on
the demon's shoulders. The shadow of the fiend's expanded wings fell black
and vast on the fiery sand, but diminished and became invisible as he
soared to a prodigious height, to escape observation from below. By-and-by
the sun's glowing ball touched earth at the extremity of the horizon; it
disappeared, the fires of sunset burned low in the west, and the figures of
the demon and his freight showed like a black dot against a lake of green
sky, growing larger as he cautiously stooped to earth. Grazing temples,
skimming pyramids, the party came to ground in the precincts of Panopolis,
just in time to avoid the rising moon that would have betrayed them. The
demon immediately disappeared. Apollo hastened off to demand an explanation
from Nonnus, while Pachymius repaired to a neighbouring convent, peopled,
as he knew, by a legion of sturdy monks, ever ready to smite and be smitten
in the cause of orthodoxy.

II

Nonnus sat in his study, wrinkling his brow as he polished his verses by
the light of a small lamp. A large scroll lay open on his knees, the
contents of which seemed to afford him little satisfaction. Forty-eight
more scrolls, resplendent with silver knobs and coquettishly tied with
purple cord, reposed in an adjoining book-case; the forty-eight books,
manifestly, of the Panopolitan bard's Dionysiaca. Homer, Euripides, and
other poets lay on the floor, having apparently been hurriedly dislodged to
make room for divers liturgies and lives of the saints. A set of episcopal
robes depended from a hook, and on a side table stood half-a-dozen mitres,
which, to all appearance, the designated prelate had been trying on.

"Nonnus," said Phoebus, passing noiselessly through the unresisting wall,
"the tale of thy apostasy is then true?"

It would be difficult to determine whether surprise, delight, or dismay
preponderated in Nonnus's expression as he lifted up his eyes and
recognised the God of Poetry. He had just presence of mind to shuffle his
scroll under an enormous dictionary ere he fell at Apollo's feet.

"O Phoebus," he exclaimed, "hadst thou come a week ago!"

"It is true, then?" said Apollo. "Thou forsakest me and the Muses. Thou
sidest with them who have broken our statues, unroofed our temples,
desecrated our altars, and banished us from among mankind. Thou rejectest
the glory of standing alone in a barbarous age as the last witness to
culture and civilisation. Thou despisest the gifts of the Gods an