han many men. Aye, aye,
child; I, too, learnt mathematics once, and I still go through various
calculations every night in my observatory; but to this day I find it
difficult to conceive of a mathematical point. It is nothing and yet
it is something. But the great final nothingness!--And that even is
nonsense, for it can be neither great nor small, and come neither sooner
nor later. Is it not so, my sweet? Think of nothing--who cannot do that;
but it is very hard to imagine nothingness. We can neither of us achieve
that. Not even the One has a place in it. But what is the use of racking
our brains? Only wait till to-morrow or the day after; something
will happen then which will reduce our own precious persons and this
beautiful world to that nothingness which to-day is inconceivable. It
is coming; I can hear from afar the brazen tramp of the airy
and incorporeal monster. A queer sort of giant--smaller than the
mathematical point of which we were speaking, and yet vast beyond all
measurement. Aye, aye; our intelligence, polyp-like, has long arms and
can apprehend vast size and wide extent; but it can no more conceive of
nothingness than it can of infinite space or time.

"I was dreaming that this monstrous Nought had come to his kingdom and
was opening a yawning mouth and toothless jaws to swallow its all
down into the throat that it has not got--you, and me, and your young
officer, with this splendid, recreant city and the sky and the earth.
Wait, only wait! The glorious image of Serapis still stands radiant, but
the cross casts an ominous shadow that has already darkened the light
over half the earth! Our gods are an abomination to Caesar, and Cynegius
only carries out his wishes..."

Here Damia was interrupted by the steward, who rushed breathless into
the room, exclaiming:

"Lost! All is lost! An edict of Theodosius commands that every temple
of the gods shall be closed, and the heavy cavalry have dispersed our
force."

"Ah ha!" croaked the old woman in shrill accents. "You see, you see!
There it is: the beginning of the end! Yes--your cavalry are a powerful
force. They are digging a grave--wide and deep, with room in it
for many: for you, for me, and for themselves, too, and for their
Prefect.--Call Argus, man, and carry me into the Gynaeconitis--[The
women's apartment]--and there tell us what has happened." In the women's
room the steward told all he knew, and a sad tale it was; one thing,
however, gave him so