Ah! why were you not Pulcheria?
No, for then Alexandria had been dark, and Orestes missed the supreme happiness of kissing a hand which Pallas, when she made you, must have borrowed from the workshop of Aphrodite.' 'Recollect that you are a Christian,' answered Hypatia, half smiling.
So the prefect departed; and passing through the outer hall, which was already crowded with Hypatia's aristocratic pupils and visitors, bowed his way out past them and regained his chariot, chuckling over the rebuff which he intended to administer to Cyril, and comforting himself with the only text of Scripture of the inspiration of which he was thoroughly convinced--'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' At the door was a crowd of chariots, slaves with their masters' parasols, and the rabble of onlooking boys and market-folk, as usual in Alexandria then, as in all great cities since, who were staring at the prefect, and having their heads rapped by his guards, and wondering what sort of glorious personage Hypatia might be, and what sort of glorious house she must live in, to be fit company for the great governor of Alexandria.

Not that there was not many a sulky and lowering face among the mob, for the great majority of them were Christians, and very seditious and turbulent politicians, as Alexandrians, 'men of Macedonia,' were bound to be; and there was many a grumble among them, all but audible, at the prefect's going in state to the heathen woman's house--heathen sorceress, some pious old woman called her--before he heard any poor soul's petition in the tribunal, or even said his prayers in church.
Just as he was stepping into his curricle a tall young man, as gorgeously bedizened as himself, lounged down the steps after him, and beckoned lazily to the black boy who carried his parasol.
'Ah, Raphael Aben-Ezra! my excellent friend, what propitious deity--ahem! martyr--brings you to Alexandria just as I want you?
Get up by my side, and let us have a chat on our way to the tribunal.' The man addressed came slowly forward with an ostentatiously low salutation, which could not hide, and indeed was not intended to hide, the contemptuous and lazy expression of his face; and asked in a drawling tone-- 'And for what kind purpose does the representative of the Caesars bestow such an honour on the humblest of his, etc.

etc .-- your penetration will supply the rest.' 'Don't be frightened; I am not going to borrow money of you,' answered Orestes, laughingly, as the Jew got into the curricle.
'I am glad to hear it.

Really one usurer in a family is enough.

My father made the gold, and if I spend it, I consider that I do all that is required of a philosopher.' 'A charming team of white Nisaeans, is not this?
And only one gray foot among all the four.' 'Yes....