“Grant it to him!” said Bononius, who was burning with impatience.
Philippus consented and, with the young sage and Lydia, took a solemn oath. Then Bononius told the Chaldean, who could only move with difficulty, to sit down on a cushioned couch and answer his questioner with strict conformity to the truth. He himself stood with folded arms directly in front of the couch. Philippus, sword in hand, stationed himself by the magician’s side, while Lydia leaned in breathless expectation over the back of a bronze arm-chair.
“First of all,” Caius Bononius began, “tell us one thing: do you believe in the existence of a power in the Nether World, a creature which has some traits akin to the terrible being in whom people believe under the name of Hecate? An answer to this question seems to me valuable, because I should like to know whether you have dared to offend, by the deception of your juggling arts, a divinity in whose power you trusted.”
Olbasanus smiled. Now that he had once yielded, he seemed to take the whole matter very quietly and after the fashion of a man of the world, like the Epicurean, who, reclining on the dining-couch in the brilliantly-lighted triclinium, chats about death.
“Sir,” he said with aristocratic calmness, “I believe, if not in Hecate, in the existence of the mighty void she fills. I, who know mankind as a gardener does flowers, assure you: certain things must be systematically devised by us more talented men, if the imagination of the people is not to exhaust itself. Meantime, you might have the kindness to loose my bonds. Our sworn agreement, your superior numbers, and this centurion’s sword make the favor appear trivial, and it is more agreeable to philosophize if one is not enduring physical discomfort.”
Caius Bononius made no delay in granting this request.
“Very well,” he began again when he had freed the magician from his ropes, “so you entirely deny the existence of supernatural beings?”
“I deny nothing—assert nothing. This world is so mysterious, the nature of things is so unfathomable to our intellectual powers, that it would be madness to form a positive opinion about the possibility or impossibility of a thing which does not come directly within our own experience.”
“I won’t dispute that. Now for details!”
“You need only question.”