Presently the columns and pediments of the temple shone through the wood, but not a worshipper yet had Julian encountered.  At last he saw a boy of twelve years old, on a path overgrown with wild hyacinth.

“Do you know, child, where are the sacrificers and the people?” Julian asked.

The child made no answer.

“Listen, little one.  Can you not lead me to the priest of Apollo?”

The boy put a finger to his lips and then to both his ears, and shook his head gravely.  Suddenly he pointed out to Julian an old man, clothed in a patched and tattered tunic, and Julian recognised a temple priest.  The weak and broken old man stumbled along in drunken fashion, carrying a large basket and laughing and mumbling to himself as he went.  He was red-nosed, and his watery and short-sighted eyes had an expression of childlike benevolence.

“The priest of Apollo?” asked Julian.

“I am he.  I am called Gorgius.  What do you want, good man?”

He smelt strongly of wine.  Julian thought his behaviour indecent.

“You seem to be drunk, old man!”

Gorgius, in no wise dismayed, put down his basket and rubbed his bald head.

“Drunk?  I don’t think so.  But I may have had four or five cups in honour of the celebration; and, as to that, I drink more through sorrow than mirth.  May the Olympians have you in their keeping!”

“Where are the victims?” asked Julian.  “Have many people been sent from Antioch?  Are the choirs ready?”

“Victims!  Small thanks for victims!  Many’s the long year, my brother, since we saw that kind of thing.  Not since the time of Constantine.  It is all over—­done for!  Men have forgotten the gods.  We don’t even get a handful of wheat to make a cake; not a grain of incense, not a drop of oil for the lamps.  There’s nothing for it but to go to bed and die....  The monks have taken everything....  Our tale is told....  And you say ‘don’t drink.’  But it’s hard not to drink when one suffers.  If I didn’t drink I should have hanged myself long ago.”

“And no one has come from Antioch for this great feast day?” asked Julian.

“None but you, my son.  I am the priest, you are the people!  Together we will offer the victim to the god.  It is my own offering.  We’ve eaten little for three days, this lad and I, to save the necessary money.  Look; it is a sacred bird!”

He raised the lid of the basket.  A tethered goose slid out its head, cackling and trying to escape.

“Have you dwelt long in this temple; and is this lad your son?” questioned Julian.

“For forty years, and perhaps longer; but I have neither relatives nor friends.  This child helps me at the hour of sacrifice.  His mother was the great sibyl Diotima, who lived here, and it is said that he is the son of a god,” said Gorgius.

“A deaf mute the son of a god?” murmured the emperor, surprised.