"I am to advise, then?" Flaccus asked indifferently.

"Thou wilt not suffer them to lead our men-servants and our maid-servants and our artisans into heresy?" the Pharisee asked.

"We do not persecute in Alexandria, thou saidst," Flaccus observed.

"No," declared Lysimachus. "If all the Regio Judaeorum were as we three, the apostates might come and go, strive their best and die of their own misdeeds, unincreased in number or in goods. But the clamoring voice of the ma.s.s--nay, even Caesar hath harkened to it!

Those that have not followed the Nazarenes demand that they be cut off from us. But we can not kill, and not even death daunts a Nazarene.

Commend thyself, Flaccus, that thou didst call my brothers' mission a perplexity."

"So you have come formally to me with your people's plaint and expect me to solve a question that you yourselves can not solve," Flaccus said. "_Poena_! But you are a helpless lot! I shall pen the heretics in Rhacotis forthwith, and command them neither to visit nor to be visited! Is it enough?"

The three Jews arose.

"It is wisdom," said the Sadducee.

"It will serve," the Pharisee observed.

"I shall ferret them out," Lysimachus said.

"Thanks," the three observed at once. "Peace to all this house."

Flaccus waved his hand and the three pa.s.sed out.

CHAPTER XVII

A WORD IN SEASON

The summer waxed over Egypt. The Delta, back from the yellow plain which fronted the sea, was in full flower of the wheat. The happy fellahs lay under the shade of dom-palms and drowsed the morning in and the sunset out, for there was nothing to do since Rannu of the Harvests had laid her beneficent hand upon the fields. Across the Mediterranean, nearer the snows, the wheat flowered later and the Feast of Flora held in celebration of the blossoming fields would arrive with the new moon. Egypt could have given her celebration in honor of Flora weeks earlier, but she preferred to wait for Rome.

These were not uneventful days in the alabarch's house, for Cypros, with Drumah at her feet, fashioned with her own hands Agrippa's wardrobe and prepared for his departure, while the prince idled about the alabarch's garden, apparently oblivious to the call of his need to go to Rome, in his enjoyment of Junia's fellowship. And Marsyas, daily more grave, gazed at him askance and furthered the plans for the trip, tirelessly.

His patience might have continued unworn, but for a single incident.

Late one night, when oppressed by the crowding of his unhappy thoughts, he arose from his bed to walk the streets in search of composure, and, descending into the darkness of the alabarch's house, he heard the doors swing in softly. Expecting robbers, or at least a servant returning by stealth from a night's revel, he stepped down into the gloom and waited till the intruder should pa.s.s.

Softly the unknown approached and laid hand on the stair-rail to ascend. At the second step the figure was between him and the window lighting the stairs. Against the lesser darkness and the stars without, he saw Lydia's outlines etched. Noiselessly, she pa.s.sed up and out of hearing.

In his soul, he knew that she had been to the Nazarenes!

"To-morrow," he said grimly to himself, "I prepare the prince's ship!

There pa.s.ses a stiff-necked sacrifice to Saul of Tarsus, unless I can bring him low!"

The next morning, Justin Cla.s.sicus received a letter, by a merchant ship from Syria. He retired into his chamber and read it:

"O Brother," it said, "that dwelleth among the heathen, this from thy friend who envieth thy banishment:

"I delayed opening thy letter three days, believing it to come from him who lined my threadbare purse while in Alexandria, asking usury, long since due, but at the end of that time, I received his letter of a surety. So I made haste to open thy slandered missive, and greater haste to answer it by way of propitiation.

"I read much of thy letter with astonishment, some of it with rancor, some with congratulation. By Abraham's beard, it is almost as good to be fortunate as it is to be single; wherefore in answer to thine only question, I say that I am neither. Thus, am I led up to comment on the facts thou offerest me.

"I remember the little Lysimachus, a bit of Ephesian ivory-work, that I augured would go unmarried, seeing that she was so hindered with brains. But naught so good as a dowry to offset the embarra.s.sment of sense in a woman. Prosper, my Cla.s.sicus! For if thou art the same elegant paganized son of Abraham thou wast in thine old days, thy debts are as many as thy usurers are scarce. Half a million drachmae; demand no less a dowry than that, my Cla.s.sicus!

"But here, below, thou writest that which hath cut my limbs from under me and set me heavily and helpless on the carpet! A manumitted slave, a c.u.mbrous yokel of an Essene, hath given thee troublous nights, because the lady's eyes soften in his presence! Thou scented son of Daphne; Athene's darling; Venus' latest joy! To let a Phidian colossus, with a face high-colored like a comic mask, outstrip thee!

"Thou camest upon them once, the lady's hand in his! Again, she stammered under his look! And yet a third time, he wrapped a cloak about her, and lingered getting his arm away! And all these things thou didst suffer and didst take no more revenge than to write thy plaint to me, eight hundred miles away!

"By the philippics of Jeremiah, thou deservest a wife with a figure like a durra loaf, and dowered with nine sisters for thy support!

"Thou opinest in a lady-like way, that he is a Nazarene! Thou addest, with a flurry of spleen, that the proconsul of Egypt hateth him! Thou offerest a womanish suspicion that he fled from difficulty here in Judea! Now, any blind dolt could see substance in this for the overthrow of a rival. Lackest thou courage, Cla.s.sicus, or hast thou money enough to last thee till thou findest another lady?

"Is it not a sufficient cause against him that he is a Nazarene? Or perchance thou dost not know of them, which astonishes me more, since Pharaoh in the plagues was not more c.u.mbered with flies than the earth is of Nazarenes. But read herein hope, then, against thy suspected rival.

"These heretics are persistent offenders against law and order, rebellious and otherwise unruly. One Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, proceedeth against them, for the Sanhedrim. Whether he is an instrument of a political party or an immoderate zealot, is not for me to say; perchance he is both. At any rate he rages against the iniquity of the apostasy as a continuing whirlwind. He is not applying his methods locally, only. He reaches into neighboring provinces, and it is his oath to pursue the heresy unto the end of the world and bring back the last to judgment. Vitellius is a.s.sisting him in Judea, Herod Antipas in Galilee and Aretas in Syria. I expect hourly to hear that Caesar hath lent him a strong arm, because the rebels are particularly rabid against Rome.

"Of course, the members of the congregation are divided, but thou knowest that even a small number of zealous defenders of the faith can set a whole Synagogue by the ears. Even so tepid a Jew as I should not care to rub shoulders with a Nazarene.

"Do I give thee life, O languid lover?

"Of thyself, I would hear more and oftener. Await not the rising of a new rival to write to me. Fear not; I shall not ask to borrow money of thee--until thou hast wedded the Lysimachus.

"All thy friends in Jerusalem greet thee. Be happy and be fortunate.

Thy friend,

"PHILIP OF JERUSALEM."

At this point Cla.s.sicus composedly doubled the parchment, broke it lengthwise and cross-wise and clapped his hands for a slave. A Hebrew bondman appeared.

"This for the ovens," said Cla.s.sicus, handing it to him.

When the servant disappeared, the philosopher descended into his house and was dressed for a visit. An hour before the noon rest, he appeared in the garden of the alabarch.

There he found Lydia and Junia, Agrippa, Cypros, the alabarch and Flaccus, idly discussing the day's opening of the Feast of Flora. He had given and received greetings and merged his interests in the subject, when Marsyas appeared in the colonnade. He had taken off the kerchief usually worn about the head, and carried it on his arm. As he pa.s.sed the spare old alabarch, the heavy purple proconsul and the exquisite Herod, not one of the guests there gathered but made successive comparisons between him and the others. Junia gazed at him steadily, under half-closed lids, but Lydia followed him with a look, half-sorrowful, half-happy, and wholly involuntary.

Cypros glanced at his flushed forehead and damp hair.

"Hast thou been into the city?" she asked with sweet solicitude.

"To the harbor-master," he answered, "I have been making ready thy lord's ship."

Agrippa overheard the low answer, and turned upon him irritably.

"I have said that I do not depart until after the Feast of Flora," he remarked.

"The men of the sea do not expect fair winds before three days,"