‘I have treated already with all the officers of the city, and every one of them has acted like a wise man, and given me a promise of help, conditional of course on Heraclian’s success, being as tired as I am of that priest-ridden court at Byzantium. Moreover, the stationaries are mine already. So are the soldiery all the way up the Nile. Ah! you have been fancying me idle for these four months, but--You forget that you yourself were the prize of my toil. Could I be a sluggard with that goal in sight?’
Hypatia shuddered, but was silent; and Orestes went on--
‘I have unladen several of the wheat-ships for enormous largesses of bread: though those rascally monks of Tabenne had nearly forestalled my benevolence, and I was forced to bribe a deacon or two, buy up the stock they had sent down, and retail it again as my own. It is really most officious of them to persist in feeding gratuitously half the poor of the city! What possible business have they with Alexandria?’
‘Just so; and then what hold can the government have on a set of rogues whose stomachs are filled without our help?’
‘Julian made the same complaint to the high priest of Galatia, in that priceless letter of his.’
‘Ah, you will set that all right, you know, shortly. Then again, I do not fear Cyril’s power just now. He has injured himself deeply, I am happy to say, in the opinion of the wealthy and educated, by expelling the Jews. And as for his mob, exactly at the right moment, the deities--there are no monks here, so I can attribute my blessings to the right source--have sent us such a boon as may put them into as good a humour as we need.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, mistaking or ignoring the tone of her answer. ‘A real, live, white elephant; a thing which has not been seen in Alexandria for a hundred years! It was passing through with two tame tigers, as a present to the boy at Byzantium, from some hundred-wived kinglet of the Hyperborean Taprobane, or other no-man’s-land in the far East. I took the liberty of laying an embargo on them, and, after a little argumentation and a few hints of torture, elephant and tigers are at our service.’
‘My dearest madam-- Conceive.... How are we to win the mob without a show?.... When were there more than two ways of gaining either the whole or part of the Roman Empire--by force of arms or force of trumpery? Can even you invent a third? The former is unpleasantly exciting, and hardly practicable just now. The latter remains, and, thanks to the white elephant, may be triumphantly successful. I have to exhibit something every week. The people are getting tired of that pantomime; and since the Jews were driven out, the fellow has grown stupid and lazy, having lost the more enthusiastic half of his spectators. As for horse-racing, they are sick of it.... Now, suppose we announce, for the earliest possible day--a spectacle--such a spectacle as never was seen before in this generation. You and I--I as exhibitor, you as representative--for the time being only--of the Vestals of old--sit side by side.... Some worthy friend has his instructions, when the people are beside themselves with rapture, to cry, “Long live Orestes Caesar!”....Another reminds them of Heraclian’s victory--another couples your name with mine.... the people applaud.... some Mark Antony steps forward, salutes me as Imperator, Augustus--what you will--the cry is taken up--I refuse as meekly as Julius Caesar himself--am compelled, blushing, to accept the honour--I rise, make an oration about the future independence of the southern continent--union of Africa and Egypt--the empire no longer to be divided into Eastern and Western, but Northern and Southern. Shouts of applause, at two drachmas per man, shake the skies. Everybody believes that everybody else approves, and follows the lead.... And the thing is won.’