e
wrapping of the package fell away, and the forty-eight scrolls of the
Dionysiaca, silver knobs, purple cords, and all, came to view.

"Burn my poem!" exclaimed Nonnus. "Destroy the labours of twenty-four
years! Bereave Egypt of its Homer! Erase the name of Nonnus from the tablet
of Time!"

"How so, while thou hast the Paraphrase of St. John?" demanded Apollo
maliciously.

"Indeed, good youth," said the Governor, who wished to favour Nonnus,
"methinks the condition is somewhat exorbitant. A single book might
suffice, surely!"

"I am quite content," replied Apollo. "If he consents to burn any of his
books he is no poet, and I wash my hands of him."

"Come, Nonnus," cried the Governor, "make haste; one book will do as well
as another. Hand them up here."

"It must be with his own hands, please your Excellency," said Apollo.

"Then," cried the Governor, pitching to the poet the first scroll brought
to him, "the thirteenth book. Who cares about the thirteenth book? Pop it
in!"

"The thirteenth book!" exclaimed Nonnus, "containing the contest between
wine and honey, without which my epic becomes totally and entirely
unintelligible!"

"This, then," said the Governor, picking out another, which chanced to be
the seventeenth.

"In my seventeenth book," objected Nonnus, "Bacchus plants vines in India,
and the superiority of wine to milk is convincingly demonstrated."

"Well," rejoined the Governor, "what say you to the twenty-second?"

"With my Hamadryad! I can never give up my Hamadryad!"

"Then," said the Governor, contemptuously hurling the whole set in the
direction of Nonnus, "burn which you will, only burn!"

The wretched poet sat among his scrolls looking for a victim. All his
forty-eight children were equally dear to his parental heart. The cries of
applause and derision from the spectators, and the formidable bellowings
of the exasperated monks who surrounded Pachymius, did not tend to steady
his nerves, or render the task of critical discrimination the easier.

"I won't! I won't!" he exclaimed at last, starting up defiantly. "Let the
bishopric go to the devil! Any one of my similes is worth all the
bishoprics in Egypt!"

"Out on the vanity of these poets!" exclaimed the disappointed Governor.

"It is not vanity," said Apollo, "it is paternal affection; and being
myself a sufferer from the same infirmity, I rejoice to find him my true
son after all."

"Well," said the Governor, turning to the d