tle chamber of the inner
court, beckoned the Jew in after him, locked the door, threw himself
into an arm-chair, put his hands on his knees, and sat, bending forward,
staring into Raphael's face with a ludicrous terror and perplexity.

'Tell me all about it. Tell me this instant.'

'I have told you all I know,' quoth Raphael, quietly seating himself on
a sofa, and playing with a jewelled dagger. 'I thought, of course, that
you were in the secret, or I should have said nothing. It's no business
of mine, you know.'

Orestes, like most weak and luxurious men, Romans especially, had a
wild-beast vein in him--and it burst forth.

'Hell and the furies! You insolent provincial slave--you will carry
these liberties of yours too far! Do you know who I am, you accursed
Jew? Tell me the whole truth, or, by the head of the emperor, I'll twist
it out of you with red-hot pincers!'

Raphael's countenance assumed a dogged expression, which showed that
the old Jewish blood still heat true, under all its affected shell of
Neo-Platonist nonchalance; and there was a quiet unpleasant earnest in
his smile, as he answered--

'Then, my dear governor, you will be the first man on earth who ever yet
forced a Jew to say or do what he did not choose.'

'We'll see!' yelled Orestes. 'Here, slaves!' And he clapped his hands
loudly.

'Calm yourself, your excellency,' quoth Raphael, rising. 'The door
is locked; the mosquito net is across the window; and this dagger
is poisoned. If anything happens to me, you will offend all the Jew
money-lenders, and die in about three days in a great deal of pain,
having missed our assignation with old Miriam, lost your pleasantest
companion, and left your own finances and those of the prefecture in a
considerable state of embarrassment. How much better to sit down, hear
all I have to say philosophically, like a true pupil of Hypatia, and not
expect a man to tell you what he really does not know.'

Orestes, after looking vainly round the room for a place to escape, had
quietly subsided into his chair again; and by the time that the slaves
knocked at the door he had so far recovered his philosophy as to ask,
not for the torturers, but for a page and wine.

'Oh, you Jews!' quoth he, trying to laugh off matters. 'The same
incarnate fiends that Titus found you!'

'The very same, my dear prefect. Now for this matter, which is really
important-at least to Gentiles. Heraclian will certainly rebel. Synesius
let