"The Hellas that you love has never existed."
"Do you mean to say that my faith is futile?"
"We are only to believe," answered Maximus, "in what is not, but shall be. Your Hellas shall exist, shall be the reign, the kingdom of divine men, men daring all things, fearing none."
"Fearing none!... Master, powerful enchantments are thine.... Deliver my soul from fear!"
"Fear of what?"
"I cannot say, but from childhood I have been afraid—afraid of life, of death, of myself, of the mystery in all things, of the darkness.... I had an old nurse, Labda, like a Parca, a Fate, who used to spin me terrible tales of my family, the Flavii. These mad old-wives' tales keep singing in my ears still, at night, when I am alone. They will ruin me some day ... I wish to be free, as one of the old Hellenes ... and I have no gladness in me.... Sometimes I think I am a coward, Master!... Master, save me! Deliver me from that eternal fear, these consuming darknesses!"
"Ah, I have long known the need of your soul," said Maximus, gravely, "and from this very day I will cleanse you from this Galilean corruption—slay the shadow of Golgotha in the radiance of Mithra—warm afresh your body, frozen at baptism, in the hot blood of the Sun-god!... My son, rejoice! for I will give you such freedom, such joy as no man on earth has yet possessed!"
They issued from the wood, and followed a narrow path, hewn through the rock, above a chasm in which a torrent ran seething. Stones, loosened by their feet, rolled echoing down and plunged into the water. High over the forest they saw the distant snow-covered summits of Mount Rhodope. Julian and Maximus at last reached and entered the mouth of a cave. It was the temple of the Sun-god Mithra, where mysteries, forbidden by the Roman laws, were performed. In this cavern there was no sign of splendour; the bleak walls were engraven with cabalistic signs of Zoroastrian religion, triangles, enlaced circles, winged beasts, and constellations. Here and there the vaulted obscurity was relieved by dull flames of torches or the form of an initiating priest in strange and sweeping robes.
Julian was arrayed in the Olympian robe, embroidered with Indian monsters, stars, suns, and hyperborean dragons. He held a flambeau in his right hand. Maximus had acquainted him with the responses to be made to his initiator, and Julian had learned them by heart, although their meaning hitherto was unintelligible to him.
With Maximus he went down rock-hewn steps into a long and deep foss. Here the air was already humid and stifling; but to make it more so, overhead a wooden trap-door, riddled with holes like a strainer, was lowered across, from edge to edge. The trampling of hoofs resounded, and the sacrificers placed three black bulls, three white bulls, and a red bull with gilded hoofs and horns on the trap above the two men. Then the initiators, intoning a hymn which mingled with the bellowing of the beasts, felled with axes one bull after another. They fell on their knees and struggled, the wooden framework trembled under their weight, while the farthest vaults of the cavern resounded to the cries of the red bull, which was hailed as the god Mithra. Percolating through the holes in the trap, the blood fell in a hot shower upon the head of Julian. This slaying of the bull consecrated to the Sun was the supreme mystery of the Pagans. Throwing off his outer clothes and standing in his white tunic only, Julian offered head, breast, and all his limbs to the terrible trickling rain. Then Maximus, shaking the torch overhead, cried—