'They are very beautiful, I cannot deny,' said poor Hypatia.

'Ah, sweetest Empress! you forget sometimes that I, too, world-worm as
I am, am a Greek, with as intense a love of the beautiful as even you
yourself have. Do not fancy that every violation of correct taste does
not torture me as keenly as it does you. Some day, I hope, you will have
learned to pity and to excuse the wretched compromise between that which
ought to be and that which can be, in which we hapless statesmen must
struggle on, half-stunted, and wholly misunderstood--Ah, well! Look,
now, at these fauns and dryads among the shrubs upon the stage, pausing
in startled wonder at the first blast of music which proclaims the exit
of the goddess from her temple.'

'The temple? Why, where are you going to exhibit?'

'In the Theatre, of course. Where else pantomimes?'

'But will the spectators have time to move all the way from the
Amphitheatre after that--those--'

'The Amphitheatre? We shall exhibit the Libyans, too, in the Theatre.'

'Combats in the Theatre sacred to Dionusos?'

'My dear lady'--penitently--'I know it is an offence against all the
laws of the drama.'

'Oh, worse than that! Consider what an impiety toward the god, to
desecrate his altar with bloodshed?'

'Fairest devotee, recollect that, after all, I may fairly borrow
Dionusos's altar in this my extreme need; for I saved its very existence
for him, by preventing the magistrates from filling up the whole
orchestra with benches for the patricians, after the barbarous
Roman fashion. And besides, what possible sort of representation, or
misrepresentation, has not been exhibited in every theatre of the empire
for the last four hundred years? Have we not had tumblers, conjurers,
allegories, martyrdoms, marriages, elephants on the tight-rope, learned
horses, and learned asses too, if we may trust Apuleius of Madaura; with
a good many other spectacles of which we must not speak in the
presence of a vestal? It is an age of execrable taste, and we must act
accordingly.'

'Ah!' answered Hypatia; 'the first step in the downward career of the
drama began when the successors of Alexander dared to profane theatres
which had re-echoed the choruses of Sophocles and Euripides by degrading
the altar of Dionusos into a stage for pantomimes!'

'Which your pure mind must, doubtless, consider not so very much better
than a little fighting. But, after all, the Ptolemies could not do
otherwise. You can