Orestes, like most weak and luxurious men, Romans especially, had a wild-beast vein in him—and it burst forth.
‘Hell and the furies! You insolent provincial slave—you will carry these liberties of yours too far! Do you know who I am, you accursed Jew? Tell me the whole truth, or, by the head of the emperor, I’ll twist it out of you with red-hot pincers!’
Raphael’s countenance assumed a dogged expression, which showed that the old Jewish blood still heat true, under all its affected shell of Neo-Platonist nonchalance; and there was a quiet unpleasant earnest in his smile, as he answered—
‘Then, my dear governor, you will be the first man on earth who ever yet forced a Jew to say or do what he did not choose.’
‘We’ll see!’ yelled Orestes. ‘Here, slaves!’ And he clapped his hands loudly.
‘Calm yourself, your excellency,’ quoth Raphael, rising. ‘The door is locked; the mosquito net is across the window; and this dagger is poisoned. If anything happens to me, you will offend all the Jew money-lenders, and die in about three days in a great deal of pain, having missed our assignation with old Miriam, lost your pleasantest companion, and left your own finances and those of the prefecture in a considerable state of embarrassment. How much better to sit down, hear all I have to say philosophically, like a true pupil of Hypatia, and not expect a man to tell you what he really does not know.’
Orestes, after looking vainly round the room for a place to escape, had quietly subsided into his chair again; and by the time that the slaves knocked at the door he had so far recovered his philosophy as to ask, not for the torturers, but for a page and wine.
‘Oh, you Jews!’ quoth he, trying to laugh off matters. ‘The same incarnate fiends that Titus found you!’
‘The very same, my dear prefect. Now for this matter, which is really important-at least to Gentiles. Heraclian will certainly rebel. Synesius let out as much to me. He has fitted out an armament for Ostia, stopped his own wheat-ships, and is going to write to you to stop yours, and to starve out the Eternal City, Goths, senate, emperor, and all. Whether you will comply with his reasonable little request depends of course on yourself.’
‘And that again very much on his plans.’