Hypatia by Charles Kingsley (good books to read for young adults txt) 📕

her purse a substantial reason for so thinking—‘I think it might be worth your ladyship’s while to see him.’

Hypatia shook her head impatiently.

‘He seems to know you well, madam, though he refuses to tell his name: but he bade me put you in mind of a black agate—I cannot tell what he meant—of a black agate, and a spirit which was to appear when you rubbed it.’

Hypatia turned pale as death. Was it Philammon again? She felt for the talisman—it was gone! She must have lost it last night in Miriam’s chamber. Now she saw the true purpose of the old hag’s plot—....deceived, tricked, doubly tricked! And what new plot was this?

‘Tell him to leave the letter, and begone …. My father? What? Who is this? Who are you bringing to me at such a moment?’

And as she spoke, Theon ushered into the chamber no other than Raphael Aben-Ezra, and then retired.

He advanced slowly towards her, and falling on one knee, placed in her hand Synesius’s letter.

Hypatia trembled from head to foot at the unexpected apparition …. Well; at least he could know nothing of last night and its disgrace. But not daring to look him in the face, she took the letter and opened it …. If she had hoped for comfort from it, her hope was not realised.

‘Synesius to the Philosopher:

‘Even if Fortune cannot take from me all things, yet what she can take she will. And yet of two things, at least, she shall not rob me—to prefer that which is best, and to succour the oppressed. Heaven forbid that she should overpower my judgment, as well as the rest of me! Therefore I do hate injustice; for that I can do: and my will is to stop it; but the power to do so is among the things of which she has bereaved me-before, too, she bereaved me of my children….

‘“Once, in old times, Milesian men were strong.”

And there was a time when I, too, was a comfort to my friends, and when you used to call me a blessing to every one except myself, as I squandered for the benefit of others the favour with which the great regarded me …. My hands they were—then …. But now I am left desolate of all: unless you have any power. For you and virtue I count among those good things, of which none can deprive me. But you always have power, and will have it, surely, now—using it as nobly as you do.

‘As for Nicaeus and Philolaus, two noble youths, and kinsmen of my own, let it be the business of all who honour you, both private men and magistrates, to see that they return possessors of their just rights.’ [Footnote: An authentic letter of Synesius to Hypatia.]

‘Of all who honour me!’ said she, with a bitter sigh: and then looked up quickly at Raphael, as if fearful of having betrayed herself. She turned deadly pale. In his eyes was a look of solemn pity, which told her that he knew—not all?—surely not all?

‘Have you seen the—Miriam?’ gasped she, rushing desperately at that which she most dreaded.

‘Not yet. I arrived but one hour ago; and Hypatia’s welfare is still more important to me than my own.’

‘My welfare? It is gone!’

‘So much the better. I never found mine till I lost it.’

‘What do you mean?’

Raphael lingered, yet without withdrawing his gaze, as if he had something of importance to say, which he longed and yet feared to utter. At last—

‘At least, you will confess that I am better drest than when we met last. I have returned, you see, like a certain demoniac of Gadara, about whom we used to argue, clothed—and perhaps also in my right mind …. God knows!’

‘Raphael! are you come here to mock me? You know—you cannot have been here an hour without knowing—that but yesterday I dreamed of being’—and she drooped her eyes—‘an empress; that to-day I am ruined; to-morrow, perhaps, proscribed. Have you no speech for me but your old sarcasms and ambiguities?’

Raphael stood silent and motionless.

‘Why do you not speak? What is the meaning of this sad, earnest look, so different from your former self? .... You have something strange to tell me!’

‘I have,’ said he, speaking very slowly. ‘What—what would Hypatia answer if, after all, Aben-Ezra said like the dying Julian, “The Galilean has conquered”?’

‘Julian never said it! It is a monkish calumny.’

‘But I say it.’

‘Impossible!’

‘I say it!’

‘As your dying speech? The true Raphael Aben-Ezra, then, lives no more!’

‘But he may be born again.’

‘And die to philosophy, that he may be born again into barbaric superstition! Oh worthy metempsychosis! Farewell, sir!’ And she rose to go.

‘Hear me!—hear me patiently this once, noble, beloved Hypatia! One more sneer of yours, and I may become again the same case-hardened fiend which you knew me of old—to all, at least, but you. Oh, do not think me ungrateful, forgetful! What do I not owe to you, whose pure and lofty words alone kept smouldering in me the dim remembrance that there was a Right, a Truth, an unseen world of spirits, after whose pattern man should aspire to live?’

She paused, and listened in wonder. What faith had she of her own? She would at least hear what he had found….

‘Hypatia, I am older than you—wiser than you, if wisdom be the fruit of the tree of knowledge. You know but one side of the medal, Hypatia, and the fairer; I have seen its reverse as well as its obverse. Through every form of human thought, of human action, of human sin and folly, have I been wandering for years, and found no rest—as little in wisdom as in folly, in spiritual dreams as in sensual brutality. I could not rest in your Platonism—I will tell you why hereafter. I went on to Stoicism, Epicurism, Cynicism, Scepticism, and in that lowest deep I found a lower depth, when I became sceptical of Scepticism itself.’

‘There is a lower deep still,’ thought Hypatia to herself, as she recollected last night’s magic; but she did not speak.

‘Then in utter abasement, I confessed myself lower than the brutes, who had a law, and obeyed it, while I was my own lawless God, devil, harpy, whirlwind …. I needed even my own dog to awaken in me the brute consciousness of my own existence, or of anything without myself. I took her, the dog, for my teacher, and obeyed her, for she was wiser than I. And she led me back—the poor dumb beast— like a God-sent and God-obeying angel, to human nature, to mercy, to self-sacrifice, to belief, to worship—to pure and wedded love.’

Hypatia started …. And in the struggle to hide her own bewilderment, answered almost without knowing it—

‘Wedded love? .... Wedded love? Is that, then, the paltry bait by which Raphael Aben-Ezra has been tempted to desert philosophy?’

‘Thank Heaven!’ said Raphael to himself. ‘She does not care for me, then! If she had, pride would have kept her from that sneer.’ Yes, my dear lady,’ answered he aloud, ‘to desert philosophy, to search after wisdom; because wisdom itself had sought for me, and found me. But, indeed, I had hoped that you would have approved of my following your example for once in my life, and resolving, like you, to enter into the estate of wedlock.’

‘Do not sneer at me!’ cried she, in her turn, looking up at him with shame and horror, which made him repent of uttering the words. ‘If you do not know—you will soon, too soon! Never mention that hateful dream to me, if you wish to have speech of me more!’

A pang of remorse shot through Raphael’s heart. Who but he himself had plotted that evil marriage? But she gave him no opportunity of answering her, and went on hurriedly—

‘Speak to me rather about yourself. What is this strange and sudden betrothal? What has it to do with Christianity? I had thought that it was rather by the glories of celibacy—gross and superstitious as their notions of it are—that the Galileans tempted their converts.’

‘So had I, my dearest lady,’ answered he, as, glad to turn the subject for a moment, and perhaps a little nettled by her contemptuous tone, he resumed something of his old arch and careless manner. ‘But—there is no accounting for man’s agreeable inconsistencies—one morning I found myself, to my astonishment, seized by two bishops, and betrothed, whether I chose or not, to a young lady who but a few days before had been destined for a nunnery.’

‘Two bishops?’

‘I speak simple truth. The one was Synesius of course;—that most incoherent and most benevolent of busybodies chose to betray me behind my back:-but I will not trouble you with that part of my story. The real wonder is that the other episcopal match-maker was Augustine of Hippo himself!’

‘Anything to bribe a convert,’ said Hypatia contemptuously.

‘I assure you, no. He informed me, and her also, openly and uncivilly enough, that he thought us very much to be pitied for so great a fall …. But as we neither of us seemed to have any call for the higher life of celibacy, he could not press it on us …. We should have trouble in the flesh. But if we married we had not sinned. To which I answered that my humility was quite content to sit in the very lowest ranks, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob …. He replied by an encomium on virginity, in which I seemed to hear again the voice of Hypatia herself.’

‘And sneered at it inwardly, as you used to sneer at me.’

‘Really I was in no sneering mood at that moment; and whatsoever I may have felt inclined to reply, he was kind enough to say for me and himself the next minute.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He went on, to my utter astonishment, by such a eulogium on wedlock as I never heard from Jew or heathen, and ended by advice to young married folk so thoroughly excellent and to the point, that I could not help telling him, when he stopped; what a pity I thought it that he had not himself married, and made some good woman happy by putting his own recipes into practice …. And at that, Hypatia, I saw an expression on his face which made me wish for the moment that I had bitten out this impudent tongue of mine, before I so rashly touched some deep old wound …. That man has wept bitter tears ere now, be sure of it …. But he turned the conversation instantly, like a well-bred gentleman as he is, by saying, with the sweetest smile, that though he had made it a solemn rule never to be a party to making up any marriage, yet in our case Heaven had so plainly pointed us out for each other, etc. etc., that he could not refuse himself the pleasure …. and ended by a blessing as kindly as ever came from the lips of man.’

‘You seem wonderfully taken with the sophist of Hippo,’ said Hypatia impatiently; ‘and forget, perhaps, that his opinions, especially when, as you confess, they are utterly inconsistent with themselves, are not quite as important to me as they seem to have become to you.’

‘Whether he be consistent or not about