I am, and you know that I love you.  If I never find my uncle again I have no one on earth to care for me but you; but I want no other, for you are my one and only hope, and to live for you and with you is enough.  Only you must never leave me or I shall die!  But you never can, for you told me that my soul was dearer to you than your own life; and so long as I have you and your love I shall grow better and better every day; but if you ever let me be parted from you I shall be utterly lost.  Yes, understand that once for all—­ruined and lost, body and soul!—­I do not know what it is that terrifies me, but do let us go on, away from this house.  Suppose your mother were to see us!”

He did as she wished and tried to soothe her, praising his mother’s virtues with the affectionate blindness of a son; but she only half listened to his eulogy, for, as they approached Rhacotis the throng grew denser, they had no opportunities for conversation, they could think of nothing but battling their way through the crowd; still, they were happy.

   [The quarter of the city inhabited by the Egyptians.  It was the old
   town close to which Alexander the Great built his splendid new
   city.]

They thus got to the street of the Sun—­one of the main arteries of the city cutting the Canopic way at right angles—­and they went down it towards the Gate of Helios in the south wall.  The Serapeum lay to their right, several streets leading to it from the street of the Sun.  To reach the house where Eusebius lived they ought to have turned down the street of the Acropolis, but a compact mass of frenzied creatures came storming down it from the Serapeum, and towards them.  The sun was now fast setting over the City of the Dead on the western horizon.  Marcus tried to get out of the middle of the road and place Dada in safety by the house at the corner, but in vain; the rabble that came crowding out of the side street was mad with excitement, and could think of nothing but the trophies it had snatched from the temple.  Several dozen men, black and white alike—­and among them some monks and even women, had harnessed themselves to an enormous truck, commonly used for the carriage of beams, columns, and heavy blocks of stone, on which they had erected a huge but shapeless mass of wood, the core, and all that remained, of the image of Serapis; this they were dragging through the streets.

“To the Hippodrome!  Burn it!  Down with the idols!  Look at the divine form of Serapis!  Behold the god!”

These were the cries that rent the air from a thousand throats, an ear-splitting accompaniment to the surging storm of humanity.