"No, no; perhaps I didn't understand him well!" interrupted Avinius. "Don't disbelieve it! Mauricus, I am sincere."
From a downy litter the head of the chancery himself, Garguillus, got out, groaning—
"I think I'm late.... But that's of no great importance; I'll remain on the space outside ... God and the Holy Ghost...."
"Here's another miracle!" laughed Mauricus. "Texts from the Bible, in the mouth of Garguillus!"
"May Christ forgive you, my son!" quoth that imperturbable quæstor; "what are you always racking your soul about?"
"Oh, but up to now I haven't been able quite to get over it! There are so many conversions, so many transformations! I had always imagined that your opinions...."
"Pure stupidity, my dear son! I have only one opinion, which is, that the Galilean cooks are no worse than the Hellenist cooks. The Hellenists put me on a lenten diet ... which would make anybody ill.... Come and dine, O philosopher, and I'll bring you over to my belief. You will lick your fingers after it! And, after all, isn't it the same thing to eat a good dinner in honour of the god Hermes, and to eat it in honour of St. Mercurius? All these things are prejudices. I don't see anything irritating in trifles like this." And he pointed to the little amber cross, which dangled amidst the perfumed folds of an amethystine-purple robe, upon his enormous belly.
"Look, there's Hekobolis, the arch-priest of the goddess Astarte-Dindymene! The hierophant has repented, and is now in black Galilean vestments again!... Oh, Ovid, singer of Metamorphoses, why art thou not here?" chanted Mauricus, pointing to an old man with a red face seated in a covered litter—
"What's he reading?"
"It surely can't be the laws of the goddess of Pessinus!"