She could have gone on thus
+for ever, even to destruction; and, in fact, they were still sinking--she
+felt the water rising breast high, but she cared not.  Not a word had
+either of them spoken.  Suddenly she felt urged to break the silence, and
+as if she could not help it she asked: "Am I the other?"  At this the
+waves surged down on them from all sides; a whirlpool dragged away the
+horse, spinning him round, and with him Orion and herself, a shrill blast
+swept past them, and then the current and the waves, the roaring of the
+whirlpool, the howling of the storm--all at once and together, as with
+one voice, louder than all else and filling her ears, shouted: "Thou!"--
+Only Orion remained speechless.  An eddy caught the horse and sucked him
+under, a wave carried her away from him, she was sinking, sinking, and
+stretched out her arms with longing.--A cold dew stood on her brow as she
+slept, and the nurse, waking her from her uneasy dream, shook her head as
+she said:
+
+"Why, child?  What ails you?  You have been calling Orion again and
+again, at first in terror and then so tenderly.--Yes, believe me,
+tenderly."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+In the neat rooms which Rufinus' wife had made ready for her sick guests
+perfect peace reigned, and it was noon.  A soft twilight fell through the
+thick green curtains which mitigated the sunshine, and the nurses had
+lately cleared away after the morning meal.  Paula was moistening the
+bandage on the Masdakite's head, and Pulcheria was busy in the adjoining
+room with Mandane, who obeyed the physician's instructions with
+intelligent submission and showed no signs of insanity.
+
+Paula was still spellbound by her past dream.  She was possessed by such
+unrest that, quite against her wont, she could not long remain quiet, and
+when Pulcheria came to her to tell her this or that, she listened with so
+little attention and sympathy that the humble-minded girl, fearing to
+disturb her, withdrew to her patient's bed-side and waited quietly till
+her new divinity called her.
+
+In fact, it was not without reason that Paula gave herself up to a
+certain anxiety; for, if she was not mistaken, Orion must necessarily
+present himself to hand over to her the remainder of her fortune; and
+though even yesterday, on her way from the cemetery, she had said to
+herself that she must and would refuse to meet him, the excitement
+produced by Katharina's story and her subsequent dream had confirmed
+her in her determination.
+
+Perpetua awaited Orion's visit on the ground-floor, charged to announce
+him to Rufinus and not to her mistress.  The old man had willingly
+undertaken to receive the money as her representative; for Philippus had
+not concealed from her that he had acquainted him with the circumstances
+under which Paula had quitted the governor's house, describing Orion as a
+man whom she had good reason for desiring to avoid.
+
+By about two hours after noon Paula's restlessness had increased so much
+that now and then she wandered out of the sick-room, which looked over
+the garden, to watch the Nile-quay from the window of the anteroom; for
+he might arrive by either way.  She never thought of the security of her
+property; but the question arose in her mind as to whether it were not
+actually a breach of duty to avoid the agitation it would cost her to
+meet her cousin face to face.  On this point no one could advise her,
+not even Perpetua; her own mother could hardly have understood all her
+feelings on such an occasion.  She scarcely knew herself indeed; for
+hitherto she had never failed, even in the most difficult cases, to know
+at once and without long reflection, what to do and to leave undone, what
+under special circumstances was right or wrong.  But now she felt herself
+a yielding reed, a leaf tossed hither and thither; and every time she set
+her teeth and clenched her hands, determined to think calmly and to
+reason out the "for" and "against," her mind wandered away again, while
+the memory of her dream, of Orion as he stood by his father's grave--of
+Katharina's tale of "the other," and the fearful punishment which he had
+to suffer, nay indeed, certainly had suffered--came and went in her mind
+like the flocks of birds over the Nile, whose dipping and soaring had
+often passed like a fluttering veil between her eye and some object on
+the further shore.
+
+It was three hours past noon, and she had returned to the sick-room, when
+she thought that she heard hoofs in the garden and hurried to the window
+once more.  Her heart had not beat more wildly when the dog had flown at
+her and Hiram that fateful night, than it did now as she hearkened to the
+approach of a horseman, still hidden from her gaze by the shrubs.  It
+must be Orion--but why did he not dismount?  No, it could not be he; his
+tall figure would have overtopped the shrubbery which was of low growth.
+
+She did not know her host's friends; it was one of them very likely.  Now
+the horse had turned the corner; now it was coming up the path from the
+front gate; now Rufinus had gone forth to meet the visitor--and it was
+not Orion, but his secretary, a much smaller man, who slipped off a mule
+that she at once recognized, threw the reins to a lad, handed something
+to the old man, and then dropped on to a bench to yawn and stretch his
+legs.
+
+Then she saw Rufinus come towards the house.  Had Orion charged this
+messenger to bring her her possessions?  She thought this somewhat
+insulting, and her blood boiled with wrath.  But there could be no
+question here of a surrender of property; for what her host was holding
+in his hand was nothing heavy, but a quite small object; probably, nay,
+certainly a roll of papyrus.  He was coming up the narrow stairs, so she
+ran out to meet him, blushing as though she were doing something wrong.
+The old man observed this and said, as he handed her the scroll:
+
+"You need not be frightened, daughter of a hero.  The young lord is not
+here himself, he prefers, it would seem, to treat with you by letter;
+and it is best so for both parties."
+
+Paula nodded agreement; she took the roll, and then, while she tore the
+silken tie from the seal, she turned her back on the old man; for she
+felt that the blood had faded from her face, and her hands were
+trembling.
+
+"The messenger awaits an answer," remarked Rufinus, before she began to
+read it.  "I shall be below and at your service."  He left; Paula
+returned to the sick-room, and leaning against the frame of the casement,
+read as follows, with eager agitation:
+
+"Orion, the son of George the Mukaukas who sleeps in the Lord, to his
+cousin the daughter of the noble Thomas of Damascus, greeting.
+
+"I have destroyed several letters that I had written to you before this
+one."  Paula shrugged her shoulders incredulously.  "I hope I may succeed
+better this time in saying what I feel to be indispensable for your
+welfare and my own.  I have both to crave a favor and offer counsel."
+
+"Counsel! he!"  thought the girl with a scornful curl of the lips, as she
+went on.  "May the memory of the man who loved you as his daughter, and
+who on his death-bed wished for nothing so much as to see you--averse as
+he was to your creed--and bless you as his daughter indeed, as his son's
+wife,--may the remembrance of that just man so far prevail over your
+indignant and outraged soul that these words from the most wretched man
+on earth, for that am I, Paula, may not be left unread.  Grant me the
+last favor I have to ask of you--I demand it in my father's name."
+
+"Demand!"  repeated  the  damsel;  her  cheeks flamed, her eye sparkled
+angrily, and her hands clutched the opposite sides of the letter as
+though to tear it across.  But the next words: "Do not fear," checked her
+hasty impulse--she smoothed out the papyrus and read on with growing
+excitement:
+
+"Do not fear that I shall address you as a lover--as the man for whom
+there is but one woman on earth.  And that one can only be she whom I
+have so deeply injured, whom I fought with as frantic, relentless, and
+cruel weapons as ever I used against a foe of my own sex."
+
+"But one," murmured the girl; she passed her hand across her brow, and a
+faint smile of happy pride dwelt on her lips as she went on:
+
+"I shall love you as long as breath animates this crushed and wretched
+heart."
+
+Again the letter was in danger of destruction, but again it escaped
+unharmed, and Paula's expression became one of calm and tender pleasure
+as she read to the end of Orion's clearly written epistle:
+
+"I am fully conscious that I have forfeited your esteem, nay even all
+good feeling towards me, by my own fault; and that, unless divine love
+works some miracle in your heart, I have sacrificed all joy on earth.
+You are revenged; for it was for your sake--understand that--for your
+sake alone, that my beloved and dying father withdrew the blessings he
+had heaped on my remorseful head, and in wrath that was only too just at
+the recreant who had desecrated the judgment-seat of his ancestors,
+turned that blessing to a curse."
+
+Paula turned pale as she read.  This then was what Katharina had meant.
+This was what had so changed his appearance, and perhaps, too, his whole
+inward being.  And this, this bore the stamp of truth, this could not be
+a lie--it was for her sake that a father's curse had blighted his only
+son!  How had it all happened?  Had Philippus failed to observe it, or
+had he held his peace out of respect for the secrets of another?--Poor
+man, poor young man!  She must see him, must speak to him.  She could not
+have a moment's ease till she knew how it was that her uncle, a tender
+father.--But she must go on, quickly to the end:
+
+"I come to you only as what I am: a heart-broken man, too young to give
+myself over for lost, and at the same time determined to make use of all
+that remains to me of the steadfast will, the talents, and the self-
+respect of my forefathers to render me worthy of them, and I implore you
+to grant me a brief interview.  Not a word, not a look shall betray the
+passion within and which threatens to destroy me.
+
+"You must on no account fail to read what follows, since it is of no
+small real importance even to you.  In the first place restitution must
+be made to you of all of your inheritance which the deceased was able to
+rescue and to add to by his fatherly stewardship.  In these agitated
+times it will be a matter of some difficulty to invest this capital
+safely and to good advantage.  Consider: just as the Arabs drove out
+the Byzantines, the Byzantines might drive them out again in their turn.
+The Persians, though stricken to the earth, the Avars, or some other
+people whose very name is as yet unknown to history, may succeed our
+present rulers, who, only ten years since, were regarded as a mere
+handful of unsettled camel-drivers, caravan-leaders, and poverty-stricken
+desert-tribes.  The safety of your fortune would be less difficult to
+provide for if, as was formerly the case here, we could entrust it to the
+merchants of Alexandria.  But one great house after another is being
+ruined there, and all security is at an end.  As to hiding or burying
+your possessions, as most Egyptians do in these hard times, it is
+impossible, for the same reason as prevents our depositing it on interest
+in the state land-register.  You must be able to get it at the shortest
+notice; since you might at some time wish to quit Egypt in haste with all
+your possessions.
+
+"These are matters with which a woman cannot be familiar.  I would
+therefore propose that you should leave the arrangement of them to us
+men; to Philippus, the physician, Rufinus, your host--who is, I am
+assured, an honest man--and to our experienced and trustworthy treasurer
+Nilus, whom you know as an incorruptible judge.
+
+"I propose that the business should be settled tomorrow in the house of
+Rufinus.  You can be present or not, as you please.  If we men agree in
+our ideas I beg you--I beseech you to grant me an interview apart.  It
+will last but a few minutes, and the only subject of discussion will be a
+matter--an exchange by which you will recover something you value and
+have lost, and grant me I hope, if not your esteem, at any rate a word of
+forgiveness.  I need it sorely, believe me, Paula; it is as indispensable
+to me as the breath of life, if I am to succeed in the work I have begun
+on myself.  If you have prevailed on yourself to read through this
+letter, simply answer 'Yes' by my messenger, to relieve me from torturing
+uncertainty.  If you do not--which God forefend for both our sakes, Nilus
+shall this very day carry to you all that belongs to you.  But, if you
+have read these lines, I will make my appearance to-morrow, at two hours
+after noon, with Nilus to explain to the others the arrangement of which
+I have spoken.  God be with you and infuse some ruth into your proud and
+noble soul!"
+
+Paula drew a deep breath as the hand holding this momentous epistle
+dropped by her side; she stood for some time by the window, lost in grave
+meditation.  Then calling Pulcheria, she begged her to tend her patient,
+too, for a short time.  The girl looked up at her with rapt admiration in
+her clear eyes, and asked sympathetically why she was so pale; Paula
+kissed her lips and eyes, and saying affectionately: "Good, happy child!"
+she retired to her own room on the opposite side of the house.  There she
+once more read through the letter.
+
+Oh yes; this was Orion as she had known him after his return till the
+evening of that never-to-be-forgotten water-party.  He was, indeed, a
+poet; nature herself had made it so easy to him to seduce unguarded souls
+into a belief in him!  And yet no!  This letter was honestly meant.
+Philippus knew men well; Orion really had a heart, a warm heart.  Not the
+most reckless of criminals could mock at the curse hurled at him by a
+beloved father in his last moments.  And, as she once more read the
+sentence in which he told her that it was his crime as an unjust judge
+towards her that had turned the dying man's blessing to a curse, she
+shuddered and reflected that their relative attitude was now reversed,
+and that he had suffered more and worse through her than she had through
+him.  His pale face, as she had seen it in the Necropolis, came back
+vividly to her mind, and if he could have stood before her at this moment
+she would have flown to him, have offered him a compassionate hand, and
+have assured him that the woes she had brought upon him filled her with
+the deepest and sincerest pity.
+
+That morning she had asked the Masdakite whether he had besought Heaven
+to grant him a speedy recovery, and the man replied that Persians never
+prayed for any particular blessing, but only for "that which was good;"
+for that none but the Omnipotent knew what was good for mortals.  How
+wise!  For in this instance might not the most terrible blow that could
+fall on a son--his father's curse--prove a blessing?  It was undoubtedly
+that curse which had led him to look into his soul and to start on this
+new path.  She saw him treading it, she longed to believe in his
+conversion--and she did believe in it.  In this letter he spoke of his
+love; he even asked her hand.  Only yesterday this would have roused her
+wrath; to-day she could forgive him; for she could forgive anything to
+this unhappy soul--to the man on whom she had brought such deep anguish.
+Her heart could now beat high in the hope of seeing him again; nay, it
+even seemed to her that the youth, whose return had been hailed with such
+welcome and who had so powerfully attracted her, had only now grown and
+ripened to full and perfect manhood through his sin, his penitence, and
+his suffering.
+
+And how noble a task it would be to assist him in seeking the right way,
+and in becoming what he aspired to be!
+
+The prudent care he had given to her worldly welfare merited her
+gratitude.  What could he mean by the "exchange" he proposed?  The
+"great love" of which he had spoken to Katharina was legible in every
+line of his letter, and any woman can forgive any man--were he a sinner,
+and a scarecrow into the bargain--for his audacity in loving her.  Oh!
+that he might but set his heart on her--for hers, it was vain to deny
+it, was strongly drawn to him.  Still she would not call it Love that
+stirred within her; it could only be the holy impulse to point out to him
+the highest goal of life and smooth the path for him.  The pale horseman
+who had clutched her in her dream should not drag her away; no, she would
+joyfully lift him up to the highest pinnacle attainable by a brave and
+noble man.
+
+So her thoughts ran, and her cheeks flushed as, with swift decision, she
+opened her trunk, took out papyrus, writing implements and a seal, and
+seated herself at a little desk which Rufinus had placed for her in the
+window, to write her answer.
+
+At this a sudden fervent longing for Orion came over her.  She made a
+great effort to shake it off; still, she felt that in writing to him it
+was impossible that she should find the right words, and as she replaced
+the papyrus in the chest and looked at the seal a strange thing happened
+to her; for the device on her father's well-known ring: a star above two
+crossed swords--perchance the star of Orion--caught her eye, with the
+motto in Greek: "The immortal gods have set sweat before virtue," meaning
+that the man who aims at being virtuous must grudge neither sweat nor
+toil.
+
+She closed her trunk with a pleased smile, for the motto round the star
+was, she felt, of good augury.  At the same time she resolved to speak to
+Orion, taking these words, which her forefathers had adopted from old
+Hesiod, as her text.  She hastened down stairs, crossed the garden,
+passing by Rufinus, his wife and the physician, awoke the secretary who
+had long since dropped asleep, and enjoined him to say: "Yes" to his
+master, as he expected.  However, before the messenger had mounted his
+mule, she begged him to wait yet a few minutes and returned to the two
+men; for she had forgotten in her eagerness to speak to them of Orion's
+plans.  They were both willing to meet him at the hour proposed and,
+while Philippus went to tell the messenger that they would expect his
+master on the next day, the old man looked at Paula with undisguised
+satisfaction and said:
+
+"We were fearing lest the news from the governor's house should have
+spoilt your happy mood, but, thank God, you look as if you had just come
+from a refreshing bath.--What do you say, Joanna?  Twenty years ago such
+an inmate here would have made you jealous?  Or was there never a place
+for such evil passions in your dove-like soul?"
+
+"Nonsense!"  laughed the matron.  "How can I tell how many fair beings
+you have gazed after, wanderer that you are in all the wide world far
+away?"
+
+"Well, old woman, but as sure as man is the standard of all things,
+nowhere that I have carried my staff, have I met with a goddess like
+this!"
+
+"I certainly have not either, living here like a snail in its shell,"
+said Dame Joanna, fixing her bright eyes on Paula with fervent
+admiration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+That evening Rufinus was sitting in the garden with his wife and daughter
+and their friend Philippus.  Paula, too, was there, and from time to time
+she stroked Pulcheria's silky golden hair, for the girl had seated
+herself at her feet, leaning her head against Paula's knee.
+
+The moon was full, and it was so light out of doors that they could see
+each other plainly, so Rufinus' proposition that they should remain to
+watch an eclipse which was to take place an hour before midnight found
+all the more ready acceptance because the air was pleasant.  The men had
+been discussing the expected phenomenon, lamenting that the Church should
+still lend itself to the superstitions of the populace by regarding it as
+of evil omen, and organizing a penitential procession for the occasion to
+implore God to avert all ill.  Rufinus declared that it was blasphemy
+against the Almighty to interpret events happening in the course of
+eternal law and calculable beforehand, as a threatening sign from Him; as
+though man's deserts had any connection with the courses of the sun and
+moon.  The Bishop and all the priests of the province were to head the
+procession, and thus a simple natural phenomenon was forced in the minds
+of the people into a significance it did not possess.
+
+"And if the little comet which my old foster father discovered last week
+continues to increase," added the physician, "so that its tail spreads
+over a portion of the sky, the panic will reach its highest pitch; I can
+see already that they will behave like mad creatures."
+
+"But a comet really does portend war, drought, plague, and famine," said
+Pulcheria, with full conviction; and Paula added:
+
+"So I have always believed."
+
+"But very wrongly," replied the leech.  "There are a thousand reasons
+to the contrary; and it is a crime to confirm the mob in such a
+superstition.  It fills them with grief and alarms; and, would you
+believe it--such anguish of mind, especially when the Nile is so low
+and there is more sickness than usual, gives rise to numberless forms
+of disease?  We shall have our hands full, Rufinus."
+
+"I am yours to command," replied the old man.  "But at the same time, if
+the tailed wanderer must do some mischief, I would rather it should break
+folks' arms and legs than turn their brains."
+
+"What a wish!"  exclaimed  Paula.  "But  you often say things--and I see
+things about you too--which seem to me extraordinary.  Yesterday you
+promised. . . ."
+
+"To explain to you why I gather about me so many of God's creatures who
+have to struggle under the burden of life as cripples, or with injured
+limbs."
+
+"Just so," replied Paula.  "Nothing can be more truly merciful than to
+render life bearable to such hapless beings. . . ."
+
+"But still, you think," interrupted the eager old man, "that this noble
+motive alone would hardly account for the old oddity's riding his hobby
+so hard.--Well, you are right.  From my earliest youth the structure of
+the bones in man and beast has captivated me exceedingly; and just as
+collectors of horns, when once they have a complete series of every
+variety of stag, roe, and gazelle, set to work with fresh zeal to find
+deformed or monstrous growths, so I have found pleasure in studying every
+kind of malformation and injury in the bones of men and beasts."
+
+"And to remedy them," added Philippus.  "It has been his passion from
+childhood.
+
+"And the passion has grown upon me since I broke my own hip bone and know
+what it means," the old man went on.  "With the help of my fellow-student
+there, from a mere dilettante I became a practised surgeon; and, what is
+more, I am one of those who serve Esculapius at my own expense.  However,
+there are accessory reasons for which I have chosen such strange
+companions: deformed slaves are cheap and besides that, certain
+investigations afford me inestimable and peculiar satisfaction.
+But this cannot interest a young girl."
+
+"Indeed it does!"  cried Paula.  "So far as I have understood Philippus
+when he explains some details of natural history. . . ."
+
+"Stay," laughed Rufinus,  "our friend will take good care not to explain
+this.  He regards it as folly, and all he will admit is that no surgeon
+or student could wish for better, more willing, or more amusing house-
+mates than my cripples."
+
+"They are grateful to you," cried Paula.
+
+"Grateful?"  asked the old man.  "That is true sometimes, no doubt;
+still, gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons.  Now I
+have told you enough; for the sake of Philippus we will let the rest
+pass."
+
+"No, no," said Paula putting up entreating hands, and Rufinus answered
+gaily:
+
+"Who can refuse you anything?  I will  cut it short, but you must pay
+good heed.--Well then Man is the standard of all things.  Do you
+understand that?"
+
+"Yes, I often hear you say so.  Things you mean are only what they seem
+to us."
+
+"To us, you say, because we--you and I and the rest of us here--are sound
+in body and mind.  And we must regard all things--being God's handiwork--
+as by nature sound and normal.  Thus we are justified in requiring that
+man, who gives the standard for them shall, first and foremost, himself
+be sound and normal.  Can a carpenter measure straight planks properly
+with a crooked or sloping rod?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Then you will understand how I came to ask myself: 'Do sickly, crippled,
+and deformed men measure things by a different standard to that of sound
+men?  And might it not be a useful task to investigate how their
+estimates differ from ours?'"
+
+"And have your researches among your cripples led to any results?"
+
+"To many important ones," the old man declared; but Philippus interrupted
+him with a loud: "Oho!"  adding that his friend was in too great a hurry
+to deduce laws from individual cases.  Many of his observations were, no
+doubt, of considerable interest...  Here Rufinus broke in with some
+vehemence, and the discussion would have become a dispute if Paula had
+not intervened by requesting her zealous host to give her the results, at
+any rate, of his studies.
+
+"I find," said Rufinus very confidently, as he stroked down his long
+beard, "that they are not merely shrewd because their faculties are early
+sharpened to make up by mental qualifications for what they lack in
+physical advantages; they are also witty, like AEesop the fabulist and
+Besa the Egyptian god, who, as I have been told by our old friend Horus,
+from whom we derive all our Egyptian lore, presided among those heathen
+over festivity, jesting, and wit, and also over the toilet of women.
+This shows the subtle observation of the ancients; for the hunchback
+whose body is bent, applies a crooked standard to things in general.
+His keen insight often enables him to measure life as the majority of men
+do, that is by a straight rule; but in some happy moments when he yields
+to natural impulse he makes the straight crooked and the crooked
+straight; and this gives rise to wit, which only consists in looking at
+things obliquely and--setting them askew as it were.  You have only to
+talk to my hump-backed gardener Gibbus, or listen to what he says.  When
+he is sitting with the rest of our people in an evening, they all laugh
+as soon as he opens his mouth.--And why?  Because his conformation makes
+him utter nothing but paradoxes.--You know what they are?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And you, Pul?"
+
+"No, Father."
+
+"You are too straight-nay, and so is your simple soul, to know what the
+thing is!  Well, listen then: It would be a paradox, for instance, if I
+were to say to the Bishop as he marches past in procession: 'You are
+godless out of sheer piety;' or if I were to say to Paula, by way of
+excuse for all the flattery which I and your mother offered her just now:
+'Our incense was nauseous for very sweetness.'--These paradoxes, when
+examined, are truths in a crooked form, and so they best suit the
+deformed.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Certainly," said Paula.
+
+"And you, Pul?"
+
+"I am not quite sure.  I should be better pleased to be simply told:  "We
+ought not to have made such flattering speeches; they may vex a young
+girl."
+
+"Very good, my straightforward child," laughed her father.  "But look,
+there is the man!  Here, good Gibbus--come here!--Now, just consider:
+supposing you had flattered some one so grossly that you had offended him
+instead of pleasing him: How would you explain the state of affairs in
+telling me of it?"
+
+The gardener, a short, square man, with a huge hump but a clever face and
+good features, reflected a minute and then replied: "I wanted to make an
+ass smell at some roses and I put thistles under his nose."
+
+"Capital!"  cried Paula; and as Gibbus turned away, laughing to himself,
+the physician said:
+
+"One might almost envy the man his hump.  But yet, fair Paula, I think we
+have some straight-limbed folks who can make use of such crooked phrases,
+too, when occasion serves."
+
+But Rufinus spoke before Paula could reply, referring her to his Essay on
+the deformed in soul and body; and then he went on vehemently:
+
+"I call you all to witness, does not Baste, the lame woman, restrict her
+views to the lower aspect of things, to the surface of the earth indeed?
+She has one leg much shorter than the other, and it is only with much
+pains that we have contrived that it should carry her.  To limp along at
+all she is forced always to look down at the ground, and what is the
+consequence?  She can never tell you what is hanging to a tree, and about
+three weeks since I asked her under a clear sky and a waning moon whether
+the moon had been shining the evening before and she could not tell me,
+though she had been sitting out of doors with the others till quite late,
+evening after evening.  I have noticed, too, that she scarcely recognizes
+men who are rather tall, though she may have seen them three or four
+times.  Her standard has fallen short-like her leg.  Now, am I right or
+wrong?"
+
+"In this instance you are right," replied Philippus, "still, I know some
+lame people. . ."
+
+And again words ran high between the friends; Pulcheria, however, put an
+end to the discussion this time, by exclaiming enthusiastically:
+
+"Baste is the best and most good-natured soul in the whole house!"
+
+"Because she looks into her own heart," replied Rufinus.  "She knows
+herself; and, because she knows how painful pain is, she treats others
+tenderly.  Do you remember, Philippus, how we disputed after that
+anatomical lecture we heard together at Caesarea?"
+
+"Perfectly well," said the leech, "and later life has but confirmed the
+opinion I then held.  There is no less true or less just saying than the
+Latin motto: 'Mens sana in corpore sano,' as it is generally interpreted
+to mean that a healthy soul is only to be found in a healthy body.  As
+the expression of a wish it may pass, but I have often felt inclined to
+doubt even that.  It has been my lot to meet with a strength of mind, a
+hopefulness, and a thankfulness for the smallest mercies in the sickliest
+bodies, and at the same time a delicacy of feeling, a wise reserve, and
+an undeviating devotion to lofty things such as I have never seen in a
+healthy frame.  The body is but the tenement of the soul, and just as we
+find righteous men and sinners, wise men and fools, alike in the palace
+and the hovel--nay, and often see truer worth in a cottage than in the
+splendid mansions of the great--so we may discover noble souls both
+in the ugly and the fair, in the healthy and the infirm, and most
+frequently, perhaps, in the least vigorous.  We should be careful how we
+go about repeating such false axioms, for they can only do harm to those
+who have a heavy burthen to bear through life as it is.  In my opinion a
+hunchback's thoughts are as straightforward as an athlete's; or do you
+imagine that if a mother were to place her new-born children in a spiral
+chamber and let them grow up in it, they could not tend upwards as all
+men do by nature?"
+
+"Your comparison limps," cried Rufinus, "and needs setting to rights.
+If we are not to find ourselves in open antagonism. . . ."
+
+"You must keep the peace," Joanna put in addressing her husband; and
+before Rufinus could retort, Paula had asked him with frank simplicity:
+
+"How old are you, my worthy host?"
+
+"Your arrival at my house blessed the second day of my seventieth year,"
+replied Rufinus with a courteous bow.  His wife shook her finger at him,
+exclaiming:
+
+"I wonder whether you have not a secret hump?  Such fine phrases. . ."
+
+"He is catching the style from his cripples," said Paula laughing at him.
+"But now it is your turn, friend Philippus.  Your exposition was worthy
+of an antique sage, and it struck me--for the sake of Rufinus here I will
+not say convinced me.  I respect you--and yet I should like to know how
+old.  .  .  ."
+
+"I shall soon be thirty-one," said Philippus, anticipating her question.
+
+"That is an honest answer," observed Dame Joanna.  "At your age many a
+man clings to his twenties."
+
+"Why?"  asked Pulcheria.
+
+"Well," said her mother, "only because there are some girls who think a
+man of thirty too old to be attractive."
+
+"Stupid  creatures,"  answered  Pulcheria.  "Let them find me a young
+man who is more lovable than my father; and if Philippus--yes you,
+Philippus--were ten or twenty years over nine and twenty, would that make
+you less clever or kind?"
+
+"Not less ugly, at any rate," said the physician.  Pulcheria laughed, but
+with some annoyance, as though she had herself been the object of the
+remark.  "You are not a bit ugly!"  she exclaimed.  "Any one who says so
+has no eyes.  And you will hear nothing said of you but that you are a
+tall, fine man!"
+
+As the warm-hearted girl thus spoke, defending her friend against
+himself, Paula stroked her golden hair and added to the physician:
+
+"Pulcheria's father is so far right that she, at any rate, measures men
+by a true and straight standard.  Note that, Philippus!--But do not take
+my questioning ill.--I cannot help wondering how a man of one and thirty
+and one of seventy should have been studying in the high schools at the
+same time?  The moon will not be eclipsed for a long time yet--how bright
+and clear it is!--So you, Rufinus, who have wandered so far through the
+wide world, if you would do me a great pleasure, will tell us something
+of your past life and how you came to settle in Memphis."
+
+"His history?"  cried Joanna.  "If he were to tell it, in all its details
+from beginning to end, the night would wane and breakfast would get cold.
+He has had as many adventures as travelled Odysseus.  But tell us
+something husband; you know there is nothing we should like better."
+
+"I must be off to my duties," said the leech, and when he had taken a
+friendly leave of the others and bidden farewell to Paula with less
+effusiveness than of late, Rufinus began his story.
+
+"I was born in Alexandria, where, at that time, commerce and industry
+still flourished.  My father was an armorer; above two hundred slaves and
+free laborers were employed in his work-shops.  He required the finest
+metal, and commonly procured it by way of Massilia from Britain.  On one
+occasion he himself went to that remote island in a friend's ship, and he
+there met my mother.  Her ruddy gold hair, which Pul has inherited, seems
+to have bewitched him and, as the handsome foreigner pleased her well--
+for men like my father are hard to match nowadays--she turned Christian
+for his sake and came home with him.  They neither of them ever regretted
+it; for though she was a quiet woman, and to her dying day spoke Greek
+like a foreigner, the old man often said she was his best counsellor.
+At the same time she was so soft-hearted, that she could not bear that
+any living creature should suffer, and though she looked keenly after
+everything at the hearth and loom, she could never see a fowl, a goose,
+or a pig slaughtered.  And I have inherited her weakness--shall I say
+'alas!' or 'thank God?'
+
+"I had two elder brothers who both had to help my father, and who were to
+carry on the business.  When I was ten years old my calling was decided
+on.  My mother would have liked to make a priest of me and at that time I
+should have consented joyfully; but my father would not agree, and as we
+had an uncle who was making a great deal of money as a Rhetor, my father
+accepted a proposal from him that I should devote myself to that career.
+So I went from one teacher to another and made good progress in the
+schools.
+
+"Till my twentieth year I continued to live with my parents, and during
+my many hours of leisure I was free to do or leave undone whatever I had
+a fancy for; and this was always something medical, if that is not too
+big a word.  I was but a lad of twelve when this fancy first took me,
+and that through pure accident.  Of course I was fond of wandering about
+the workshops, and there they kept a magpie, a quaint little bird, which
+my mother had fed out of compassion.  It could say 'Blockhead,' and call
+my name and a few other words, and it seemed to like the noise, for it
+always would fly off to where the smiths were hammering and filing their
+loudest, and whenever it perched close to one of the anvils there were
+sure to be mirthful faces over the shaping and scraping and polishing.
+For many years its sociable ways made it a favorite; but one day it got
+caught in a vice and its left leg was broken.  Poor little creature!"
+
+The old man stooped to wipe his eyes unseen, but he went on without
+pausing:
+
+"It fell on its back and looked at me so pathetically that I snatched the
+tongs out of the bellows-man's hand--for he was going to put an end to
+its sufferings in all kindness--and, picking it up gently, I made up my
+mind I would cure it.  Then I carried the bird into my own room, and to
+keep it quiet that it might not hurt itself, I tied it down to a frame
+that I contrived, straightened its little leg, warmed the injured bone by
+sucking it, and strapped it to little wooden splints.  And behold it
+really set: the bird got quite well and fluttered about the workshops
+again as sound as before, and whenever it saw me it would perch upon my
+shoulder and peck very gently at my hair with its sharp beak.
+
+"From that moment I could have found it in me to break the legs of every
+hen in the yard, that I might set them again; but I thought of something
+better.  I went to the barbers and told them that if any one had a bird,
+a dog, or a cat, with a broken limb, he might bring it to me, and that I
+was prepared to cure all these injuries gratis; they might tell all their
+customers.  The very next day I had a patient brought me: a black hound,
+with tan spots over his eyes, whose leg had been smashed by a badly-aimed
+spear: I can see him now!  Others followed; feathered or four-footed
+sufferers; and this was the beginning of my surgical career.  The invalid
+birds on the trees I still owe to my old allies the barbers.  I only
+occasionally take beasts in hand.  The lame children, whom you saw in the
+garden, come to me from poor parents who cannot afford a surgeon's aid.
+The merry, curly-headed boy who brought you a rose just now is to go home
+again in a few days.--But to return to the story of my youth.
+
+"The more serious events which gave my life this particular bias occurred
+in my twentieth year, when I had already left even the high school behind
+me; nor was I fully carried away by their influence till after my uncle
+had procured me several opportunities of proving my proficiency in my
+calling.  I may say without vanity that my speeches won approval; but I
+was revolted by the pompous, flowery bombast, without which I should have
+been hissed down, and though my parents rejoiced when I went home from
+Niku, Arsmoe, or some other little provincial town, with laurel-wreaths
+and gold pieces, to myself I always seemed an impostor.  Still, for my
+father's sake, I dared not give up my profession, although I hated more
+and more the task of praising people to the skies whom I neither loved
+nor respected, and of shedding tears of pathos while all the time I was
+minded to laugh.
+
+"I had plenty of time to myself, and as I did not lack courage and held
+stoutly to our Greek confession, I was always to be found where there was
+any stir or contention between the various sects.  They generally passed
+off with nothing worse than bruises and scratches, but now and then
+swords were drawn.  On one occasion thousands came forth to meet
+thousands, and the Prefect called out the troops--all Greeks--to restore
+order by force.  A massacre ensued in which thousands were killed.  I
+could not describe it!  Such scenes were not rare, and the fury and greed
+of the mob were often directed against the Jews by the machinations of
+the creatures of the archbishop and the government.  The things I saw
+there were so horrible, so shocking, that the tongue refuses to tell
+them; but one poor Jewess, whose husband the wretches--our fellow
+Christians--killed, and then pillaged the house, I have never forgotten!
+A soldier dragged her down by her hair, while a ruffian snatched the
+child from her breast and, holding it by its feet, dashed its skull
+against the wall before her eyes--as you might slash a wet cloth against
+a pillar to dry it--I shall never forget that handsome young mother and
+her child; they come before me in my dreams at night even now.
+
+"All these things I  saw; and I  shuddered to behold God's creatures,
+beings endowed with reason, persecuting their fellows, plunging them into
+misery, tearing them limb from limb--and why?  Merciful Saviour, why?
+For sheer hatred--as sure as man is the standard for all things--merely
+carried away by a hideous impulse to spite their neighbor for not
+thinking as they do--nay, simply for not being themselves--to hurt him,
+insult him, work him woe.  And these fanatics, these armies who raised
+the standard of ruthlessness, of extermination, of bloodthirstiness,
+were Christians, were baptized in the name of Him who bids us forgive our
+enemies, who enlarged the borders of love from the home and the city and
+the state to include all mankind; who raised the adulteress from the
+dust, who took children into his arms, and would have more joy over a
+sinner who repents than over ninety and nine just persons!--Blood, blood,
+was what they craved; and did not the doctrine of Him whose followers
+they boastfully called themselves grow out of the blood of Him who shed
+it for all men alike,--just as that lotos flower grows out of the clear
+water in the marble tank?  And it was the highest guardians and keepers
+of this teaching of mercy, who goaded on the fury of the mob: Patriarchs,
+bishops, priests and deacons--instead of pointing to the picture of the
+Shepherd who tenderly carries the lost sheep and brings it home to the
+fold.
+
+"My own times seemed to me the worst that had ever been; aye, and--as
+surely as man is the standard of all things--so they are! for love is
+turned to hatred, mercy to implacable hardheartedness.  The thrones not
+only of the temporal but of the spiritual rulers, are dripping with the
+blood of their fellow-men.  Emperors and bishops set the example;
+subjects and churchmen follow it.  The great, the leading men of the
+struggle are copied by the small, by the peaceful candidates for
+spiritual benefices.  All that I saw as a man, in the open streets, I had
+already seen as a boy both in the low and high schools.  Every doctrine
+has its adherents; the man who casts in his lot with Cneius is hated by
+Caius, who forthwith speaks and writes to no other end than to vex and
+put down Cneius, and give him pain.  Each for his part strives his utmost
+to find out faults in his neighbor and to put him in the pillory,
+particularly if his antagonist is held the greater man, or is likely
+to overtop him.  Listen to the girls at the well, to the women at the
+spindle; no one is sure of applause who cannot tell some evil of the
+other men or women.  Who cares to listen to his neighbor's praises?
+The man who hears that his brother is happy at once envies him!  Hatred,
+hatred everywhere!  Everywhere the will, the desire, the passion for
+bringing grief and ruin on others rather than to help them, raise them
+and heal them!
+
+"That is the spirit of my time;  and everything within me revolted
+against it with sacred wrath.  I vowed in my heart that I would live and
+act differently; that my sole aim should be to succor the unfortunate, to
+help the wretched, to open my arms to those who had fallen into unmerited
+contumely, to set the crooked straight for my neighbor, to mend what was
+broken, to pour in balm, to heal and to save!
+
+"And, thank God! it has been vouchsafed to me in some degree to keep this
+vow; and though, later, some whims and a passionate curiosity got mixed
+up with my zeal, still, never have I lost sight of the great task of
+which I have spoken, since my father's death and since my uncle also left
+me his large fortune.  Then I had done with the Rhetor's art, and
+travelled east and west to seek the land where love unites men's hearts
+and where hatred is only a disease; but as sure as man is the standard of
+all things, to this day all my endeavors to find it have been in vain.
+Meanwhile I have kept my own house on such a footing that it has become a
+stronghold of love; in its atmosphere hatred cannot grow, but is nipped
+in the germ.
+
+"In spite of this I am no saint.  I have committed many a folly, many an
+injustice; and much of my goods and gold, which I should perhaps have
+done better to save for my family, has slipped through my fingers, though
+in the execution, no doubt, of what I deemed the highest duties.  Would
+you believe it, Paula?--Forgive an old man for such fatherly familiarity
+with the daughter of Thomas;--hardly five years after my marriage with
+this good wife, not long after we had lost our only son, I left her and
+our little daughter, Pul there, for more than two years, to follow the
+Emperor Heraclius of my own free will to the war against the Persians who
+had done me no harm--not, indeed, as a soldier, but as a surgeon eager
+for experience.  To confess the truth I was quite as eager to see and
+treat fractures and wounds and injuries in great numbers, as I was to
+exercise benevolence.  I came home with a broken hip-bone, tolerably
+patched up, and again, a few years later, I could not keep still in one
+place.  The bird of passage must need drag wife and child from the peace
+of hearth and homestead, and take them to where he could go to the high
+school.  A husband, a father, and already grey-headed, I was a singular
+exception among the youths who sat listening to the lectures and
+explanations of their teachers; but as sure as man is the standard of all
+things, they none of them outdid me in diligence and zeal, though many a
+one was greatly my superior in gifts and intellect, and among them the
+foremost was our friend Philippus.  Thus it came about, noble Paula, that
+the old man and the youth in his prime were fellow-students; but to this
+day the senior gladly bows down to his young brother in learning and
+feeling.  To straighten, to comfort, and to heal: this is the aim of his
+life too.  And even I, an old man, who started long before Philippus on
+the same career, often long to call myself his disciple."
+
+Here Rufinus paused and rose; Paula, too, got up, grasped his hand
+warmly, and said:
+
+"If I were a man, I would join you!  But Philippus has told me that even
+a woman may be allowed to work with the same purpose.--And now let me beg
+of you never to call me anything but Paula--you will not refuse me this
+favor.  I never thought I could be so happy again as I am with you; here
+my heart is free and whole.  Dame Joanna, do you be my mother!  I have
+lost the best of fathers, and till I find him again, you, Rufinus, must
+fill his place!"
+
+"Gladly, gladly!"  cried the old man; he clasped both her hands and went
+on vivaciously: "And in return I ask you to be an elder sister to Pul.
+Make that timid little thing such a maiden as you are yourself.--But
+look, children, look up quickly; it is beginning!--Typhon, in the form
+of a boar, is swallowing the eye of Horns: so the heathen of old in this
+country used to believe when the moon suffered an eclipse.  See how the
+shadow is covering the bright disk.  When the ancients saw this happening
+they used to make a noise, shaking the sistrum with its metal rings,
+drumming and trumpeting, shouting and yelling, to scare off the evil one
+and drive him away.  It may be about four hundred years since that last
+took place, but to this day--draw your kerchiefs more closely round your
+heads and come with me to the river--to this day Christians degrade
+themselves by similar rites.  Wherever I have been in Christian lands,
+I have always witnessed the same scenes: our holy faith has, to be sure,
+demolished the religions of the heathen; but their superstitions have
+survived, and have forced their way through rifts and chinks into our
+ceremonial.  They are marching round now, with the bishop at their head,
+and you can hear the loud wailing of the women, and the cries of the men,
+drowning the chant of the priests.  Only listen!  They are as passionate
+and agonized in their entreaty as though old Typhon were even now about
+to swallow the moon, and the greatest catastrophe was hanging over the
+world.  Aye, as surely as man is the standard of all things, those
+terrified beings are diseased in mind; and how are we to forgive those
+who dare to scare Christians; yes, Christian souls, with the traditions
+of heathen folly, and to blind their inward vision?"
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons
+Healthy soul is only to be found in a healthy body
+Man is the standard of all things
+Persians never prayed for any particular blessing
+The immortal gods have set sweat before virtue
+Things you mean are only what they seem to us
+Would want some one else to wear herself out for
+Any woman can forgive any man for his audacity in loving her
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE NILE, BY EBERS, V5 ***
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