y while she was crushed and fettered by
the rulers of this world? And how could they be anything but the tyrants
and antichrists they were, while they were menaced and deluded by
heathen philosophy, and vain systems of human wisdom? If Orestes was the
curse of the Alexandrian Church, then Hypatia was the curse of Orestes.
On her head the true blame lay. She was the root of the evil. Who would
extirpate it?....

Why should not he? It might be dangerous; yet, successful or
unsuccessful, it must be glorious. The course of Christianity wanted
great examples. Might he not-and his young heart beat high at the
thought--might he not, by some great act of daring, self-sacrifice,
divine madness of faith, like David's of old, when he went out against
the giant--awaken selfish and luxurious souls to a noble emulation, and
recall to their minds, perhaps to their lives, the patterns of those
martyrs who were the pride, the glory, the heirloom of Egypt? And as
figure after figure rose before his imagination, of simple men and weak
women who had conquered temptation and shame, torture and death, to live
for ever on the lips of men, and take their seats among the patricians
of the heavenly court, with brows glittering through all eternities with
the martyr's crown, his heart beat thick and fast, and he longed only
for an opportunity to dare and die.

And the longing begot the opportunity. For he had hardly rejoined his
brother visitors when the absorbing thought took word again, and he
began questioning them eagerly for more information about Hypatia.

On that point, indeed, he obtained nothing but fresh invective; but when
his companions, after talking of the triumph which the true faith had
gained that morning, went on to speak of the great overthrow of Paganism
twenty years before, under the patriarch Theophilus; of Olympiodorus and
his mob, who held the Serapeium for many days by force of arms against
the Christians, making sallies into the city, and torturing and
murdering the prisoners whom they took; of the martyrs who, among those
very pillars which overhung their heads, had died in torments rather
than sacrifice to Serapis; and of the final victory, and the soldier
who, in presence of the trembling mob, clove the great jaw of the
colossal idol, and snapped for ever the spell of heathenism, Philammon's
heart burned to distinguish himself like that soldier, and to wipe out
his qualms of conscience by some more unquestionable de