Thus the coup d’église had succeeded for the moment. But it had to reckon with another monk, a second Timothy, of whom, as events proved, the angel had really been thinking. He was Timothy Whitebonnet, so called from his headgear, and his life was more notable than the Cat’s, for he lived at Canopus, where the air is so thick with demons that only the most robust of Christians can breathe. Canopus stood on a promontory ten miles east of Alexandria, overlooking the exit of the Nile. Foul influences had haunted it from the first. Helen, a thousand years ago, had come here with Paris on their flight towards Troy, and though the local authorities had expelled her for vagabondage, the ship that carried her might still be seen, upon summer nights, ploughing the waves into fire. In her train had followed Herodotus, asking idle questions of idle men; Alexander, called the Great from his enormous horns; and Serapis, a devil worse than any, who, liking the situation, had summoned his wife and child and established them on a cliff to the north, within sound of the sea. The child never spoke. The wife wore the moon. In their honour the Alexandrians used to come out along the canal in barges and punts, crowned with flowers, robed in gold, and singing spells of such potency that the words remained, though the singers were dead, and would slide into Timothy Whitebonnet’s ear, when the air seemed stillest, and pretend to him that they came from God. Often, just as a sentence was completed, he would realize its origin, and have to expectorate it in the form of a toad—a dangerous exercise, but it taught him discernment, and fitted him to play his part in the world. He learned with horror of the riots in the metropolis, and of the elevation of the heretical Cat. For he knew that Christ has two Natures, one human, the other divine: how can it be otherwise?
At Constantinople there seems to have been a little doubt. Leo, the reigning emperor, was anxious not to drive Egypt into revolt, and disposed to let Alexandria follow the faith she preferred. But his theologians took a higher line, and insisted on his sending a new garrison. This was done, the Cat was captured, and Whitebonnet dragged from Canopus and consecrated in his place. There matters rested until the accession of Basiliscus, who sent a new garrison to expel Whitebonnet. Once more the Cat ruled bloodily until the Emperor Zeno took the other view, and sending a——
However, the curtain may drop now. The controversy blazed for two hundred years, and is smouldering yet. The Copts still believe, with Timothy the Cat, in the single Nature of Christ; the double Nature, upheld by Timothy Whitebonnet, is still maintained by the rest of Christendom and by the reader. The Pharos, the Temple of Serapis—these have perished, being only stones, and sharing the impermanence of material things. It is ideas that live.
THE GOD ABANDONS ANTONY
When at the hour of midnight
an invisible choir is suddenly heard passing
with exquisite music, with voices—
Do not lament your fortune that at last subsides,
your life’s work that has failed, your schemes that have proved illusions.