“It is on my head to see the Emperor’s orders obeyed,” returned Chrysostomus, and forced the door.  The bereaved parent was busily engaged in sticking pins into a wax effigy of Basil, under the direction of Panurgiades, already honourably mentioned in this history.

“Wretched old man!” exclaimed Chrysostomus, “is this thy grief for thy daughter?”

“My grief is great,” answered Photinius, “but my time is small.  If I turn not every moment to account, I shall never be prime minister again.  But all is over now.  Thou wilt denounce me, of course.  I will give thee a counsel.  Say that thou didst arrive just as we were about to place the effigy of Basil before a slow fire, and melt it into a caldron of bubbling poison.”

“I shall report what I have seen,” replied Chrysostomus, “neither more nor less.  But I think I can assure thee that none will suffer for this mummery except Panurgiades, and that he will at most be whipped.”

“Chrysostomus,” said Basil, on receiving the report, “lust of power, a fever in youth, is a leprosy in age.  The hoary statesman out of place would sell his daughter, his country, his soul, to regain it:  yea, he would part with his skin and his senses, were it possible to hold office without them.  I commiserate Photinius, whose faculties are clearly on the decline; the day has been when he would not have wasted his time sticking pins into a waxen figure.  I will give him some shadow of authority to amuse his old days and keep him out of mischief.  The Abbot of Catangion is just dead.  Photinius shall succeed him.”

So Photinius received the tonsure and the dignity, and made a very tolerable Abbot.  It is even recorded to his honour that he bestowed a handsome funeral on his old enemy Eustathius.

Helladia made Chrysostomus an excellent wife, a little over-prudish, some thought.  When, nearly two centuries afterwards, the Courts of Love came to be established in Provence, the question at issue between her and Euprepia was referred to those tribunals, which, finding the decision difficult, adjourned it for seven hundred years.  That period having now expired, it is submitted to the British public.

THE WISDOM OF THE INDIANS

Everybody knows that in the reign of the Emperor Elagabalus Rome was visited by an embassy from India; whose members, on their way from the East, had held that memorable interview with the illustrious (though heretical) Christian philosopher Bardesanes which enabled him to formulate his doctrine of Fate, borrowed from the Indian theory of Karma, and therefore, until lately, grievously misunderstood by his commentators.

It may not, however, be equally notorious that the ambassadors returned by sea as far as Berytus, and upon landing there were hospitably entertained by the sage Euphronius, the head of the philosophical faculty of that University.

Euphronius naturally inquired what circumstance in Rome had appeared to his visitors most worthy of remark.