of the guild just to get his exemption from taxes, and leaves the work to poor men like you. Rotten, rotten! my son, and you will find it out. The preachers, now—people used to say—I know Abbot Isidore did—that I had as good a gift for expounding as any man in Pelusium; but since I came here, eleven years since, if you will believe it, I have never been asked to preach in my own parish church.’
‘You surely jest!’
‘True, as I am a christened man. I know why—I know why: they are afraid of Isidore’s men here.... Perhaps they may have caught the holy man’s trick of plain speaking—and ears are dainty in Alexandria. And there are some in these parts, too, that have never forgiven him the part he took about those three villains, Marc, Zosimus, and Martinian, and a certain letter that came of it; or another letter either, which we know of, about taking alms for the church from the gains of robbers and usurers. “Cyril never forgets.” So he says to every one who does him a good turn.... And so he does to every one who he fancies has done him a bad one. So here am I slaving away, a subordinate priest, while such fellows as Peter the Reader look down on me as their slave. But it’s always so. There never was a bishop yet, except the blessed Augustine—would to Heaven I had taken my abbot’s advice, and gone to him at Hippo!—who had not his flatterers and his tale-bearers, and generally the archdeacon at the head of them, ready to step into the bishop’s place when he dies, over the heads of hard-working parish priests. But that is the way of the world. The sleekest and the oiliest, and the noisiest; the man who can bring in most money to the charities, never mind whence or how; the man who will take most of the bishop’s work off his hands, and agree with him in everything he wants, and save him, by spying and eavesdropping, the trouble of using his own eyes; that is the man to succeed in Alexandria, or Constantinople, or Rome itself. Look now; there are but seven deacons to this great city, and all its priests; and they and the archdeacon are the masters of it and us. They and that Peter manage Cyril’s work for him, and when Cyril makes the archdeacon a bishop, he will make Peter archdeacon....They have their reward, they have their reward; and so has Cyril, for that matter.’
‘How?’
‘Why, don’t say I said it. But what do I care? I have nothing to lose, I’m sure. But they do say that there are two ways of promotion in Alexandria: one by deserving it, the other by paying for it. That’s all.’
‘Impossible!’
‘Oh, of course, quite impossible. But all I know is just this, that when that fellow Martinian got back again into Pelusium, after being turned out by the late bishop for a rogue and hypocrite as he was, and got the ear of this present bishop, and was appointed his steward, and ordained priest—I’d as soon have ordained that street-dog—and plundered him and brought him to disgrace—for I don’t believe this bishop is a bad man, but those who use rogues must expect to be called rogues—and ground the poor to the earth, and tyrannised over the whole city so that no man’s property, or reputation, scarcely their lives, were safe; and after all, had the impudence, when he was called on for his accounts, to bring the church in as owing him money; I just know this, that he added to all his other shamelessness this, that he offered the patriarch a large sum of money to buy a bishopric of him.... And what do you think the patriarch answered?’
‘Excommunicated the sacrilegious wretch, of course!’
‘Sent him a letter to say that if he dared to do such a thing again he should really be forced to expose him! So the fellow, taking courage, brought his money himself the next time; and all the world says that Cyril would have made him a bishop after all, if Abbot Isidore had not written to remonstrate.’
‘He could not have known the man’s character,’ said poor Philammon, hunting for an excuse.
‘The whole Delta was ringing with it. Isidore had written to him again and again.’
‘Surely then his wish was to prevent scandal, and preserve the unity of the church in the eyes of the heathen.’
The old man laughed bitterly.
‘Ah, the old story—of preventing scandals by retaining them, and fancying that sin is a less evil than a little noise; as if the worst of all scandals was not the being discovered in hushing up a scandal. And as for unity, if you want that, you must go back to the good old times of Dioclesian and Decius.’
‘The persecutors?’
‘Ay, boy—to the times of persecution, when Christians died like brothers, because they lived like brothers. You will see very little of that now, except in some little remote county bishopric, which no one ever hears of from year’s end to year’s end. But in the cities it is all one great fight for place and power. Every one is jealous of his neighbour. The priests are jealous of the deacons, and good cause they have. The county bishops are jealous of the metropolitan, and he is jealous of the North African bishops, and quite right he is. What business have they to set up for themselves, as if they were infallible? It’s a schism, I say—a complete schism. They are just as bad as their own Donatists. Did not the Council of Nice settle that the Metropolitan of Alexandria should have authority over Libya and Pentapolis, according to the ancient custom?’
‘Of course he ought,’ said Philammon, jealous for the honour of his own patriarchate.
‘And the patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople are jealous of our patriarch.’
‘Of Cyril?’
‘Of course, because he won’t be at their beck and nod, and let them be lords and masters of Africa.’
‘But surely these things can be settled by councils?’
‘Councils? Wait till you have been at one. The blessed Abbot Isidore used to say, that if he ever was a bishop—which he never will be—he is far too honest for that—he would never go near one of them; for he never had seen one which did not call out every evil passion in men’s hearts, and leave the question more confounded with words than they found it, even if the whole matter was not settled beforehand by some chamberlain, or eunuch, or cook sent from court, as if he were an anointed vessel of the Spirit, to settle the dogmas of the Holy Catholic Church.’
‘Cook?’
‘Why, Valens sent his chief cook to stop Basil of Caesarea from opposing the Court doctrine.... I tell you, the great battle in these cases is to get votes from courts, or to get to court yourself. When I was young, the Council of Antioch had to make a law to keep bishops from running off to Constantinople to intrigue, under pretence of pleading the cause of the orphan and widow. But what’s the use of that, when every noisy and ambitious man shifts and shifts, from one see to another, till he settles himself close to Rome or Byzantium, and gets the emperor’s ear, and plays into the hands of his courtiers?’
‘Is it not written, “Speak not evil of dignities”? ‘said Philammon, in his most sanctimonious tone.
‘Well, what of that? I don’t speak evil of dignities, when I complain of the men who fill them badly, do I?’
‘I never heard that interpretation of the text before.’
‘Very likely not. That’s no reason why it should not be true and orthodox. You will soon hear a good many more things, which are true enough—though whether they are orthodox or not, the court cooks must settle. Of course, I am a disappointed, irreverent old grumbler. Of course, and of course, too, young men must needs buy their own experience, instead of taking old folks’ at a gift. There—use your own eyes, and judge for yourself. There you may see what sort of saints are bred by this plan of managing the Catholic Church. There comes one of them. Now! I say no more!’
As he spoke, two tall negroes came up to them, and set down before the steps of a large church which they were passing an object new to Philammon—a sedan-chair, the poles of which were inlaid with ivory and silver, and the upper part enclosed in rose-coloured silk curtains.
‘What is inside that cage?’ asked he of the old priest, as the negroes stood wiping the perspiration from their foreheads, and a smart slave-girl stepped forward, with a parasol and slippers in her hand, and reverently lifted the lower edge of the curtain.
‘A saint, I tell you!’
An