e to pieces like a ruinous hovel, then the
wisdom of the Magians is a lie, the course of the stars has nothing to
do with the destinies of the earth and its inhabitants, the planets are
mere lamps, the sun is no more than a luminous furnace, the old gods are
marsh-fires, emanations from the dark bog of men's minds--and the great
Serapis.... But why be angry with him? There is no doubt--no if nor
but.... Give me the diptychon and I will show you our doom. There--just
here--my sight is so dazzled, I cannot make it out.--And if I could,
what matter? Who can alter here below what has been decided above? Leave
me to sleep now, and I will explain it all to you to-morrow if there is
still time. Poor child, when I think how we have tormented you to learn
what you know, and how industrious you have been! And now--to what end?
I ask you, to what end? The great gulf will swallow up one and all."

"So be it, so be it!" cried Gorgo interrupting her. "Then, at any rate,
nothing that I love on earth will be lost to me before I die!"

"And the enemy will perish in the same ruin!" continued Damia, her eyes
sparkling with revived fire. "But where shall we go to--where? The soul
is divine by nature and cannot be destroyed. It must return--say, am I
right or wrong?--It will return to its first fount and cause; for like
attracts and absorbs like, and thus our deification, our union with the
god will be accomplished."

"I believe it--I am sure of it!" replied Gorgo with conviction.

"You are sure of it?" retorted the old woman. "But I am not. For our
clearest knowledge is but guesswork when it is not based on numbers.
Nothing is proved or provable but by numbers, but they are surer than
the rocks in the sea; that is why I believe in our coming doom, for,
on those tablets, we have calculated it to a certainty. But who can
calculate evidence of the future fate of the soul? If, indeed, the old
order should not pass away--if the depths should remain below and the
empyrean still keep its place above--then, to be sure, your studies
would not be in vain; for then your soul, which is fixed on spiritual,
supernatural and sublime conceptions, would be drawn upwards to the
great Intelligence of which it is the offspring, to the very god, and
become one with him--absorbed into him, as the rain-drop fallen from a
cloud rises again and is reunited to its parent vapor. Then--for there
may be a metempsychosis--your songful spirit might revive to inform a