“Nonnus,” said Phœbus, passing noiselessly through the unresisting wall, “the tale of thy apostasy is then true?”
It would be difficult to determine whether surprise, delight, or dismay preponderated in Nonnus’s expression as he lifted up his eyes and recognised the God of Poetry. He had just presence of mind to shuffle his scroll under an enormous dictionary ere he fell at Apollo’s feet.
“O Phœbus,” he exclaimed, “hadst thou come a week ago!”
“It is true, then?” said Apollo. “Thou forsakest me and the Muses. Thou sidest with them who have broken our statues, unroofed our temples, desecrated our altars, and banished us from among mankind. Thou rejectest the glory of standing alone in a barbarous age as the last witness to culture and civilisation. Thou despisest the gifts of the Gods and the Muses, of which I am even now the bearer. Thou preferrest the mitre to the laurel chaplet, and the hymns of Gregory to the epics of Homer?”
“O Phœbus,” replied Nonnus, “were it any God but thou, I should bend before him in silence, having nought to reply. But thou art a poet, and thou understandest the temper of a poet. Thou knowest how beyond other men he is devoured by the craving for sympathy. This and not vulgar vanity is his motive of action; his shaft is launched in vain unless he can deem it embedded in the heart of a friend. Thou mayest well judge what scoffings and revilings my Dionysiac epic has brought upon me in this evil age; yet, had this been all, peradventure I might have borne it. But it was not all. The gentle, the good, the affectionate, they who in happier times would have been my audience, came about me, saying, Nonnus, why sing the strains against which we must shut our ears? Sing what we may listen to, and we will love and honour thee. I could not bear the thought of going to my grave without having awakened an echo of sympathy, and weakly but not basely I have yielded, given them what they craved, and suffered them, since the Muses’ garland is not theirs to bestow, to reward me with a mitre.”
“And what demanded they?” asked Apollo.
“Oh, a mere romance! Something entirely fabulous.”
“I must see it,” persisted Apollo; and Nonnus reluctantly disinterred his scroll from under the big dictionary, and handed it up, trembling like a schoolboy who anticipates a castigation for a bad exercise.
“What trash have we here?” cried Phœbus—
“Αχρονος ην, ακιχητος, εν αρρητω Λογος αρχη,
’Ισοφυης Γενετηρος όμηλικος Τιος αμητωρ,
Και Λογος αυτοφυτοιο Θεου, φως, εκ φαεος φως.