"I thank God for my blindness!" exclaimed the old man; "it does not allow me to see your damned face, Apostate!"
"What spitefulness! in so frail a body! You are always speaking of humility and love, Galileans; and yet what hate is in every one of your words! I have just quitted an assemblage where the Fathers of the Church were ready to fly at each other like wild beasts. And now comes this unbridled speech of yours! Why this hatred? Am I not your brother? Oh, if you knew at this moment how kindly my heart feels towards you! May the Olympians soften your cruel and suffering soul, poor blind man! Go in peace, and remember that the Galileans are not the only men who can pardon!..."
"Believe him not, brethren!... It is a trick, a snare of the Serpent. God of Israel, have no mercy!"
Paying no attention to the curses of the old man, Julian, in his white tunic, made his way through the crowd with the haughty bearing of one of the old sages.
VIII
It was a stormy night. At rare intervals a weak moon-ray darted between hurrying black clouds and mingled itself strangely with the throbbings of lightning. A warm salt-laden wind was blowing violently. On the left shore of the Bosphorus a horseman was approaching a lonely ruin. In immemorial Trojan times this fortification had been used as a watch-tower. It was now little more than a heap of stones and half-demolished walls, overgrown by tall grass. But at its foot a small chamber still served as shelter to shepherds and poor travellers.
Tethering his horse under a dismantled doorway, and brushing through the burdock-leaves, the rider knocked at a low door—
"It is I, Meroë! Open!..."
An old Egyptian woman opened the door and admitted him to the interior of the tower. The traveller came near a torch which lighted up his face. He was Julian the Emperor.