tes heard with blandest smiles, while his heart was black
with curses; and Cyril answered by a very violent though a very true and
practical harangue on the text, 'How hardly shall they that have riches
enter into the kingdom of heaven.'

So respectability and moderation met with their usual hapless fate,
and, soundly cursed by both parties, in the vain attempt to please both,
wisely left the upper powers to settle their own affairs, and went home
to their desks and counters, and did a very brisk business all that week
on the strength of the approaching festival. One hapless innkeeper only
tried to carry out in practice the principles which the deputation from
his guild had so eloquently advocated; and being convicted of giving
away bread in the morning to the Nitrian monks, and wine in the evening
to the Prefect's guards, had his tavern gutted, and his head broken by
a joint plebiscitum of both the parties whom he had conciliated, who
afterwards fought a little together, and then, luckily for the general
peace, mutually ran away from each other.

Cyril in the meanwhile, though he was doing a foolish thing, was doing
it wisely enough. Orestes might curse, and respectability might deplore,
those nightly sermons, which shook the mighty arcades of the Caesareum,
but they could not answer them. Cyril was right and knew that he was
right. Orestes was a scoundrel, hateful to God, and to the enemies of
God. The middle classes were lukewarm covetous cowards: the whole system
of government was a swindle and an injustice; all men's hearts were mad
with crying, 'Lord, how long?' The fierce bishop had only to thunder
forth text on text, from every book of scripture, old and new, in order
to array on his side not merely the common sense and right feeling, but
the bigotry and ferocity of the masses.

In vain did the good Arsenius represent to him not only the scandal but
the unrighteousness of his new canonisation. 'I must have fuel, my good
father,' was his answer, 'wherewith to keep alight the flame of zeal. If
I am to be silent as to Heraclian's defeat, I must give them some other
irritant, which will put them in a proper temper to act on that defeat,
when they are told of it. If they hate Orestes, does he not deserve it?
Even if he is not altogether as much in the wrong in this particular
case as they fancy he is, are there not a thousand other crimes of
his which deserve their abhorrence even more? At all events, he must
procl