y for all prisoners; and as, of course, every evil-doer
had a kind of friend, who considered him an injured martyr, all parties
were well content, on their own accounts at least, with such a move.

And so Orestes's bubble swelled, and grew, and glittered every day with
fresh prismatic radiance; while Hypatia sat at home, with a heavy heart,
writing her ode to Venus Urania, and submitting to Orestes's daily
visits.

One cloud, indeed, not without squalls of wind and rain, disfigured
that sky which the Prefect had invested with such serenity by the simple
expedient, well known to politicians, of painting it bright blue, since
it would not assume that colour of its own accord. For, a day or two
after Ammonius's execution, the Prefect's guards informed him that
the corpse of the crucified man, with the cross on which it hung, had
vanished. The Nitrian monks had come down in a body, and carried them
off before the very eyes of the sentinels. Orestes knew well enough that
the fellows must have been bribed to allow the theft; but he dare not
say so to men on whose good humour his very life might depend; so,
stomaching the affront as best he could, he vowed fresh vengeance
against Cyril, and went on his way. But, behold!--within four-and-twenty
hours of the theft, a procession of all the rascality, followed by
all the piety, of Alexandria,--monks from Nitria counted by the
thousand,--priests, deacons, archdeacons, Cyril himself, in full
pontificals, and borne aloft in the midst, upon a splendid bier, the
missing corpse, its nail-pierced hands and feet left uncovered for the
pitying gaze of the Church.

Under the very palace windows, from which Orestes found it expedient to
retire for the time being, out upon the quays, and up the steps of the
Caesareum, defiled that new portent; and in another half-hour a servant
entered, breathlessly, to inform the shepherd of people that his
victim was lying in state in the centre of the nave, a martyr duly
canonised--Ammonius now no more, but henceforth Thaumasius the
wonderful, on whose heroic virtues and more heroic faithfulness unto the
death, Cyril was already descanting from the pulpit, amid thunders of
applause at every allusion to Sisera at the brook Kishon, Sennacherib in
the house of Nisroch, and the rest of the princes of this world who come
to nought.

Here was a storm! To order a cohort to enter the church and bring away
the body was easy enough: to make them do it, in the fa