d the
Muses, of which I am even now the bearer. Thou preferrest the mitre to the
laurel chaplet, and the hymns of Gregory to the epics of Homer?"

"O Phoebus," replied Nonnus, "were it any God but thou, I should bend
before him in silence, having nought to reply. But thou art a poet, and
thou understandest the temper of a poet. Thou knowest how beyond other men
he is devoured by the craving for sympathy. This and not vulgar vanity is
his motive of action; his shaft is launched in vain unless he can deem it
embedded in the heart of a friend. Thou mayest well judge what scoffings
and revilings my Dionysiac epic has brought upon me in this evil age; yet,
had this been all, peradventure I might have borne it. But it was not all.
The gentle, the good, the affectionate, they who in happier times would
have been my audience, came about me, saying, Nonnus, why sing the strains
against which we must shut our ears? Sing what we may listen to, and we
will love and honour thee. I could not bear the thought of going to my
grave without having awakened an echo of sympathy, and weakly but not
basely I have yielded, given them what they craved, and suffered them,
since the Muses' garland is not theirs to bestow, to reward me with a
mitre."

"And what demanded they?" asked Apollo.

"Oh, a mere romance! Something entirely fabulous."

"I must see it," persisted Apollo; and Nonnus reluctantly disinterred his
scroll from under the big dictionary, and handed it up, trembling like a
schoolboy who anticipates a castigation for a bad exercise.

"What trash have we here?" cried Phoebus--

[Greek: "Achronos aen, akichaetos, en arraetoos Logos archae,]
[Greek: 'Isophuaes Genetaeros omaelikos Tios amaetoor,]
[Greek: Kai Logos antophygoio Theou, phoos, ek phaeos phoos.]

"If it isn't the beginning of the Gospel of John! Thy impiety is worse than
thy poetry!"

Apollo cast the scroll indignantly to the ground. His countenance wore an
expression so similar to that with which he is represented in act to smite
the Python, that Nonnus judged it prudent to catch up his manuscript and
hold it shield-wise before his face.

"Thou doest well," said Apollo, laughing bitterly; "that rampart is indeed
impenetrable to my arrows."

Nonnus seemed about to fall prostrate, when a sharp rap came to the door.

"That is the Governor's knock," he exclaimed. "Do not forsake me utterly, O
Phoebus!" But as he turned to open the door, Apollo vanished. The G