.... Only one hair's-breadth.
But that was enough; his whole inward and outward world changed shape,
and cracked at every joint. What if it were to fall in pieces? His brain
reeled with the thought. He doubted his own identity. The very light of
heaven had altered its hue. Was the firm ground on which he stood after
all no solid reality, but a fragile shell which covered--what?

The nightmare vanished, and he breathed once more. What a strange dream!
The sun and the exertion must have made him giddy. He would forget all
about it.

Weary with labour, and still wearier with thought, he returned that
evening, longing and yet dreading to be permitted to speak with Hypatia.
He half hoped at moments that Cyril might think him too weak for it;
and the next, all his pride and daring, not to say his faith and hope,
spurred him on. Might he but face the terrible enchantress, and rebuke
her to her face! And yet so lovely, so noble as she looked! Could
he speak to her, except in tones of gentle warning, pity, counsel,
entreaty? Might he not convert her--save her? Glorious thought! to win
such a soul to the true cause! To be able to show, as the firstfruits of
his mission, the very champion of heathendom! It was worth while to have
lived only to do that; and having done it, to die.

The archbishop's lodgings, when he entered them, were in a state of
ferment even greater than usual. Groups of monks, priests, parabolani,
and citizens rich and poor, were banging about the courtyard, talking
earnestly and angrily. A large party of monks fresh from Nitria, with
ragged hair and beards, and the peculiar expression of countenance which
fanatics of all creeds acquire, fierce and yet abject, self-conscious
and yet ungoverned, silly and yet sly, with features coarsened and
degraded by continual fasting and self-torture, prudishly shrouded from
head to heel in their long ragged gowns, were gesticulating wildly and
loudly, and calling on their more peaceable companions, in no measured
terms, to revenge some insult offered to the Church.

'What is the matter?' asked Philammon of a quiet portly citizen, who
stood looking up, with a most perplexed visage, at the windows of the
patriarch's apartments.

'Don't ask me; I have nothing to do with it. Why does not his holiness
come out and speak to them? Blessed virgin, mother of God! that we were
well through it all!--'

'Coward!' bawled a monk in his ear. 'These shopkeepers care for nothing
but