ich portended the worst, and it was a grief to many of the baptized
to think of their native city without Serapis and the Serapeum, just as
we cannot bear to cut down a tree planted by the hand of an ancestor,
even though it may darken our home. The temple ought to be closed, bloody
sacrifices to the god should be prohibited--but his image--the noblest
work of Bryaxis--to mutilate, or even to touch that would be a rash, a
fateful deed, treason to the city and an outrage on the world.

Thus thought the citizens; thus, too, thought the soldiers, who were
required by military discipline to draw the sword against the god in whom
many of them believed.

As the news spread that the troops were to attack the Serapeum early next
morning, thousands of spectators collected, and filled the temple itself
in breathless anxiety to watch the issue of the struggle.

The sky was as clear and blue as on any other fine day; but over the sea
to the north lay a light stratum of clouds--the harbingers perhaps of the
appalling blackness which the god would presently bring up against his
enemies.

The men who had defended the Serapeum were led away; it had been
determined in a council of war that they should be treated with clemency,
and Cynegius had proclaimed free and full pardon to every prisoner who
would swear never, for the future, to sacrifice to the god or worship in
his temple.

Not one of the hundreds who had fallen into the hands of the Romans had
refused to take the oath; they dispersed at once, though with suppressed
fury, many of them joining the crowd who stood waiting and watching for
the next step to be taken by the Romans--for the final crash of the
universe, perhaps.

The doors of the temple were thrown wide open; the temple-servants and
hundreds of soldiers were busied in clearing the steps and approaches of
the stones and fragments of statuary with which the heathen had
encumbered them. As soon as this task was finished the dead and wounded
were removed; among those who still breathed was Orpheus, the son of
Karnis. Those who had been so happy as to escape in the defence of the
sanctuary and had mingled with the crowd were besieged with questions,
and all agreed that the statue of the god was as yet inviolate.

The citizens were relieved, but ere long were startled by a new alarm; an
Ala of heavy cavalry came upon the scene, opening a way for an immensely
long procession whose chanted psalms rang out from afar, loud