. The very
tone of it forbids you, for your own honour, and the honour of
the empire. Are you to treat with a man who talks of the masses at
Alexandria as "the flock whom the King of kings has committed to his
rule and care"? Does your excellency, or this proud bishop, govern
Alexandria?'

'Really, my dear lady, I have given up inquiring.'

'But he has not. He comes to you as a person possessing an absolute
authority over two-thirds of the population, which he does not scruple
to hint to you is derived from a higher source than your own. The
consequence is clear. If it be from a higher source than yours, of
course it ought to control yours'; and you will confess that it ought
to control it--you will acknowledge the root and ground of every
extravagant claim which he makes, if you deign to reply.'

'But I must say something, or I shall be pelted in the streets. You
philosophers, however raised above your own bodies you may be, must
really not forget that we poor worldlings have bones to be broken.'

'Then tell him, and by word of mouth merely, that as the information
which he sends you comes from his private knowledge and concerns not
him as bishop, but you as magistrate, you can only take it into
consideration when he addresses you as a private person, laying a
regular information at your tribunal.'

'Charming! queen of diplomatists as well as philosophers! I go to obey
you. Ah! why were you not Pulcheria? No, for then Alexandria had been
dark, and Orestes missed the supreme happiness of kissing a hand which
Pallas, when she made you, must have borrowed from the workshop of
Aphrodite.'

'Recollect that you are a Christian,' answered Hypatia, half smiling.

So the prefect departed; and passing through the outer hall, which was
already crowded with Hypatia's aristocratic pupils and visitors, bowed
his way out past them and regained his chariot, chuckling over the
rebuff which he intended to administer to Cyril, and comforting himself
with the only text of Scripture of the inspiration of which he was
thoroughly convinced--'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'

At the door was a crowd of chariots, slaves with their masters'
parasols, and the rabble of onlooking boys and market-folk, as usual in
Alexandria then, as in all great cities since, who were staring at the
prefect, and having their heads rapped by his guards, and wondering what
sort of glorious personage Hypatia might be, and what sort of glorious