“I do not know.”
“Just four-and-twenty, including that of the martyr Babylas, whose
ruined chapel you see just beyond us. I have had something to do with
most of them in my time. They are transitory. They give employment to
care-takers for a while. But the thing that lasts, and the thing that
interests me, is the human life that plays around them. The game has
been going on for centuries. It still disports itself very pleasantly
on summer evenings through these shady walks. Believe me, for I know.
Daphne and Apollo are shadows. But the flying maidens and the pursuing
lovers, the music and the dances, these are realities. Life is a game,
and the world keeps it up merrily. But you? You are of a sad countenance
for one so young and so fair. Are you a loser in the game?” The words
a key fits the lock. He opened his heart to the old man, and told him
the story of his life: his luxurious boyhood in his father’s house;
the irresistible spell which compelled him to forsake it when he
heard John’s preaching of the new religion; his lonely year with the
anchorites among the mountains; the strict discipline in his teacher’s
house at Antioch; his weariness of duty, his distaste for poverty, his
discontent with worship.
“And to-day,” said he, “I have been thinking that I am a fool. My life is swept as bare as a hermit’s cell. There is nothing in it but a dream, a thought of God, which does not satisfy me.”
The singular smile deepened on his companion’s face. “You are ready, then,” he suggested, “to renounce your new religion and go back to that of your father?”
“No; I renounce nothing, I accept nothing. I do not wish to think about it. I only wish to live.”
“A very reasonable wish, and I think you are about to see its accomplishment. Indeed, I may even say that I can put you in the way of securing it. Do you believe in magic?”
“I do not know whether I believe in anything. This is not a day on which I care to make professions of faith. I believe in what I see. I want what will give me pleasure.”
“Well,” said the old man, soothingly, as he plucked a leaf from the laurel-tree above them and dipped it in the spring, “let us dismiss the riddles of belief. I like them as little as you do. You know this is a Castalian fountain. The Emperor Hadrian once read his fortune here from a leaf dipped in the water. Let us see what this leaf tells us. It is already turning yellow. How do you read that?”
“Wealth,” said Hermas, laughing, as he looked at his mean garments.
“And here is a bud on the stem that seems to be swelling. What is that?”