passed into
the peristyle.

'No, she is from Neapolis.'

'Neapolis!' echoed Glaucus; and at that moment the group, dividing on
either side of Ione, gave to his view that bright, that nymph-like
beauty, which for months had shone down upon the waters of his memory.

Chapter IV

THE TEMPLE OF ISIS. ITS PRIEST. THE CHARACTER OF ARBACES DEVELOPS
ITSELF.

THE story returns to the Egyptian. We left Arbaces upon the shores of
the noonday sea, after he had parted from Glaucus and his companion. As
he approached to the more crowded part of the bay, he paused and gazed
upon that animated scene with folded arms, and a bitter smile upon his
dark features.

'Gulls, dupes, fools, that ye are!' muttered he to himself; 'whether
business or pleasure, trade or religion, be your pursuit, you are
equally cheated by the passions that ye should rule! How I could loathe
you, if I did not hate--yes, hate! Greek or Roman, it is from us, from
the dark lore of Egypt, that ye have stolen the fire that gives you
souls. Your knowledge--your poesy--your laws--your arts--your barbarous
mastery of war (all how tame and mutilated, when compared with the vast
original!)--ye have filched, as a slave filches the fragments of the
feast, from us! And now, ye mimics of a mimic!--Romans, forsooth! the
mushroom herd of robbers! ye are our masters! the pyramids look down no
more on the race of Rameses--the eagle cowers over the serpent of the
Nile. Our masters--no, not mine. My soul, by the power of its wisdom,
controls and chains you, though the fetters are unseen. So long as
craft can master force, so long as religion has a cave from which
oracles can dupe mankind, the wise hold an empire over earth. Even from
your vices Arbaces distills his pleasures--pleasures unprofaned by
vulgar eyes--pleasures vast, wealthy, inexhaustible, of which your
enervate minds, in their unimaginative sensuality, cannot conceive or
dream! Plod on, plod on, fools of ambition and of avarice! your petty
thirst for fasces and quaestorships, and all the mummery of servile
power, provokes my laughter and my scorn. My power can extend wherever
man believes. I ride over the souls that the purple veils. Thebes may
fall, Egypt be a name; the world itself furnishes the subjects of
Arbaces.'

Thus saying, the Egyptian moved slowly on; and, entering the town, his
tall figure towered above the crowded throng of the forum, and swept
towards the small but graceful te