capable of being reached by any of them. For, as a god is all sufficient to itself, needing nothing and likewise fearing nothing from man, it is neither profited by good folks' services nor angered by the deeds of the vicious." Again: "Moreover, anything that may exist, either doth something, or is obliged to suffer the doings of other things which these inflict upon it, or else it simply is in such a way that other things may exist and be done in it. But nothing can do or suffer unless it have bodily substance, nor afford a place for acting or suffering unless it be empty and vacant space. Nothing, as a consequence, can have existence, save empty space and bodily substance." Yet again: “Primordial atoms are of pure solidity, simple, indissoluble, eternal. Unless there be some least, some point at which division endeth, the smallest bodies that exist will be as infinitely composed as the largest. Then there will be no difference between the greatest bodies and the smallest. But this is abhorrent to reason. Hence it is necessary one shall say, There are bodies which have no parts, but consist of the least possible substance. These, therefore, being indivisible and undiminishable, are also solid (or without pores) also eternal." Once more: "Which infinity of space being admitted, there could be no rest for any of the primary atoms which pass eternally therethrough. Rather, driven by incessant motion, part of the eternal atoms, struck by yet other—"

CHAPTER LI

WHEN THE GATES LIFT UP THEIR HEADS

THE sharp ear of Simon caught, at a distance, a scurrying sound, as of swiftly moving feet over the atrium. The sounds grew faster, nearer, rushed up his stairway. The door opened, and Conatus: "Master, away! Begone! The soldiers of Cæsar! Thou art in judgment! Why dost thou tarry? Get thee gone.'

Stepped Simon to the atrium door, whence Conatus had fled quickly, and looked out over his great room-his in the past.

All was present as ever before-the calm impluvium beneath the sapphire perforation in the lofty roof, the hypothetic masks of the Jew's numerous ancestors, the Attic tumblers laughing and bouncing on the pavement.

A light air fluttered through the court, swaying the lisping branches of the oriental trees. Just at that moment, the old slave by the water-clock-he with grave, impassive countenance, long beard,

and scythe of eternal unerringness, called forth, like a slow, inevitable machine: "Meridies! Meridies! Time passes, yet be not sad!"

Simon saw in a quick vision the solemn plexus of events which had constituted his life.

He turned, closing the door. And entered the space behind Minerva, and closed that entrance also. Felt for his torch, lighted it, went the hundred steps and one to mystery and yet further fear and also unlimited corruption.

He lifted the foul sewer-lid, and entered the sewer, and closed the way behind him again.

But yet again paused and listened, for he felt that some one followed.

He swept on through the dim-winding sewers, which underlay, like streets, all Rome. Presently he was lost. Whereat, in confusion, he dropped his torch in the flowing filth. And cried in an anguish, "Which is the way from corruption?"

Then heard he a sound as of one that plashed behind him.

And he would have stricken with his sweet blade, but that he heard the syllables, "Master!"

"Conatus?

Thou!"

"I, Master; whither-"

"What of my servants, Conatus?"

"Dead. All, all are dead that served within thy house. Time himself lies a-dying."

"And thou?"

"I bleed. The soldiers-I bleed-" The soldiers know thy stairway. Whatever was known to Lampadephorus is known to Cæsar. Let me lean upon thee. So. I-take me to the light, Master."

"Light? Light? I know no light. I know no way from this ut ter darkness. My torch was extinguished in the filth, and we are lost."

Then said the servant, "I know the way. I have been here oft before, Master."

"Thou!" cried Simon. "Conatus! Thou?"

"Even I, Conatus, thy servant. For once I saw thee, Master, come down the stair a little distance. And later, being fearful of Cæsar and him they call Thanatos, I too came down the way of Minerva, seeking in heathen beliefs a solace and refuge from the terrors of the world. I, too, was lost. And, wandering here in filth and darkness, yet, by trying, I did find an exit-yonder, straight ahead, the

nearest passage and the straight-up stair. And so I found the way on the other times whenas I came."

And when they had got up out of the darkness and into a court of half-light which, though it belonged to Simon, was yet unknown to him, being part of the house of Ophidion, then said Conatus: "We are not better, but worse off, than before we went the deep, dark, stercoraceous way. But hold me in thine arms, dear Master, till I perish. For lo! it is nearing the end of the ages, and I come to Christ."

"Christ! Conatus, art thou a Christian?"

"First thou, then Christopherus, then thou and he together." "I! I! Sayest thou 'I'?"

"Yea, Master. Thou wast for me as it were a sign from heaven. And all the Jews, be they not also signs? And I, I have tried to serve thee like a Christian servant. I have tried. Christ Jesus, I have tried."

And Simon covered the man's face with his own splendid garment. He heard the sound again of the solitary treadmill-that which he had so distantly listened unto in his own dim garden. Being in the deeps of compassion and of fear because of this, that he had lost his servant, he said: "I will find the weary one at last, and will comfort him."

And the

But the sounds had ceased, or ere he had found the mill. servant that had treaded the mill, lay stretched beside it, and was even as Conatus. And the servant that had treaded the mill was Amahnah, Child of God, and God's peculiar gift to him, Simon.

He lifted up his voice then for Amahnah, and, weeping, said: “I might have had thee by me for a blessing and a comfort all these many days, O Amahnah, had I not been blind. But it is even as thou, Conatus, hast truly declared-the end of all things. And now the Gift of God, so long neglected by me, is of no more life upon this earth.”

It seemed to him, in fact, as if eternity had begun to envelop him already. And then-trumpets were blown, and he knew well why. The full, imperious utterances reverberated from wall to wall, from stone to stone, about the hostile and treacherous city, calling, calling for him, the Jew, even Simon the olden, from far-off, sheep-filled Cyrenaica.

Yet he said (there being that within him which did cause that he should do this): "There is throb of life within me. And other servants yet await me than those which be dead in my house. Why should I die?

"Yea, by the strength of mine arms, which the years have not abated, and by the strength of the Lord also that is still within me, and will work as once before it worked for him of Gaza, yea, by both these things I swear I will not die for Cæsar, or be in any wise his dimachærus, but will deliver the Land."

He went into the street.

And behold, Vulgus was there! He came to Simon, and was a-drunken.

And laid hold upon the Jew, saying: "See! I will try thee again. Even as Cæsar tried thee, and as I did try Defectus before the very gates of thy house, so will I try thee now, here at the seat of sewerjustice. Wait till I get up the lid of yon sewer."

But Simon, stretching the man on the ground, laid over his breast a great stone which was there for building. And so he would truly have gone to escape, but that the soldiers, an innumerable party, came with trumpets and weapons. And they took away his swords.

They brought him to the amphitheater, saying: "The games this day are in honor of the Emperor's genius, thy sovereign Lord, the Lord of All this World and that to come. Thy turn is not as yet, therefore wait in this cuniculum." So they departed, leaving a guard.

And Simon beheld that he who guarded was a treacherous manone that might be purchased, if but the way were seen. Leaped in his soul a flame of hope. Said he to Jehovah: "O Lord, thou hast remembered me!" Unto the fellow: "At Ostia and at Alexandria, at Patmos, Pontus, Corinth, Rhodes, and many other harbors, are multitudes that await me—if only I escape these walls. Therefore see! If thou sufferest me to elude thee and to give thee harmless wounds, I will pay thee of a surety a most excellent pearl, the perfectest jewel which ever the eyes of avarice grew mad upon-the price of fifty Romes, ten thousand Cæsars. The dearest gem-" "Pay!" said the man.

Simon brought arm and mouth together, and bit out the place wherein he had buried the pearl.

The guard took away from him the flesh, and began to part it with his sword's point-this way, that, endeavoring to discover the pearl. And Simon looked with bated breath

For nowhere was the pearl.

Flesh, flesh; all, all, was only flesh. Into the very sluices of his own protecting arm had gone away the treasure, leaving merely a corruptible lump.

The guard cried, "Be accursed!" And a roll of thunder sounded above, as it were a great voice of many people shouting in heaven.

But Simon of Cyrene stood amazed, saying only, and that to himself: "Lost, lost! In the end, my wealth is merely as my flesh-corruption.'

Then came from the amphitheater (like a trumpet of doom) the voice of him that edited the games: "Simon of Cyrene, dimachærus splendens!"

The gates before him opened, yea the bars thereof did turn, disclosing a way leading out over the sands.

Now, as the man stepped into the arena, there came back to him the course of all his life; first, the beginnings of years in far-off Cyrenaica; then himself a herder of his father's sheep; again the mimicry of the Mocker, Trivialis-whereat his cheeks did fire; he caught once more the accents of Jehovah, which he had heard in his father's tomb-"And when I have no further need of thee, I will break thee and yet keep thee;" and then he saw, coming with singing and with light, the sunny-headed Greek, him that afterward had become his well-loved Master, the idolizer of intellectual and physical joys, even Lampadephorus of Athens. Then he beheld himself allured by the Egyptian priestess-and fallen; next, by her of Petraonce more fallen; yet again by the Syrian Abaddone, and yet a third time fallen. He saw himself in the belly of the Babylonia, a miserable captive, but free forever from idolatry; then a shepherd in Judea with Berith and the children, however a discarded and black-gowned priest; next a disciple of the strange man, Parush (ten thousand forms and mock observances); then there was Christ-once, and yet again, yet still another time also. He himself, even Simon, was coming from the country. And he saw the cloud of dust that poured through the Gate of the Gardens, beheld the thundering multitude that issued from that cloud, caught sight of Him of Nazareth, was seized and compelled to carry the cross (oh, that bitter and contaminate cross) and all the concentrated sufferings which the man of flesh and iron had endured since Golgotha because of his carrying up the hill the tree of Christ, shot through his wrong-wracked mind in one great bolt of fire.

Then he looked about and became aware again. He saw myriads of heads like rolling apples, ranked and filed in the cone-shaped amphitheatre. And all the innumerable eyes looked down upon him pitiless. The heads wagged, their mouths cried curses on the Jew, mockery at his religion. One came that gave him twain weapons.

And he looked again-to the farthest portion of the amphitheatre.