mes to hand. What in the devil's name
are you here for at all, but to invent a lie when I want one?'

'True, most noble,' and the worthy sat meekly down to his paper.... but
did not proceed rapidly.

'I don't see anything that would suit the emergency, unless I stated,
with your august leave, that Cyril, and not you, celebrated the
gladiatorial exhibition; which might hardly appear credible?'

Orestes burst out laughing, in spite of himself. The sleek Chaldee
smiled and purred in return. The victory was won; and Orestes, somewhat
more master of himself, began to turn his vulpine cunning to the one
absorbing question of the saving of his worthless neck.

'No, that would be too good. Write, that we had discovered a plot on
Cyril's part to incorporate the whole of the African churches (mind and
specify Carthage and Hippo) under his own jurisdiction, and to throw off
allegiance to the Patriarch of Constantinople, in case of Heraclian's
success.'

The secretary purred delighted approval, and scribbled away now with
right good heart.

'Heraclian's success, your Excellency.'

'We of course desired, by every means in our power, to gratify the
people of Alexandria, and, as was our duty, to excite by every lawful
method their loyalty toward the throne of the Caesars (never mind who
sat on it) at so critical a moment.'

'So critical a moment....'

'But as faithful Catholics, and abhorring even in the extremest need,
the sin of Uzzah, we dreaded to touch with the unsanctified hands
of laymen the consecrated ark of the Church, even though for its
preservation....'

'Its preservation, your Excellency....'

'We, therefore, as civil magistrates, felt bound to confine ourselves
to those means which were already allowed by law and custom to our
jurisdiction; and accordingly made use of those largesses, spectacles,
and public execution of rebels, which have unhappily appeared to his
holiness the patriarch (too ready, perhaps, to find a cause of complaint
against faithful adherents of the Byzantine See) to partake of the
nature of those gladiatorial exhibitions, which are equally abhorrent
to the spirit of the Catholic Church, and to the charity of the sainted
emperors by whose pious edicts they have been long since abolished.'

'Your Excellency is indeed great.... but--pardon your slave's remark--my
simplicity is of opinion that it may be asked why you did not inform the
Augusta Pulcheria of Cyril's conspiracy?'

'Say tha