Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face

by Charles Kingsley

‘And as for your palaces, and cities, and temples.... look at this Campagna, and judge. Flea-bites go down after a while—and so do they. What are they but the bumps which we human fleas make in the old earth’s skin?. Make them? We only cause them, as fleas cause flea-bites.... What are all the works of man, but a sort of cutaneous disorder in this unhealthy earth-hide, and we a race of larger fleas, running about among its fur, which we call trees? Why should not the earth be an animal? How do I know it is not? Because it is too big? Bah! What is big, and what is little? Because it has not the shape of one?.... Look into a fisherman’s net, and see what forms are there! Because it does not speak?.... Perhaps it has nothing to say, being too busy. Perhaps it can talk no more sense than we.... In both cases it shows its wisdom by holding its tongue. Because it moves in one necessary direction? .... How do I know that it does? How can I tell that it is not flirting with all the seven spheres at once, at this moment? But if it does—so much the wiser of it, if that be the best direction for it. Oh, what a base satire on ourselves and our notions of the fair and fitting, to say that a thing cannot be alive and rational, just because it goes steadily on upon its own road, instead of skipping and scrambling fantastically up and down without method or order, like us and the fleas, from the cradle to the grave! Besides, if you grant, with the rest of the world, that fleas are less noble than we, because they are our parasites, then you are bound to grant that we are less noble than the earth, because we are its parasites. .... Positively, it looks more probable than anything I have seen for many a day.... And, by the bye, why should not earthquakes, and floods, and pestilences, be only just so many ways which the cunning old brute earth has of scratching herself when the human fleas and their palace and city bites get too troublesome?’

At a turn of the road he was aroused from this profitable meditation by a shriek, the shrillness of which told him that it was a woman’s. He looked up, and saw close to him, among the smouldering ruins of a farmhouse, two ruffians driving before them a young girl, with her hands tied behind her, while the poor creature was looking back piteously after something among the ruins, and struggling in vain, bound as she was, to escape from her captors and return.

‘Conduct unjustifiable in any fleas,—eh, Bran? How do I know that, though? Why should it not be a piece of excellent fortune for her, if she had but the equanimity to see it? Why—what will happen to her? She will betaken to Rome, and sold as a slave.... And in spite of a few discomforts in the transfer, and the prejudice which some persons have against standing an hour on the catasta to be handled from head to foot in the minimum of clothing, she will most probably end in being far better housed, fed, bedizened, and pampered to her heart’s desire, than ninety-nine out of a hundred of her sister fleas.... till she begins to grow old.... which she must do in any case....And if she have not contrived to wheedle her master out of her liberty, and to make tip a pretty little purse of savings, by that time—why, it is her own fault. Eh, Bran?’

But Bran by no means agreed with his view of the case; for after watching the two ruffians, with her head stuck on one side, for a minute or two, she suddenly and silently, after the manner of mastiffs, sprang upon them, and dragged one to the ground.

‘Oh! that is the “fit and beautiful,” in this case, as they say in Alexandria, is it? Well—I obey. You are at least a more practical teacher than ever Hypatia was. Heaven grant that there may be no more of them in the ruins!’

And rushing on the second plunderer, he laid him dead with a blow of his dagger, and then turned to the first, whom Bran was holding down by the throat.

‘Mercy, mercy!’ shrieked the wretch. ‘Life! only life!’

‘There was a fellow half a mile back begging me to kill him: with which of you two am I to agree?—for you can’t both be right.’

‘Life! Only life!’

‘A carnal appetite, which man must learn to conquer,’ said Raphael, as he raised the poniard..... In a moment it was over, and Bran and he rose—Where was the girl? She had rushed back to the ruins, whither Raphael followed her; while Bran ran to the puppies, which he had laid upon a stone, and commenced her maternal cares.