He immediately recognised the voice of the principal dignitary of the Imperial post, Gaudentius. It was he who had suffered from the bad dream.
"One council treads on the heels of another," Gaudentius was complaining; "now it's at Sirmio, now it's at Sardis, now at Antioch, and now here at Constantinople. They discuss and discuss, but never come to an understanding. And I would ask you, for pity's sake, to consider the horses that have to carry these gentlemen about! Out of a relay of ten horses you will hardly find one who is not foundered by the bishops. Another five councils, and my beasts will only be fit for the knacker's yard—not a car will have a wheel on it. Yet, in spite of all, you'll see that the bishops will still be at loggerheads and boggling at the Trinity!"
"Why then, Gaudentius, don't you send in a formal report on the subject to the Emperor?"
"Nobody would believe me. I should be accused of irreligion and lack of respect for the crying needs of the Church."
In the vast round hall, crowned by a cupola on columns of Phrygian marble, the heat was already stifling. Slanting sun rays fell in through uncurtained windows. The noise of voices was like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. The Imperial golden seat—sella aurea—was prepared on a daïs. It rested on lions' paws of carved ivory, crossed like those of the curule chairs of Roman consuls.
Close to the throne, the high-priest Paphnutis, with a face empurpled by argument, was declaring—
"For my part, I shall keep to the opinions my fathers taught me! According to the creed of our holy father Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, we must worship a single God in a Trinity, and the Trinity in a single God; the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God, and nevertheless they form together but one God!"
And as if he was smashing an invisible enemy he brought down his enormous right fist into his left-hand palm and glared triumphantly round the assembly.
"That tradition have I received from my fathers, and that tradition I will keep!"
"Who is it? What's he saying?" asked Ozius, a man of a hundred years old, who had been alive in the time of the council of Nicæa. "Where's my trumpet?" Harrowing perplexity could be read on his face. He was deaf, almost blind. The deacon who accompanied him set the ear-trumpet to his ear.