How great is its problems, how towering its philosophies, how bad its badness! See us wrinkle our little old brows and smile agedly over the creature impulses of children and forget that the G.o.ds sit on the brink of Olympus and smile at us. How we deplore the Feast of Flora--and out upon us! None--save perchance thyself, good sir, and thy rigid order--but goes reveling after pleasure and chooses a love or casts a stone at an offender--and soberly calls it a crisis or a principle!

Philosophy! Discovering the obvious! Badness! Only nature, more or less emphatic! All a matter of meat and drink, shelter and apparel and the recreation of ourselves! Everything else is merely an attribute of the simple essentials. Is it not so, good sir?"

Marsyas shook his head. For the first time in his life he had heard the world forgiven and the sound of it was good. He could not help remembering Lydia's words, in contrast. But he was not convinced.

"It is not from the place of the G.o.ds that we feel, do and believe," he said. "The child's difficulties are heavy to it; it can not imagine them to be greater. So if thy reasoning hold, lady, perhaps the higher G.o.d smiles at the rage of Jove and the threats of Mars and the loves and pains of Venus. But Jove and Mars and Venus do not smile at them; nor does the child at his fallen sand-house or his ruined bauble. It is therefore a serious world for worldlings."

Junia lifted her white arms, and, dropping her head back between them against the divan, smiled up at the roof of the pavilion.

"I thought thee to be large and far-seeing," she said. "But go follow Flora, and thou shall either be driven mad with astonishment, or persuaded to look upon the world henceforward with mine eyes!"

CHAPTER XVI

A MATTER HANDLED WISELY

Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, held audience in his atrium. He received a commission of three from the Jews of Alexandria. One was Alexander Lysimachus, who came with a civil pet.i.tion; the other two were despatched from the congregation with a hieratic memorial.

The three were stately and deliberate in manner, handsome even for their years, and as courtly as Jews can be when they bring up their native grace to the highest standard of culture. They were bearded, gowned in linen, covered with tarbooshes, and as they walked their indoor sandals made no sound upon the polished pavement of the atrium.

One wore on his left arm a phylactery, the last clinging to the old formality which had separated his fathers' cla.s.s in Judea from the others, as a Pharisee. The second was an Alexandrian Sadducee. The third had over his shoulders the cloak of a magistrate.

Flaccus did not rise from his curule as they approached, but he returned their greetings with better grace than they had formerly expected of a Roman governor.

"Be greeted," he said bluntly. "And sit; ye are elderly men!"

Lysimachus took the nearest chair and the others retired a little way to an indoor exedra.

Flaccus thrust away parchments and writings to let his elbow rest on his table, ordered the bearers of the fasces to withdraw to a less conspicuous position, and looked at Lysimachus.

"Thou lookest grave, Alexander," he said. "Art thou commissioned with a perplexity?"

The alabarch, being a magistrate and therefore recognized by Rome before the synagogue, answered readily.

"Not so much perplexed, good sir, as troubled. I come with a pet.i.tion, not in writing, but nevertheless most urgent."

"Let me hear it," Flaccus said.

"Nay, then; thou knowest that a certain celebration of the Gentiles in this city is approaching. It is a feast of much magnitude and of much lawlessness. Thou knowest the temper of the city toward my people, and after three days of drunkenness, Alexandria will love the Jew no more, but much less. Thou rememberest, as I and my people remember with mourning, that last year, the excited mult.i.tude, that followed Flora's trail of yellow roses through the Regio Judaeorum, fell upon the Jews by the way and slaughtered and sacked as if it had been warfare instead of festivity. It was a new diversion for the mult.i.tude, and one like to be repeated. But we, who are led to believe by thy recent good will that thou dost not cherish Rome's ancient prejudice against our race, come unto thee and hopefully beseech thee to forbid the Flora to lead her rioters upon our peaceful community."

"I have already warned the praetor," Flaccus responded, "that Flora is not to run through the Regio Judaeorum this year."

"The praetor dare not disobey thee," Lysimachus said, with a tone of finality in his voice.

Flaccus smiled grimly.

"Nor Flora," he added.

"Thou hast our people's grat.i.tude and allegiance; mine own thankfulness and blessings," Lysimachus responded heartily.

Flaccus waved his hand, and glanced at the other two, sitting aside.

"And ye?" he said. "Are ye but a portion of the alabarch's commission?"

"Nay, good sir," the Sadducee answered, "we come upon a mission for the congregation."

Lysimachus arose, but the Sadducee turned to him with a bow.

"Pray thee, sir, it concerns thee as well. Wilt thou abide longer and hear us?"

The alabarch inclined his head and sat down. Flaccus signified that he was ready to hear them.

"Thou didst ask our brother, the alabarch, if he were commissioned with a perplexity," the Sadducee continued. "Not he, but we come perplexed.

Were we Jews in Judea, the method would be laid down to us by Law. But in Alexandria we have grown away from the method, while yet we have the same object to achieve."

"We lose in guidance what we gain in freedom," the Pharisee added.

"In Judea," the Sadducee continued, "they are still bound by the usages of the Mosaic Law. An offender against the Law is stoned. We do not stone in Alexandria; yet we have the offender, and suffer the offense.

What, then, shall we do to cleanse our skirt and yet offer no violence to our advanced thinking?"

"Give me thy meaning," the proconsul said impatiently.

"Perchance it hath come to thee that there is a sect known as the Nazarenes, followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which are spreading like a pestilence on the wind over the world. So full of them is Judea, even David's City, that the Sanhedrim, in alliance with the Roman legate, is proceeding against them with extreme punishment."

"I have heard," Flaccus a.s.sented.

"But the numbers have grown so great and so far-reaching that the Sanhedrim hath achieved little more than to drive them abroad into the world."

"So the legate informs me," Flaccus added.

"Perchance then thou knowest that Alexandria hath its share."

"I do."

"Even the Regio Judaeorum."

"Strange," Lysimachus broke in. "Strange, if they be such law-breakers, as they are reputed to be, that they have not been brought before me for rebellion and violence, ere this!"

The Pharisee put his plump white hands together.

"Thou touchest upon the perplexity, brother," he said, addressing himself to Lysimachus. "We are warned by the scribe of Saul of Tarsus, who leadeth the war against the heretics, that they are invidious workers of sedition; whisperers of false doctrines and pretenders of love and humility. They do not persuade the rich man nor the powerful man nor the learned man. They labor among the poor and the despised and the ignorant. Saul, himself, though first to be awakened to the peril of the heresy, did not dream how immense an evil he had attacked until he found the half of Jerusalem fleeing from him. Wherefore, brother, we may be built upon the sliding sands of an evil doctrine; the whole Regio Judaeorum may be going astray after this apostasy ere the powers know it."

Lysimachus stroked his white beard and looked incredulous.

"The Jews of Alexandria will not tolerate a persecution," he said emphatically.

"So thou dost grasp the perplexity wholly," the Sadducee said. "What shall we do?" he turned to the proconsul.