‘It is very odd,’ said Peter to the swallows in the Serapeium, ‘that some people cannot obtain influence enough in their own parishes to get the simplest good works performed without tormenting his holiness the patriarch.’
The old priest mumbled some sort of excuse, and the archdeacon, without deigning a second look at him, said—‘Find him a man, brother Peter. Anybody will do. What is that boy—Philammon—doing there? Let him go with Master Hieracas.’
Peter seemed not to receive the proposition favourably, and whispered something to the archdeacon....
‘No. I can spare none of the rest. Importunate persons must take their chance of being well served. Come—here are our brethren; we will all go together.’
‘The farther together the better for the boy’s sake,’ grumbled Peter, loud enough for Philammon—perhaps for the old priest—to overhear him.
So Philammon went out with them, and as he went questioned his companions meekly enough as to who Raphael was.
‘A friend of Hypatia!’—that name, too, haunted him; and he began, as stealthily and indirectly as he could, to obtain information about her. There was no need for his caution; for the very mention of her name roused the whole party into a fury of execration.
‘May God confound her, siren, enchantress, dealer in spells and sorceress! She is the strange woman of whom Solomon prophesied.’
‘It is my opinion,’ said another, ‘that she is the forerunner of Antichrist.’
‘Perhaps the virgin of whom it is prophesied that he will be born,’ suggested another.