Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley (most popular novels of all time .TXT) 📕
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- Author: Charles Kingsley
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‘What news?’ asked the little porter, who had been waiting for him at the door all the while. ‘What news, O favourite of the gods!’
‘I will lodge with you, and labour with you. Ask me no more at present. I am—I am—
‘Those who descended into the Cave of Trophonius, and beheld the unspeakable, remained astonished for three days, my young friend—and so will you!’ And they went forth together to earn their bread.
But what is Hypatia doing all this while, upon that cloudy Olympus, where she sits enshrined far above the noise and struggle of man and his work-day world?
She is sitting again, with her manuscripts open before her; but she is thinking of the young monk, not of them.
‘Beautiful as Antinous!.... Rather as the young Phoebus himself, fresh glowing from the slaughter of the Python. Why should not he, too, become a slayer of Pythons, and loathsome monsters, bred from the mud of sense and matter? So bold and earnest! I can forgive him those words for the very fact of his having dared, here in my fathers house, to say them to me.... And yet so tender, so open to repentance and noble shame!—That is no plebeian by birth; patrician blood surely flows in those veins; it shows out in every attitude, every tone, every motion of the hand and lip. He cannot be one of the herd. Who ever knew one of them crave after knowledge for its own sake?.... And I have longed so for one real pupil! I have longed so to find one such man, among the effeminate selfish triflers who pretend to listen to me. I thought I had found one—and the moment that I had lost him, behold, I find another; and that a fresher, purer, simpler nature than ever Raphael’s was at its best. By all the laws of physiognomy—by all the symbolism of gesture and voice and complexion—by the instinct of my own heart, that young monk might be the instrument, the ready, valiant, obedient instrument, for carrying out all my dreams. If I could but train him into a Longinus, I could dare to play the part of a Zenobia, with him as counseller.... And for my Odenatus—Orestes? Horrible!’
She covered her face with her hand a minute. ‘No!’ she said, dashing away the tears—‘That—and anything—and everything for the cause of Philosophy and the gods!’
CHAPTER XI: THE LAURA AGAIN
Not a sound, not a moving object, broke the utter stillness of the glen of Scetis. The shadows of the crags, though paling every moment before the spreading dawn, still shrouded all the gorge in gloom. A winding line of haze slept above the course of the rivulet. The plumes of the palm-trees hung motionless, as if awaiting in resignation the breathless blaze of the approaching day. At length, among the green ridges of the monastery garden, two gray figures rose from their knees, and began, with slow and feeble strokes, to break the silence by the clatter of their hoes among the pebbles.
‘These beans grow wonderfully, brother Aufugus. We shall be able to sow our second crop, by God’s blessing, a week earlier than we did last year.’
The person addressed returned no answer; and his companion, after watching him for some time in silence, recommenced—
‘What is it, my brother? I have remarked lately a melancholy about you, which is hardly fitting for a man of God.’
A deep sigh was the only answer. The speaker laid down his hoe, and placing his hand affectionately on the shoulder of Aufugus, asked again—
‘What is it, my friend? I will not claim with you my abbot’s right to know the secrets of your heart: but surely that breast hides nothing which is unworthy to be spoken to me, however unworthy I may be to hear it!’
‘Why should I not be sad, Pambo, my friend? Does not Solomon say that there is a time for mourning?’
‘True: but a time for mirth also.’
‘None to the penitent, burdened with the guilt of many sins.’
‘Recollect what the blessed Anthony used to say—“Trust not in thine own righteousness, and regret not that which is past.”’
‘I do neither, Pambo.’
‘Do not be too sure of that. Is it not because thou art still trusting in thyself, that thou dost regret the past, which shows thee that thou art not that which thou wouldst gladly pride thyself on being?’
‘Pambo, my friend,’ said Arsenius solemnly, ‘I will tell thee all. My sins are not yet past; for Honorius, my pupil, still lives, and in him lives the weakness and the misery of Rome. My sins past? If they are, why do I see rising before me, night after night, that train of accusing spectres, ghosts of men slain in battle, widows and orphans, virgins of the Lord shrieking in the grasp of barbarians, who stand by my bedside and cry, “Hadst thou done thy duty, we had not been thus! Where is that imperial charge which God committed to thee?”’.... And the old man hid his face in his hands and wept bitterly.
Pambo laid his hand again tenderly on the weeper’s shoulder.
‘Is there no pride here, my brother? Who art thou, to change the fate of nations and the hearts of emperors, which are in the hand of the King of kings? If thou wert weak, and imperfect in thy work—for unfaithful, I will warrant thee, thou wert never—He put thee there, because thou wert imperfect, that so that which has come to pass might come to pass; and thou bearest thine own burden only-and yet not thou, but He who bore it for thee.’
‘Why then am I tormented by these nightly visions?’
‘Fear them not, friend. They are spirits of evil, and therefore lying spirits. Were they good spirits they would speak to thee only in pity, forgiveness, encouragement. But be they ghosts or demons, they must be evil, because they are accusers, like the Evil One himself, the accuser of the saints. He is the father of lies, and his children will be like himself. What said the blessed Anthony? That a monk should not busy his brain with painting spectres, or give himself up for lost; but rather be cheerful, as one who knows that he is redeemed, and in the hands of the Lord, where the Evil One has no power to hurt him. “For,” he used to say, “the demons behave to us even as they find us. If they see us east down and faithless, they terrify us still more, that they may plunge us in despair. But if they see us full of faith, and joyful in the Lord, with our souls filled with the glory which shall be, then they shrink abashed, and flee away in confusion.” Cheer up, friend! such thoughts are of the night, the hour of Satan and of the powers of darkness; and with the dawn they flee away.’
‘And yet things are
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