The porter did not wake, and Parphenas furtively entered the chapel. At the sight of the diptych, his mind grew calm again. He tried the sapphire eyes of Dionysus into the holes. They fitted admirably, and soon were glittering anew in the aureole of the Infant Jesus. He returned to his cell, lit the lamp, and went to bed. Huddling himself up, and hiding his face in his hands, he burst into a fit of muffled laughter, like a child delighted at some piece of mischief and afraid of discovery. He then straightway fell sound asleep. When he awoke, the morning waves of the Propontic were shining through the small barred window, and the pigeons cooing and shaking their wings. The laughter of the previous night was still in the heart of Parphenas. He ran to the painting-table and contentedly looked at his unfinished arabesque of the Earthly Paradise. Adam and Eve were seated in a meadow, glittering in the sunlight; it was a vellum tapestry of purple, blue, and gold. And so the little monk worked on, innocently investing the body of Adam with the proud antique beauty of young Dionysus. IV The celebrated sophist, Hekobolis, Court professor of eloquence, had begun to climb the ladder of promotion at the very lowest rungs. He had been a servant attached to the Temple of Astarte at Hieropolis. At sixteen, having stolen some articles of value, he escaped to Constantinople, lived with the dregs of the populace, soaked in every kind of rascality. Later he took to the high-roads, where, roving on ass-back from village to village, he lived from hand to mouth, in company both with respectable pilgrims and with bands of brigands--sacrificers to Dindymene, that goddess beloved of the people. Finally he reached the school of Proeres the rhetorician, and soon became a teacher of eloquence himself. During the last years of Constantine the Great, when the Christian religion became fashionable at Court, Hekobolis became a Christian. The clergy showed him sympathy, but Hekobolis (though never inopportunely) changed his form of creed as the wind blew: from Arian he became Orthodox, from Orthodox Arian, and every conversion raised him a step in office. The clergy pushed him up this ascent, and in turn he lent the clergy a helping hand.