CHAPTER VIII: THE EAST WIND.
As Hypatia went forth the next morning, in all her glory, with a crowd of philosophers and philosophasters, students, and fine gentlemen, following her in reverend admiration across the street to her lecture-room, a ragged beggar-man, accompanied by a huge and villainous-looking dog, planted himself right before her, and extending a dirty hand, whined for an alms.
Hypatia, whose refined taste could never endure the sight, much less the contact, of anything squalid and degraded, recoiled a little, and bade the attendant slave get rid of the man with a coin.

Several of the younger gentlemen, however, considered themselves adepts in that noble art of 'upsetting' then in vogue in the African universities, to which we all have reason enough to be thankful, seeing that it drove Saint Augustine from Carthage to Rome; and they, in compliance with the usual fashion of tormenting any simple creature who came in their way by mystification and insult, commenced a series of personal witticisms, which the beggar bore stoically enough.

The coin was offered him, but he blandly put aside the hand of the giver, and keeping his place on the pavement, seemed inclined to dispute Hypatia's farther passage.
'What do you want?
Send the wretch and his frightful dog away, gentlemen!' said the poor philosopher in some trepidation.
'I know that dog,' said one of them; 'it is Aben-Ezra's.

Where did you find it before it was lost, you rascal.' 'Where your mother found you when she palmed you off upon her goodman, my child--in the slave-market.

Fair Sybil, have you already forgotten your humblest pupil, as these young dogs have, who are already trying to upset their master and instructor in the angelic science of bullying ?' And the beggar, lifting his broad straw hat, disclosed the features of Raphael Aben-Ezra.