'Well, my dear lady, and has not the villainous demagogue got the
whole mob on his side? Am I to have the Constantinople riots re-
enacted here? I really cannot face it; I have not nerve for it;
perhaps I am too lazy. Be it so.'

Hypatia sighed. 'Ah, that your excellency but saw the great duel
which depends on you alone! Do not fancy that the battle is merely
between Paganism and Christianity--'

'Why, if it were, you know, I, as a Christian, under a Christian and
sainted emperor, not to mention his august sister--'

'We understand,' interrupted she, with an impatient wave of her
beautiful hand. 'Not even between them; not even between philosophy
and barbarism. The struggle is simply one between the aristocracy
and the mob,--between wealth, refinement, art, learning, all that
makes a nation great, and the savage herd of child-breeders below,
the many ignoble, who were meant to labour for the noble few. Shall
the Roman empire command or obey her own slaves? is the question
which you and Cyril have to battle out; and the fight must be
internecine.'

'I should not wonder if it became so, really,' answered the prefect,
with a shrug of his shoulders. 'I expect every time I ride, to have
my brains knocked out by some mad monk.'

'Why not? In an age when, as has been well and often said, emperors
and consulars crawl to the tombs of a tent-maker and a fisherman,
and kiss the mouldy bones of the vilest slaves? Why not, among a