All that lived--Nature and its Soul as much as Man and his Soul--were inseparably dependent on him.

If he--if Serapis were to fall, the order of the universe must be destroyed; and with him: The Synthesis of the Universe--the Universe itself must cease to exist.
But what would survive would not be the nothingness--the void of which her grandmother had spoken; it would be the One--the cold, ineffable, incomprehensible One! This world would perish with Serapis; but perhaps it might please that One to call another world into being out of his overflowing essence, peopled by other and different beings.
Gorgo was startled out of these meditations by a wild tumult which came up from the slaves' hall some distance off and reached her ears in the women's sitting-room.

Could her grandmother have opened the wine stores all too freely; were the miserable wretches already drunk?
No, the noise was not that of a troop of slaves who have forgotten themselves, and given the rein to their wild revelry under the influence of Dionysus! She listened and could distinctly hear lamentable howls and wild cries of grief.

Something frightful must have happened! Had some evil befallen her father?
Greatly alarmed she flew across the courtyard to the slaves' quarters and found the whole establishment, black and white alike, in a state of frenzy.

The women were rushing about with their hair unbound over their faces, beating their breasts and wailing, the men squatted in silence with their wine-cups before them untouched, softly sobbing and whining.
What had come upon them--what blow had fallen on the house?
Gorgo called her old nurse and learnt from her that the Moschosphragist had just told them that the troops had been placed all round the Serapeum and that the Emperor had commanded the Prefect of the East to lay violent hands on the temple of the King of gods.