“Not in the least,” replied the demon, “especially as I can easily make my words good.  If you and Pachymius will mount my back I will transport you to Panopolis, where you can verify my assertion for yourselves.”

The Deity and the anchorite promptly consented, and seated themselves on the demon’s shoulders.  The shadow of the fiend’s expanded wings fell black and vast on the fiery sand, but diminished and became invisible as he soared to a prodigious height, to escape observation from below.  By-and-by the sun’s glowing ball touched earth at the extremity of the horizon; it disappeared, the fires of sunset burned low in the west, and the figures of the demon and his freight showed like a black dot against a lake of green sky, growing larger as he cautiously stooped to earth.  Grazing temples, skimming pyramids, the party came to ground in the precincts of Panopolis, just in time to avoid the rising moon that would have betrayed them.  The demon immediately disappeared.  Apollo hastened off to demand an explanation from Nonnus, while Pachymius repaired to a neighbouring convent, peopled, as he knew, by a legion of sturdy monks, ever ready to smite and be smitten in the cause of orthodoxy.

II

Nonnus sat in his study, wrinkling his brow as he polished his verses by the light of a small lamp.  A large scroll lay open on his knees, the contents of which seemed to afford him little satisfaction.  Forty-eight more scrolls, resplendent with silver knobs and coquettishly tied with purple cord, reposed in an adjoining book-case; the forty-eight books, manifestly, of the Panopolitan bard’s Dionysiaca.  Homer, Euripides, and other poets lay on the floor, having apparently been hurriedly dislodged to make room for divers liturgies and lives of the saints.  A set of episcopal robes depended from a hook, and on a side table stood half-a-dozen mitres, which, to all appearance, the designated prelate had been trying on.

“Nonnus,” said Phoebus, passing noiselessly through the unresisting wall, “the tale of thy apostasy is then true?”

It would be difficult to determine whether surprise, delight, or dismay preponderated in Nonnus’s expression as he lifted up his eyes and recognised the God of Poetry.  He had just presence of mind to shuffle his scroll under an enormous dictionary ere he fell at Apollo’s feet.

“O Phoebus,” he exclaimed, “hadst thou come a week ago!”

“It is true, then?” said Apollo.  “Thou forsakest me and the Muses.  Thou sidest with them who have broken our statues, unroofed our temples, desecrated our altars, and banished us from among mankind.  Thou rejectest the glory of standing alone in a barbarous age as the last witness to culture and civilisation.  Thou despisest the gifts of the Gods and the Muses, of which I am even now the bearer.  Thou preferrest the mitre to the laurel chaplet, and the hymns of Gregory to the epics of Homer?”