CHAPTER VI: THE NEW DIOGENES
About five o’clock the next morning, Raphael Aben-Ezra was lying in bed, alternately yawning over a manuscript of Philo Judaeus, pulling the ears of his huge British mastiff, watching the sparkle of the fountain in the court outside, wondering when that lazy boy would come to tell him that the bath was warmed, and meditating, half aloud....
‘Alas! poor me! Here I am, back again—just at the point from which I started!.... How am I to get free from that heathen Siren? Plagues on her! I shall end by falling in love with her.... I don’t know that I have not got a barb of the blind boy in me already. I felt absurdly glad the other day when that fool told me he dare not accept her modest offer. Ha! ha! A delicious joke it would have been to have seen Orestes bowing down to stocks and stones, and Hypatia installed in the ruins of the Serapeium, as High Priestess of the Abomination of Desolation!. And now.... Well I call all heaven and earth to witness, that I have fought valiantly. I have faced naughty little Eros like a man, rod in hand. What could a poor human being do more than try to marry her to some one else, in hopes of sickening himself of the whole matter? Well, every moth has its candle, and every man his destiny. But the daring of the little fool! What huge imaginations she has! She might be another Zenobia, now, with Orestes as Odenatus, and Raphael Aben-Ezra to play the part of Longinus, and receive Longinus’s salary of axe or poison. She don’t care for me; she would sacrifice me, or a thousand of me, the cold-blooded fanatical archangel that she is, to water with our blood the foundation of some new temple of cast rags and broken dolls.... Oh, Raphael Aben-Ezra, what a fool you are!.... You know you are going off as usual to her lecture, this very morning!’
At this crisis of his confessions the page entered, and announced, not the bath, but Miriam.
The old woman, who, in virtue of her profession, had the private entry of all fashionable chambers in Alexandria, came in hurriedly; and instead of seating herself as usual, for a gossip, remained standing, and motioned the boy out of the room.
‘Well my sweet mother? Sit: Ah? I see! You rascal, you have brought in no wine for the lady. Don’t you know her little ways yet?’
‘Eos has got it at the door, of course,’ answered the boy, with a saucy air of offended virtue.
‘Out with you, imp of Satan!’ cried Miriam. ‘This is no time for winebibbing. Raphael Aben-Ezra, why are you lying here? Did you not receive a note last night?’
‘A note? So I did, but I was too sleepy to read it. There it lies. Boy, bring it here....What’s this? A scrap out of Jeremiah? “Arise, and flee for thy life, for evil is determined against the whole house of Israel!”—Does this come from the chief rabbi; I always took the venerable father for a sober man.... Eh, Miriam?’
‘Fool! instead of laughing at the sacred words of the prophets, get up and obey them. I sent you the note.’