cross and jealous, you know. But he--he could not be cruel to
such a sweet face as that. Try the fair young lad! Or, perhaps, if you
are bashful, the old Jewess might try him for you?'

These last words were spoken with so marked a significance, that
Hypatia, in spite of her disgust, found herself asking the hag what
she meant. She made no answer for a few seconds, but remained looking
steadily into her eyes with a glance of fire, before which even the
proud Hypatia, as she had done once before, quailed utterly, so deep was
the understanding, so dogged the purpose, so fearless the power, which
burned within those withered and shrunken sockets.

'Shall the old witch call him up, the fair young Apollo, with the
beauty-bloom upon his chin? He shall come! He shall come! I warrant him
he must come, civilly enough, when old Miriam's finger is once held up.'

'To you? Apollo, the god of light, obey a Jewess?'

'A Jewess? And you a Greek?' almost yelled the old woman. 'And who
are you who ask? And who are your gods, your heroes, your devils,
you children of yesterday, compared with us? You, who were a set of
half-naked savages squabbling about the siege of Troy, when our
Solomon, amid splendours such as Rome and Constantinople never saw, was
controlling demons and ghosts, angels and archangels, principalities and
powers, by the ineffable name? What science have you that you have not
stolen from the Egyptians and Chaldees? And what had the Egyptians which
Moses did not teach them? And what have the Chaldees which Daniel did
not teach them? What does the world know but from us, the fathers
and the masters of magic--us, the lords of the inner secrets of the
universe! Come, you Greek baby--as the priests in Egypt said of your
forefathers, always children, craving for a new toy, and throwing it
away next day--come to the fountainhead of all your paltry wisdom! Name
what you will see, and you shall see it!'

Hypatia was cowed; for of one thing there was no doubt,--that the woman
utterly believed her own words; and that was a state of mind of which
she had seen so little, that it was no wonder if it acted on her with
that overpowering sympathetic force, with which it generally does, and
perhaps ought to, act on the human heart. Besides, her school had always
looked to the ancient nations of the East for the primeval founts of
inspiration, the mysterious lore of mightier races long gone by. Might
she not have found it now?

The