poor mangled ruffians to have that voice speaking such words to me....and to believe them.'.... And he went on perusing the manuscript which he held in his hand. ...............
'Well!' he sighed to himself after a while 'at least it is the most complimentary, not to say hopeful, view of our destinies with which I have met since I threw away my curse's belief that the seed of David was fated to conquer the whole earth, and set up a second Roman Empire at Jerusalem, only worse than the present one, in that the devils of superstition and bigotry would be added to those of tyranny and rapine.'
A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice asked' 'And what may this so hopeful view be?'
'Ah! my dear General!' said Raphael, looking up. 'I have a poor bill of fare whereon to exercise my culinary powers this morning. Had it not been for that shark who was so luckily deluded last night, I should have been reduced to the necessity of stewing my friend the fat decurion's big boots.'
'They would have been savoury enough, I will warrant, after they had passed under your magical hand.'
'It is a comfort, certainly, to find that after all one did learn something useful in Alexandria! So I will even go forward at once, and employ my artistic skill.'
'Tell me first what it was about which I heard you just now soliloquising, as so hopeful a view of some matter or other?'
'Honestly—if you will neither betray me to your son and daughter, nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself—it was Paul of Tarsus's notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!' And he held up a manuscript of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
'It is execrable Greek. But it is sound philosophy, I cannot deny. He knows Plato better than all the ladies and gentlemen in Alexandria put together, if my opinion on the point be worth having.'
'I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that point, sir. He may or may not know Plato; but I am right sure that he knows God.'
'Not too fast,' said Raphael with a smile. 'You do not know, perhaps, that I have spent the last ten years of my life among men