"A little food, a little wine, for pity's sake," she murmured; for her own needs she had never asked a crust in charity, but for his,—she would have kissed the mud from the feet of any creature who would have had thus much of mercy.
In answer they only mocked her, some struck her in the palm of her outstretched hand. Some called her by foul names; some seized her with a drunken laugh, and cursed her as she writhed from their lewd hold; some, and these often women, whispered to her of the bagnio and the brothel; some muttered against her as a thief; one, a youth, who gave her the gentlest answer that she had, murmured in her ear, "A beggar? with that face? come tarry with me to-night."
She went on through the sulphurous yellow glare, and the poisonous steam of these human styes, shuddering from the hands that grasped, the voices that wooed her, the looks that ravished her, the laughs that mocked her.
It was the hell of the Christians: it was a city at midnight; and its very stones seem to arise and give tongue in her derision and cry, "Oh, fool, you dreamt of a sacrifice which should be honor; of a death, which should be release; of a means whereby through you the world should hear the old songs of the gods? Oh, fool! We are Christians here: and we only gather the reeds of the river to bruise them and break them, and thrust them, songless and dead, in the name of our Lord."
She stumbled on through the narrow ways.
After a little space they widened, and the lights multiplied, and through the rushing rains she saw the gay casements of the houses of pleasure.
On the gust of wind there came a breath of fragrance from a root of autumn blossom in a balcony. The old fresh woodland smell smote her as with a blow; the people in the street looked after her.
"She is mad," they said to one another, and went onward.
She came to a broad place, which even in that night of storm was still a blaze of fire, and seemed to her to laugh through all its marble mask, and all its million eyes of golden light. A cruel laugh which mocked and said,—
"The seven chords of the lyre; who listens, who cares, who has ears to hear? But the rod of wealth all women kiss, and to its rule all men crawl; forever. You dreamt to give him immortality?—fool! Give him gold—give him gold! We are Christians here: and we have but one God."