Alarming as was the outlook in Alexandria, the races, were to be held as usual.  This had been decided only a few hours since at the Bishop’s palace, and criers had been sent abroad throughout the streets and squares of the city to bid the inhabitants to this popular entertainment.  In the writing-office of the Ephemeris, which would be given to the public the first thing in the morning, five hundred slaves or more were occupied in writing from dictation a list of the owners of the horses, of the ‘agitatores’ who would drive them, and of the prizes offered to the winners, whether Christians or heathen.

   [Ephemeris—­The news-sheet, which was brought out, not only in Rome,
   but in all the cities of the Empire, and which kept the citizens
   informed of all important events.]

The heat in the Episcopal council-hall had been oppressive, and not less so the heat of temper among the priests assembled there; for they had fully determined, for once, not to obey their prelate with blind submission, and they knew full well that Theophilus, on occasion, if his will were opposed, could not merely thunder but wield the bolt.

Besides the ecclesiastical members of the council, Cynegius, the Imperial legate—­Evagrius, the Prefect—­and Romanus, the commander-in-chief and Comes of Egypt,—­had all been present.  The officials of the Empire—­Roman statesmen who knew Alexandria and her citizens well, and who had often smarted under the spiritual haughtiness of her Bishop—­were on the prelate’s side.  Cynegius was doubtful; but the priests, who had not altogether escaped the alarms that had stricken the whole population, were so bold as to declare against a too hasty decision, and to say that the celebration of the games at a time of such desperate peril was not only presumptuous but sinful, and a tempting of God.

In answer to a scornful enquiry from Theophilus as to where the danger lay if—­as the Comes promised—­Serapis were to be overthrown on the morrow, one of the assembly answered in the name of his colleagues.  This man, now very old, had formerly been a wonderfully successful exorcist, and, notwithstanding that he was a faithful Christian, he was the leader of a gnostic sect and a diligent student of magic.  He proceeded to argue, with all the zeal and vehemence of conviction, that Serapis was the most terrible of all the heathen daemons, and that all the oracles of antiquity, all the prophecies of the seers, and all the conclusions of the Magians and astrologers would be proved false if his fall—­which the present assembly could only regard as a great boon from Heaven—­did not entail some tremendous convulsion of nature.

At this Theophilus gave the reins to his wrath; he snatched a little crucifix from the wall above his episcopal throne, and broke it in fragments, exclaiming in deep tones that quavered with wrath: 

“And which do you regard as the greater:  The only-begotten Son of God, or that helpless image?” And he flung the pieces of the broken crucifix down on the table round which they were sitting.  Then, as though horror-stricken at his own daring act, he fell on his knees, raised his eyes and hands in prayer, and gathering up the broken image, kissed it devoutly.