"Alas!" Lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. "Why will they insist that the Messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies to the high place of Supreme Necromancer of the Universe!" "Sweet Lydia!" Agrippa protested. "Roman hard-headedness hath turned thee against our traditions!" "But the Egyptian did not picture such a man," Classicus said very gently. "He went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified for blasphemy during a popular uproar." "It hath the recommendation of being different!" Lydia declared frankly. "Tell me more." "There is no more." "What! Is it dead?" she insisted. "Dead as all the others? Then it is different only in its inception." "No," said Agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard. The Sanhedrim is punishing its followers in Jerusalem at present. Thou rememberest, Cypros; Marsyas was charged with the apostasy." "So material as to engage the Sanhedrim?" Lydia pursued. "We hear," responded Classicus, "that Jerusalem and even Judea are unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late--" "Among us?" Lydia asked. "No; in Rhacotis," replied Classicus; whereupon Flaccus raised an inquiring eye. "Is that the sect that the prefect has been warned to observe?" he demanded. "Doubtless; it seems that their foremost fault is rebellion against authority," Classicus made answer. "So much for their doctrine of submission." "Tell us that," Lydia urged. "Apostasy," Agrippa answered for Classicus, "flagrant apostasy; for the Sanhedrim came out of the hall of judgment to stone an offender, for the first time in seven years. I saw the execution; in fact, in a way I was brought close to the circumstances by a friend of the apostate who was attached to my household." "Is he with thee?" Flaccus asked pointedly. "No, we left him in Ptolemais. But the note of their presence in Alexandria must have been sounded early, directly they arrived, for I departed from Jerusalem the day following the first movement against the sect, and thence to Ptolemais and Alexandria with ordinary despatch." "They did not announce themselves," Flaccus replied. "Vitellius announced them. He wants an Essene who is believed to be among them." Agrippa raised his head and looked straight at Flaccus. He remembered that he had betrayed Marsyas' refuge. Cypros drew in a breath of alarm. "That was simply done, Flaccus," Agrippa remarked coolly. The princess laid her hand on the ruddy flesh of the proconsul's arm. "We have been frank with thee, my lord," she said, "and thou art a noble Roman--therefore a safe guardian of our unguarded words." The others maintained a wondering silence. Flaccus smiled.