The chorus of Sophocles soon became wearisome. Husky voices took up a street-song. The whole proceeding appeared to Julian to have been desecrated. A drunken man was picked up; and some thieves, playing the part of Fauns, were arrested. They defended themselves, and a fight ensued. The only personages in the whole company whose demeanour remained dignified and beautiful were the panthers.
At last they drew near the temple. Julian came down from his chariot.
"Can I really present myself before the altar of Dionysus surrounded by this human refuse?"
A chill of disgust ran through his body. He saw the brutal faces wasted with debauchery, corpse-like through their paint; the painful nudity of bodies deformed by fasting and anæmia. He breathed the atmosphere of low wine-shops, houses of ill-fame. The breath of the crowd, tainted with rotten fish and sour wine, smote him through the aromatic smoke. Scrolls of papyrus were stretched out to him from every side:
"I was promised a place in your stables.... I have been paid nothing for renouncing Christ...."
"Don't desert us, Divine Augustus! Protect us! We denied for your sake the faith of our fathers!... If you give us up what will become of us?"
These were the voices drowned by the chorus of the feast.
Julian went into the temple, and contemplated the marvellous statue of Dionysus. His eyes, weary with human deformity, reposed on the pure lines of that divine body. He became oblivious of the crowd as if he were alone—the only man amidst a herd of animals.
The Emperor proceeded to the sacrifice. The people watched with amazement the Roman Cæsar, as Pontifex Maximus, in his zeal for religion doing the work of a slave—splitting wood, bringing twigs, drawing water, and cleansing the altar.
A rope-dancer said to his neighbour—