It is not enough for them to blaspheme God and His church, to have
the monopoly of all the cheating, fortune-telling, usury, sorcery,
and coining of the city, but they must deliver my clergy into the
hands of the tyrant?'

'It was so even in the apostles' time,' suggested a softer but far
more unpleasant voice.

'Then it shall be so no longer! God has given me the power to stop
them; and God do so to me, and more also, if I do not use that
power. To-morrow I sweep out this Augean stable of villainy, and
leave not a Jew to blaspheme and cheat in Alexandria.'

'I am afraid such a judgment, however righteous, might offend his
excellency.'

'His excellency! His tyranny! Why does Orestes truckle to these
circumcised, but because they lend money to him and to his
creatures? He would keep up a den of fiends in Alexandria if they
would do as much for him! And then to play them off against me and
mine, to bring religion into contempt by setting the mob together by
the ears, and to end with outrages like this! Seditious! Have they
not cause enough? The sooner I remove one of their temptations the
better: let the other tempter beware, lest his judgment be at hand!'

'The prefect, your holiness?' asked the other voice slily.

'Who spoke of the prefect? Whosoever is a tyrant, and a murderer,
and an oppressor of the poor, and a favourer of the philosophy which
despises and enslaves the poor, should not he perish, though he be