‘The only way to avoid it, believe me, is to allure and to indulge. After all, it is for their good.’
‘True,’ sighed Hypatia. ‘Have your way, sir.’
‘Believe me, you shall have yours in turn. I ask you to be ruled by me now, only that you may be in a position to rule me and Africa hereafter.’
‘And such an Africa! Well, if they are born low and earthly, they must, I suppose, he treated as such; and the fault of such a necessity is Nature’s, and not ours.—Yet it is most degrading!—But still, if the only method by which the philosophic few can assume their rights, as the divinely-appointed rulers of the world, is by indulging those lower beings whom they govern for their good—why, be it so. It is no worse necessity than many another which the servant of the gods must endure in days like these.’
‘Ah,’ said Orestes, refusing to hear the sigh, or to see the bitterness of the lip which accompanied the speech—‘now Hypatia is herself again; and my counsellor, and giver of deep and celestial reasons for all things at which poor I can only snatch and guess by vulpine cunning. So now for our lighter entertainment. What shall it be?’
‘What you will, provided it be not, as most such are, unfit for the eyes of modest women. I have no skill in catering for folly.’
‘A pantomime, then? We may make that as grand and as significant as we will, and expend too on it all our treasures in the way of gewgaws and wild beasts.’
‘As you like.’
‘Just consider, too, what a scope for mythologic learning a pantomime affords. Why not have a triumph of some deity? Could I commit myself more boldly to the service of the gods! Now—who shall it be?’
‘Pallas—unless, as I suppose, she is too modest and too sober for your Alexandrians?’