and complex syntax that turned all
opposition into admiration. Even the president, who had been listening
to theology all his life and had much business to attend to, must fain
neglect some of it for the pleasure of listening to Mathias when he
lectured. Even Saddoc, the most orthodox Jew in the cenoby, Mathias
could keep as it were chained to his seat. He resented and spurned the
allegory, but the beautiful voice that brought out sentence after
sentence, like silk from off a spool, enticed his thoughts away from it.
The language used in the cenoby was Aramaic, and never did Joseph hear
that language spoken so beautifully. It seemed to him that he was
listening to a new language and on leaving the hall he told Mathias that
it had seemed to him that he was listening to Aramaic for the first
time. Mathias answered him--blushing a little, Joseph thought--that he
hoped one of these days, in Egypt perhaps, if Joseph ever went there, to
lecture to him in Greek. He liked Aramaic for other purposes, but for
philosophy there was but one language. But you speak Greek and are now
teaching Greek, so let us speak it when we are together, Mathias said,
and if I detect any incorrectness I will warn you against it.

That Mathias should choose to speak to him in Greek was flattering
indeed, and Joseph, who had not spoken Greek for many months, began to
prattle, but he had not said many words before Mathias interrupted him
and said: you must have learnt Greek very young. This remark turned the
talk on to Azariah; and Mathias listened to Joseph's account of his
tutor carelessly, interrupting him when he had heard enough with a
remark anent the advancement of the spring, to which Joseph did not know
how to reply, so suddenly had his thoughts been jerked away from the
subject he was pursuing. You have the full Jewish mind, Mathias
continued; interested in moral ideas rather than beauty: without eyes
for the village. True that you see it in winter plight, but in the near
season all the fields will be verdant and the lintels running over with
flowers. He waited for Joseph to defend himself, but Joseph did not know
for certain that Mathias was not right--perhaps he was more interested
in moral ideas than in beauty. However this might be, he began to
experience an aversion, and might have taken leave of Mathias if they
had not come upon the president. He stopped to speak to them; and having
congratulated Mathias on having fortuned at last on an