The secretary purred delighted approval, and scribbled away now with right good heart.
‘Heraclian’s success, your Excellency.’
‘We of course desired, by every means in our power, to gratify the people of Alexandria, and, as was our duty, to excite by every lawful method their loyalty toward the throne of the Caesars (never mind who sat on it) at so critical a moment.’
‘So critical a moment....’
‘But as faithful Catholics, and abhorring even in the extremest need, the sin of Uzzah, we dreaded to touch with the unsanctified hands of laymen the consecrated ark of the Church, even though for its preservation....’
‘Its preservation, your Excellency....’
‘We, therefore, as civil magistrates, felt bound to confine ourselves to those means which were already allowed by law and custom to our jurisdiction; and accordingly made use of those largesses, spectacles, and public execution of rebels, which have unhappily appeared to his holiness the patriarch (too ready, perhaps, to find a cause of complaint against faithful adherents of the Byzantine See) to partake of the nature of those gladiatorial exhibitions, which are equally abhorrent to the spirit of the Catholic Church, and to the charity of the sainted emperors by whose pious edicts they have been long since abolished.’
‘Your Excellency is indeed great.... but—pardon your slave’s remark—my simplicity is of opinion that it may be asked why you did not inform the Augusta Pulcheria of Cyril’s conspiracy?’
‘Say that we sent a messenger off three months ago, but that.... Make something happen to him, stupid, and save me the trouble.’
‘Shall I kill him by Arabs in the neighbourhood of Palmyra, your Excellency?’