ardless of carriages,
elephants, and foot-passengers; and having been knocked down by a
surly porter, and left a piece of his sheepskin between the teeth of a
spiteful camel-neither of which insults he had time to resent-arrived at
the archbishop's house, found Peter the Reader, and tremblingly begged
an audience from Cyril.

CHAPTER IX: THE SNAPPING OF THE BOW

Cyril heard Philammon's story and Hypatia's message with a quiet smile,
and then dismissed the youth to an afternoon of labour in the city,
commanding him to mention no word of what had happened, and to come to
him that evening and receive his order when he should have had time
to think over the matter. So forth Philammon went with his companions,
through lanes and alleys hideous with filth and poverty, compulsory
idleness and native sin. Fearfully real and practical it all was; but he
saw it all dimly as in a dream. Before his eyes one face was shining; in
his ears one silvery voice was ringing.... 'He is a monk, and knows no
better.'.... True! And how should he know better? How could he tell
how much more there was to know, in that great new universe, in such
a cranny whereof his life had till now been past? He had heard but one
side already. What if there were two sides? Had he not a right-that is,
was it not proper, fair, prudent, that he should hear both, and then
judge?

Cyril had hardly, perhaps, done wisely for the youth in sending him out
about the practical drudgery of benevolence, before deciding for him
what was his duty with regard to Hypatia's invitation. He had not
calculated on the new thoughts which were tormenting the young monk;
perhaps they would have been unintelligible to him bad he known of them.
Cyril had been bred up under the most stern dogmatic training, in those
vast monastic establishments, which had arisen amid the neighbouring
saltpetre quarries of Nitria, where thousands toiled in voluntary
poverty and starvation at vast bakeries, dyeries, brick-fields, tailors'
shops, carpenters' yards, and expended the profits of their labour, not
on themselves, for they had need of nothing, but on churches, hospitals,
and alms. Educated in that world of practical industrial production as
well as of religious exercise, which by its proximity to the great
city accustomed monks to that world which they despised; entangled from
boyhood in the intrigues of his fierce and ambitious uncle Theophilus,
Cyril had succeeded him in the patriarchat