Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/117

] *—Oh, as I live this life of revel and riot, I often wonder whether truth is indeed the enemy of beauty!

And in such an hour can you sigh after beauty? Can you so easily forget what you have just heard?

[Stopping his ears.] Not a word more of those horrors! We will shake off all thoughts of Antioch

Tell me, what does Makrina write further? There was something more; I remember, you said; what was it you called the rest of her news?

Strange.

Yes, yes;—what was it?

She writes of Maximus in Ephesus

[Eagerly.] The Mystic?

Yes; that inscrutable man. He has appeared once more; this time in Ephesus. All the region around is in a ferment. Maximus is on all lips. Either he is a juggler or he has made a baleful compact with certain spirits. Even Christians are strangely allured by his impious signs and wonders.