were
to fall, the order of the universe must be destroyed; and with him: The
Synthesis of the Universe--the Universe itself must cease to exist.

But what would survive would not be the nothingness--the void of which
her grandmother had spoken; it would be the One--the cold, ineffable,
incomprehensible One! This world would perish with Serapis; but perhaps
it might please that One to call another world into being out of his
overflowing essence, peopled by other and different beings.

Gorgo was startled out of these meditations by a wild tumult which came
up from the slaves' hall some distance off and reached her ears in the
women's sitting-room. Could her grandmother have opened the wine stores
all too freely; were the miserable wretches already drunk?

No, the noise was not that of a troop of slaves who have forgotten
themselves, and given the rein to their wild revelry under the influence
of Dionysus! She listened and could distinctly hear lamentable howls and
wild cries of grief. Something frightful must have happened! Had some
evil befallen her father? Greatly alarmed she flew across the courtyard
to the slaves' quarters and found the whole establishment, black and
white alike, in a state of frenzy. The women were rushing about with
their hair unbound over their faces, beating their breasts and wailing,
the men squatted in silence with their wine-cups before them untouched,
softly sobbing and whining.

What had come upon them--what blow had fallen on the house?

Gorgo called her old nurse and learnt from her that the Moschosphragist
had just told them that the troops had been placed all round the
Serapeum and that the Emperor had commanded the Prefect of the East to
lay violent hands on the temple of the King of gods. Today or to-morrow
the crime was to be perpetrated. They had been warned to pray and repent
of their sins, for at the moment when the holiest sanctuary on earth
should fall the whole world would crumble into nothingness. The entrails
of the beast sacrificed by Damia had been black as though scorched,
and a terrific groan had been heard from the god himself in the great
shrine; the pillars of the great hypostyle had trembled and the three
heads of Cerberus, lying at the feet of Serapis; had opened their jaws.

Gorgo listened in silence to the old woman's story; and all she said in
reply was: "Let them wail."

CHAPTER XVI.

The day had flown swiftly for Dada under the roof of Medius; there