Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/250

214 Think of Maris, the bishop of Chalcedon, who has now changed sides three times in the Arian controversy. Think of old Bishop Marcus, of Arethusa; him you know from your boyhood. Has he not lately, in the teeth of both law and justice, taken all municipal property from the citizens, and transferred it to the church? And remember the feeble, vacillating Bishop of Nazianzus, who is the laughing-stock of his own community, because he answers yes and no in the same cause, in the hope to please both parties.

True, true, true!

These are your brothers in arms, my Julian; you will find none better among them. Or perhaps you count upon those two great Galilean lights that were to be, in Cappadocia? Ha-ha; Gregory, the bishop's son, pleads causes in his native town, and Basil, on his estate in the far east, is buried in the writings of secular philosophers.

Yes, I know it well. On all sides they fall away! Hekebolius, my former teacher, has grown rich through his zeal for the faith, and his expositions of it; and since then! Maximus—it has come to this, that I stand almost alone in earnestness.

You stand quite alone. Your whole army is either in headlong flight, or lying slain around you. Sound the battle-call,—and none will hear you; advance,—and none will follow you! Dream not