Philippus had known nothing of the old man’s purpose till he had gone too far to be dissuaded; and it was misery to him now to reflect that his dear old friend, and his whole household, might come to ruin for the sake of the sisterhood who were nothing to them; for he had received private information that there had been a skirmish between the Moslems and the deliverers of the nuns, which had cost the lives of several combatants on both sides.

And Paula!  If only he could have seen her happy—­But she was pale; and that which robbed the young girl—­healthy as she was in mind and body—­ of her proud, frank, independent bearing was not the heat, which tormented all creation, but a secret, devouring sorrow; and this sorrow was the work of one alone—­of him on whom she had set her heart, and who made, ah! what a return, for the royal gift of her love.

Philippus had frequent business at the governor’s residence, and a fortnight since he had plainly perceived what it was that had brought Neforis into this strange state.  She was taking the opium that her husband had had, taking it in excessive quantities; and she could easily procure more through some other physician.  However, her piteous prayer that Philippus would not abandon her to her fate had prevailed to induce him to continue to see her, in the hope of possibly restricting her use of the drug.

The senator’s wife, Martina, also required his visits to the palace.  She was not actually ill, but she suffered cruelly from the heat, and she had always been wont to see her worthy old house-physician every day, to hear all the latest gossip, and complain of her little ailments when anything went wrong with her usually sound health.  Philippus was indeed too much overburdened to chatter, but his professional advice was good and helped her to endure the fires of this pitiless sky.  She liked this incisive, shrewd, plain-spoken man—­often indeed sharp and abrupt in his freedom—­ and he appreciated her bright, natural ways.  Now and then Martina even succeeded in winning a smile from “Hermes Trismegistus,” who was “generally as solemn as though there was no such thing on earth as a jest,” and in spurring him to a rejoinder which showed that this dolorous being had a particularly keen and ready wit.

Heliodora attracted him but little.  There was, to be sure, an unmistakable likeness in her “imploring eves” to those of Pulcheria; but the girl’s spoke fervent yearning for the grace and love of God, while the widow’s expressed an eager desire for the admiration of the men she preferred.  She was a graceful creature beyond all question, but such softness, which never even attempted to assert a purpose or an opinion, did not commend itself to his determined nature; it annoyed him, when he had contradicted her, to hear her repeat his last statement and take his side, as if she were ashamed of her own silliness.  Her society, indeed, did not seem to satisfy the clever older woman, who at home, was accustomed to a succession of visitors, and to whom the word “evening” was synomynous with lively conversation and a large gathering.  She spoke of the leech’s visits as the oasis in the Egyptian desert, and little Katharina even she regarded as a Godsend.