IV
The Arian basilica of St. Maurice was built almost entirely of blockstaken from the ruined temple of Apollo. The sacred court, the_atrium_, was surrounded by colonnades. In the middle of this courtmurmured a fountain, placed there for the ablutions of the faithful.Under one of the side porticoes lay an ancient oaken tomb darkenedwith age; and in this tomb were the wonder-working bones of St. Mamas,for which Eutropius had obliged Julian and Gallus themselves to builda stone-work shrine. The task of Gallus, who took to it as to a game,went rapidly forward, while the wall of Julian frequently crumbled andproved oddly unsatisfactory; a phenomenon which Eutropius explained byremarking that St. Mamas refused the offering of children possessed bythe demon of pride.
The halt, the maimed, the sick, and the blind, expectant of miracle,thronged near the tomb. Julian understood why they stationedthemselves here. One of the monks used to hold a pair of balances; thepilgrims--some of them come from hamlets many leagues away--weighedwith scrupulous care pieces of linen, woollen stuff, or silk; andhaving laid them on the tomb of St. Mamas, would fall to praying allnight. At daylight the stuff was weighed over again, and the weightcompared with the weight on the previous day. If the texture provedheavier, it was declared that the prayer had been answered, that thedivine mercy, like dew, had soaked into the stuff and rendered itcapable of producing all manner of marvellous cures.
But frequently the prayer was in vain. The stuff weighed just what itdid before; and pilgrims would pass whole days, weeks, even months,waiting at the sepulchre. Among the latter there was an old womannamed Theodula. Some called her demented; others counted her a saint.For years she had not quitted the tomb of St. Mamas. The daughter forwhose restoration she had come to pray had now been a long while dead.But Theodula continued kneeling ceaselessly before her faded andravelled fragment of cloth.
From the outer court three doors led into the basilica--one for women,one for men, and the third, in the centre, for monks and the lowerclergy. With Eutropius and Gallus, Julian went in through this lastdoor, being _anagnost_ or reader of the lessons for the day. Clothedin a long black robe with white sleeves, his hair anointed, and boundback by a fillet that it might not fall into his eyes while readingaloud, Julian passed through the midst of the faithful, his eyes fixedhumbly on the ground. His pale face assumed almost involuntarily theinevitable and hypocritical expression of submissiveness. He ascendedthe high rood-loft. The frescoes of the wall to the right depicted themartyrdom of St. Euthymus, in which one executioner seized thesufferer's head, while another, wrenching open his mouth with pincers,brought the cup of molten lead to his lips. In another scene theexecutioner with an instrument of torture was flaying the childish andbleeding limbs of St. Euthymus, hanging from a tree by his hands.Beneath these frescoes ran the inscription, "With the blood of themartyrs, O Lord, Thy church is arrayed as in purple and fine linen."
On the opposite wall sinners were burning in the fire of the pit, andabove them rose Paradise and the saints. One of the saints wasplucking the fruits of the tree of Eden; another playing the psaltery;and a third, couched on a cloud, contemplated with a beatific smilethe tortures of the damned. Beneath were written the words, "Behold!there shall be tears and gnashing of teeth!" The adorers of St. Mamasentered the church like a procession of all human maladies. Thebandy-legged, the blind, the armless, the anaemic, children totteringalong like old men, epileptics, idiots with pale faces and inflamedeyelids--all bore the mark of a dull and desperate submission. Whenthe choir ceased, there could be heard the contrite sighings of the"widows of the church," black-robed nuns of the order of St. Basil,and the jingling of the chains of old Pamphilus, who for many a longyear had addressed no word to the living, muttering only, "Lord, Lord,give me tears!--grant me mercy!--give me an end to remembrance!"
The atmosphere was that of a warm sepulchral chamber, thick, loadedwith incense and the smell of melting wax, hot oil, and the breath ofall these sick persons. Now it was Julian's lot on that day to readaloud part of the Apocalypse.
The terrifying pictures of the Revelation were unfolded, the whitehorse of Death soared through space above the peoples of the earth, asthey knelt weeping at the nearness of the world's end.
"_The sun becomes dark as pitch, and the moon red as blood. Men say tothe mountains, Fall on us and hide us from the throne of God and fromthe wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His anger is come, and whocan resist it?_"
Over and over again came the prophecy: "_Men shall seek death andshall not find it; they shall desire death and it shall flee fromthem._"
Lamentation arose: "_Thrice happy are the dead!_" and "_Then came thebloody destruction of all peoples, and the angel cast his sickle intothe earth and gathered the vintage of the earth and cast it into thegreat wine-press of the wrath of God, and the wine-press was troddenwithout the city; and there came out blood from the wine-press evenunto the bridles of the horses, as far as a thousand and six hundredfurlongs_," and men cursed the God of heaven for their plagues, andthey did not repent them of their sins; and the angel sang: "_He Whoworships the Beast and his image shall drink of the wine of the wrathof God, prepared in the cup of His anger, and shall be tormented infire and sulphur before the holy angels and the Lamb, and the smoke ofhis torture shall rise in the night of ages. For he who shall adorethe Beast and his image shall rest no more._"
Julian ended. A profound hush succeeded in the church. Painful sighsrose from the terrified crowd; and the noise of foreheads struckagainst the earth and the clank of the fetters of Pamphilus,accompanying his perpetual murmur: "Lord, Lord, give me tears!--grantme mercy!--give me an end of remembrance!"
The child raised his eyes towards the spandril of mosaic between thecolumns of the arcade, representing the Arian image of Christ; asombre, terrible figure, its wasted face aureoled in gold, anddiademed in the fashion of the Byzantine emperors. It was the face ofan old man, with a long thin nose and lips severely shut. With hisright hand he was blessing the world; in the left he held a book inwhich was written, "Peace be with you; I am the Light of the World."He was seated on a splendid throne, and a Roman emperor (Julianimagined that it must be Constantius) was in the act of kissing hisfeet.
In the penumbral shadow below this image, lighted by a single lamp,could be discerned a bas-relief on a sarcophagus, dating from theearliest Christian times. It displayed sea-nymphs, leopards, gaytritons blowing their horns, and among them Moses, Jonah and hiswhale, Orpheus charming the beasts with his lyre, an olive-branch, anda dove; the whole sculpture a symbol of pure and childlike faith. Inthe midst stood the Good Shepherd bearing on his shoulder the sheepthat had gone astray, the soul of the sinner. This barefooted youthfulfigure, with beardless face, had the joyous and simple bearing of apoor peasant, and his smile something of a heavenly sweetness.
Julian imagined that nobody nowadays knew or saw that Good Shepherd;and this little picture of old times was somehow connected in his mindwith a dream of his childhood which he tried in vain to recover.
And, gazing at this youth, who seemed as if mysteriously reproachinghim, he murmured the name picked up from Mardonius, "Galilean!" Atthat moment slanting rays of the sun through the windows trembled,above, in a cloud of incense, which, aflame with reflections from thegilded aureole, seemed to upheave the sombre and terrible image of theArian Christ. The choir chanted, "_Let all human flesh be dumb and bowdown, fearful and trembling, thinking no more of the things of theearth; for the Emperor of emperors, the Lord of lords, has givenHimself afresh as a pledge and a food to His faithful; even He who issurrounded by the hosts of angels, by all powers and dominions, bycherubim with innumerable eyes, and by the six-winged seraphim,veiling their faces and singing, 'Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!'_"
Like a tempest the psalm swept over the bowed heads of the pilgrims.The figure of the Good Shepherd faded into the distance; but itsyouthful gaze remained steadily fixed upon Julian, a gaze full ofreproach. The heart of the child was moved, not by a sense of worship,but by an intolerable fear; a fea
r before that mystery which was forhim to remain for ever insoluble.