All being ready, the Governor rose from his seat, and announced that, with the sanction of his Grace the Archbishop, the invidious task of determining between the claims of two such highly qualified competitors had been delegated to two gentlemen in the enjoyment of his full confidence, who would proceed to apply fitting tests to the respective candidates.  Should one fail and the other succeed, the victor would of course be instituted; should both undergo the probation successfully, new criterions of merit would be devised; should both fall short, both would be set aside, and the disputed mitre would be conferred elsewhere.  He would first summon Nonnus, long their fellow-citizen, and now their fellow-Christian, to submit himself to the test proposed.

Apollo now rose, and proclaimed in an audible voice, “By virtue of the authority committed to me I call upon Nonnus of Panopolis, candidate for the bishopric of his native city, to demonstrate his fitness for the same by consigning to the flames with his own hands the forty-eight execrable books of heathen poetry composed by him in the days of his darkness and blindness, but now without doubt as detestable to him as to the universal body of the faithful.”  So saying, he made a sign to an attendant, the wrapping of the package fell away, and the forty-eight scrolls of the Dionysiaca, silver knobs, purple cords, and all, came to view.

“Burn my poem!” exclaimed Nonnus.  “Destroy the labours of twenty-four years!  Bereave Egypt of its Homer!  Erase the name of Nonnus from the tablet of Time!”

“How so, while thou hast the Paraphrase of St. John?” demanded Apollo maliciously.

“Indeed, good youth,” said the Governor, who wished to favour Nonnus, “methinks the condition is somewhat exorbitant.  A single book might suffice, surely!”

“I am quite content,” replied Apollo.  “If he consents to burn any of his books he is no poet, and I wash my hands of him.”

“Come, Nonnus,” cried the Governor, “make haste; one book will do as well as another.  Hand them up here.”

“It must be with his own hands, please your Excellency,” said Apollo.

“Then,” cried the Governor, pitching to the poet the first scroll brought to him, “the thirteenth book.  Who cares about the thirteenth book?  Pop it in!”

“The thirteenth book!” exclaimed Nonnus, “containing the contest between wine and honey, without which my epic becomes totally and entirely unintelligible!”

“This, then,” said the Governor, picking out another, which chanced to be the seventeenth.

“In my seventeenth book,” objected Nonnus, “Bacchus plants vines in India, and the superiority of wine to milk is convincingly demonstrated.”

“Well,” rejoined the Governor, “what say you to the twenty-second?”

“With my Hamadryad!  I can never give up my Hamadryad!”

“Then,” said the Governor, contemptuously hurling the whole set in the direction of Nonnus, “burn which you will, only burn!”