Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley (e book reader TXT) 📗

but times are changed since then!.... You have worn out the old Hebrew hints, you miserable Gentiles, you, and got a Caesar instead of a Joseph! Hist, you hussies!’ cried she to the girls upstairs, clapping her hands loudly. ‘Here! bring us down one of those roast chickens, and a bottle of the wine of wines—the wine with the green seal, you careless daughters of Midian, you, with your wits running on the men, I’ll warrant, every minute I’ve been out of the house! Ah, you’ll smart for it some day—you’ll smart for it some day, you daughters of Adam’s first wife!’

Down came, by the hands of one of the Syrian slave-girls, the fowl and the wine.

‘There, now; we’ll all sup together. Wine, that maketh glad the heart of man!—Youth, you were a monk once, so you have read all about that, eh? and about the best wine which goes down sweetly, causing the lips of them that are asleep to speak. And rare wine it was, I warrant, which the blessed Solomon had in his little country cellar up there in Lebanon. We’ll try if this is not a very fair substitute for it, though. Come, my little man-monkey, drink, and forget your sorrow! You shall be temple-sweeper to Beelzebub yet, I promise you. Look at it there, creaming and curdling, the darling! purring like a cat at the very thought of touching human lips! As sweet as honey, as strong as fire, as clear as amber! Drink, ye children of Gehenna; and make good use of the little time that is left you between this and the unquenchable fire!’

And tossing a cup of it down her own throat, as if it had been water, she watched her companions with a meaning look, as they drank.

The little porter followed her example gallantly. Philammon looked, and longed, and sipped blushingly and bashfully, and tried to fancy that he did not care for it; and sipped again, being willing enough to forget his sorrow also for a moment; the negress refused with fear and trembling—‘She had a vow on her.’

‘Satan possess you and your vow! Drink, you coal out of Tophet! Do you think it is poisoned? You, the only creature in the world that I should not enjoy ill-using, because every one else ill-uses you already without my help! Drink, I say, or I’ll turn you pea-green from head to foot!’

The negress put the cup to her lips, and contrived, for her own reasons, to spill the contents unobserved.

‘A very fine lecture that of the Lady Hypatia’s the other morning, on Helen’s nepenthe,’ quoth the little porter, growing philosophic as the wine-fumes rose. ‘Such a power of extracting the cold water of philosophy out of the bottomless pit of Mythus, I never did hear. Did you ever, my Philammonidion?’

‘Aha! she and I were talking about that half an hour ago,’ said Miriam.

‘What! have you seen her?’ asked Philammon, with a flutter of the heart.

‘If you mean, did she mention you,—why, then, yes!’

‘How?—how?’

‘Talked of a young Phoebus Apollo—without mentioning names, certainly, but in the most sensible, and practical, and hopeful way—the wisest speech that I have heard from her this twelvemonth.’

Philammon blushed scarlet.

‘And that,’ thought he, in spite of what passed this morning!—Why’ what is the matter with our host?’

‘He has taken Solomon’s advice, and forgotten his sorrow.’

And so, indeed, he had; for he was sleeping sweetly, with open lack-lustre eyes, and a maudlin smile at the ceiling; while the negress, with her head fallen on her chest, seemed equally unconscious of their presence.

‘We’ll see,’ quoth Miriam; and taking up the lamp, she held the flame unceremoniously to the arm of each of them; but neither winced nor stirred.

‘Surely your wine is not drugged?’ said Philammon, in trepidation.

‘Why not? What has made them beasts, may make us angels. You seem none the less lively for it! Do I?’

‘But drugged wine?’

‘Why not? The same who made wine made poppy-juice. Both will make man happy. Why not use both?’

‘It is poison!’

‘It is the nepenthe, as I told Hypatia, whereof she was twaddling mysticism this morning. Drink, child, drink! I have no mind to put you to sleep to-night! I want to make a man of you, or rather, to see whether you are one!’

And she drained another cup, and then went on, half talking to herself—

‘Ay, it is poison; and music is poison; and woman is poison, according to the new creed, Pagan and Christian; and wine will be poison, and meat will be poison, some day; and we shall have a world full of mad Nebuchadnezzars, eating grass like oxen. It is poisonous, and brutal, and devilish, to be a man, and not a monk, and an eunuch, and a dry branch. You are all in the same lie, Christians and philosophers, Cyril and Hypatia! Don’t interrupt me, but drink, young fool!—Ay, and the only man who keeps his manhood, the only man who is not ashamed to be what God has made him, is your Jew. You will find yourselves in want of him after all, some day, you besotted Gentiles, to bring you back to common sense and common manhood.—In want of him and his grand old books, which you despise while you make idols of them, about Abraham, and Jacob, and Moses, and David, and Solomon, whom you call saints, you miserable hypocrites, though they did what you are too dainty to do, and had their wives and their children, and thanked God for a beautiful woman, as Adam did before them, and their sons do after them—Drink, I say—and believed that God had really made the world, and not the devil, and had given them the lordship over it, as you will find out to your cost some day.’

Philammon heard, and could not answer; and on she rambled.

‘And music, too? Our priests were not afraid of sackbut and psaltery, dulcimer and trumpet, in the house of the Lord; for they knew who had given them the cunning to make them. Our prophets were not afraid of calling for music, when they wished to prophesy, and letting it soften and raise their souls, and open and quicken them till they saw into the inner harmony of things, and beheld the future in the present; for they knew who made the melody and harmony, and made them the outward symbols of the inward song which runs through sun and stars, storm and tempest, fulfilling his word—in that these sham philosophers the heathen are wiser than those Christian monks. Try it!—try it! Come with me! Leave these sleepers here, and come to my rooms. You long to be as wise as Solomon. Then get at wisdom as Solomon did, and give your heart first to know folly and madness.... You have read the Book of the Preacher?’

Poor Philammon! He was no longer master of himself. The arguments—the wine—the terrible spell of the old woman’s voice and eye, and the strong overpowering will which showed out through them, dragged him along in spite of himself. As if in a dream, he followed her up the stairs.

‘There, throw away that stupid, ugly, shapeless philosopher’s