The mob carried the bodies of the three murdered men upon camels to the side of the lake, and there burned them, and threw the ashes into the water, for fear, as they said, that a church should be built over their remains, as had been sometimes done, even at that early date, over the bodies of martyrs. [Illustration: 225.jpg A YOUNG EGYPTIAN WEARING THE ROYAL LOCK] When the news of this outrage against the laws was brought to the philosophical emperor, he contented himself with threatening by an imperial edict that if the offence were repeated, he would visit it with severe punishment. But in every act of Julian we trace the scholar and the lover of learning. George had employed his wealth in getting together a large library, rich in historians, rhetoricians, and philosophers of all sects; and, on the murder of the bishop, Julian wrote letter after letter to Alexandria, to beg the prefect and his friend Porphyrius to save these books, and send them to him in Cappadocia. He promised freedom to the librarian if he gave them up, and torture if he hid them; and further begged that no books in favour of Christianity should be destroyed, lest other and better books should be lost with them. There is too much reason to believe that the friends of Athanasius were not displeased at the murder of the Bishop George and their Arian fellow-Christians; at any rate they made no effort to save them, and the same mob that had put to death George as an enemy to paganism now joined his rival, Athanasius, in a triumphal entry into the city, when, with the other Egyptian bishops, he was allowed to return from banishment. Athanasius could brook no rival to his power; the civil force of the city was completely overpowered by his party, and the Arian clergy were forced to hide themselves, as the only means of saving their lives. But, while thus in danger from their enemies, the Arians pro-hooded to elect a successor to their murdered bishop, and they chose Lucius to that post of honour, but of danger. Athanasius, however, in reality and openly filled the office of bishop; and he summoned a synod at Alexandria, at which he re-admitted into the church Lucifer and Eusebius, two bishops who had been banished to the Thebaid, and he again decreed that the three persons in the Trinity were of one substance.