warm discussion was immediately
started. The talk was more flowery and brilliant, no doubt, than in old
Athens, but it led to no deeper views and threw no clearer light on the
well-worn question. The wranglers could only quote what had been said
long since as to the highest Good, and when presently Helladius called
upon them to bring their minds to bear on the nature of humanity, a
vehement disputation arose as to whether man were the best or the worst
of created beings. This led to various utterances as to the mystical
connection of the spiritual and material worlds, and nothing could be
more amazing than the power of imagination which had enabled these
mystical thinkers to people with spirits and daemons every circle of the
ladder-like structure which connected the incomprehensible and
self-sufficing One with the divine manifestation known as Man. It became
quite intelligible that many Alexandrians should fear to fling a stone
lest it might hit one of the good daemons of which the air was full--a
spirit of light perhaps, or a protecting spirit. The more obscure their
theories, the more were they overloaded with image and metaphor; all
simplicity of statement was lost, and yet the disputants prided
themselves on the brilliancy of their language and the wealth of their
ideas. They believed that they had brought the transcendental within the
grasp of intelligent sense, and that their empty speculations had carried
them far beyond the narrow limits of the Ancients.

Karnis was in raptures; Porphyrius only wished for Gorgo by his side,
for, like all fathers, he would rather that his child should have enjoyed
this supreme intellectual treat than himself.

........................

In Porphyrius' house, meanwhile, all was gloom and anxiety. In spite of
the terrific heat Damia would not be persuaded to come down from the
turret-room where she had collected all the instruments, manuals and
formulas used by astrologers and Magians. A certain priest of Saturn, who
had a great reputation as a master of such arts, and who, for many years,
had been her assistant whenever she sought to apply her science to any
important event, was in attendance--to give her the astrological tables,
to draw circles, ellipses or triangles at her bidding, to interpret the
mystical sense of numbers or letters, which now and then escaped her aged
memory; he made her calculations or tested those she made herself, and
read out the incantations