It was of no use to grieve; and when the kindly hand of the monk was placed upon my shoulder I submitted to his will, and was led back to the cell, and there he gave me to drink of a sweet, thin decoction that greatly soothed these high-strung nerves.
Then many were the questions that studious man would have me answer, and busy his wonder and awe at my assertions.
“What Emperor rules here now?” I said, lying melancholy on my elbow on the couch.
“None, my son. There are no Emperors but the Sovereign Pontiff now—may St. Peter be his guide!”
“No Emperor! Why, old man, Honorius held sway in Rome that night I went to sleep!”
“Honorius!” said the monk, incredulously stopping his excited pacings to stare at me; and he took down a portly tome of history and ran his fingers over the leaves, until, about midway through that volume, they settled on a passage.
“Look! look! you marvelous man!” he cried; “all this was history before you slumbered; and all this, nigh as much again, has been added while you slept! Five hundred years of solid life!—a thousand changing seasons has the germ of existence been dormant in that mighty bulk of yours! Oh! ’tis past belief, and had you not been my lodger for so long a time, though all so short in comparison, I would not hear of it.”
“And how has the world spun all this period?” I said, with dense persistence. “Who is Consul now in Gaul? And are all my jolly friends of the Tenth Legion still quartered where I left them?”—and I mentioned the name of the town by which Electra lived.
“I tell thee, youth,” the priest replied quite hotly, “there is no Consul, there are no legions. All your barbarous Romans are long since swept to hell, and the noble Harold is here anointed King of Saxon England.”
“I never heard of him,” I said coldly.