ome jest of Philammon's on the contrast between
the monks of Nitria and those of Scetis.

Arsenius was too wise not to see well enough what all this flippancy
meant; and too wise, also, not to know that Philammon's version was
probably quite as near the truth as Peter's and Cyril's; but for reasons
of his own, merely replied by an affectionate look, and a compliment to
Philammon's growth.

And yet you seem thin and pale, my boy.'

'Study,' said Philammon, 'study. One cannot burn the midnight oil
without paying some penalty for it.... However, I am richly repaid
already; I shall be more so hereafter.'

'Let us hope so. But who are those Goths whom I passed in the streets
just now?'

'Ah! my father,' said Philammon, glad in his heart of any excuse to
turn the conversation, and yet half uneasy and suspicious at Arsenius's
evident determination to avoid the very object of his visit. 'It must
have been you, then, whom I saw stop and speak to Pelagia at the farther
end of the street. What words could you possibly have had wherewith to
honour such a creature?'

'God knows. Some secret sympathy touched my heart.... Alas! poor child!
But how came you to know her?'

'All Alexandria knows the shameless abomination,' interrupted a voice
at their elbow--none other than that of the little porter, who had
been dodging and watching the pair the whole way, and could no longer
restrain his longing to meddle. 'And well it had been for many a rich
young man had odd Miriam never brought her over, in an evil day, from
Athens hither.'

'Miriam?'

'Yes, monk; a name not unknown, I am told, in palaces as well as in
slave-markets.'

'An evil-eyed old Jewess?'

'A Jewess she is, as her name might have informed you; and as for her
eyes, I consider them, or used to do so, of course--for her injured
nation have been long expelled from Alexandria by your fanatic tribe--as
altogether divine and demoniac, let the base imagination of monks call
them what it likes.'

'But how did you know this Pelagia, my son? She is no fit company for
such as you.'

Philammon told, honestly enough, the story of his Nile journey, and
Pelagia's invitation to him.

'You did not surely accept it?'

'Heaven forbid that Hypatia's scholar should so degrade himself!'

Arsenius shook his head sadly.

'You would not have had me go?'

'No, boy. But how long hast thou learned to call thyself Hypatia's
scholar, or to call it a degradation to visit the most