Lysimachus arose, but the Sadducee turned to him with a bow. "Pray thee, sir, it concerns thee as well. Wilt thou abide longer and hear us?" The alabarch inclined his head and sat down. Flaccus signified that he was ready to hear them. "Thou didst ask our brother, the alabarch, if he were commissioned with a perplexity," the Sadducee continued. "Not he, but we come perplexed. Were we Jews in Judea, the method would be laid down to us by Law. But in Alexandria we have grown away from the method, while yet we have the same object to achieve." "We lose in guidance what we gain in freedom," the Pharisee added. "In Judea," the Sadducee continued, "they are still bound by the usages of the Mosaic Law. An offender against the Law is stoned. We do not stone in Alexandria; yet we have the offender, and suffer the offense. What, then, shall we do to cleanse our skirt and yet offer no violence to our advanced thinking?" "Give me thy meaning," the proconsul said impatiently. "Perchance it hath come to thee that there is a sect known as the Nazarenes, followers of Jesus of Nazareth, which are spreading like a pestilence on the wind over the world. So full of them is Judea, even David's City, that the Sanhedrim, in alliance with the Roman legate, is proceeding against them with extreme punishment." "I have heard," Flaccus assented. "But the numbers have grown so great and so far-reaching that the Sanhedrim hath achieved little more than to drive them abroad into the world." "So the legate informs me," Flaccus added. "Perchance then thou knowest that Alexandria hath its share." "I do." "Even the Regio Judaeorum." "Strange," Lysimachus broke in. "Strange, if they be such law-breakers, as they are reputed to be, that they have not been brought before me for rebellion and violence, ere this!" The Pharisee put his plump white hands together. "Thou touchest upon the perplexity, brother," he said, addressing himself to Lysimachus. "We are warned by the scribe of Saul of Tarsus, who leadeth the war against the heretics, that they are invidious workers of sedition; whisperers of false doctrines and pretenders of love and humility. They do not persuade the rich man nor the powerful man nor the learned man. They labor among the poor and the despised and the ignorant. Saul, himself, though first to be awakened to the peril of the heresy, did not dream how immense an evil he had attacked until he found the half of Jerusalem fleeing from him. Wherefore, brother, we may be built upon the sliding sands of an evil doctrine; the whole Regio Judaeorum may be going astray after this apostasy ere the powers know it." Lysimachus stroked his white beard and looked incredulous. "The Jews of Alexandria will not tolerate a persecution," he said emphatically. "So thou dost grasp the perplexity wholly," the Sadducee said. "What shall we do?" he turned to the proconsul. "I am to advise, then?" Flaccus asked indifferently.