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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Bride of the Nile, by Georg Ebers, v12
+#89 in our series by Georg Ebers
+
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+Title: The Bride of the Nile, Volume 12.
+
+Author: Georg Ebers
+
+Release Date: April, 2004  [EBook #5528]
+[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, V12 ***
+
+
+
+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 12.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+While Rustem, to whom Mary had entrusted the jeweller's gold, was making
+his preparations for their journey with all the care of a practised
+guide, and while Mary was comforting her governess and Mandane, to whom
+she explained that Rustem's journey was to save Paula's life, a fresh
+trial was going forward in the Court of Justice.
+
+This time Orion was the accused.  He had scarcely begun to study the maps
+and lists he required for his undertaking when he was bidden to appear
+before his judges.
+
+The members composing the Court were the same as yesterday.  Among the
+witnesses were Paula and the new bishop, as well as Gamaliel, who had
+been sent for soon after Mary had left him.
+
+The prosecutor accused the son of the Mukaukas of having made away, in
+defiance of the patriarch's injunction, with a costly emerald bequeathed
+to the Church by his father.
+
+Orion had determined to conduct his own defence; he recapitulated
+everything that he had told the prelate in self-justification in his
+father's private room, and then added, that to put a speedy end to this
+odious affair he was now prepared to restore the stone, and he placed it
+at the disposal of his judges.  He handed Paula's emerald to the Kadi who
+presented it to the bishop.  John, however, did not seem satisfied; he
+referred to the written testimony of the widow Susannah, who had been
+present when the deceased Mukaukas had designated all the jewels in the
+Persian hanging as included in his gift to the Church.  This was in
+Orion's presence so he was still under suspicion of a fraud; and it was
+difficult to determine whether the fine gem now lying on the table before
+them were indeed the same to which the Church laid claim.
+
+All this was urged with excessive vehemence and bore the stamp of a
+hostile purpose.
+
+Obedience and conviction alike prompted the zealous prelate to this
+demeanor, for the same carrier-pigeon which had brought from the
+patriarch his appointment to the bishopric required him to insist on
+Orion's punishment, for he was a thorn in the flesh of the Jacobite
+church, a tainted sheep who might infect the rest of the flock.  If the
+young man should offer an emerald it was therefore to be closely
+examined, to see whether it were the original stone or a substitute.
+
+On these grounds the bishop had expressed his doubts, and though they
+gave rise to an indignant murmur among the judges, the Kadi so far
+admitted the prelate's suspicions as to explain that last evening a
+letter had reached him from his uncle at Djidda, Haschim the merchant, in
+which mention was made of the emerald.  His son happened to have weighed
+that stone, without his knowledge, before he started for Egypt, and
+Othman had here a note of its exact weight.  The Jew Gamaliel had been
+desired to attend with his balances, and could at once use them to
+satisfy the bishop.
+
+The jeweller immediately proceeded to do so, and old Horapollo, who was
+an expert in such matters, went close up to him, and watched him
+narrowly.
+
+It was in feverish anxiety, and more eagerly than any other bystander,
+that Paula and Orion kept their eyes fixed on the Jew's hands and lips;
+after weighing it once, he did so a second time.  Old Horapollo himself
+weighed it a third time, with a keen eye though his hands trembled a
+little; all three experiments gave the same result: this gem was heavier
+by a few grains of doura than that which the merchant's son had weighed,
+and yet the Jew declared that there was no purer, clearer, or finer
+emerald in the world than this.
+
+Orion breathed more freely, and the question arose among the judges as to
+whether the young Arab might have failed in precision, or an exchange had
+in fact been effected.  This was difficult to imagine, since in that case
+the accused would have given himself the loss, and the Church the
+advantage.
+
+The bishop, an honest man, now said that the patriarch's suspicions had
+certainly led him too far in this instance, and after this he spoke no
+more.
+
+All through this enquiry the Vekeel had kept silence, but the defiant
+gaze, assured of triumph, which he fixed on Paula and Orion alternately,
+augured the worst.
+
+When the prosecutor next accused the young man of complicity in the much
+discussed escape of the nuns Orion again asserted his innocence, pointing
+out that during the fatal contest between the Arabs and the champions of
+the sisters, he had been with the Arab governor, as Amru himself could
+testify.  By an act of unparalleled despotism, he had been deprived of
+his estates and his freedom on mere false suspicion, and he put his trust
+in the first instance in a just sentence from his judges and, failing
+that, he threw himself on the protection and satisfaction of his
+sovereign lord the Khaliff.
+
+As he spoke his eyes flashed flames at the Vekeel; but the negro still
+preserved his self-control, and this doubled the alarm of those who
+wished the youth well.
+
+It was clear from all this that Obada felt sure that he had the noose
+well around his victim's neck, and why he thought so, soon became
+evident; for Orion had hardly finished his defence when he rose, and
+with a malicious grin, handed to the Kadi the little tablet given him
+yesterday by old Horapollo, describing it as a document addressed to
+Paula and desiring the Kadi to examine it.  The heat had effaced much of
+what had been written on the wax, but most of the words could still be
+deciphered.  The venerable Horapollo had already made them out, and was
+quite ready to read to the judges all that the accused--who by his own
+account, was a spotless dove--had written in his innocence and
+truthfulness for his fair one.  He signed to the old man and helped
+him as he rose with difficulty, but the Kadi begged him to wait, made
+himself acquainted with the contents of the letter by the help of the
+interpreter, and when the man had, with much pains, fulfilled his task,
+he turned, not to Horapollo, but to Obada, and asked whence this document
+had come.
+
+"From Paula's desk," replied the Vekeel.  "My old friend found it there."
+He pointed to Horapollo, who confirmed his statement by a nod of assent.
+
+The Kadi rose, went up to the girl, whose cheeks were pale with
+indignation, and asked whether she recognized the tablets as her
+property; Paula, after convincing herself, replied with a flaming glance
+of scorn and aversion at Horapollo: "Yes, my lord.  It is mine.  That
+base old man has taken it with atrocious meanness from among my things."
+For an instant her voice failed her; then, turning to the judges, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"If there is one among you to whom helplessness and innocence are sacred
+and malice and cunning odious, I beg him to go to Rufinus' wife, over
+whose threshold this man has crept like a ferret into a dovecote, for no
+other end but to tread hospitable kindness in the dust, to rifle her home
+and make use of whatever might serve his vile purpose--to go, I say, and
+warn the lonely woman against this treacherous spy and thief."
+
+At this the old man, gasping and inarticulate, raised his withered arm;
+the Christian judges whispered together, but at cross-purposes, while the
+Jew fidgeted his round little person on the bench, drumming incessantly
+with his fingers on his breast, and trying to meet Orion's or Paula's eye
+and to make her understand that he was the man who would warn Joanna.
+But a thump from the Vekeel's fist, that came down on his shoulder
+unawares, reduced him to sitting still; and while he sat rubbing the
+place with subdued sounds of pain, not daring to reproach the all-
+powerful negro for his violence, the Kadi gave the tablets to Horapollo
+and bid him read the letter.
+
+But the terrible accusation cast at him by the hated Patrician maiden,
+ascribing his removal to Rufinus house to a motive which, in truth, had
+been far from his, had so enraged and agitated him that his old lungs, at
+all times feeble, refused their office.  This woman had done him a fresh
+wrong, for he had gone to live with the widow from the kindest impulse;
+only an accident had thrown this document in his way.  And yet it would
+not fail to be reported to Joanna in the course of the day that he had
+gone to her house as a spy, and there would be an end to the pleasant
+life of which he had dreamed--nay, even Philippus might perhaps quarrel
+with him.
+
+And all, all through this woman.
+
+He could not utter a word but, as he sank back on the seat, a glance so
+full of hatred, so dark with malignant fury, fell on Paula that she
+shuddered, and told herself that this man was ready to die himself if
+only he could drag her down too.
+
+The interpreter now began to read Orion's letter and to translate it for
+the Arabs; and while he blundered through it, declaring that not a letter
+could be plainly made out, she recovered her self-control and, before the
+interpreter had done his task, a gleam as of sunshine lighted up her pure
+features.  Some great, lofty, and rapturous thought must have flashed
+through her brain, and it was evident that she had seized it and was
+feeding on it.
+
+Orion, sitting opposite to her, noticed this; still, he did not
+understand what her beseeching gaze had to say to him, what it asked of
+him as she pressed her hand on her breast, and looked into his eyes with
+such urgent entreaty that it went to his very heart.
+
+The interpreter ceased; but what he had read had had a great effect on
+the judges.  The Kadi's benevolent face expressed extreme apprehension,
+and the contents of the letter were indeed such as to cause it.  It ran
+as follows:
+
+"After waiting for you a long time in vain, I must at last make up my
+mind to go; and how much I still had to say to you.  A written farewell."
+
+Here a few lines were effaced, and then came the--fatal and quite legible
+conclusion:
+
+"How far otherwise I had dreamed of ending this day, which has been for
+the most part spent in preparations for the flight of the Sisters; and I
+have found a pleasure in doing all that lay in my power for those kind
+and innocent, unjustly persecuted nuns.  We must hope for the best for
+them; and for ourselves we must look to-morrow for an undisturbed
+interview and a parting which may leave us memories on which we can live
+for a long time.  The noble governor Amru is, among the Arabs, such
+another as he whom we mourn was among the Egyptians .  .  ."  Here the
+letter ended; not quite three lines were wanting to conclude it.
+
+The Kadi held the tablets for a few minutes in his hand; then looking up
+again at the assembly, who were waiting in great suspense, he began:
+"Even if the accused was not one of those who raised their hands in
+mutiny against our armed troops, it is nevertheless indisputable, after
+what has just been read, that he not only knew of the escape of the nuns,
+but aided them to the utmost.--When did you receive this communication,
+noble maiden?"
+
+At this Paula clasped her hands tightly and replied with a slightly bent
+head and her eyes fixed on the ground.
+
+"When did I receive it?--Never; for I wrote it myself.  The writing is
+mine."
+
+"Yours?"  said the Kadi in amazement.  "It is from me to Orion," replied
+Paula.
+
+"From you to him?  How then comes it in your desk?"
+
+"In a very simple way," she explained, still looking down.  "After
+writing the letter to my betrothed I threw it in with the other tablets
+as soon as I had no need for it; for he himself came, and there was no
+necessity for his reading what could be better said by word of mouth."
+
+As she spoke a peculiar smile passed over her lips and a loud murmur ran
+through the room.  Orion looked first at the girl and then at the Kadi in
+growing bewilderment; but the Negro started up, struck his fist on the
+table, making it shake, and roared out:
+
+"An atrocious fabrication!  Which of you can allow yourself to be taken
+in by a woman's guile?"  Horapollo, who had recovered himself by this
+time, laughed hoarsely and maliciously; the judges looked at each other
+much puzzled; but when the Vekeel went on raging the Kadi interrupted
+him, and desired that Orion might speak, for he had twice tried to make
+himself heard.  Now, with scarlet cheeks and a choking utterance, he
+said:
+
+"No, Othman--no, no indeed, my lords.  Do not believe her.  Not she, but
+I--I wrote the letter that.  .  .  ."
+
+But Paula broke in:
+
+"He?  Do you not feel that all he wants is to save me, and so he takes my
+guilt on himself?  It is his generosity, his love for me!  Do not, do not
+believe him!  Do not allow yourselves to be deceived by him."
+
+"I?  No, it is she, it is she," Orion again asserted; but, before he
+could say more, Paula declared with a flashing glance that it was a poor
+sort of love which sacrificed itself out of false generosity.  And as,
+at the same time, she again pressed her hand to her bosom with pathetic
+entreaty, he was suddenly silent, and casting his eyes up to heaven, he
+sank back on the prisoners' bench, deeply affected.
+
+Paula joyfully went on:
+
+"He has thought better of it, and given up his crazy attempt to take my
+guilt on himself.  You see, Othman, you all see, worthy men.--Let me
+atone for what I did to help the poor nuns."
+
+"Have your way!" shrieked the old man; but the Negro cried out:
+
+"A hellish tissue of lies, an unheard-of deception!  But in spite of the
+shield a woman holds before you, I have my foot on your neck, treacherous
+wretch!  Is it credible--I ask you, judges--that a finished letter should
+be found, after weeks had elapsed, in the hands of the writer and not
+those of the person to whom it was addressed?"
+
+The Kadi shrugged his shoulders and replied with calm dignity:
+
+"Consider, Obada, that we are condemning this damsel on the evidence of
+a letter which was found in possession, not of the person to whom it was
+addressed, but of the writer.  This document gave rise to no doubts in
+your mind.  The judge should mete out equal measure to all, Obada."
+
+The aptness of these words, spoken in a dogmatic tone, aroused the
+approval of the Arabs, and the Jew could not restrain himself from
+exclaiming: "Capital!"  but no sooner had it escaped him than he shrank
+as quick as lightning out of the Vekeel's reach; and Obada hardly heard
+him, for he did not allow himself to be interrupted by the Kadi but went
+on to explain in wrathful words what a disgrace it was to them, as men
+and judges, to have dust cast in their eyes by a woman, and allow
+themselves to be molified by the arts of a pair of love-stricken fools;
+and how desirable it must be in the eyes of every Moslem to guard the
+security of life and bring the severest punishment on the instigator of a
+sanguinary revolt against the champions of the Khaliff's power.
+
+His eloquent and stormy address was not without effect; still, the
+Christians, who ascribed every form of evil to the Melchite girl, would
+have been satisfied with her death and have been ready to forgive the son
+of the Mukaukas this crime--supposing him to have committed it.  And it
+was after the judges had agreed that it was impossible to decide by whom
+the letter on the tablet had been written, and there had been a great
+deal of argument on both sides, that the real discussion began.
+
+It was long before the assembly could agree, and all the while Orion sat
+now looking as though he had already been condemned to a cruel death, and
+now exchanging glances with Paula, while he pressed his hand to his heart
+as though to keep it from bursting.  He perfectly understood her, and her
+magnanimity upheld him.  He had indeed persuaded himself to accept her
+self-sacrifice, but he was fully determined that if she must die he would
+follow her to the grave.  "Non dolet,"--[It does not hurt]--Arria cried
+to her lover Paetus, as she thrust the knife into her heart that she
+might die before him; and the words rang in his ear; but he said to
+himself that Paula would very likely be pardoned, and that then he would
+be free and have a whole lifetime in which to thank her.
+
+At last--at last.  The Kadi announced the verdict: It was impossible to
+find Orion worthy of death, and equally so to give up all belief in his
+guilt; the court therefore declared itself inadequate to pronounce a
+sentence, and left it to be decided by the Khaliff or by his
+representative in Egypt, Amru.  The court only went so far as to rule
+that the prisoner was to be kept in close confinement, so that he might
+be within reach of the hand of justice, if the supreme decision should be
+"guilty!"
+
+When the Kadi said that the matter was to be referred to the Khaliff or
+his representative, the Vekeel cried out:
+
+"I--I am Omar's vicar!"  but a disapproving murmur from the judges, as
+with one voice, rejected his pretensions, and at a proposal of the Kadi
+it was resolved that the young man should be protected against any
+arbitrary attack on the part of the Vekeel by a double guard; for many
+grave accusations against Obada were already on their way to Medina.  The
+negro quitted the court, mad with rage, and concocting fresh indictments
+against Paula with the old man.
+
+When Paula returned to her cell old Betta thought that she must have been
+pardoned; for how glad, how proud, how full of spirit she entered it!
+The worst peril was diverted from her lover, and she and her love had
+saved him!
+
+She gave herself up for lost; but whatever fate might have in store for
+her, life lay open before him; he would have time to prove his splendid
+powers, and that he would do so, as she would have him do it, she felt
+certain.
+
+She had not ended telling her nurse of the judges' decision, when the
+warder announced the Kadi.  In a minute or two he made his appearance;
+she expressed her thanks, and he warmly assured her that he regarded the
+disgrace of being perhaps a beguiled judge as a favor of Fortune; then he
+turned the conversation on the real object of his visit.
+
+In the letter, he began, which he had received the evening before from
+his uncle Haschim, there was a great deal about her.  She had quite won
+the old merchant's heart, and the enquiries for her father which he had
+set on foot....
+
+Here she interrupted him saying: "Oh, my lord; is the wish, the prayer of
+my life to be granted?"
+
+"Your father, the noble Thomas, before whom even the Moslem bows, has
+been.  .  .  ."  and then Othman went on to tell her that the hero of
+Damascus had in fact retired to Sinai and had been living there as a
+hermit.  But she must not indulge in premature rejoicing, for the
+messengers had found him ill, consumed by disease arising from his
+wounded lungs, and almost at death's door.  His days were numbered....
+
+"And  I, I  am  a prisoner,"  groaned  the  girl.  "Held fast, helpless,
+robbed of all means of flying to his arms!"
+
+He again bid her be calm, and went on to tell her: in his soft, composed
+manner, that two days since a Nabathaean had come to him and had asked
+him, as the chief administrator of justice in Egypt, whether an old foe
+of the Moslems, a general who had fought in the service of the emperor
+and the cross against the Khaliff and the crescent, and who was now sick,
+weary, and broken, might venture on Egyptian soil without fear of being
+seized by the Arab authorities; and when he, Othman, had learnt that this
+man was no other than Thomas, the hero of Damascus, he had promised him
+his life and freedom, promised them gladly, as he felt assured his
+sovereign the Khaliff would desire.
+
+So this very day her father had reached Fostat, and the Kadi had received
+him as a guest into his house.  Thomas, indeed, stood on the brink of the
+grave; but he was inspirited and sustained by the hope of seeing his
+daughter.  It had been falsely reported to him that she had perished in
+the massacre at Abyla and he had already mourned her fate.
+
+It was now his duty to fulfil the wish of a dying man, and he had ordered
+the prison servants to prepare the room adjoining Paula's cell with
+furniture which was on the way from his house.  The door between the two
+would be opened for her.
+
+"And I shall see him again, have him again to live with--to close his
+eyes, perhaps to die with him!"  cried Paula; and, seizing the good man's
+hand, she kissed it gratefully.
+
+The Moslem's eyes filled with tears as he bid her not to thank him, but
+God the All-merciful; and before the sun went down the head of the doomed
+daughter was resting on the breast of the weary hero who was so near his
+end, though his unimpaired mind and tender heart rejoiced in their
+reunion as fully and deeply as did his beloved and only child.  A new and
+unutterable joy came to Paula in the gloom of her prison; and that same
+day the warder carried a letter from her to Orion, conveying her father's
+greetings; and, as he read the fervent blessing, he felt as though an
+invisible hand had released him for ever from the curse his own father
+had laid upon him.  A wonderful glad sense of peace came over him with
+power and pleasure in work, and he gave his brains and pen no rest till
+morning was growing grey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Horapollo made his way home to his new quarters from the court of justice
+with knit and gloomy brows.  As he passed Susannah's garden hedge he saw
+a knot of people gathered together and pointing out furtively to the
+handsome residence beyond.
+
+They, like a hundred other groups he had passed, hailed him with words of
+welcome, thanks, and encouragement and, as he bowed to them slightly, his
+eyes followed the direction of their terrified gaze and he started; above
+the great garden gates hung the black tablet; a warning that looked like
+a mark of disgrace, crying out to the passer-by: "Avoid this threshold!
+Here rages the destroying pestilence!"
+
+The old man had a horror of everything that might remind him of death,
+and a cold shiver ran through him.  To live so near to a focus of the
+disease was most alarming and dangerous!  How had it invaded this, the
+healthiest part of the town, which the last raging epidemic had spared?
+
+An officer of the town-council, whom he called to him, told him that two
+slaves, father and son, whose duty it was to take charge of the baths in
+the widow's house, had been first attacked, but they had been carried
+quietly away in the night to the new tents for the sick; to-day, however,
+the widow herself had fallen ill.  To prevent the spread of the
+infection, the plot of ground was now guarded on all sides.
+
+"Be strict, be sharp; not a rat must creep out !"  cried the old man as
+he rode on.
+
+He was later than he had been yesterday; supper must be ready.  After a
+short rest he was preparing to join the family at their meal, washing and
+dressing with the help of his servant, when a lame slave-girl came into
+his room and placed a tray covered with steaming dishes on the low table
+by the divan.
+
+What was the meaning of this?  Before he could ask, he was informed that
+for the future the women wished to eat by themselves; he would be served
+in his own room.
+
+At this a bright patch of red colored his cheeks; after brief reflection
+he cried to his servant.  "My ass!"  and added to the girl:  "Where is
+your mistress?"
+
+"In the viridarium with Gamaliel the goldsmith; but they are going to
+supper immediately."
+
+"And without their guest?  I understand!"  muttered the old man, taking
+up his hat and marching past the maid out of the room.  In the hall he
+met Gamaliel, to whom a slave-girl was handing his stick.  Horapollo
+could guess that the Jew had come only to warn the women against him and,
+without vouchsafing him a glance, he went into the dining-room.  There he
+found Pulchena and Mary kneeling in tears by the side of Joanna, who was
+weeping too.
+
+He guessed for whom were these lamentations, and prompted by the wish to
+prove the falsity of the accusation that charged him with having entered
+the house as a spy, he spoke to the widow.  She shuddered as he entered,
+and she now pointed to the door with an outstretched finger; when he
+nevertheless stood still and was about to make his defence, she
+interrupted him loudly and urgently: "No, no, my lord!  This house is
+henceforth closed against you!  You yourself have broken every tie that
+bound us!  Do not any longer disturb our peace!  Go back to the place you
+came from."
+
+At this the old man made one more attempt to speak; but the widow rose,
+and saying: "Come, my children," she hastily withdrew with the girls into
+the adjoining room, and closed the door.
+
+Horapollo was left alone on the threshold.
+
+Old as he was, in all his life he had never suffered such an insult; but
+he did not lay it to the score of those who had shown him the door, but
+to the already long one of the Syrian girl; as he rode back to his own
+home on his white ass, he stopped several times to speak to the passers-
+by.
+
+During the following day or two he heeded not the heat of the weather,
+nor his own need of rest for his body, and quiet occupation for his mind;
+morning, noon and night he was riding about the streets stirring up the
+people, and setting forth in insinuating speeches that they must perish
+miserably if they rejected the only means of deliverance which he had
+pointed out to them.  He was present at every meeting of the Senate, and
+his inflammatory eloquence kept the town council on his side, and
+nullified the efforts of the bishop, while he pressed them to fix
+the day of the marriage of the Nile with his bride.
+
+He knew the Egyptians and their passion for the intoxicating joys of a
+splendid ceremonial.  This festival: the wedding of the Bride of the Nile
+to her mighty and unresting spouse, on whom the weal or woe of the land
+depended, was to be as a flowery oasis in the waste of dearth and
+desolation.  He recalled every detail of the reminiscences of his
+childhood as to the processions in Honor of Isis, and the festivals
+dedicated to her and her triad; every record of his own experience and
+that of former generations; all he had read in books of the great
+pilgrimages and dramas of heathen Egypt--and he described it all in his
+speeches, painted it in glowing colors to the Senate and the mob, and
+counselled the authorities to reproduce it all with unparalleled splendor
+on the occasion of this marriage.
+
+Every man in whose veins flowed Egyptian blood listened to him
+attentively, took pleasure in his projects, and was quite ready to do his
+utmost to enhance the glories of this ceremonial, in which every one was
+to take part either active or passive.  Thousands were ruined, but there
+was yet enough and to spare for this marriage feast, and the Senate did
+not hesitate to raise a fresh loan.
+
+"Destruction or Deliverance!"  was the watch-word Horapollo had given the
+Memphites.  If everything came to ruin their hoarded talents would be
+lost too; if, on the other hand, the sacrifice produced its result, if
+the Nile should bless its children with renewed prosperity, what need the
+town or country care for a few thousand drachmae more or less?
+
+So the day was fixed!
+
+Not quite two weeks after Paula's trial, on the day of Saint Serapis the
+miraculous, saving, auspicious ceremonial was to take place.  And how
+glowing was the picture given of the Bride's beauty by the old man, and
+by the judges and officials who had seen her!  How brightly old
+Horapollo's eyes would flash with hate as he described it!  The eyes of
+love could not be more radiant.
+
+All that this patrician hussy had done to aggrieve him--she should
+expiate it all, and his triumph meant woe, not only to that one woman,
+but to the Christian faith which he hated!
+
+Bishop John, however, had not been idle meanwhile.  Immediately after
+his interference with the popular vote he had despatched a letter by a
+carrier-pigeon to the patriarch in Upper Egypt, and Benjamin's reply
+would no doubt give him powers for still more vigorous measures.  In
+church, before the Senate, and even in the highways, he and his clergy
+did their utmost to combat the atrocious project of the authorities and
+the populace, but the zeal which was stirred up by old Horapollo soon
+broke into brighter flames than the conservatism, orthodoxy and breadth
+of view which the ecclesiastics did their utmost to fan.  The wind blew
+with equal force from both quarters, but on one side it blew on
+smoldering fuel, and on the other on overflowing and flaming stores.
+Famine and despair had undermined faith, and weakened discipline; even
+the mightiest weapons of the Church--Cursing and blessing--were
+powerless.  A floating beam was held out to sinking men, and they would
+no longer wait for the life-boat that was approaching to rescue them,
+with strong hands at the oars and a trusty pilot at the helm.
+
+Horapollo went no more to the widow's home.  A few hours after she had
+shown him the door, his slaves came and fetched away the various things
+he had carried there with him.  His body servant at the same time brought
+a large sealed phial and a letter to Dame Joanna, as follows:
+
+"It is wrong to judge a man without hearing his defence.  This you have
+done; but I owe you no grudge.  Philippus, on his return, will perhaps
+pick up the ends of the tie and join again what you have this day cut.
+I send you a portion of the remedy he left with me at parting to use
+against the plague in case of need.  Its good effects have been tested
+within the last few days.  May the sickness which has fallen on your
+neighbors, spare you and yours."
+
+Joanna was much pleased with this letter but, when she had read it aloud,
+little Mary exclaimed:
+
+"If any one should fall ill he shall not take a drop of that mixture!  I
+tell you he only wants to poison us!"
+
+Joanna, however, maintained that the old man was not bad hearted in spite
+of his unaccountable hatred of Paula; and Pulcheria declared that it must
+be so, if only because Philip esteemed him so highly.  If only he were
+here, everything would have been different and have turned out well.
+
+Mary remained with the mother and daughter till it grew dark; her chatter
+always led them back to Paula; and when, in the afternoon, the Nabathaean
+messenger came to them, and told them from their captive friend that he
+had brought her father home to her, the women once more began to hope,
+and Mary could allow herself to give free expression to her fond love
+before she quitted them, without exciting their suspicions.
+
+At length she said she must go to her lessons with Eudoxia; she had a
+hard task before her and they must think of her and wish her good
+success.  She threw her arms first round the widow's neck and then round
+Pulcheria's; and, as the tears would start to her eyes, she asked them if
+she were not indeed a silly childish thing--but they were to think of her
+all the same and never to forget her.
+
+She met the governess in her own room; Eudoxia cut off the fine, soft
+curls, shedding her first tears over them; and those tears flowed faster
+as she placed round Mary's neck a little reliquary containing a lock from
+the sheep-skin of St. John the Baptist, which had belonged to her own
+mother.  It was very dear and sacred to her, and she had never before
+parted from it, but now it was to protect the child and bring her
+happiness--great happiness.
+
+Had it brought her such happiness?--Not much, in truth; and yet she
+believed in the saving and beneficent influence of the relic.
+
+At last Mary stood before her with short hair and in a boy's dress; and
+what a sweet and lovely little fellow it was;  Eudoxia could not weary of
+looking at him.  But Mary was too pretty, too frail for a boy; and
+Eudoxia advised her to pull her broad travelling hat low over her eyes as
+soon as she came in sight of men, or else to darken her color.
+
+Gamaliel, who had in fact come to warn Dame Joanna against Horapollo,
+had kept them informed of the progress of this day's sitting, and Paula's
+conduct to save her lover had increased Mary's admiration for her.  When
+she should confront Amru she could answer him on every head, so she felt
+equipped at all points as she stole through the garden with Eudoxia, and
+down to the quay.
+
+When she had passed the gateway she once more kissed her hand to the
+house she loved and its inmates; then, pointing with a sigh to the
+neighboring garden, she said:
+
+"Poor Katharina! she is a prisoner now.--Do you know, Eudoxia, I am still
+very fond of her, and when I think that she may take the plague, and die
+but no!--Tell Mother Joanna and Pulcheria to be kind to her.  To-morrow,
+after breakfast, give them my letter; and this evening, if they get
+anxious, you can only quiet them by saying you know all and that it is of
+no use to fret about me.  You will set it all right and not allow them to
+grieve."
+
+As they passed a Jacobite chapel that stood open, she begged Eudoxia to
+wait for her and fell on her knees before the crucifix.  In a few minutes
+she came out again, bright and invigorated and, as they passed the last
+houses in the town, she exclaimed:
+
+"Is it not wicked, Eudoxia?  I am leaving those I love dearly, very
+dearly, and yet I feel as glad as a bird escaping from its cage.  Good
+Heaven!  Only to think of the ride by night through the desert and over
+the hills, a swift beast under me, and over my head no ceiling but the
+blue sky and countless stars!  Onward and still onward to a glorious end,
+left entirely to myself and entrusted with an important task like a
+grownup person!  Is it not splendid?  And by God's help--and if I find
+the governor and succeed in touching his heart....  Now, confess,
+Eudoxia, can there be a happier girl in the whole wide world?"
+
+They found the Masdakite at Nesptah's inn with some capital dromedaries
+and the necessary drivers and attendants.  The Greek governess gave her
+pupil much good advice, and added her "maternal" blessing with her whole
+heart.  Rustem lifted the child on to the dromedary, carefully settling
+her in the saddle, and the little caravan set out.  Mary waved repeated
+adieux to her old governess and newly-found friend, and Eudoxia was still
+gazing after her long after she had vanished in the darkness.
+
+Then she made her way home, at first weeping silently with bowed head,
+but afterwards tearless, upright, and with a confident step.  She was in
+unusually good spirits, her heart beat higher than it had done for years;
+she felt uplifted by the sense of relief from a burthensome duty, and of
+freedom to act independently on the dictates of her own intelligence.
+She would assert herself, she would show the others that she had acted
+rightly; and when at supper-time Mary was missing, and had not returned
+even at bed-time, there was much to do to soothe and comfort them, and
+much misconstruction to endure; but she took it all patiently, and it was
+a consolation to her to bear such annoyance for her little favorite.
+
+Next morning, when she had delivered Mary's letter to Dame Joanna, her
+love and endurance were put to still severer proof; indeed, the meek-
+tempered widow allowed herself to be carried away to such an outbreak
+as hitherto would undoubtedly have led Eudoxia to request her dismissal,
+with sharp recrimination; but she took it all calmly.
+
+It was not till noon-day--when the bishop made his appearance to
+carry the child off to the convent, and was highly wrathful at Mary's
+disappearance, threatening the widow, and declaring that he would search
+the whole country through for the little girl and find her at last, that
+Eudoxia felt that the moment of her triumph had come.  She quietly
+allowed the bishop to depart, and then only did she send her last and
+best shaft at Joanna by informing her that she had in fact encouraged
+the child in her exploit on purpose to save her from the cloister.  Her
+newly-found motherly feeling made her eloquent, and with a result that
+she had almost ceased to hope for: the warm-hearted little woman, who
+had hurt her with such cruel words, threw her arms round Eudoxia's tall,
+meagre figure, put up her face to kiss her, called her a brave, clever
+girl, and begged her forgiveness for all she had said and done the day
+before.
+
+So, when the Greek went to bed, she felt as if her life had turned
+backwards and she had grown more like the happy young creature she had
+once been with her sisters in her parents' house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Paula now understood what hung over her.  It is Bishop John who had told
+her, as gently as he could, and with every assurance that he still clung
+to the hope that he could stop the hideous heathen abomination; but even
+without this she would certainly have known what was impending, for large
+crowds of people gathered every day under the prisonwalls, and loud cries
+reached her, demanding to see the "Bride of the Nile."
+
+Now and again shouts of "Hail!" came up to her; but when the demented
+creatures had shrieked themselves hoarse, and in vain, they would abuse
+her vilely.  The cry for the "Bride" never ceased from morning till
+night, and the head warder of the prison was glad that the bishop had
+relieved him of the task of explaining to Paula the meaning of the
+fateful word, whose significance she had repeatedly asked him.
+
+At first this fresh and terrible peril had startled and shaken her;
+but she did her utmost to cling to the hope held out by the bishop so
+as to appear calm, and as far as possible cheerful, in her sick father's
+presence.  And in this she succeeded so long as it was day; but at night
+she was a prey to agonizing terrors.  Then, in fancy she saw herself
+surrounded by a raging mob, dragged to the river and cast into a watery
+grave before a thousand eyes.  Then, prayer was of no avail, nor any
+resolve or effort; not the tender messages that constantly reached her
+from Orion, nor the songs he would sing for her in the brief moments of
+leisure he allowed himself; not the bishop's words of comfort, nor the
+visits of those she loved.  The warder would admit her friends as often
+as he was able; and among those who found their way to her cell were the
+Senator Justinus and his wife.
+
+By great good fortune Martina had quitted Susannah's house as soon as the
+two slaves had fallen ill and she had heard that the physician pronounced
+them to be sickening of the plague.  She had returned to her rooms in the
+inn kept by Sostratus, but her nephew Narses had remained with Katharina
+and her mother.  He was indeed intending to follow her with Heliodora;
+but, by the time they were ready to set out, Susannah, too, had fallen a
+victim to the pestilence and the authorities had forbidden all egress
+from her house.
+
+Heliodora might have succeeded in leaving in time, alone; but she would
+not abandon her unfortunate brother-in-law; for he never felt easy but in
+her presence, would allow no one else to wait on him, and would take
+neither food nor drink unless they were offered him by her.  Besides
+this, the cavalry officer, once so stalwart, had in his weakness become
+pathetically like her lost husband, and she knew that Narses had been the
+first to love her, and that it was only for his brother's sake that he
+had concealed his passion.  Her motherly instincts found an outlet in the
+care of the half-crushed, but not hopelessly lost man; and the desire to
+drag him back to life kept her busy day and night, and made her regard
+everything else as trivial and of secondary importance.  Her life had
+once more found a purpose; her efforts were for an attainable end, and
+she devoted herself to him body and soul.
+
+Her uncle had told her that Orion was bound to Paula by a supreme
+passion.--This had been a painful blow, but the Syrian girl had impressed
+her; she looked up to her, and it soothed her wounded self-esteem to
+reflect that she had lost her lover to no inferior woman.  Though her
+longing for him still surged up in many a silent hour, she felt it an
+injustice, a stint of love to her invalid charge.
+
+So far as Katharina was concerned, next to her mother, Heliodora was the
+object of her deepest anxiety.  The least word of complaint from either
+terrified her; and if Susannah sank on the divan exhausted by the heat,
+or Heliodora had a headache after watching through the night by the sick
+man, the girl would turn pale, her heart would beat painfully, she would
+paint them in fancy stricken by the plague, with burning brows and the
+horrible, fatal spots on their foreheads and cheeks; and whenever these
+alarms pressed on the young criminal she felt the ominous weight on the
+top of her head where the dead bishop's hand had rested.
+
+The senator's wife had so completely changed in her demeanor to the
+water-wagtail, since Paula's imprisonment, that to Katharina she was as a
+living reproach, so she had no regret at seeing the worthy pair depart.
+But scarcely had they left when misfortune took their place as an
+unbidden guest.
+
+The slave whose duty it was to heat the baths had reserved a portion of
+the infected garments that had been given to him to burn; his son had
+helped him, and Katharina's nurse, the mother of her foster-brother
+Anubis, had come into direct contact with her immediately after her
+return from the soothsayer's and from the bishop's.  All three had caught
+the disease.  They had all three been removed to the hospital tents--the
+slave and the nurse as corpses.
+
+But had the fearful infection been taken away with them?  If not, it
+would be the turn next of those whom she herself had pushed into the arms
+of the fell monster: First Heliodora, and then her mother!  And she,
+rightfully, ought to have fallen before them; and if the pestilence
+should seize her and death should drag her down into the grave it would
+be showing her mercy.  She was still so young, and yet she hated life.
+It had nothing in store for her but humiliation and disappointment,
+arrows which, sent from the prison, pierced her to the heart, and a
+torturing fear which never gave her any peace, day or night.
+
+When the physician came to transport the sick to the hospital in the
+desert, he mentioned incidentally that the judges had condemned Paula to
+death, and that the populace and senate, in spite of the new bishop's
+prohibition, had determined to cast her into the river in accordance with
+an ancient custom.  Orion's fate was not to be decided till the following
+day; but it would hardly be to his advantage in the eyes of his Jacobite
+judges, that his betrothed was this Syrian Melchite.
+
+At this Katharina was forced to support herself against her mother's arm-
+chair to save herself from sinking on her knees; with tingling cheeks she
+questioned the leech till he lost all patience and turned away much
+annoyed at such excessive feminine curiosity.
+
+Yes! "The other" was his betrothed before all the world; but only to
+die!  The blood rushed through her veins in a hot tide at the thought;
+she could have laughed aloud and fallen on the neck of every one she met.
+What she felt was hideous; malignant spite possessed her; but it gave her
+rapture--delicious rapture--a flower of hell, but with splendid petals
+and intoxicating perfume.  But its splendor dazzled her and its fragrance
+presently sickened her.  Sheer horror of herself came over her, and yet
+she could have shouted with joy each time that the thought flashed
+through her brain: "The other must die!"
+
+Her mother feared that her daughter, too, was about to fall ill, her eyes
+glowed so strangely and she was so restless and nervously excitable.
+
+Since Heliodora had taken the overwhelming news of Orion's betrothal to
+Paula with astonishing though sorrowful calmness, to the hot-blooded girl
+she was nothing, nobody, utterly unworthy of her notice.
+
+To spite her she had committed a crime as like murder as one snake is
+like another, and imperilled her own mother's life!  It was enough to
+drive her to despair, to make her scourge herself with rods!
+
+When Susannah kissed her at parting for the night she complained of a
+slight sore throat and of her lips, which she fancied must be swollen.
+Katharina detained her, questioned her with a trembling voice, put the
+lamp close to her, and held her breath while she examined her face, her
+neck, and her arms for the dreadful spots.  But none were to be seen and
+her mother laughed at her terrors, called her a dutiful, anxious child,
+and warned her not to be too full of fears, as they were supposed to
+invite the disease.
+
+All night the girl could not sleep.  Her malicious triumph was past;
+nothing but painful thoughts and grewsome images haunted her while awake,
+and pursued her more persistently when she dozed.  By dawn of day her
+alarm for her mother was so great that she sprang out of bed and went to
+her room; Susannah was sleeping so soundly that she did not even hear
+her.  Much relieved Katharina crept back to bed; but in the morning the
+worst had happened: Susannah could no longer leave her bed; she was
+feverish, and on her lips, the very lips which had kissed her child's
+infected hair, there were indeed, between her nose and mouth, the first
+terrible, unmistakable spots.
+
+The leech came and confirmed the fact.--The house was closed and barred.
+
+The physician and Susannah, who was still in full possession of her
+senses, wished and insisted that Katharina should withdraw to the
+gardener's house, but she refused with defiant obstinacy, saying she
+would rather die with her mother than leave her.
+
+Quite beside herself she threw herself on the sick woman, and kissed the
+spots on her mouth to divert the poison into her own blood; but the
+physician angrily pulled her away, and the sufferer reproved her with
+tears in her eyes which spoke her fervent affection.
+
+She was now allowed to nurse her mother.  Two nuns came to her
+assistance, and said, not only to the rich widow but behind her back,
+that they had never seen so devoted and loving a daughter.  Even Bishop
+John, who did not shrink from entering the houses of the sick to give
+them spiritual consolation, praised Katharina's conduct; and he, who had
+hitherto regarded the water-wagtail as no more than a bright, restless
+child, treated her with respect, talked to her as to a grown-up person,
+and answered her questions--which for the most part referred to Paula--
+gravely and fully.
+
+The prelate, who was full of admiration for Thomas' daughter, told
+Katharina how, to save her lover, she had taken a crime upon herself
+which deprived her of every claim to mercy.  The Syrian girl was only a
+Melchite, but to take another's guilt, out of love, was treading indeed
+in the footsteps of Christ, if ever anything was.  At this Katharina
+shrugged her shoulders, as though to say: "Do you think so much of that?
+Could not I gladly have done the same?"
+
+The priest saw this and admonished her kindly to be on her guard against
+spiritual pride, though she had indeed earned the right to believe
+herself capable of the sternest devotion, and did not cease to set an
+example of filial and Christian love.
+
+He departed; and Katharina, to whom every word in praise of her behavior
+to her mother, whom her sin had brought to her death-bed, was a torturing
+mockery, felt that she had deceived one more worthy soul.  She did not,
+to be sure, deserve to be charged with spiritual pride; for in this
+silent chamber, where death stood on the threshold, she thought over all
+the horrible things she had done, and told herself repeatedly that she
+was the chief and most vile of sinners.
+
+Many times she felt impelled to confide in another soul, to invite a
+pitying eye to behold and share her inward suffering.
+
+To the bishop above all, the most venerable priest she knew, she would
+most readily have confessed everything and have submitted to any penance,
+however severe, at his hands, but shame held her back; and even more did
+another more urgent consideration.  The prelate, she knew, would demand
+of her that she should forsake her old life, root out from her soul the
+old feelings and desires, and begin a new existence; but for this the
+time had not yet come: her love was still an indispensable condition of
+life, and her hatred was even more dear to her.  When Paula's terrible
+doom should indeed have overtaken her, and Katharina, her heart full of
+those old feelings, had gloated over it; when she should have been able
+to prove to Orion that her love was no less great and strong and self-
+sacrificing than that of Thomas' daughter; when she should have compelled
+him--as she would and must--to acknowledge that he had cruelly misprized
+her and sinned against her; then, and not till then, would she make peace
+with herself, with the Church, and with her Saviour.  Nay, if need be,
+she would take the veil and mourn away the rest of her young life as a
+penitent, in a convent or a solitary rock-cell.  But now--when Paula,
+his betrothed, had done this great thing for him--to perish now, with her
+love unseen, unknown, uncared for, perhaps forgotten by him, to retire
+into herself and vanish from his ken--that was too much for human nature!
+Sooner would she be lost forever; body and soul in everlasting perdition,
+a prey to Satan and hell--in which she believed as firmly as in her own
+existence.
+
+So she went on nursing her mother, saw the red spots spread over the sick
+woman's whole body--watched the fever that increased from day to day,
+from hour to hour; listened with a mixture of horror and gladness--at
+which she herself shuddered, though she fed her heart on it--to the
+reports of the preparations for the sacrifice of the Bride of the Nile,
+and to all the bishop could tell her of Paula, and her dying father, and
+Orion.  She trembled for little Mary, who had disappeared from the
+neighboring garden, till she heard that the child had fled to escape the
+cloister; each day she learnt that Heliodora, who had moved to the
+gardener's house with her invalid, had as yet escaped the pestilence;
+while in the prayers, which even now she never failed to offer up morning
+and evening, she implored the Almighty and her patron saints to rescue
+the young widow, to save her from causing the death of her own mother,
+and to forgive her for having indirectly caused that of worthy old
+Rufinus, who had always been so good to her, and of so many innocent
+creatures by her treachery.
+
+Thus the terrible days and nights of anguish passed by; and the captives
+whom the girl's sins had brought to prison were happier than she, in
+spite of the doom that threatened them.
+
+The fate of his betrothed tortured Orion more than a hundred aching
+wounds.  Paula's terrible end was fast approaching, and his brain burned
+at the mere thought.  Now, as he was told by the warder, by the bishop,
+and by Justinus, the day after to-morrow was fixed for the bridal of his
+betrothed.  In two days the bride, decked by base and mocking hands for
+an atrocious and accursed farce, would be wreathed and wedded, not to
+him, the bridegroom whom she loved, but to the Nile--the insensible,
+death-dealing element.  He rushed up and down his cell like a madman,
+and tore his lute-strings when he tried to soothe his soul with music;
+but then a calm, well-intentioned voice would come from the adjoining
+room, exhorting him not to lose hope, to trust in God, not to forget his
+duty and the task before him.  And Orion would control himself
+resolutely, pull himself together, and throw himself into his work again.
+
+Day and night were alike to him.  The senator had provided him with a
+lamp and oil.  When he was wearied out, he allowed himself no longer
+sleep on his hard couch than human nature imperatively demanded; and as
+soon as he had shaken it off he again became absorbed in maps and lists,
+plied his pen, thought, sketched, calculated, and reflected.  Then, if a
+doubt arose in his mind or he could not trust his own memory and
+judgment, he knocked at the wall, and his shrewd and experienced friend
+was at all times ready to help him to the best of his knowledge and
+opinion.  The senator went to Arsinoe for him, to gain information as
+to the seaboard from the archives preserved there; and so the work went
+forward, approaching its end, strengthening and raising his sinking
+spirit, bringing him the pleasures of success, and enabling him not
+unfrequently to forget for hours that which otherwise might have brought
+the bravest to despair.
+
+The warder, the senator or his worthy wife, Dame Joanna or Eudoxia--who
+twice had the pleasure of accompanying her--each time they visited him
+had some message or note to carry to Paula, telling her how far his work
+had progressed; and to her it was a consolation and heartfelt joy to be
+able to follow him in his labors.  And many a token of his love, esteem,
+and admiration gave her courage, when even her brave heart began to
+quail.
+
+Ah!  It was not alone her terror of a horrible death that tortured her
+soul.  Her father, whom she considered it her greatest joy in life to
+have found again, was fading beyond all hope under her loving hands.
+His poor wounded lungs refused its service.  It was with great difficulty
+that he could swallow a few drops of wine and mouthfuls of food; and in
+these last days his clear mind had lain as it were under a shroud--
+perhaps it was happier so, as she told herself and as her friends
+said to comfort her.
+
+He, too, had heard the cries of: "Hail to the Bride of the Nile!"
+
+"Bring out the Bride!"
+
+"Away with the Bride of the Nile!"  Though he had no suspicion of their
+meaning, they had haunted his thoughts incessantly during the last few
+days; and the terrible, strange words had seemed to charm his fancy,
+for to Paula's distress he would murmur them to himself tenderly or
+thoughtfully as the case might be.
+
+Many times the idea occurred to her that she might put an end to her life
+before the worst should befall, before she became a spectacle for a whole
+nation, to be jeered at and made a delightful and exciting show to rouse
+their cruelty or their compassion.  But dared she do it?  Dared she defy
+the Most High, the Lord in whom she put her trust, into whose hand she
+commended herself in a thousand dumb but fervent prayers.
+
+No.  To the very last she would trust and hope.  And wonderful to say!
+Each time she had reached the very limits of her powers of endurance,
+feeling she could certainly bear no more and must succumb, something came
+to her to revive her faith or her courage: a message would be brought her
+from Orion, or Dame Joanna or Pulcheria came to see her; the bishop
+sought an interview, or her father's mind rallied and he could speak to
+her in beautiful and stimulating words.  Often the warder would announce
+the senator and his wife, and their vigorous and healthy minds always hit
+on the very thing she needed.  Martina, particularly, with her subtle
+motherly instinct, always understood whatever was agitating her; and
+once she showed her a letter from Heliodora, in which she spoke of the
+calmness she had won through nursing their dear invalid, and said how
+thankful she was to see the reward of her care and toil.  Narses was
+already quite another man, and she could know no higher task than that of
+reconciling the hapless man to life, nay, of making it dear to him again.
+She no longer thought of Orion but as she might of a beautiful song she
+once had heard in a delightful hour.
+
+Thus time passed, even for the imprisoned maiden, till only two nights
+remained before St. Serapis' day when the fearful marriage was to be
+solemnized.
+
+It was evening when the bishop came to visit Paula.  He regarded it as
+his duty to tell her that the execution of her sentence was fixed for the
+day after to-morrow.  He should hope and believe till the last, but his
+own power over the misguided mob was gone from him.  In any case, and if
+the worst should befall, he would be at her side to protect her by the
+dignity of his office.  He had come now, so as to give her time to
+prepare her self in every respect.  The care of her noble father till his
+last hour on earth he would take upon himself as a dear and sacred duty.
+
+Though she had believed herself surely prepared long since for the worst,
+this news fell on her like a thunderbolt.  What lay before her seemed so
+monstrous, so unexampled, that it was impossible that she ever could look
+forward to it firmly and calmly.
+
+For a long time she could not help clinging desperately to her faithful
+Betta, and it was only by degrees that she so far recovered herself as to
+be able to speak to the bishop, and thank him.  He, however, could only
+lament his inability to earn her fullest gratitude, for the patriarch's
+reply to his complaint of those who promised rescue to the people by the
+instrumentality of a heathen abomination--a document on which he had
+founded his highest hopes for her--had had a different result from that
+which he had expected.  The patriarch, to be sure, condemned the
+abominable sacrifice, but he did it in a way which lacked the force
+necessary to terrify and discourage the misled mob.  However, he would
+try what effect it might have on the people, and a number of scribes were
+at work to make copies of it in the course of the night.  These would be
+sent to the Senators next morning, posted up in the market-place and
+public buildings, and distributed to the people; but he feared all this
+would have no effect.
+
+"Then help me to prepare for death," said Paula gloomily.  "You are not
+a priest of my confession, but no church has a more worthy minister.
+If you can absolve me in the name of your Redeemer, mine will pardon me.
+We look at Him, it is true, with different eyes, but He is the Saviour of
+us both, nevertheless."  A contradictory reply struggled for utterance in
+the strict Jacobite's mind, but at such a moment he felt he must repress
+it; he only answered:
+
+"Speak, daughter, I am listening."
+
+And she poured forth all her soul, as though he had been a priest of her
+own creed, and his eyes grew moist as he heard this confession of a pure
+and loving heart, yearning for all that was highest and best.  He
+promised her the mercy of the Redeemer, and when he had ended with
+"Amen," and blessed her, he looked down at the ground for some minutes
+and presently said, "Follow me, Child."
+
+"Whither?"  she asked in surprise; for she thought that her last hour had
+already come, and that he was about to lead her away to the place of
+execution, or to her watery, ever-flowing tomb; but he smiled as he
+replied: "No, child.  To-day I have only the pleasing duty of blessing
+your betrothal before God; if only you will promise not to estrange your
+husband from the faith of his fathers--for what will not a man sacrifice
+to win the love of a woman.--You promise?  Then I will take you to your
+Orion."
+
+He rapped on the door of the cell, and when the warder had opened it he
+whispered his orders; Paula followed him silently and with blushing
+cheeks, and in a few minutes she was clasped to her lover's breast while,
+for the first time--and perhaps the last--their lips met in a kiss.
+
+The prelate gave them a few minutes together; when he had blessed them
+both and solemnized their betrothal, he led her back to her cell.
+However, she had hardly time to thank him out of the fulness of her
+overflowing heart, when a town-watchman came to fetch him to see
+Susannah; her last hour was at hand, if not already past.  John at once
+went with the messenger, and Paula drew a deep breath as she saw him
+depart.  Then she threw herself on to her nurse's shoulders, crying:
+
+"Now, come what may!  Nothing can divide us; not even death!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The bishop was too late.  He found the widow Susannah a corpse; standing
+at the head of the bed was little Katharina, as pale as death,
+speechless, tearless, utterly annihilated.  He kindly tried to cheer her,
+and to speak words of comfort; but she pushed him away, tore herself from
+him, and before he could stop her, she had fled out of the room.
+
+Poor child!  He had seen many a loving daughter mourning for her mother,
+but never such grief as this.  Here, thought he, were two human souls all
+in all to each other, and hence this overwhelming sorrow.
+
+Katharina had escaped to her own room, had thrown herself on the couch
+--cowering so close that no one entering the room would have taken the
+undistinguishable heap for a human being, a grown up, passionately
+suffering girl.
+
+It was very hot, and yet a cold shiver ran through her slender frame.
+Was she now attacked by the pestilence?  No; it would be too merciful of
+Fate to take such pity on her woes.
+
+The mother was dead, dragged to the grave by her own daughter.  The
+disease had first shown itself on her lips; and how many times had the
+physician expressed his surprise at the plague having broken out in this
+healthy quarter of the town, and in a house kept so scrupulously clean.
+She knew at whose bidding the avenging angel had entered there, and whose
+criminal guile had trifled with him.  The words "murdered your mother"
+haunted her, and she remembered the law of the ancients which refused to
+prescribe a punishment for the killing of parents, because they
+considered such a monstrous deed impossible.
+
+A scornful smile curled her lip.  Laws!  Principles!  Was there one that
+she had not defied?  She had contemned God, meddled with magic, borne
+false witness, committed murder--and as to the one law with promise,
+which, if Philippus was right, was exactly the same in the code of her
+forefathers as on the tables of Moses, how had she kept that?  Her own
+mother was no more, and by her act!
+
+All through this frightful retrospect she had never ceased to shiver and,
+as this was becoming unendurable, she took to walking up and down and
+seeking excuses for her sinful doings: It was not her mother, but
+Heliodora whom she had wished to kill; why had malicious Fate....?
+
+Here she was interrupted, for the young widow, who had heard the sad
+news, sought her out to comfort her and offer her services.  She spoke
+to the girl with real affection;  but her sweet, low tones reminded
+Katharina of that evening after the old bishop's death; and when
+Heliodora put out her arm to draw her to her, she shrank from her,
+begging her in a dry, hoarse voice, not to touch her for her clothes were
+infected.  She wanted no comfort; all she asked was to be left alone--
+quite alone--nothing more.  The words were hard and unkind, and as the
+door closed on the young woman Katharina's eyes glared after her.
+
+Why had this doom passed over Heliodora's head and demanded the sacrifice
+of one whose loss she could never cease to mourn?
+
+This brought her mother vividly to her mind.  She flew back to her death-
+bed and fell on her knees--but even there she could not bear to stay
+long, so she wandered into the garden and visited every spot where she
+and her mother had been together.  But there were such strange crackings
+in the shrubs, and the trees and bushes cast such uncanny shadows that
+she hailed daybreak as a deliverance.
+
+She was on her way back to the house when her foster-brother Anubis came
+limping to meet her.  Poor fellow!  She had made a cripple of him, too,
+and his mother had died through her fault.
+
+The lad spoke to her, giving expression to his sympathy, and she accepted
+it; but she said such strange things, and answered him so utterly at
+random, that he began to fear that grief had turned her brain.  She went
+on to ask him point-blank how much money she now had, and as he happened
+to know approximately, he could tell her; she clasped her hands, for how
+could any one human being who was not a king possess such enormous
+wealth!  Finally she enquired whether he knew how a will should be drawn
+up, and that, too, he answered affirmatively.
+
+She made him describe it all, and then he added that the signature must
+be made valid by those of two witnesses; but she, he added, was too young
+to be thinking of making her will.
+
+"Why?"  said she.  "Is Paula much older than I am?"
+
+"And the day after to-morrow," the boy went on, "she is to be cast into
+the Nile.  All the people call her the Bride of the Nile."
+
+At this that hideous, malignant smile again curled her lips, but she
+hastily suppressed it and walked straight on into the house.  At the door
+he timidly asked her whether he might once more look on his mistress; but
+she was obliged to forbid it for fear of infection.  However, he proudly
+replied: "What you do not fear, has no terrors for me," and he followed
+her to the side of the bed where the corpse now lay washed and in fine
+array; and when he saw Katharina kiss the dead woman's hand he, too, as
+soon as she looked away, pressed his lips on the place hers had touched.
+Then he sat down by the bed and remained there till she sent him away.
+
+Before noon the bishop arrived to perform the last rites.  He found the
+body surrounded by beautiful flowers.  Katharina had been out in the
+garden again and had cut all the rarest and finest; and though she had
+allowed the gardener to carry the basket for her, she would not have him
+help her in gathering them.  The feeling that she was doing something for
+her mother had been a comfort to her; still, by day everything about her
+seemed even more intolerable than by night.  Everything looked so large,
+so coarse, so insistent, so menacing, and reminded her at every step of
+some injustice or some deed of which she was ashamed.  Every eye, she
+fancied, must see through her; and now and then it seemed as though the
+pillars of the great banqueting-hall, where her mother still lay, were
+tottering, and the ceiling about to fall in and crush her.
+
+She answered the bishop's questions absently and often quite at random,
+and the old man supposed that she was stunned by her great sorrow; so to
+give her thoughts a new direction he began telling her about Paula, and
+believing that Katharina was fond of her, he confided to her that he had
+taken Paula, the day before, to Orion's cell, and consecrated their
+betrothal.
+
+At this her face was convulsed in a manner that alarmed the bishop; a
+fearful tumult raged in her soul, her bosom rose and fell spasmodically,
+and all she could utter was the question: "But they will sacrifice her
+all the same?"
+
+The bishop thought he understood.  She was horror stricken by the idea of
+the sudden, cruel end that hung over the young bride, and he replied
+sadly; "I shall not be able to restrain the wretches; still, no means
+shall remain untried.  The patriarch's rescript, condemning this mad
+crime, shall be made public to-day, and I will read and expound it at the
+Curia, and try to give it keener emphasis.--Would you like to read it?"
+
+As she eagerly assented, the prelate signed to the acolyte who had waited
+on him with the holy vessels, and he produced from a packet a written
+sheet which he handed to Katharina.  As soon as she was alone she read
+the patriarch's epistle; at first superficially, then more carefully, and
+at last in deep attention and growing interest, stirred by it to strange
+thoughts, till at length her eyes flashed and her breath came fast, as
+though this paper referred to herself, and could seal her fate for life.
+
+When the bearers came in to fetch away the body she was still sitting
+there, gazing as if spell-bound at the papyrus; but she sprang up, shook
+herself, and then bid farewell to the cold rigid form of the mother on
+whose warm heart she had so often rested, and to whom she had been the
+dearest thing on earth--and even then the solace of tears was denied her.
+
+She no longer suffered the deep remorse that had tormented her; for she
+felt now that her intercourse with her last mother had not been put an
+end to by death; that after a short parting they would meet again--soon
+perhaps, perhaps even to-morrow--meet for a fulness of speech, an
+outpouring of the heart, a revelation of all the past more open and
+unreserved than could ever be between mortal beings, even between mother
+and daughter.  And when she who was sleeping there, blind, deaf, and
+senseless, should awake again, up there, with eyes clearer than those of
+men below, and the ears and senses of a spiritual being to see and hear
+and judge all she had known and done, all she had felt and made others
+feel--then, she told herself, her mother might perhaps blame her and
+punish her more than she had ever done on earth, but she would also clasp
+her more closely to her heart and comfort her more earnestly.
+
+She whispered gently in her ear as if she were still alive: "Wait awhile,
+only wait: I shall come soon and tell you everything!"
+
+And then she kissed her so passionately and recklessly that the nuns were
+shocked and dragged her away, ordering the bearers to close the coffin.
+They obeyed, and when the wooden lid fell over the sleeping form,
+shutting it in with a slam, and hiding it from the girl's sight, the
+barrier gave way which had hitherto restrained her tears and she began to
+weep bitterly; now, too, the feeling that she had indeed lost her mother
+took complete possession of her--the sense of being an orphan and alone,
+quite alone in the wide world.
+
+She saw and heard no more of what took place round the beloved dead; for
+when she took her hands from her face streaming with tears, the house of
+the rich widow no longer sheltered its mistress; her remains had been
+borne away to the nearest mortuary.  The law forbade its being any longer
+kept within doors, but did not allow of its being buried till night fell.
+The child might not follow her own mother to the cemetery.
+
+With a drooping head Katharina withdrew to her room and there stood
+looking out into the garden.  It all was hers now; she was mistress of it
+all and of much besides, as free and unfettered to command as hitherto
+she had been over the birds, her little dog, or the jewels that lay on
+her toilet-table.  She could make hundreds happy with a word, a wave of
+the hand--but not herself.  She had never felt so grown-up, independent,
+womanly, nay powerful, and at the same time so unutterably wretched and
+helpless as she felt in this hour.
+
+What did she care for all these vanities?  They could not suffice to
+check one sigh of disappointed yearning.
+
+She had parted from her mother with a promise; the fervent longing that
+filled her soul was never still; and now the patriarch's letter had given
+her a hint as to how she might fulfil the one and silence the other.  She
+hastily took the document up again, and read it through once more.
+
+Its instructions were precise to stop the proceedings of the misguided
+Memphites with stern promptitude.  It explained that the death of the
+Christ Jesus, who shed His blood to redeem the world, had satisfied the
+need for a human victim.  Throughout the wide realms which the Cross
+overshadowed with blessing human sacrifice must therefore be accounted a
+useless and accursed abomination.  It went on to point out how the
+heathen had devised their gods in the image of weak, sinful, earthly
+beings, and chosen victims in accordance with this idea.  "But our God,"
+it said, "is as high above men as the Spirit is above the flesh, and the
+sacrifice He demands is not of the flesh, but of the spirit.  Will He not
+turn away in wrath and sorrow from the blinded Christians of Memphis who,
+in their straits, feel and are about to act like the cruel and foolish
+heathen?  They take for their victim a heretic and a stranger, deeming
+that that will diminish the abomination in the eyes of the Lord; but it
+moves Him to loathing all the same, for no human blood may stain the pure
+and sacred altars of our mild faith, which gives life and not death.
+
+"Ask your blind and misguided flock, my brother: Can the Father of Love
+feel joy at the sight of one of His children, even an erring one,
+suffocated in the waters to the honor of the Most High, while struggling,
+and cursing her executioners?
+
+"If, indeed, there were a pure maiden, possessed with the blessed
+intoxication of the love of God, who was ready to follow the example of
+Him who redeemed man by His death, to fling herself into the waters while
+she cried to Heaven with her dying breath: 'Take me and my innocence as
+an offering, O Lord!  Release my people from their extremity!'--that
+would be a victim indeed; and perchance, the Lord might say: 'I will
+accept it; but the will alone is enough.  No child of mine may cast away
+the life that I have lent her as the most sacred and precious of gifts.'"
+
+The letter ended with pious exhortations to the community.
+
+Then a maiden who should voluntarily sacrifice herself in the river to
+save the people in their need would be a victim pleasing in the sight of
+the Lord--so said the Man of God, through whose mouth the Most High
+spoke.  And this opinion, this hint, was to Katharina like a distaff from
+which she spun a lengthening thread to warp to the loom and weave from it
+a tangible tissue.
+
+She would be the maiden whom the patriarch had imagined--the real, true
+Bride of the Nile, inspired to cast off her young life to save her people
+in their need.  In this there was expiation such as Heaven might accept;
+this would release her from the burthen of life that weighed upon her,
+and would reunite her to her mother; in this way she could show her lover
+and the bishop and all the world the immensity of her self-sacrifice,
+which was in nothing behind that of "the other"--the much-vaunted
+daughter of Thomas!  She would do the great deed before Paula's eyes, in
+sight of all the people.  But Orion must know whose image she bore in her
+heart and for whose sake she made that leap from blooming life into a
+watery grave.
+
+Oh! it was wonderful, splendid!  Would she not thus compel him inevitably
+to remember her whenever he should think of Paula?  Yes, she would force
+him to allow her image to dwell in his soul, inseparable from that
+"other;" and would not such an unparalleled act add such height to her
+figure, that it would be equal to that of her Syrian rival in the
+estimation of all men--even in his?
+
+She now began to long for the supreme moment.  Her vain little heart
+laughed in anticipation of the delight of being seen, praised and admired
+by all.  Tomorrow she, her little self, would tower above all the world;
+and the more she felt the oppressive heat of the scorching day, the more
+delicious it seemed to look forward to finding rest from the torments of
+life in the cool element.
+
+She saw no difficulties in the way of her achievement; she was mistress
+now, and her slaves and servants must obey her orders.  At the same time
+she remembered, too, to protect her large possessions from falling into
+the hands of relations for whom she did not care; with a firm hand she
+drew up a will in which she bequeathed part of her fortune to her uncle
+Chrysippus, small portions to her foster-brother Anubis, and to Rufinus'
+widow, to whom she owed reparation for great wrong; then the larger half,
+and she owned many millions, she bequeathed to her dear friend Orion,
+whom she freely forgave, and who, she hoped, would see that even in the
+little "water-wagtail" there had been room for some greatness.  She
+begged him also to take her house, since she had not been altogether
+guiltless of the destruction of the home of his fathers.
+
+The condition she attached to this bequest showed the same keen, alert
+spirit that had guided her through life.
+
+She knew that the patriarch's indignation might be fatal to the young
+man, so to serve as a mediator, and at the same time to ensure for
+herself the prayers of the Church, which she desired, she enjoined Orion
+to bestow the greater part of his inheritance on the patriarch for the
+Church and for benevolent purposes.  But not at once, not for ten years,
+and in instalments of which Orion himself was to determine the
+proportion.  In the event of his dying within the next three years all
+his claims were to be transferred to her uncle Chrysippus.  She added a
+request to the Church, to which she belonged with her whole heart, that
+every year on her saint's day and her mother's they should be prayed for
+in every church in the land.  A chapel was to be erected on the scene of
+her self-immolation, and if the patriarch thought her worthy of the
+honor, it was to bear the name of the Chapel of Susannah and Katharina.
+
+She gave all her slaves their freedom and devised legacies to all the
+officials of her household.
+
+As she sat for long hours of serious meditation, drawing up this last
+will, she smiled frequently with satisfaction.  Then she copied it out
+fair, and finally called the physician and all the free servants in the
+house to witness her signature.
+
+Though no one had suspected the "water-wagtail" of such forethought, it
+was no matter of surprise that the young heiress, shut up in the plague-
+stricken house, should dispose of her estates, and before night-fall the
+physician brought Alexander, the chief of the Senate, to the garden gate
+by her desire, and there they spoke to each other without opening it.  He
+was an old friend of her father's, and since the death of the Mukaukas,
+had been her guardian; he now agreed to stand as her Kyrios, and as such
+he ratified her will and the signature, though she would not allow him to
+read the document.
+
+Finally she went to the slaves quarters, from whence a few more sufferers
+had been removed to the Necropolis, and desired her boatman to get the
+holiday barge in readiness early in the morning, as she purposed seeing
+the ceremonial from the river.  She gave particular orders to the
+gardener as to how it was to be decorated, and what flowers he was to cut
+for her personal adornment.
+
+She went to bed far less excited than she had been the night before, and
+before she had ended her evening prayer, slumber overtook her weary
+brain.
+
+When she awoke at sunrise, the large and splendid boat, which her father
+had had built at great cost in Alexandria, was manned and ready to put
+out.  No one interfered to prevent her embarking with Anubis and a few
+female servants, for all the guards who had surrounded the house till
+yesterday had been withdrawn to do duty at the great ceremonial of the
+marriage and sacrifice, since a popular tumult was not unlikely to arise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+A great number of persons had collected during the night on the quay near
+Nesptah's inn.  The crowd was increasing every minute, and in spite of
+the intense heat, not a Memphite could bear to stop within doors, Men,
+women and children were flocking to the scene of the festival; they came
+in thousands from the neighboring towns, hamlets and villages, to witness
+the unprecedented sacrifice which was to put an end to the misery of the
+land.  Who had ever heard of such a marriage?  What a privilege, what a
+happiness, to be so fortunate as to see it!
+
+The senate had not been idle and had done all in their power to surround
+it with magnificence and to enable as many as possible to enjoy the
+pageant, which had been planned with a lavish hand and liberal
+munificence.
+
+Round the cove by Nesptah's inn a semi-circular wooden stand had been
+constructed, on which thousands found seats or standing-room.  Stalls
+furnished with hangings were erected in the middle of the tribune for the
+authorities and their families as well as for the leading Arab officials,
+and arm-chairs were placed in them for the Vekeel, for the Kadi, for
+the head of the senate, for old Horapollo and also for the Christian
+priesthood, though it was well known that they would not be present
+at the ceremony.
+
+The lower classes, who could not afford to pay for admission to these
+seats, had established themselves on the banks of the river; wandering
+dealers had followed them, and wherever the crowd was densest they had
+displayed their wares--light refreshments or solid food--on two-wheeled
+trucks, or on little carpets spread on the ground.  In the tribune itself
+the cries of the water-sellers were incessant as they offered filtered
+Nile water and fruit syrups for sale.
+
+The parched tops of the palms, where turtle doves, lapwings and sparrow-
+hawks were wont to perch, were crowded with the vagabond boys of the
+town, who whiled away the time by pulling the withered and diseased dates
+from the great clumps and flinging them down on the bystanders below,
+till the guard took aim at them with their arrows and stopped the game.
+
+The centre of attraction to all eyes was a wooden platform or pontoon,
+built far out into the stream; from thence the bride was to be flung into
+the watery embrace of the expectant bridegroom.  Here the masters of the
+ceremonies had put forth their best efforts, and it was magnificently
+decorated with hangings and handkerchiefs, palm-leaves and flags; with
+heavy garlands of tamarisk and willow, mingled with bright blossoms of
+the lotos and mallow, lilies and roses; with devices emblematic of the
+province, and other gilt ornaments.  Only the furthest end of it was
+unadorned and without even a railing, that there might be nothing to
+intercept the view of the "marriage."
+
+Three hours before noon none were absent but those whose places were
+secured, and ere long curiosity brought them also to the spot.  The town-
+watch found it required all their efforts to keep the front ranks of the
+people from being pushed into the river by those behind; indeed, this
+accident could not be everywhere guarded against; but, thanks to the
+shallow state of the water, no one was the worse.  But the cries of those
+who were in danger nevertheless drowned the music of the bands performing
+on raised platforms and the shouts of applause which rose on all sides to
+hail Horapollo--who was here, there, everywhere on his white ass as brisk
+as a lad--or to greet some leading official.
+
+And now and again loud cries of anguish were heard, or the closely-packed
+throng parted with exclamations of horror.  A citizen had had a
+sunstroke, or had been seized by the plague.  Then the fugitives dragged
+others away with them; screaming mothers trying to save their little ones
+from the crush on one hand and the contagion on the other, oversetting
+one dealer's truck, smashing the eggs and cakes of another.  A whole
+party were pushed into a deep but half-dried up water-course; the
+guardians of the peace flourished their staves, yelling and making their
+victims yell in their efforts to restore order--but all this hardly
+affected the vast body of spectators, and suddenly peace reigned, the
+confusion subsided, the shrieks were silenced.  Those who were doomed
+might fall or die, be crushed or plague-stricken.  Trumpet calls and
+singing were heard approaching from the town: the procession, the Bridal
+procession was coming!  Not a man but would have perished rather than be
+deprived of seeing a single act of this stupendous drama.
+
+Those Arabs--what fools they were!  Besides the Vekeel only three of
+their magnates were present, and those men whom no one knew.  Even the
+Kadi was nowhere to be seen; and he must have forbidden the Moslem women
+to come, for not a single veiled beauty of the harem was visible.  Not
+one Egyptian woman would have failed to appear if the plague had not kept
+so many imprisoned in their houses.  Such a thing would never be seen
+again; this day's doings would be a tale to tell to future great-
+grandchildren!
+
+The music and singing came nearer and nearer; and it did not indeed sound
+as if it were escorting a hapless creature to a fearful end.  Blast after
+blast rang out from the trumpets, filling the air with festive defiance;
+cheerful bridal songs came nearer and nearer to the listeners, the shrill
+chorus of boys and maidens sounding above the deeper and stronger chant
+of youths and men of all ages; flutes piped a gay invitation to gladness;
+the dull roar of drums muttered like the distant waves in time to a
+march, broken by the clang of cymbals and the tinkle of bells hung around
+tambourines held high by girlish hands which struck, rattled and waved
+them above their flowing curls; lute players discoursed sweet music on
+the strings; and as this vast tide of mingled tones came closer, behind
+it there was still more music and more song.
+
+To the ear the procession seemed endless, and the eye soon confirmed the
+impression.
+
+All were listening, gazing, watching to see the Bride and her escort.
+Every eye seemed compelled to turn in the same direction; and presently
+there came: first the trumpeters on spirited horses, and these ranged
+themselves on each side of the road by the shore leading to the scene of
+the "marriage."  In front of them the choir of women took their stand to
+the left and, on the right, the men who had marched after them.  All
+alike were arrayed in light sea-green garments, and loaded with lotos-
+flowers.  The women's hair, twined with white blossoms, flowed over their
+shoulders; the men carried bunches of papyrus and reeds;--they
+represented river gods that had risen from the stream.
+
+Then came boys and bearded men, in white robes, with panther-skins on
+their shoulders, as the heathen priests had been wont to wear them.  They
+were headed by two old men with long white beards, one holding a silver
+cup and the other a golden one, ready to fling them into the waves as a
+first offering, according to the practise of their forefathers, as
+Horapollo had described and ordered it.  These went on to the pontoon, to
+its farthest end, and took their place on one side of the platform whence
+the Bride was to be cast into the river.  Behind them came a large troop
+of flute-players and drummers, followed by fifty maidens holding
+tambourines, and fifty men all dressed and carrying emblems as followers
+of Dionysus, or Osiris-Bacchus, who had been worshipped here in the time
+of the Romans; with these came the drunken Silenus, goathoofed Satyrs and
+Pan, with his reed-pipes, all riding grey asses strangely bedaubed with
+yellow.
+
+Then followed giraffes, elephants, ostriches, antelopes, gazelles; even
+some tamed lions and panthers were led past the wondering crowd; for this
+had been done in the famous procession in honor of the second Ptolemy,
+described by Callixenus of Rhodes.
+
+Next came a large car drawn by twelve black horses, and on it a
+symbolical group of Famine and Pestilence overthrown; they were
+surrounded by shrieking black children, with pointed wings on their
+shoulders and horns on their foreheads, bound to stakes to represent the
+hosts of hell--a performance which they tried to make at once ghastly and
+droll.
+
+On another car the Goddess of the Inundation was to be seen.  She sat
+amid sheaves, fruits, and garlands of vine; while round her were groups
+of children with apples and corn, pomegranates and bunches of dates,
+wine-jars and cups in their hands.
+
+Presently there appeared in a large shell, as though lounging in a bath,
+the goddess of health; she was drawn by eight snow-white horses, and held
+in one hand a golden goblet and in the other a caduceus.  After her came
+the river-god Nile, the bridegroom of the marriage, studied from the
+famous statue carried away from Alexandria by the Romans: a splendid and
+mighty bearded man, resting against an urn.  Sixteen naked children--the
+sixteen ells that the river must rise for its overflow to bless the land
+--played round his herculean form, and a bridal wreath of lotos-flowers
+crowned his flowing locks.  This car, which was decorated with
+crocodiles, sheaves, dates, grapes, and shells, was hailed with shouts of
+enthusiasm; it was escorted by old men in the costume of the heathen
+priesthood.
+
+Behind this came more music and singers, with a troop of young men and
+maidens led by lute-players singing.  These too were dressed as the
+genie, and nymphs of the river and were the groomsmen and bridesmaids in
+attendance on the betrothed.
+
+The longer the procession lasted and the nearer the looked-for victim
+approached, the more eagerly attent were the gazing multitude.
+
+When this group of youths and maidens had gone by, there was hardly a
+sound to be heard in the tribune and among the crowd.  No one felt the
+fierce heat of the sun, no one heeded the thirst that parched every
+tongue; all eyes were bent in one direction; only the black Vekeel, whose
+colossal form towered up where he stood, occasionally sent a sinister and
+anxious glance towards the town.  He expected to see smoke rising from
+the quarter near the prison, and suddenly his lips parted and he
+displayed his dazzlingly white teeth in a scornful laugh.  That which he
+looked for had come to pass; the little grey cloud which he discerned
+grew blacker, and then, in the heart of it, rose a crimson glow which did
+not take its color from the sun.  But of all those thousands he was the
+only one who looked behind him and observed it.
+
+The bride's attendants had by this time taken their station on the
+pontoon; here came another band of youths with panther skins on their
+shoulders; and now--at last, at last--a car came swaying along, drawn by
+eight coal-black oxen dressed with green ostrich-feathers and water-
+plants.
+
+The car was shaded by a tall canopy, supported by four poles, against
+which leaned four men in the robes of the heathen priesthood; this awning
+was lavishly decorated with wreaths of lotos and reeds, and fenced about
+with papyrus, bulrushes, tall grasses and blossoming river-weeds.
+Beneath it sat the queen of the festival--the Bride of the Nile.
+
+Robed in white and closely veiled, she was quite motionless.  Her long,
+thick brown hair fell over her shoulders; at her feet lay a wreath, and
+rare rose-colored lotos-flowers were strewn on the car.
+
+The bishop had been sitting at her side, the first Christian priest,
+certainly, of all the swarms of monks and ecclesiastics in Memphis, who
+had ever appeared at such a scene of heathen abomination.  He was now
+standing, looking down at the crowd with a deeply knit brow and menacing
+gaze.  What good had come of the penitential sermons in all the churches,
+of his and his vicar's warnings and threats?  In spite of all
+remonstrance he had mounted the car with the condemned victim,
+after administering the last consolations to her soul.  It might
+cost him his life, but he would keep his promise.
+
+In her hand Paula held two roses: one was Orion's last greeting delivered
+by Martina; the other Pulcheria had brought her early in the morning.
+Yesterday, in a lucid moment, her dying father had given her his fondest
+blessing, little knowing what hung over her; to-day he had not come to
+himself, and had neither noticed nor returned her parting kiss.  Quite
+unconscious, he had been moved from the prison out of doors and to the
+house of Rufinus.  Dame Joanna would not forego the privilege of giving
+him a resting-place and taking care of him till the end.
+
+Orion's last note was placed in Paula's hands just before she set out;
+it informed her that his task was now successfully ended.  He had been
+told that it was to-morrow, and not to-day, that the hideous act would be
+accomplished; and it was a consolation to her to know that he was spared
+the agony of following her in fancy in her fearful progress.
+
+She had allowed the women who came to clothe her in bridal array to
+perform their task; among them was Emau, the chief warder's wife, and her
+overflowing compassion had done Paula good.  But even in the prison-yard
+she had felt it unendurable to exhibit herself decked in her bridal
+wreaths to the gaping multitude; she had torn them from her and thrown
+them on the ground.
+
+How long--how interminably long--had the road to the river appeared; but
+she had never raised her eyes to look at the curious crowd, never ceased
+lifting up her heart in prayer; and when her proud blood boiled, or
+despair had almost taken possession of her, she had grasped the bishop's
+hand and he had never wearied of encouraging her and exhorting her to
+cling to love and faith, and not even yet abandon all hope.
+
+Thus they at last reached the pontoon at whose further end life would
+begin for her in another world.  The shouts of the crowd were as loud,
+as triumphant, as expectant as ever; music and singing mingled with the
+roar of thousands of spectators; she allowed herself to be lifted from
+the car as though she were stunned, and followed the young men and
+maidens who formed the bridal train, and in alternate choruses sang the
+finest nuptial song of Sappho the fair Lesbian.
+
+The bishop now made an attempt to address the people, but he was soon
+reduced to silence.  So he once more joined Paula, and hand in hand they
+went on to the pier.
+
+All she had in her of strength, pride, and heroic courage she summoned to
+her aid to enable her to walk these last few paces with her head erect,
+and without tottering; she had gone half way along the wooden structure,
+with a mien as lofty and majestic as though she were marching to command
+the obedience of the mob, when hoofs came thundering after her on the
+boards.
+
+Old Horapollo, on his white ass, had overtaken her and stopped her on her
+road.  Breathless, bathed in perspiration, scornful and triumphant, he
+desired her to remove her veil, and ordered the bishop to leave her and
+give up his place to the man who represented Father Nile--a gigantic
+farrier who followed him, somewhat embarrassed in his costume, but very
+ready to perform his part to the end.
+
+The priest and Paula, however, refused to obey.  At this the old man tore
+the veil from her face and signed to the Nile-God; he stepped forward and
+assumed his rights, after bowing respectfully to the prelate--who was
+forced to make way--and then led the Bride to the end of the platform.
+Here the two elders who had headed the procession in honor of Bacchus,
+cast the gold cups as offerings into the river, and then a lawyer, in the
+costume of a heathen priest, proceeded to expound, in a well-set speech,
+the meaning of this betrothal and sacrifice.  He took Paula's hand to
+place in that of the farrier, who made ready to cast her into the river
+for which he stood proxy.
+
+But an obstacle intervened before he could do so.  A large and splendid
+barge had drawn up close to the platform, and shouts were heard from the
+tribune and from the mob which had till now looked on in breathless
+suspense and profound silence:
+
+"Susannah's barge!"
+
+"Look at the Nile, look at the river!"
+
+"It is the water-wagtail--Philammon's rich heiress!"
+
+"A pretty sight!"
+
+"Another Bride--a second Bride!"
+
+And the gaze of the multitude was now, as one eye, fixed on Katharina.
+
+Susannah's handsome barge had been passing up and down near the platform
+for the last hour, and the guards on duty had several times desired that
+it was to be kept at a distance from the scene of the "marriage;" but in
+vain; and they in their little boats were not strong enough to take
+active measures against the larger vessel manned by fifty rowers.  It had
+now steered quite close to the pontoon, and the splendid gilding and
+carving, the tall deck-house supported on silver pillars, and the crimson
+embroidered sails would have been a gorgeous feast for the eye, but that
+the black flag floating from the mast gave it a melancholy and gloomy
+aspect.
+
+Within the cabin Katharina had made her waiting-women dress her in white
+and deck her with white flowers-myrtle, roses and lotos; but she
+vouchsafed no reply to their anxious enquiries.
+
+The maid who fastened the flowers on her bosom could feel her mistress's
+heart beating under her hand, and the lotos-blossoms which drooped from
+her shoulder rose and fell as though they were already rocking on the
+waves of the Nile.  Her lips, too, never ceased moving, and her cheeks
+were as pale as death.
+
+"What is she going to do?"  her attendants asked each other.
+
+Her mother dead only yesterday, and now she chose to be present at this
+ceremonial, desiring the steersman to run close to the platform and keep
+near to it, where all the world could see her.  But she evidently wished
+to display herself to the people in all her finery and be admired, for
+she presently went up on the roof of the deck-house.  And she looked
+lovely, as lovely as a guileless angel, as she mounted the steps with
+childlike diffidence-timidly, but with wide open eyes, as though
+something grand was awaiting her there--something she had long yearned
+for with her whole heart.
+
+Anubis had to help her up the last steps, for her knees gave way; but
+once at the top she sent him down again to remain below with the others,
+as she wished to be alone.  The lad was accustomed to obey; and Katharina
+now stepped on a seat close to the side of the boat, turned to Paula,
+whom she was now rapidly approaching, and held out to her and the bishop
+two tall lily-stems covered with splendid blossoms.  At the very moment
+when the farrier was measuring by eye the distance between the platform
+and the barge, and had judged it impossible to cast the Bride into the
+stream till the vessel had moved on, Katharina cried out:
+
+"Reverend Father John--and all of you!  Take me, me and not the daughter
+of Thomas!  It is I, not she--I am the true Bride of the Nile.  Of my own
+free will--hear me, John!--of my own free will I am ready to give my life
+for my hapless land and the misery of the people, and the patriarch said
+that such a sacrifice as mine would be acceptable to Heaven.  Farewell!
+Pray for me!--Lord have mercy upon me!  Mother, dear Mother, I am coming
+to you!"
+
+Then she called to the steersman: "Put out from the platform!"  and as
+soon as a few strokes of the oars had carried the barge into the deeper
+channel she stepped nimbly on to the edge of the bulwark, dropped the
+lilies into the river, and then with a smile, her head gracefully bent on
+one side and her skirt modestly held round her, she slipped into the
+water.
+
+The waves closed over her; but she was a good swimmer and could not help
+coming once to the surface.  Her expression was that of a bather enjoying
+the cool fresh water that laved and gurgled round her.  Perhaps the
+wild storm of applause, the mingled cries of horror, compassion and
+thanksgiving that went up from the assembled thousands once more reached
+her ear--but she dived head foremost to rise no more.
+
+The "River-God," a good-hearted man, who in his daily life could never
+have let a fellow-creature drown under his very eyes, forgot his part,
+released Paula, and sprang after Katharina, as did Anubis and a few
+boatmen; but they could not reach her, and the boy, who found swimming
+difficult with his crippled leg followed the girl to whom his young heart
+was wholly devoted to a watery death.
+
+Her speech had reached no ears but those to whom it was addressed; but
+before she was lost in the waters Bishop John turned to the people, took
+Paula's hand--and she felt free once more when her terrible bridegroom
+had deserted her--and holding up the Crucifix which hung at his girdle he
+shouted loudly:
+
+"Behold the desires of our holy Father Benjamin, by whom God himself
+speaks to you, have met with fulfilment.  A pure and noble Jacobite
+maiden, of her own free and beautiful impulse, has sacrificed herself
+after the example of the Saviour, for the sufferings of her nation,
+before your eyes.  This one," and he drew Paula to him, "this one is
+free; the Nile has had his victim!"
+
+But almost before he had done speaking--before the people could proclaim
+their vote--Horapollo had rushed at him and interrupted him.  He had
+dismounted from his ass during the earlier part of the proceedings, and,
+not to let his prey escape, he now came between Paula and the bishop,
+grasped her dress and cried to the chorus of youths:
+
+"Come on--at once!  One of you take the part of the Nile-God--into the
+river with the Bride!"  The bishop however forced himself between the
+speaker and the girl to protect her.  But Horapollo flew into a fury and
+rushed at the prelate to snatch away the image of the Saviour, while John
+exclaimed in a voice of ominous thunder: "Anathema!"
+
+This word of fear roused the Christian blood in the Egyptians; the
+sacrilegious attempt stirred the zeal which they had proved in many a
+struggle, and which had only been kept under by an effort during these
+times of trouble: the leader of the choir dragged the old man away and
+took part with the bishop.  Others followed his example, while several,
+on the contrary, sided with old Horapollo who clung tightly to Paula,
+preferring to die himself rather than allow her to escape his hatred and
+vengeance.
+
+At this moment the clang of bells was heard from the town with a terrific
+and unaccountable uproar, and a young man was seen forcing his way
+through the throng, a naked sword in his hand, and in spite of his torn
+garments, his wild hair, and his blackened face, he was at once
+recognized as Orion.  Every one made way for him, for he rushed on like a
+madman; as he reached the pontoon and took in at a glance what was going
+forward there, he sprang past the mummers with mighty leaps to the
+platform, pushing aside sundry groups of fighting champions; and before
+the principal actors were aware of his presence, he had snatched Paula
+from the old man's clutch, and called her by her name.  She sank on his
+breast half-fainting with terror, surprise and unspeakable rapture, and
+he clasped her to him with his left arm, while the flashing sword in his
+right hand and his flaming looks warned all bystanders that it would be
+as wise to attack a lioness defending her young as to defy this desperate
+man, who was prepared to face death with the woman he loved.
+
+His push had sent Horapollo tottering to some distance; and when the old
+man had pulled himself together, to throw himself once more on his
+victim, he found himself the centre of a fight.  A wild troop had
+followed Orion and beset the struggling mob, whom they presently drove
+over the edge of the pontoon into the river, and with them Horapollo.
+Most of these saved themselves by swimming, but the old man sank, and
+nothing more was seen of him but his clenched fist, which rose in menace
+for some minutes above the waters.
+
+Meanwhile the Vekeel had become aware of what was going forward on the
+platform; he leaped in fury from his seat to restore order, intending to
+seize Orion whom he fancied he had seen, or, if necessary to cut him down
+with his own hand.
+
+But a vast multitude stopped his progress, for a fearful horde of
+released prisoners with Orion at their head had come rushing down to the
+scene of the festival yelling: "Fire! the prison is burning, the town is
+in flames!"
+
+Every one who could run fled at once to Memphis to save his house, his
+possessions and those dear to him.  Like a flock of doves scared by the
+scream of a hawk, like autumn leaves driven before the wind, the
+multitude dispersed.  They hurried back to the town in wild tumult and
+inextricable confusion, jumping into the festal cars, cutting loose the
+horses from that of the goddess of health, to mount them and ride home,
+overthrowing everything that stood in their way and dragging back the
+Vekeel who was striving, sword in hand, to get to the pontoon.
+
+The smoke and flames of the city were rising every moment, and acted like
+magic in spurring the flying crowd to reach their homes in time.  But,
+before Obada had succeeded in his efforts, the pushing throng were once
+more brought to a standstill; horses were heard approaching.  Dense
+masses of dust hid them and their riders; but it was certainly an armed
+troop that was coming clattering onwards, for flashing gleams were seen
+here and there through the dull clouds that shrouded them, the reflection
+of the sun's bright rays from polished and glittering helmets, breast-
+plates, and sabres.
+
+Now they were visible even where the Vekeel was.  Foremost rode the Kadi,
+and just as he came up with Obada he sprang from the saddle on to the
+wooden structure, and with a loud cry of: "Free-saved!"  in which all
+the joy of his heart found utterance, he stretched out both his hands to
+Paula, who was advancing towards the shore clinging closely to Orion.
+
+Othman did not observe the Vekeel, who was but a few paces distant.  The
+words "Free!"  "Saved!"  from the supreme judge, gave the negro to
+understand that a pardon must have arrived for his youthful foe, and this
+of course implied the condemnation of his own proceedings.  All his hopes
+were wrecked, for this meant that Omar still ruled and that the attempt
+on the Khaliff's life had failed.  Dismissal, punishment or death must be
+his doom, when Amru should return.  Still, he would not succumb till the
+instrument of his ruin had preceded him to the grave.  Taking the Kadi by
+surprise he thrust him aside, and prepared to deal a fearful blow that
+should fell Orion before he himself should fall.  But the captain of the
+body-guard, who had followed Othman, had watched his movements: Swift as
+lightning he rose in his saddle and swung his cimeter, which cut deep
+into the Vekeel's neck.  With a hideous curse Obada let his arm drop, and
+fell struggling for his last breath at the feet of the newly united
+couple.
+
+The populace afterwards declared that his blood was not red like that of
+other men, but black like his skin and his soul.  They had good cause to
+curse his memory, for his villainy had reduced more than half Memphis to
+ashes that day, and brought the city to beggary.
+
+He had hired two venial wretches to set fire to the prison while the
+festival was proceeding, with a view to suffocating Orion in his cell;
+but the gang were detected and all the prisoners were released in time.
+Thus the young man had been able to reach the scene of the ceremonial at
+the head of his fellow-captives.  The fire, however, had gained the upper
+hand in the deserted town.  It had spread from house to house along the
+sun-scorched streets, and next day nothing remained of the city of the
+Pyramids but the road along the shore, and a few wretched alleys.  The
+ancient Capital of the Pharaohs was reduced to a village, and the
+houseless residents moved across to the eastern bank, to people as
+Moslems the newly-founded town of Fostat, or sought a home on Christian
+territory.
+
+Among the houses that had escaped was that of Rufinus, and thither the
+Kadi escorted Orion and Paula.  It was to serve as their prison till the
+return of Amru, and there they spent delightful days in the society of
+their friends, and there Thomas was so happy as to clasp his children to
+his heart once more, and bless them before he died.
+
+A few minutes before the Kadi had reached the scene of the festival two
+carrier pigeons had arrived, each bearing the Arab governor's commands
+that the sacrifice of Paula was at any rate to be stopped, and her life
+spared till his return.  He also reserved the right of deciding Orion's
+fate.
+
+Mary and Rustem had met Amru at Berenice, on the Egyptian coast of the
+Red Sea.  This decaying sea-port was connected with Medina by a pigeon-
+post, and in reply to his viceroy's enquiry with reference to the victim
+about to be offered by the despairing Egyptians to the Nile, Omar had
+sent a reply which had been immediately forwarded to the Kadi.
+
+The burning of their town had brought new and fearful suffering on the
+stricken Memphites, and notwithstanding Katharina's death the Nile still
+did not rise.  The Kadi therefore once more summoned a meeting of all
+the inhabitants from both sides of the river, three days after the
+interrupted marriage-festival.  It was held under the palms by Nesptah's
+inn, and there he proclaimed to the multitude, Moslem and Christian, by
+means of the Arab herald and Egyptian interpreter, what the Khaliff
+commanded him to declare, namely: that God, the One, the All-merciful,
+scorned human sacrifice.  In this firm conviction he, Omar, would beseech
+Allah the Compassionate, and he sent a letter which was to be cast into
+the river in his name.
+
+And this letter was addressed:
+
+"To the River of Egypt."  And its contents were as follows:
+
+"If thou, O River, flowest of thyself, then swell not; but if it be God,
+the One, the Compassionate, that maketh thee to flow, then we entreat the
+All-merciful that he will bid thee rise!"
+
+"That which is not of God," wrote Amru in the letter which enclosed
+Omar's, "what shall it profit men?  But all things created are by Him,
+and so is your noble river.  The Most High will hearken to Omar's prayers
+and ours, and I therefore command that all of you--Moslems, Christians,
+and Jews, shall gather together in the Mosque on the other side of the
+Nile which I have built to the glory of the All-merciful, and that you
+there lift up your souls in one great common prayer, to the end that God
+may hear you and take pity on your sufferings!"
+
+And the Kadi bid all the people to go across the Nile and they obeyed his
+bidding.  Bishop John called on his clergy and marched at their head,
+leading the Christians; the priests and elders of the Jews led their
+people next to the Jacobites; and side by side with these the Moslems
+gathered in the magnificent pillared sanctuary of Amru, where the three
+congregations of different creeds lifted up, their hearts and eyes and
+voices to the pitying Father in Heaven.
+
+And this very Mosque of Amru has more than once been the scene of the
+same sublime spectacle; even within the lifetime and before the eyes of
+the narrator of this tale have Moslems, Christians, and Jews united there
+in one pious prayer, which must have been acceptable indeed in the ears
+of the Lord.
+
+Not long after the letter from the Khaliff Omar had been cast into the
+Nile, and the prayer of the united assembly had gone up to Heaven from
+the Mosque of Armu, a pigeon came in announcing a sudden rise in the
+waters at the cataracts; and after some still anxious but hopeful days of
+patience, the Nile swelled higher and yet higher, overflowed its banks,
+and gave the laborer a right to look forward to a rich harvest; and then,
+when a heavy storm of rain had laid the choking dust, the plague, too,
+disappeared.
+
+Just when the river was beginning to rise perceptibly Amru returned;
+bringing in his train little Mary and Rustem, Philippus the leech and
+Haschim, who had joined the governor's caravan at Djidda.
+
+In the course of their journey they received news of all that had been
+happening at Memphis, and when the travellers were approaching their last
+night-quarters, and the Pyramids were already in sight, the governor said
+to little Mary:
+
+"What do you say little one?  Do we not owe the Memphites the treat of a
+splendid marriage festival?"
+
+"No, my lord, two," replied the child.
+
+"How is that?"  laughed Amru, "You are too young and do not count yet,
+and I know no other maiden in Memphis whose wedding I should care to
+provide for."
+
+"But there is a man towards whom you feel most kindly, and who lives as
+lonely as a recluse.  I should like to see him married, and at the same
+time as Orion and Paula.  I mean our good friend Philippus."
+
+"The physician?  And is he still unwed?"  asked Amru in surprise; for no
+Moslem of the leech's age and position could remain unmarried without
+exposing himself to the contempt of his fellow-believers.  "He is a
+widower then!"
+
+"No," replied Mary.  "He has never yet found a wife to suit him; but I
+know one created on purpose for him by God himself!"
+
+"You little Khatbe!"--[ A professional go-between]--cried the governor.
+"Well, settle the matter, and it shall be no fault of mine if the second
+wedding lacks magnificence."
+
+"And we will have a third!"  interrupted the child, clapping her hands
+and laughing.  "My worthy escort Rustem....
+
+"The colossus!  Why, child, to you all things are possible!  Have you
+found a wife for him too?"
+
+"No, he found Mandane for himself without my help."
+
+"It is the same thing!"  cried the governor jovially.  "I will provide
+for her.  But that must satisfy you, or else all those unbelievers whom
+we are settling here will drive us Moslem Arabs out of the land."
+
+The great man had often held such discourse as this with the child since
+she had entered his tent at Berenice, there to lay before him the case of
+the couple she loved, and for whom she had taken on herself great risk
+and hardship; she had pleaded so eloquently, so kindly, and with such
+fervent and pathetic words, that Amru had at once made up his mind to
+grant her everything that lay in his power.  Mary had done him a service,
+too, by bringing him the information she could give him, for it enabled
+him to avert perils which threatened the interests of the Crescent, and
+also to save the children of two men he honored--the son of the Mukaukas,
+and the daughter of Thomas--from imminent danger.
+
+He found, on his return home, that the Vekeel's crimes far exceeded his
+worst fears.  Obada's proceedings had begun to undermine that respect for
+Arab rule and Moslem justice which Amru had done his utmost to secure.
+It was only by a miracle that Orion had escaped his plots, for he had
+three times sent assassins to the prison, and it was entirely owing to
+the watchful care of pretty Emau's husband that the youth had been able
+to save himself in the fire.  Obada had done all this to clear out of his
+path the hated man whose statements and impeachments might ruin him.
+The wretch had met a less ignominious death than his judges would have
+granted him.  The wealth found hoarded in his dwelling was sent to
+Medina; and even Orion was forced to see the vast sums of which the Negro
+had plundered his treasury, appropriated by the Arabs.  The Arab governor
+thought it only right to inflict this penalty for the share he had taken
+in the rescue of the nuns; and the young man submitted willingly to a
+punishment which restored him and his bride to freedom, and enabled Amru
+to apply a larger proportion of the revenues of his native land for its
+own benefit.
+
+The Khaliff Omar, however, never received these moneys, which constituted
+far more than half of Orion's patrimony.  The Prophet's truest friend,
+the wise and powerful ruler, fell by the assassin's hand, and the world
+now learnt that the Vekeel had been one of the chief conspirators and had
+been spurred on to the rashest extremes by his confidence of success.
+
+Amru received the son of the Mukaukas as a father might; after examining
+the result of his labors he found it far superior to his own efforts in
+the same direction, and he charged Orion to carry out the new division of
+the country, which he confirmed excepting in a few details.
+
+Perform your duty and do your utmost in the future to go on as you have
+begun!"  cried Amru; and the young man replied:
+
+"In this bitter and yet happy interval I have become clear on many
+points."
+
+"And may I ask on what?"  asked the governor.  "I would gladly hear."
+
+"I have discovered, my lord," replied Orion, "that there is no such thing
+as happiness or unhappiness in the sense men give to the words.  Life
+appears to each of us as we ourselves paint it.  Hard times which come
+into our lives from outside are often no more than a brief night from
+which a brighter day presently dawns--or the stab of a surgeon's knife,
+which makes us sounder than before.  What men call grief is, times
+without number, a path to greater ease; whereas the ordinary happiness of
+mankind flows, swiftly as running waters, down from that delightful sense
+of ease.  Like a ship, which, when her rudder is lost, is more likely to
+ride out the storm on the high seas than near the sheltering coast, so a
+man who has lost himself may easily recover himself and his true
+happiness in the wildest turmoil of life, but rarely and with difficulty
+if his existence runs calmly on.  All other blessings are comparatively
+worthless if we are not upheld by the consciousness of fulfilling the
+task of life in faithful earnest, and of cheerfully dealing with the
+problems it sets before us.  The lost one was found as soon as he placed
+his whole being and faculties at the service of a higher duty, with God
+in his heart and before his eyes.  I have learnt from my own experience,
+and from Paula's good friends, to strive untiringly after what is right,
+and to find my own weal in that of others.
+
+"The sense of lost liberty is hard to bear; but leave me love, and give
+me room and opportunity to prove my best powers in the service of the
+community, even in a prison--and though I cannot be perfectly happy, for
+that is impossible without freedom--I will be far happier than such an
+idle and useless spendthrift of time and abilities as I used to be among
+the dissipations of the capital."
+
+"Then enjoy the consciousness of duty well performed, with liberty and
+love," replied the governor.  "And believe me, my friend, your father in
+Paradise will no more grudge you all that is loveliest and best than I
+do.  You are on the road where every curse is turned to blessing."
+
+The three marriages which Amru had promised to provide for, were
+celebrated with due splendor.
+
+That of Orion and Paula was a day never to be forgotten by the gay world
+of Memphis.  Bishop John performed the ceremony, and the young couple at
+once took possession of the beautiful house left them by Katharina, the
+real Bride of the Nile.  If it could have been granted to her to read
+Paula's and Orion's hearts, and see how they held her in remembrance,
+she would have found that to them she was no longer the childish water-
+wagtail, and that they knew how to value the sacrifice of her young life.
+
+Their first beloved guest, who went with them to their new home, was
+little Mary, and she remained their dearest companion till she married
+happily.  The governess, Eudoxia, to whom also Orion offered an asylum,
+accompanied Mary to her own delightful home; and there at last Mary
+closed her old friend's eyes, after the good woman had brought up her
+little ones, not like a hireling but as a true mother.
+
+The Patriarch Benjamin, too, who was led by many considerations--and not
+least by Katharina's will to remain on good terms with the son of the
+Mukaukas, was a visitor to the youthful pair.  Neither he nor the Church
+ever had reason to repent his alliance with Orion; and when Paula
+presented her husband with a son, the prelate offered to be his sponsor,
+and named him George after his grandfather.
+
+Orion's son, too, inherited the office of Mukaukas, when he came to man's
+estate, from his father who was appointed to it, but under a new Arab
+title, shortly after his marriage.
+
+Ere long, however, Orion, as the highest Christian authority in his
+native land, had to change his place of residence and leave Memphis,
+which was doomed to ruin, for Alexandria.  From thence his power extended
+over the whole Nile-valley, and he devoted himself to his charge with so
+much zeal, fidelity, justice, and prudence, that his name was remembered
+with veneration and affection by generations long after.
+
+Paula was the pride and joy of his life, and they lived together in
+devoted union to an advanced age.  He regarded it as one of the duties of
+his life, to care for the woman who had made him what he was from a lost
+and reprobate creature, and to fill every day of her life with joy.  When
+he built his palace at Alexandria, he graced it with the inscription that
+had been engraved on Thomas' ring: "God hath set the sweat of man's brow
+before virtue."
+
+Philippus and his Pulcheria also found a new home in Alexandria.  He had
+no long wooing to do; for when, on his return, the girl of whom he had
+thought constantly during his long journeying, met him for the first time
+in her mother's house and held out both her hands with trustful warmth of
+welcome, he clasped her to him and would not release her till Joanna had
+given them her maternal blessing.  The widow lived in the leech's house
+with her children and grandchildren, and often visited her husband's
+grave.  At length she was laid to rest by him and his soft-hearted
+mother, in the cemetery of Alexandria.
+
+Rustem, made a rich man by Orion, became a famous breeder of horses and
+camels in his own country, while Mandane ruled mildly but prudently over
+his possessions--which  he never shared with others, though he remained a
+Masdakite till he died.  The first daughter his wife bore him was named
+Mary, and the first boy Haschim; but she would not agree to Rustem's
+proposal that the second should be called Orion; she preferred to give
+him the name of Rufinus, and his successors were Rustem and Philippus.
+
+The senator and his wife were only too glad to quit Egypt.  Martina,
+however, had the satisfaction of assisting at the marriage of her dear
+Heliodora on the shores of the Nile; not, indeed, to her "Great
+Sesostris," but to her nephew Narses, who by the young widow's devoted
+care was restored, if not to perfect vigor, at any rate to very endurable
+good health.
+
+Paula's wedding gift to her was the great emerald, which had meanwhile
+been brought back again to Memphis.  Justinus and Martina always remained
+on terms of cordial friendship with the young Mukaukas and his wife:
+Nilus lived long after to perform his duties with industry and judgment;
+and whenever Haschim came to Alexandria there was a contest between Orion
+and Philippus, for neither would yield him to the other.  But Philip
+could no longer envy his former rival the wife he had won.  He had not,
+indeed, ceased to admire her; but at the same time he would say: "My
+comfortable little Pulcheria has not her match; our rooms would be too
+small for Paula, but they suit my golden-haired girl best."
+
+He remained unselfishly devoted to his work till the end, and, when he
+saw Orion wearing himself out in energetic toil, he would often say:
+"He knows now what life demands, and acts accordingly; and that is why he
+grows no older, and his laugh is as winning and gay as ever.  It is an
+honor to be called friend by a woman who like the Bride of the Nile.
+saved herself from certain death, and a man who, like the young Mukaukas,
+has freed himself from the heaviest of all curses."
+
+To this day the Bride of the Nile is not forgotten.  Before the river
+begins to rise on the Night of Dropping the inhabitants of the town of
+Cairo, which grew up after the ruin of Memphis, on the eastern shore by
+the side of Fostat, erect a figure of clay, representing a maiden form,
+which they call Aroosa or the Bride.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Sea-port was connected with Medina by a pigeon-post
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIDE OF THE NILE, BY EBERS, V12 ***
+
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