And how wretched was the aspect of the sobered, terror-stricken, worn-out men and women.  An obscure consciousness of having insulted the god and incurred his wrath lurked in every soul.  To many a one prompt death would have seemed most welcome, and one man—­a promising pupil of Helladius, had actually taken the leap from existence into the non-existence which, as he believed, he should find beyond the grave; he had run his had violently against a pillar, and lay at the foot of it with a broken skull.

With reeling brains, aching brows, and dejected hearts, the unhappy creatures had got so far as to curse the present; and those who dared to contemplate the future thought of it only as a bottomless abyss, towards which the flying hours were dragging them with unfelt but irresistible force.  Time was passing—­each could feel and see that; night was gone, it would soon be day; the storm had passed over, but instead of the inexorable powers of nature a new terror now hung over them:  the no less inexorable power of Caesar.  To the struggle of man against the gods there was but one possible end:  Annihilation.  In the conflict of man against man there might yet be, if not victory, at least escape.  The veteran Memnon, with his one arm, had kept watch on the temple-roof during that night’s orgy, planning measures for repulsing the enemy’s attack, till the storm had burst on him and his adherents with the “artillery of heaven.”  Then the greater portion of the garrison had taken refuge in the lower galleries of the Serapeum, and the old general was left alone at his post, in the blinding and deafening tempest.  He threw his remaining arm round a statue that graced the parapet of the roof to save himself from being swept or washed away; and he would still have shouted his orders, but that the hurricane drowned his voice, and none of his few remaining adherents could have heard him speak.  He, too, had heard the champing of horses and had seen the moving mountain which Orpheus had described.  It was in fact a Roman engine of war; and, faithful though he was to the cause he had undertaken, something like a feeling of joy stirred his warrior’s soul, as he looked down on the fine and well-drilled men who followed the Imperial standards under which he had, ere now, shed his best blood.  His old comrades in arms had not forgotten how to defy the tempest, and their captains had been well advised in preparing to attack first what seemed the securest side of the temple.  The struggle, he foresaw, would be against tried soldiers, and it was with a deep curse and a smile of bitter scorn that he thought of the inexperienced novices under his command.  It was only yesterday that he had tried to moderate Olympius’ sanguine dreams, and had said to him:  “It is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe!”

The skill and experience he had to contend with were in no respect inferior to his own; and he would know, only too soon, what the practical worth might be of the daring and enthusiastic youths whom he had undertaken to command, and of whom he still had secret hopes for the best.