ideas. They believed that they had brought the transcendental within the
grasp of intelligent sense, and that their empty speculations had carried
them far beyond the narrow limits of the Ancients.

Karnis was in raptures; Porphyrius only wished for Gorgo by his side,
for, like all fathers, he would rather that his child should have enjoyed
this supreme intellectual treat than himself.

........................

In Porphyrius' house, meanwhile, all was gloom and anxiety. In spite of
the terrific heat Damia would not be persuaded to come down from the
turret-room where she had collected all the instruments, manuals and
formulas used by astrologers and Magians. A certain priest of Saturn,
who had a great reputation as a master of such arts, and who, for many
years, had been her assistant whenever she sought to apply her science
to any important event, was in attendance--to give her the astrological
tables, to draw circles, ellipses or triangles at her bidding, to
interpret the mystical sense of numbers or letters, which now and then
escaped her aged memory; he made her calculations or tested those she
made herself, and read out the incantations which she thought efficacious
under the circumstances. Occasionally, too, he suggested some new method
or fresh formula by which she might verify her results.

She had fasted, according to rule, the whole forenoon, and was frequently
so far overcome by the heat as to drop asleep in the midst of her
studies; then, when she woke with a start, if her assistant had meanwhile
worked out his calculation to a result contrary to her anticipations, she
took him up sharply and made him begin again from the beginning. Gorge,
went up from time to time; but, though she offered the old woman