frica, or on the shores of the
Mediterranean, were packed in a noisy throng.

The greatest press was behind the houses of the men who buried the dead.
Here sacrifices were offered on the altars of Serapis, Isis, and Anubis;
here the sacred sistrum of Isis might be kissed; here hundreds of priests
performed solemn ceremonies, and half of those who came hither for the
festival of the dead collected about them. The mysteries were also
performed here, beginning before midnight; and a dramatic representation
might be seen of the woes of Isis, and the resurrection of her husband
Osiris. But neither here, nor at the stalls, nor among the graves, where
many families were feasting by torchlight and pouring libations in the
sand for the souls of the dead, did Alexander expect to find his brother.
Nor would Philip be attending the mysterious solemnities of any of the
fraternities. He had witnessed them often enough with his friend
Diodoros, who never missed the procession to Eleusis, because, as he
declared, the mysteries of Demeter alone could assure a man of the
immortality of the soul. The wild ceremonies of the Syrians, who maimed
themselves in their mad ecstasy, repelled him as being coarse and
barbarous.

As she made her way through this medley of cults, this worship of gods so
different that they were in some cases hostile, but more often merged
into each other, Melissa wondered to which she ought to turn in her
present need. Her mother had best loved to sacrifice to Serapis and Isis.
But since, in her last sickness, Melissa had offered everything she
possessed to these divinities of healing, and all in vain, and since she
had heard things in the Serapeum itself which even now brought a blush to
her cheek, she had turned away from the great god of the Alexandrians.
Though he who had offended her by such base proposals was but a priest of
the lower grade--and indeed, though she knew it not, was since dead--she
feared meeting him again, and had avoided the sanctuary where he
officiated.

She was a thorough Alexandrian, and had been accustomed from childhood to
listen to the philosophical disputations of the men about her. So she
perfectly understood her brother Philip, the skeptic, when he said that
he by no means denied the existence of the immortals, but that, on the
other hand, he could not believe in it; that thought brought him no
conviction; that man, in short, could be sure of nothing, and so could
know nothing what