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

or to get to court yourself. When I was young, the Council of Antioch had to make a law to keep bishops from running off to Constantinople to intrigue, under pretence of pleading the cause of the orphan and widow. But what’s the use of that, when every noisy and ambitious man shifts and shifts, from one see to another, till he settles himself close to Rome or Byzantium, and gets the emperor’s ear, and plays into the hands of his courtiers?’

‘Is it not written, “Speak not evil of dignities”? ‘said Philammon, in his most sanctimonious tone.

‘Well, what of that? I don’t speak evil of dignities, when I complain of the men who fill them badly, do I?’

‘I never heard that interpretation of the text before.’

‘Very likely not. That’s no reason why it should not be true and orthodox. You will soon hear a good many more things, which are true enough—though whether they are orthodox or not, the court cooks must settle. Of course, I am a disappointed, irreverent old grumbler. Of course, and of course, too, young men must needs buy their own experience, instead of taking old folks’ at a gift. There—use your own eyes, and judge for yourself. There you may see what sort of saints are bred by this plan of managing the Catholic Church. There comes one of them. Now! I say no more!’

As he spoke, two tall negroes came up to them, and set down before the steps of a large church which they were passing an object new to Philammon—a sedan-chair, the poles of which were inlaid with ivory and silver, and the upper part enclosed in rose-coloured silk curtains.

‘What is inside that cage?’ asked he of the old priest, as the negroes stood wiping the perspiration from their foreheads, and a smart slave-girl stepped forward, with a parasol and slippers in her hand, and reverently lifted the lower edge of the curtain.

‘A saint, I tell you!’

An embroidered shoe, with a large gold cross on the instep, was put forth delicately from beneath the curtain, and the kneeling maid put on the slipper over it.

‘There!’ whispered the old grumbler. ‘Not enough, you see, to use Christian men as beasts of burden—Abbot Isidore used to say—ay, and told Iron, the pleader, to his face, that he could not conceive how a man who loved Christ, and knew the grace which has made all men free, could keep a slave.’

‘Nor can I,’ said Philammon.

‘But we think otherwise, you see, in Alexandria here. We can’t even walk up the steps of God’s temple without an additional protection to our delicate feet.’

‘I had thought it was written, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.”’

‘Ah! there are a good many more things written which we do not find it convenient to recollect.—Look! There is one of the pillars of the church-the richest and most pious lady in Alexandria.’

And forth stepped a figure, at which Philammon’s eyes opened wider than they had done even at the sight of Pelagia. Whatever thoughts the rich and careless grace of her attire might have raised in his mind, it had certainly not given his innate Greek good taste the inclination to laugh and weep at once, which he felt at this specimen of the tasteless fashion of an artificial and decaying civilisation. Her gown was stuffed out behind in a fashion which provoked from the dirty boys who lay about the steps, gambling for pistachios on their fingers, the same comments with which St. Clement had upbraided from the pulpit the Alexandrian ladies of his day. The said gown of white silk was bedizened, from waist to ankle, with certain mysterious red and green figures at least a foot long, which Philammon gradually discovered to be a representation, in the very lowest and ugliest style of fallen art, of Dives and Lazarus; while down her back hung, upon a bright blue shawl, edged with embroidered crosses, Job sitting, potsherd in hand, surrounded by his three friends—a memorial, the old priest whispered, of a pilgrimage which she had taken a year or two before, to Arabia, to see and kiss the identical dunghill on which the patriarch had sat.

Round her neck hung, by one of half a dozen necklaces, a manuscript of the Gospels, gilt-edged and clasped with jewels; the lofty diadem of pearls on the head carried in front a large gold cross; while above and around it her hair, stiffened with pomatum, was frizzled out half a foot from a wilderness of plaits and curls, which must have cost some hapless slave-girl an hour’s work, and perhaps more than one scolding, that very morning.

Meekly, with simpering face and downcast eyes, and now and then a penitent sigh and shake of the head and pressure of her hand on her jewelled bosom, the fair penitent was proceeding up the steps, when she caught sight of the priest and the monk, and turning to them with an obeisance of the deepest humility, entreated to be allowed to kiss the hem of their garments.

‘You had far better, madam,’ said Philammon, bluntly enough, ‘kiss the hem of your own. You carry two lessons there which you do not seem to have learnt yet.’

In an instant her face flashed up into pride and fury. ‘I asked for your blessing, and not for a sermon. I can have that when I like.’

‘And such as you like,’ grumbled the old priest, as she swept up the steps, tossing some small coin to the ragged boys, and murmuring to herself, loud enough for Philammon’s hearing, that she should certainly inform the confessor, and that she would not be insulted in the streets by savage monks.

‘Now she will confess her sins inside—all but those which she has been showing off to us here outside, and beat her breast, and weep like a very Magdalen; and then the worthy man will comfort her with—“What a beautiful chain! And what a shawl—allow me to touch it! How soft and delicate this Indian wool! Ah! if you knew the debts which I have been compelled to incur in the service of the sanctuary!—” And then of course the answer will be, as, indeed, he expects it should, that if it can be of the least use in the service of the Temple, she, of course, will think it only too great an honour.... And he will keep the chain, and perhaps the shawl too. And she will go home, believing that she has fulfilled to the very letter the command to break off her sins by almsgiving, and only sorry that the good priest happened to hit on that particular gewgaw!’

‘What,’ asked Philammon; ‘dare she actually not refuse such importunity?’

‘From a poor priest like me, stoutly enough; but from a popular ecclesiastic like him.... As Jerome says, in a letter of his I once saw, ladies think twice in such cases before they offend the city newsmonger. Have you anything more to say?’

Philammon had nothing to say; and wisely held his peace, while the old grumbler ran on—

‘Ah, boy, you have yet to learn city fashions! When you are a little older, instead of speaking unpleasant truths to a fine lady with a cross on her forehead, you will be ready to run to the Pillars of