Julian took his way towards an isolated grotto, hard by the precipice, in which a statue of the god Pan, playing the flute, stood over a little sacrificial altar. Outside the grotto, a lion's mouth jetted water into a stone basin, and a curtain of roses masked the entrance while letting through its branches a view of the undulating hills and the plain, far down and drowned in misty blue. The perfume of roses filled the little cave, and the air there would have been oppressive had it not been cooled by a stream channelled in the rocky floor.
The wind scattered the turf with yellow petals of roses, and flung them floating on the water of the basin. From the dark and warm place of shelter could be heard the humming of bees. There Julian, stretched on the moss, used to read the Banquet of Plato, understanding nothing of many of the passages; but their beauty had for him a double relish because it was a fruit forbidden.
When his reading was done, Julian wrapped the book anew in the binding of the "Epistles of the Apostle Paul," went up to the altar of Pan, gazed at the joyous god as at an old accomplice, and, thrusting his hand into a heap of dried leaves, drew from the interior of the altar, which was cracked and covered with a piece of board, a small object carefully enveloped in cloth. It was his own handiwork—a delightful little Liburnian trireme, or galley with three banks of oars. He set it swimming in the basin; the galley rocked on the miniature waves. The model was complete,—three masts, rigging, oars, gilded prow, and sails made of a fragment of purple silk, the gift of Labda. Nothing was wanting but to fix the rudder, and the boy began the task.
From time to time, while planing a piece of board, he would look into the distance, at the hills outlined in mist through the hedge of roses. Beside his plaything Julian soon forgot all vexations, all hates, and the eternal fear of death. In this little cave he imagined himself a shipwrecked sailor. He was the wily Ulysses in some solitary cavern facing the ocean, building a ship in which he might win back again to Ithaca. But down yonder, there among the hills, where the houses of Cæsarea shone white as the sea-foam, a little cross, glittering high above the roof of the basilica, irritated him still. That everlasting cross! Could he never be free of it, even here in his own cave? He would resolve not to see it, and stooping, redoubled his attention to the galley.
"Julian!" a voice cried; "Julian, Julian! Where in the world is he? Eutropius is looking for you to go to church with him."
The boy shivered, and nimbly hid his handiwork inside the altar of Pan. He smoothed his hair, shook his clothes, and when he came out of the grotto had resumed an expression of impenetrable Christian hypocrisy.
Eutropius, holding Julian's hand in his bony one, conducted him to church.
IV
The Arian basilica of St. Maurice was built almost entirely of blocks taken from the ruined temple of Apollo. The sacred court, the atrium, was surrounded by colonnades. In the middle of this court murmured a fountain, placed there for the ablutions of the faithful. Under one of the side porticoes lay an ancient oaken tomb darkened with age; and in this tomb were the wonder-working bones of St. Mamas, for which Eutropius had obliged Julian and Gallus themselves to build a stone-work shrine. The task of Gallus, who took to it as to a game, went rapidly forward, while the wall of Julian frequently crumbled and proved oddly unsatisfactory; a phenomenon which Eutropius explained by remarking that St. Mamas refused the offering of children possessed by the demon of pride.