Wherever the high-priest went he was hailed with enthusiasm:  “Rejoice,” he would say to encourage the feasters, cheering them with wise and fervid exhortations, reminding them of Pharaoh Mycerinus who, having been told by an oracle that he had only six years to live, determined to prove the prophecy false, and by carousing through every night made the six years allotted to him a good dozen.

“Imitate him!” cried Olympius as he raised a cup to his lips, “crowd the joys of a year into the few hours that still are left us, and pour a libation to the god as I do, out of every cup ere you drink.”

His appeal was answered by a rapturous shout; the flutes and cymbals piped and clanged, metal cups rang sharply as the drinkers pledged each other, and the girls thumped their tambourines, till the calf-skin droned and the bells in the frames tinkled shrilly.

Olympius thanked them, and bowed on all sides, as he walked from group to group of his adherents.  Seldom, indeed, had his heart beat so high!  His end perhaps was very near, but it should at least be worthy of his life.

He knew how the sunbeam had been reflected so as to kiss the statue’s lips.  For centuries had this startling little scene and the sudden illumination of the niche round the head of the god been worked in precisely the same way at high festivals—­[They are mentioned by Rufinus.]—­these were mere stimulants to the dull souls of the vulgar who needed to be stirred up by the miraculous power of the god, which the elect recognized throughout the universe, in the wondrous co-operation of forces and results in nature, and in the lives of men.  He, for his part, firmly believed in Serapis and his might, and in the prophecies and calculations which declared that his fall must involve the dissolution of the organic world and its relapse into chaos.

Many winds were battling in the air, each one driving the ship of life towards the whirlpool.  To-day or to-morrow—­what matter which?  The threatened cataclysm had no terrors for Olympius.  One thing only was a pang to his vanity:  No succeeding generations would preserve the memory of his heroic struggle and death for the cause of the gods.  But all was not yet lost, and his sunny nature read in the glow of the dying clay the promise and dawn of a brilliant morrow.  If the expected succor should arrive—­if the good cause should triumph here in Alexandria—­if the rising were to be general throughout Greek heathendom, then indeed had he been rightly named Olympius by his parents—­then he would not change places with any god of Olympus—­then the glory of his name, more lasting than bronze or marble, would shine forth like the sun, so long as one Greek heart honored the ancient gods and loved its native land.

This night—­perhaps its last—­should see a grand, a sumptuous feast; he invited his friends and adherents—­the leaders of spiritual life in Alexandria—­to a ‘symposium’, after the manner of the philosophers and dilettanti of ancient Athens, to be held in the great concert-hall of the Serapeum.