Hypatia shook her head sadly.
‘Ah, boys will be boys.... I plead guilty myself. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. You must not be hard on us.... Whether we obey you or not in private life, we do in public; and if we enthrone you queen of Alexandria, you must allow your courtiers and bodyguards a few court licences. Now don’t sigh or I shall be inconsolable. At all events, your worst rival has betaken herself to the wilderness, and gone to look for the city of the gods above the cataracts.’
‘Whom do you mean?’ asked Hypatia, in a tone most unphilosophically eager.
‘Pelagia, of course. I met that prettiest and naughtiest of humanities half-way between here and Thebes, transformed into a perfect Andromache of chaste affection.’
‘And to whom, pray?’
‘To a certain Gothic giant. What men those barbarians do breed! I was afraid of being crushed under the elephant’s foot at every step I took with him!’
‘What!’ asked Hypatia, ‘did your excellency condescend to converse with such savages?’
‘To tell you the truth, he had some forty stout countrymen of his with him, who might have been troublesome to a perplexed prefect; not to mention that it is always as well to keep on good terms with these Goths. Really, after the sack of Rome, and Athens cleaned out like a beehive by wasps, things begin to look serious. And as for the great brute himself, he has rank enough in his way,—boasts of his descent from some cannibal god or other,—really hardly deigned to speak to a paltry Roman governor, till his faithful and adoring bride interceded for me. Still, the fellow understood good living, and we celebrated our new treaty of friendship with noble libations—but I must not talk about that to you. However, I got rid of them; quoted all the geographical lies I had ever heard, and a great many more; quickened their appetite for their fool’s errand notably, and started them off again. So now the star of Venus is set, and that of Pallas in the ascendant. Wherefore tell me—what am I to do with Saint Firebrand?’
‘Cyril?’
‘Cyril.’