d age,
to the Midianites! Here, I will go with you--now--at once--I will not
rest till I find hint, clasp his knees till he pities my gray hairs! Let
Heraclian and Orestes go their way for aught I care--I will find him,
I say. O Absalom, my son! would to God I had died for thee, my son! my
son!'

CHAPTER XII: THE BOWER OF ACRASIA

The house which Pelagia and the Amal had hired after their return to
Alexandria, was one of the most splendid in the city. They had been now
living there three months or more, and in that time Pelagia's taste had
supplied the little which it needed to convert it into a paradise
of lazy luxury. She herself was wealthy; and her Gothic guests,
overburdened with Roman spoils, the very use of which they could not
understand, freely allowed her and her nymphs to throw away for them the
treasures which they had won in many a fearful fight. What matter? If
they had enough to eat, and more than enough to drink, how could the
useless surplus of their riches be better spent than in keeping their
ladies in good humour?.... And when it was all gone....they would go
somewhere or other--who cared whither?--and win more. The whole world
was before them waiting to be plundered, and they would fulfil their
mission, whensoever it suited them. In the meantime they were in no
hurry. Egypt furnished in profusion every sort of food which could
gratify palates far more nice than theirs. And as for wine--few of them
went to bed sober from one week's end to another. Could the souls of
warriors have more, even in the halls of Valhalla?

So thought the party who occupied the inner court of the house, one
blazing afternoon in the same week in which Cyril's messenger had so
rudely broken in on the repose of the Scetis. Their repose, at least,
was still untouched. The great city roared without; Orestes plotted,
and Cyril counterplotted, and the fate of a continent hung--or seemed to
hang--trembling in the balance; but the turmoil of it no more
troubled those lazy Titans within, than did the roll and rattle of the
carriage-wheels disturb the parakeets and sunbirds which peopled, under
an awning of gilded wire, the inner court of Pelagia's house. Why should
they fret themselves with it all? What was every fresh riot, execution,
conspiracy, bankruptcy, but a sign--that the fruit was growing ripe
for the plucking? Even Heraclian's rebellion, and Orestes' suspected
conspiracy, were to the younger and coarser Goths a sor