Call me mother again!'

'Whatsoever I am to call you, there are jewels enough in that closet to
buy half Alexandria. Take them. I am going.'

'With me!'

'Out into the wide world, my dear lady. I am bored with riches. That
young savage of a monk understood them better than we Jews do. I shall
just make a virtue of necessity, and turn beggar.'

'Beggar?'

'Why not? Don't argue. These scoundrels will make me one, whether I like
or not; so forth I go. There will be few leavetakings. This brute of a
dog is the only friend I have on earth; and I love her, because she has
the true old, dogged, spiteful, cunning, obstinate Maccabee spirit in
her--of which if we had a spark left in us just now, there would be no
little Exodus; eh, Bran, my beauty?'

'You can escape with me to the prefect's, and save the mass of your
wealth.'

'Exactly what I don't want to do. I hate that prefect as I hate a dead
camel, or the vulture who eats him. And to tell the truth, I am growing
a great deal too fond of that heathen woman there--'

'What?' shrieked the old woman--'Hypatia?'

'If you choose. At all events, the easiest way to cut the knot is to
expatriate. I shall beg my passage on board the first ship to Cyrene,
and go and study life in Italy with Heraclian's expedition. Quick--take
the jewels, and breed fresh troubles for yourself with them. I am going.
My liberators are battering the outer door already.'

Miriam greedily tore out of the closet diamonds and pearls, rubies and
emeralds, and concealed them among her ample robes--'Go! go! Escape from
her! I will hide your jewels!'

'Ay, hide them, as mother earth does all things, in that all-embracing
bosom. You will have doubled them before we meet again, no doubt.
Farewell, mother!'

'But not for ever, Raphael! not for ever! Promise me, in the name of the
four archangels, that if you are in trouble or danger, you will write to
me, at the house of Eudaimon.'

'The little porter philosopher, who hangs about Hypatia's lecture-room?'

'The same, the same. He will give me your letter, and I swear to you,
I will cross the mountains of Kaf, to deliver you!--I will pay you all
back. By Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I swear! May my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth, if I do not account to you for the last penny!'

'Don't commit yourself to rash promises, my dear lady. If I am bored
with poverty, I can but borrow a few gold pieces of a rabbi, and turn
pedler. I really do not trust y