the learning of their forefathers, fanatical theologians--always ready to
avail themselves of other weapons than reason and dogma in their bitter
contests over articles of faith, hermits and recluses--
as foul in mind as they were dirty in their persons, corn-merchants and
usurers with whom it was dangerous to conclude a bargain without
witnesses. Orion was none of these. As the handsome, genial, and
original-minded son of the rich and noble Governor, Mukaukas George, he
was welcomed as a sort of ambassador; whatever the golden youth of the
city allowed themselves was permitted to him. His purse was as well
lined as theirs, his health and vigor far more enduring; and his horses
had beaten theirs in three races, though he drove them himself and did
not trust them to paid charioteers. The "rich Egyptian," the "New
Antinous," "handsome Orion," as he was called, could never be spared from
feast or entertainment. He was a welcome guest at the first houses in
the city, and in the palace and the villa of the Senator Justinus, an old
friend of his father, he was as much at home as a son of the house.

It was under his roof, and the auspices of his kindhearted wife Martina,
that he made acquaintance with the fair Heliodora, the widow of a nephew
of the Senator; and the whole city had been set talking of the tender
intimacy Orion had formed with the beautiful young woman whose rigid
virtue had hitherto been a subject of admiration no less than her fair
hair and the big jewels with which she loved to set off her simple but
costly dress. And many a fair Byzantine had striven for the young
Egyptian's good graces before Heliodora had driven them all out of the
field. Still, she had not yet succeeded in enslaving Orion deeply and
permanently; and when, last evening, he had assured his mother that she
was not mistress of his heart he spoke truly.

His conduct in the Capital had not certainly been exemplary, but he had