‘Alas, my lord, you do not know the customs of that accursed folk. They have a damnable practice of treating every member of their nation as a brother, and helping each freely and faithfully without reward; whereby they are enabled to plunder all the rest of the world, and thrive themselves, from the least to the greatest. Don’t fancy that your bonds are in Miriam’s hands. They have been transferred months ago. Your real creditors may be in Carthage, or Rome, or Byzantium, and they will attack you from thence; while all that you would find if you seized the old witch’s property, would be papers, useless to you, belonging to Jews all over the empire, who would rise as one man in defence of their money. I assure you, it is a net without a bound. If you touch one you touch all.... And besides, my diligence, expecting some such command, has already taken the liberty of making inquiries as to Miriam’s place of abode; but it appears, I am sorry to say, utterly unknown to any of your Excellency’s servants.’
‘You lie!’ said Orestes.... ‘I would much sooner believe that you have been warning the hag to keep out of the way.’
Orestes had spoken, for that once in his life, the exact truth.
The secretary, who had his own private dealings with Miriam, felt every particular atom of his skin shudder at those words; and had he had hair on his head, it would certainly have betrayed him by standing visibly on end. But as he was, luckily for him, close shaven, his turban remained in its proper place, as he meekly replied— ‘Alas! a faithful servant can feel no keener woe than the causeless suspicion of that sun before whose rays he daily prostrates his—’
‘Confound your periphrases! Do you know where she is?’
‘No!’ cried the wretched secretary, driven to the lie direct at last; and confirmed the negation with such a string of oaths, that Orestes stopped his volubility with a kick, borrowed of him, under threat of torture, a thousand gold pieces as largess to the soldiery, and ended by concentrating the stationaries round his own palace, for the double purpose of protecting himself in case of a riot, and of increasing the chances of the said riot, by leaving the distant quarters of the city without police.
‘If Cyril would but make a fool of himself, now that he is in the full-blown pride of victory—the rascal!—about that Ammonius, or about Hypatia, or anything else, and give me a real handle against him! After all, truth works better than lying now and then. Oh, that I could poison him! But one can’t bribe those ecclesiastics; and as for the dagger, one could not hire a man to be torn in pieces by monks. No; I must just sit still, and see what Fortune’s dice may turn up. Well, your pedants like Aristides or Epaminondas—thank Heaven, the race of them has died out long ago!—might call this no very creditable piece of provincial legislation; but after all, it is about as good as any now going, or likely to be going till the world’s end; and one can’t be expected to strike out a new path. I shall stick to the wisdom of my predecessors, and—oh, that Cyril may make a fool of himself to-night!’
And Cyril did make a fool of himself that night, for the first and last time in his life; and suffers for it, as wise men are wont to do when they err, to this very day and hour: but how much Orestes gained by his foe’s false move cannot be decided till the end of this story; perhaps not even then.