‘What is this for?’ asked Philammon, fingering curiously the first coins which he ever had handled in his life.
‘To pay for your entrance. To the philosopher none enters without money. Not so to the Church of God, open all day long to the beggar and the slave. If you convert her, well. And if not’.... And he added to himself between his teeth, ‘And if not, well also—perhaps better.’
‘Ay!’ said Peter bitterly, as he ushered Philammon out. ‘Go up to Ramoth Gilead, and prosper, young fool! What evil spirit sent you here to feed the noble patriarch’s only weakness?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Philammon, as fiercely as he dare.
‘The fancy that preachings, and protestations, and martyrdoms can drive out the Canaanites, who can only be got rid of with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. His uncle Theophilus knew that well enough. If he had not, Olympiodorus might have been master of Alexandria, and incense burning before Serapis to this day. Ay, go, and let her convert you! Touch the accursed thing, like Achan, and see if you do not end by having it in your tent. Keep company with the daughters of Midian, and see if you do not join yourself to Baal poor, and eat the offerings of the dead!’
And with this encouraging sentence, the two parted for the night.
CHAPTER VIII: THE EAST WIND
As Hypatia went forth the next morning, in all her glory, with a crowd of philosophers and philosophasters, students, and fine gentlemen, following her in reverend admiration across the street to her lecture-room, a ragged beggar-man, accompanied by a huge and villainous-looking dog, planted himself right before her, and extending a dirty hand, whined for an alms.
Hypatia, whose refined taste could never endure the sight, much less the contact, of anything squalid and degraded, recoiled a little, and bade the attendant slave get rid of the man with a coin. Several of the younger gentlemen, however, considered themselves adepts in that noble art of ‘upsetting’ then in vogue in the African universities, to which we all have reason enough to be thankful, seeing that it drove Saint Augustine from Carthage to Rome; and they, in compliance with the usual fashion of tormenting any simple creature who came in their way by mystification and insult, commenced a series of personal witticisms, which the beggar bore stoically enough. The coin was offered him, but he blandly put aside the hand of the giver, and keeping his place on the pavement, seemed inclined to dispute Hypatia’s farther passage.