CHAPTER XXVII.
In our last chapter, Paulus and his Athenian mother had obtained, through Esther's recital of her waking dream or vision, one little glimpse at that prison, that place of detention, which she had termed (as she herself had heard it termed) "the dim, vast house," "the vast, dim city," and the "dim, vast kingdom."
The vague notion she could give of that scene of immurement cannot be expected to prove interesting to so large a number, as Mr. Pickwick has cause to feel an interest in his glimpses of the "Fleet Prison," once famous in London. But such interest as the former house of detention commands is of a different kind, and those who may experience it are a different class. Plato (as a great critic observes) has been translated from age to age into some dozen great modern languages, in order that he might be read by about a score of persons in each generation. But that score are the little fountains of the large rivers that bear to the sea the business of the world. Few are directly taught by Kant, Sir William Hamilton, John Stuart Mill, Cousin, or Balmez; but the millions are taught and think through those whom they have taught to think. Between the good and evil originators or conservators of ideas, and the huge masses who do all their mental processes at third hand, stand the interpreters; and these listen with bent heads, while they hold trumpets which are heard at the extremities of the earth.
Paulus lingered in Jerusalem. Weeks flew by. Spring passed into summer; summer was passing into autumn; and still, from time to time, as, in the evenings, mother and son sat among the flowers on the flat roof, Esther would join them.
One night, she had hardly appeared, when Longinus the centurion followed her, bearing a letter for Paulus, which, he said, had just arrived at Fort Antonio, by the hands of an orderly, from the governor. The letter was from Dionysius of Athens, now l'un des quarante, a member of that great Areopagus of which the French Academy is partly a modern image; and it was written immediately after his return from a tour in Egypt, and a cruise through the Ægean Sea, among the famous and beautiful Greek Islands, to resume his duties as a teacher of philosophy and a professor of the higher literature at Athens.
Paulus, after a word with his mother and Esther, desired Longinus to favor them with his company. Sherbets and other refreshments were brought. They all sat down on the semicircular wicker settle at the corner of the roof, under the bower-like branches of the large rhododendron; a small lamp was held for Paulus by the Jewish serving-man, and Paulus read the letter aloud to that sympathetic group. Extracts we will give, in the substance, concerning two occurrences. The first, as the reader sees, the listening circle learned from Dionysius; but we have it in reality from Plutarch, upon whose narrative Eusebius and many other weighty authorities and grave historians have commented.
The captain and owner (for he was both) of the vessel in which Dion sailed back from Egypt to Athens was an Egyptian of the name of Thramnus (some call him Thamus). He said that a very weird thing had happened to him in his immediately previous trip, which had been from Greece to Italy. Dion was at the time at Heliopolis, in Egypt, with his friend, the celebrated philosopher Apollophanes, who, though (like Dion himself) only between twenty and thirty, had already (in this also resembling Dion) obtained an almost world-wide fame for eloquence, astronomical science, and general learning. When Thramnus had neared the Echinades Islands, the wind fell, a sudden calm came, and they had to drop anchor near Paxos. The night was sultry; every one was on deck. Suddenly, from the lonely shore, a loud, strange voice hailed the captain: "Thramnus!" it cried. None answered. Again, louder than human, came the cry, "Thramnus!" Still none answered. For the third time, "Thramnus!" was thundered from the lonely coast. Then Thramnus himself called out: "Who hails? What is it?" Shrill and far louder than before was the voice in reply: "When you reach the Lagoon of Palus, announce then that the Great Pan is dead."
Thereupon, everything became silent, save the sluggish wash of the waves under the vessel's side. A sort of council was at once held on board; and first they took a note of the exact date and the hour. They found that it was exactly the ninth hour of the sixth jeria, or day, in the month of March, in the fourth year (according with Phlegon's corrected and checked astronomical chronology) of the two hundred and second Olympiad: in other words, this, being translated into modern reckoning, means, six in the afternoon of Friday, the 25th of March, in the thirty-third year of our Lord.
Dion breaks off in his letter here to remark: "You will learn presently what happened to me and to Apollophanes, and to the whole renowned city of Heliopolis, at the same hour exactly of that same day; and it is the coincidence between the two occurrences which has fixed them so deeply in my mind."
Well; he proceeds to say that Thramnus, having asked his passengers, who happened to be unusually numerous, whether they considered he ought to obey this mysterious mandate, and having suggested himself that, if, on their reaching Palus, or Pelodes, the wind held fair, they should not lose time by stopping, but if the wind were there to fail, and they were forced to halt at that place, then it might be no harm to pay attention to the injunction, and see what came of it, they were all unanimously of his opinion. Thereupon, as though by some design, in the midst of a calm the breeze sprang up freshly again, and they proceeded on their way. When they came to the indicated spot, all were again on deck, unable to forget the strange incident at Paxos; and, on a sudden, the wind fell, and they were becalmed.
Thramnus, accordingly, after a pause, leaned over the ship's side, and, as loudly as he could, shouted that the great Pan was dead. No sooner had the words been pronounced than all round the vessel were heard a world of sighs issuing from the deep and in the air, with groans, and moanings, and long, wild, bitter wailings innumerable, as though from vast unseen multitudes and a host of creatures plunged in dismay and despair. Those on board were stricken with amazement and terror. When they arrived in Rome, and were recounting the adventures of their voyage, this wild story sent its rumor far and near, and made such an impression that it reached the ears of Tiberius Cæsar, who was then in the capital. He sent for Thramnus and several of the passengers, as Plutarch records for us, particularly one, Epitherses, who afterward, at Athens, with his son Æmilianus, and the traveller Philip, used often to tell the story till his death. Tiberius, after ascertaining the facts, summoned all the learned men who chanced then to be in Rome, and requested their opinion.
Their opinion, which is extant, matters little. The holy fathers who have investigated this occurrence are divided in their views. It must be remembered that Plutarch relates another truly wonderful fact universal in its range, as being notoriously simultaneous with the singular local adventure above described—the sudden silence of Delphi, and all the other famous pagan oracles, from the 8th day before the Kalends of April, in the 202d Olympiad, at six P.M. At that hour, on that day (March 25, Friday, Anno Domini 33), those oracles were stricken dumb, and nevermore returned answers to their votaries. Coupling these phenomena together, in presence of a thousand other portents, the holy fathers think, one party of them, that the enemy of man and of God, and that enemy's legions, were grieving and wailing, at the hour which Plutarch specifies (the time of evening, and on the very day, when our Lord died), at the redemption just then consummated; others, that the Almighty permitted nature "to sigh through all her works," in sympathy with the voluntary sufferings of her expiring Lord.
"Now, hearken," proceeded Dion in his letter, "to how I was occupied, hundreds of miles away, in Heliopolis, at the time, the very hour of the very day, when so wild and weird a response came from the powers of the air and the recesses of the deep to those who shouted forth, amid a calm on the silent breast of the Ægean Sea, that the great Pan ('the great All,' 'the universal Lord,' as you, my friends, are aware it means in Greek) had died!
"I had gone out, shortly before the sixth hour on this sixth day, to take a stroll in the tree-shaded suburbs of Heliopolis, with my friend Apollophanes. Suddenly, the sun, in a horrible manner, withdrew its light so effectually that we saw the stars. It was the time of the Hebrew Pasch, and the season of the month when the moon is at the full, and the period of an eclipse, or of the moon's apparent conjunction with the sun, was well known not to be then; independently of which, two unexampled and unnatural portents, contrary to the laws of the heavenly bodies, occurred: first, the moon entered the sun's disc from the east; secondly, when she had covered the disc and touched the opposite diameter, instead of passing onward, she receded, and resumed her former position in the sky. All the astronomers will tell you that these two facts, and also the time of the eclipse itself, are equally in positive deviation from the otherwise everlasting laws of the sidereal or planetary movements. I felt that either this universal frame was perishing or the Lord and Pilot of nature was himself suffering; and I turned to Apollophanes, and, 'O light of philosophy, glass of science!' I said, 'explain to me what this means.'
"Before answering me, he required that we should together apply the astronomical rule, or formula, of Philip Aridæus; after doing which with the utmost care, he said: 'These changes are supernatural; there is some stupendous revolution or catastrophe occurring in divine affairs, affecting the whole of the Supreme Being's creation.'
"You may be sure, my friends, that we both took a careful note of the hour, the day, the week, month, year; and I intend to inquire everywhere whether in other lands any similar phenomena have appeared; and what overwhelming, unexampled event can have taken place on this little planet of ours to bring the heavens themselves into confusion, and coerce all the powers of nature into so awful a manifestation of sympathy or of horror."
He ended by conveying to Aglais and Paulus the loving remembrance of the Lady Damarais.
Aglais and her son and Esther were spell-bound with amazement when this letter had been read; and Paulus exclaimed:
"What will Dion say when he hears that we also saw this very darkness at the same moment; that the veil of the Temple here has been rent in twain; and that he who expired amid these and so many other portents, Esther, and in the full culmination of the prophecies, is again living, speaking, acting, the Conqueror of death, as he was the Lord of life?"
"Let us go to Athens; let us bring our friends, the Lady Damarais and our dear Dion, to learn and understand what we have ourselves been mercifully taught."
So spoke Aglais, offering at the same time to Esther a mother's protection and love along the journey. Paulus was silent, but gazed pleadingly at Esther.
It was agreed. But in the political dangers of that reign, Paulus, owing to his fame itself, had to take so many precautions that much time was unavoidably lost.
Meanwhile, he had again asked the Jewish maiden to become his wife. Need we say that this time his suit was successful? Paulus and Esther were married.
Christianity in the interim grew from month to month and from year to year, and our wanderers had but just arrived at last in Athens in time to hear, near the statue of "the unknown God," while Damarais, the friend of Aglais, and Dion, the friend of them all, stood near, a majestic stranger, a Roman citizen, him who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the glorious Apostle of the Gentiles, who had been "faithful to the heavenly Vision," though he had not seen the Resurrection, explain to the Athenians "him whom they had ignorantly worshipped." And when the sublime messenger of glad tidings related the circumstances of the Passion, the scenes which had been enacted in Pilate's house (so well remembered by them), the next day's dread event, and when he touched upon the preternatural accompaniments of that final catastrophe, and described the darkness which had overspread the earth from the sixth hour of that day, Dionysius, turning pale, drew out the tablets which he carried habitually, examined the date of which, at Heliopolis, he and Apollophanes had jointly made note, and showed symptoms of an emotion such as he had never before experienced.
He and Damarais, as is well known, were among the converts of Saint Paul on that great occasion. How our other characters felt we need not describe.
Yielding to the entreaties of their beloved Dionysius, they actually loitered in Greece for a few years, during which Christianity had outstripped them and penetrated to Rome, where it was soon welcomed with fire and sword, and where "the blood of martyrs became the seed of Christians." Esther shuddered as she heard names dear to her in the murmured accounts of dreadful torments.
Resuming their westward course, how Paulus rejoiced that he had in time sold everything in Italy, and was armed with opulence in the midst of new and strange trials! They gave Italy a wide offing, and passing round by the south of Germany, with an armed escort which Thellus (who had also become a Christian, and had, while they were in Greece, sent for Prudentia) commanded, they never ceased their travels till they reached the banks of the Seine; and there, undiscernible to the vision of Roman tyranny in the distance, they obtained, by means of the treasures they had brought, hundreds of stout Gaulish hands to do their bidding, and soon founded a peaceful home amid a happy colony. Hence they sent letters to Agatha and Paterculus.
Two arrivals from the realms of civilization waked into excitement the peaceful tenor of their days. Paulus himself, hearing of the death of Paterculus, ventured quickly back to Italy, in the horrible, short reign of Caligula, and fetched his sister Agatha, now a widow, to live with them. Later still, they were surprised to behold arrive among them one whom they had often mourned as lost to them for ever. It was Dionysius. He came to found Christianity in Gaul, and settled, amidst the friends of his youth, on the banks of the Seine. Often they reverted, with a clear light, to the favorite themes of their boyhood; and often the principal personages who throughout this story have, we hope, interested the reader, gathered around that same Dionysius (who is, indeed, the St. Denis of France), and listened, near the place where Notre Dame now towers, to the first Bishop of Paris, correcting the theories which he had propounded to the Areopagus of Athens as the last of the great Greek philosophers.[5]
One other arrival greeted, indeed, the expatriated but happy settlement. Longinus found his way among them; and as the proud ideas of a social system upon which they had turned their back no longer tyrannized over Aglais or Paulus, the brave man, biding his time and watching opportunities, found no insurmountable obstacles in obtaining a fair reward for twenty years and more of patient and unalterable love. He and Agatha were married.
THE END.