"A miracle! A miracle!... Look, the paralytic can walk!"
Julian turned round, and saw a tall man, wild with joy, stretching out his hands towards him with a look full of simple faith.
"I believe! I believe!" cried the paralytic; "I believe thou art no man, but a god descended upon earth. Touch me, heal me, Cæsar!"
All the halt and maimed were shouting—
"A miracle! Glory to Apollo! Glory to the Healer!"
"Come to me," called the sick, "say a word, and I shall be cured!"
Julian turned, and looked at the god in the light of sunset, and for the first time all going on in the hospice seemed to him a sacrilege. The clear eyes of the Olympian should look down no more on these monstrosities. Julian felt a wild desire to purify the ancient palæstra, to rid it of all Pagan and Galilean vermin, to sweep out the whole human dunghill. Oh, had Apollo lived again, how his eyes would have lightened, his arrows flown and purged the place of the paralytic and infirm!
Julian left the hospice of Apollo in haste. The Emperor had understood perfectly that his information was correct and that the principal inspector was a peculator. But such fatigue and disgust rose in his heart that he had no courage to push further his investigation of the rascality.
It was late when he returned to the palace. He gave an order that he would receive no one, and withdrew to the terrace which looked out on the Bosphorus.
Previous to his visit to the guest-house, the whole day had worn away in wearisome details of business, legal decisions, and the audit of accounts. A great number of instances of peculation had been brought to light, and allowed the Emperor to see that even his best friends were deceiving him. All these philosophers, these rhetoricians, poets, panegyrists, were robbing the treasury, and robbing it just as much as had the eunuchs and Christian bishops in the reign of Constantius. Guest-houses, alms-houses for philosophers, inns of Apollo and Aphrodite, were so many pretexts for gain by the cunning, and the more so that not only to Galileans, but also to Pagans themselves, these institutions seemed a fantastic notion, even a sacrilege, on the part of Cæsar.