“There goes the Gem of Alexandria,” murmured Seti to himself.
Aleph said nothing, but he thought that, whatever the gem, it was a wonderfully fine casket that contained it. He was sure that he had never seen a finer. And those eyes! As he turned away the twin stars again ventured to show themselves above his horizon in all their dewy splendors. But what had he to do with a maiden’s starry eyes? Just nothing at all. So back they timidly sank to the horizon’s edge; but refused to go farther. They must wait till they had burned a path through.
That evening at the khan Cimon and Aleph compared experiences. Cimon had revived his acquaintance with the city, but had not found any of his old acquaintances. Thirty years and more had dismissed all of them to new homes or to the Necropolis. No directory made it possible for him to be sure but that, somewhere in the great city, some one whom he had known as a young man was still living with whitening locks; but no doubt nearly all of his generation were dead. That was the way of things in Alexandria: as it is everywhere else. Cimon was sad that night. O Time, thou mighty thief, when will Government apprehend thee and bring thee to justice! Or, better still, when will it take thy scythe from thee, and put thee into some Reformatory to learn giving instead of stealing, addition instead of subtraction, flowing instead of ebbing, the art of ever setting poor men forward from strength to strength instead of backward from weakness to weakness! Well, that is what will be done some day—for some. For whom?
IV.
THE SYNAGOGUE.
Καὶ ἀρίστους δὲ καὶ θεοφιλεστάτους.
—Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 9.
That the best men are most observant of Divine worship.