‘No, no!’ panted she, inarticulate with passion. ‘Give me gold—every coin you have. These wretches are twitting me with what they gave me before—before—oh Amal, you understand me?’ And she clung imploringly to his arm.
‘Oh! Heroes! each of you throw his purse among these fellows! they say that we and our ladies are living on their spoils!’ And he tossed his purse among the crowd.
In an instant every Goth had followed his example: more than one following it up by dashing a bracelet or necklace into the face of some hapless philosophaster.
‘I have no lady, my young friends,’ said old Wulf, in good enough Greek, ‘and owe you nothing: so I shall keep my money, as you might have kept yours; and as you might, too, old Smid, if you had been as wise as I.’
‘Don’t be stingy, prince, for the honour of the Goths,’ said Smid, laughing.
‘If I take in gold I pay in iron,’ answered Wulf, drawing half out of its sheath the huge broad blade, at the ominous brown stains of which the studentry recoiled; and the whole party swept into the empty lecture-room, and seated themselves at their ease in the front ranks.
Poor Hypatia! At first she determined not to lecture—then to send for Orestes—then to call on her students to defend the sanctity of the Museum; but pride, as well as prudence, advised her better; to retreat would be to confess herself conquered—to disgrace philosophy—to lose her hold on the minds of all waverers. No! she would go on and brave everything, insults, even violence; and with trembling limbs and a pale cheek, she mounted the tribune and began.
To her surprise and delight, however, her barbarian auditors were perfectly well behaved. Pelagia, in childish good-humour at her triumph, and perhaps, too, determined to show her contempt for her adversary by giving her every chance, enforced silence and attention, and checked the tittering of the girls, for a full half-hour. But at the end of that time the heavy breathing of the slumbering Amal, who had been twice awoke by her, resounded unchecked through the lecture-room, and deepened into a snore; for Pelagia herself was as fast asleep as he. But now another censor took upon himself the office of keeping order. Old Wulf, from the moment Hypatia had begun, had never taken his eyes off her face; and again and again the maiden’s weak heart had been cheered, as she saw the smile of sturdy intelligence and honest satisfaction which twinkled over that scarred and bristly visage; while every now and then the graybeard wagged approval, until she found herself, long before the end of the oration, addressing herself straight to her new admirer.
At last it was over, and the students behind, who had sat meekly through it all, without the slightest wish to ‘upset’ the intruders, who had so thoroughly upset them, rose hurriedly, glad enough to get safe out of so dangerous a neighbourhood. But to their astonishment, as well as to that of Hypatia, old Wulf rose also, and stumbling along to the foot of the tribune, pulled out his purse, and laid it at Hypatia’s feet.
‘What is this?’ asked she, half terrified at the approach of a figure more rugged and barbaric than she had ever beheld before.