tered sheep! There, we will talk no more of it. This, at least, I
have left in my power, to make you welcome. And after supper you shall
tell me what brings you hither.'

And the good bishop, calling his servant, set to work to show his guest
such hospitality as the invaders had left in his power.

Raphael's usual insight had not deserted him when, in his utter
perplexity, he went, almost instinctively, straight to Synesius. The
Bishop of Cyrene, to judge from the charming private letters which he
has left, was one of those many-sided, volatile, restless men, who
taste joy and sorrow, if not deeply or permanently, yet abundantly and
passionately. He lived, as Raphael had told Orestes, in a whirlwind of
good deeds, meddling and toiling for the mere pleasure of action; and as
soon as there was nothing to be done, which, till lately, had happened
seldom enough with him, paid the penalty for past excitement in fits of
melancholy. A man of magniloquent and flowery style, not without a vein
of self-conceit; yet withal of overflowing kindliness, racy humour,
and unflinching courage, both physical and moral; with a very clear
practical faculty, and a very muddy speculative one--though, of course,
like the rest of the world, he was especially proud of his own weakest
side, and professed the most passionate affection for philosophic
meditation; while his detractors hinted, not without a show of reason,
that he was far more of an adept in soldiering and dog-breaking than in
the mysteries of the unseen world.

To him Raphael betook himself, he hardly knew why; certainly not for
philosophic consolation; perhaps because Synesius was, as Raphael used
to say, the only Christian from whom he had ever heard a hearty laugh;
perhaps because he had some wayward hope, unconfessed even to himself,
that he might meet at Synesius's house the very companions from whom
he had just fled. He was fluttering round Victoria's new and strange
brilliance like a moth round the candle, as he confessed, after supper,
to his host; and now he was come hither, on the chance of being able to
singe his wings once more.

Not that his confession was extracted without much trouble to the good
old man, who, seeing at once that Raphael had some weight upon his mind,
which he longed to tell, and yet was either too suspicious or too
proud to tell, set himself to ferret out the secret, and forgot all his
sorrows for the time, as soon as he found a human being to who