Ch. 6 - An Apprenticeship to the Temple

The action of our characters during the night included in the last two
chapters has now come to a pause. Vetranio is awaiting his guests for
the banquet; Numerian is in the chapel, preparing for the discourse that
he is to deliver to his friends; Ulpius is meditating in his master's
house; Antonina is stretched upon her couch, caressing the precious
fragment that she had saved from the ruins of her lute. All the
immediate agents of our story are, for the present, in repose.

It is our purpose to take advantage of this interval of inaction, and
direct the reader's attention to a different country from that selected
as the scene of our romance, and to such historical events of past years
as connect themselves remarkably with the early life of Numerian's
perfidious convert. This man will be found a person of great importance
in the future conduct of our story. It is necessary to the
comprehension of his character, and the penetration of such of his
purposes as have been already hinted at, and may subsequently appear,
that the long course of his existence should be traced upwards to its
source.

It was in the reign of Julian, when the gods of the Pagan achieved their
last victory over the Gospel of the Christian, that a decently attired
man, leading by the hand a handsome boy of fifteen years of age, entered
the gates of Alexandria, and proceeded hastily towards the high priest's
dwelling in the Temple of Serapis.

After a stay of some hours at his destination, the man left the city
alone as hastily as he entered it, and was never after seen at
Alexandria. The boy remained in the abode of the high priest until the
next day, when he was solemnly devoted to the service of the temple.

The boy was the young Emilius, afterwards called Ulpius. He was nephew
to the high priest, to whom he had been confided by his father, a
merchant of Rome.

Ambition was the ruling passion of the father of Emilius. It had
prompted him to aspire to every distinction granted to the successful by
the state, but it had not gifted him with the powers requisite to turn
his aspirations in any instance into acquisitions. He passed through
existence a disappointed man, planning but never performing, seeing his
more fortunate brother rising to the highest distinction in the
priesthood, and finding himself irretrievably condemned to exist in the
affluent obscurity ensured to him by his mercantile pursuits.

When his brother Macrinus, on Julian's accession to the imperial throne,
arrived at the pinnacle of power and celebrity as high priest of the
Temple of Serapis, the unsuccessful merchant lost all hope of rivalling
his relative in the pursuit of distinction. His insatiable ambition,
discarded from himself, now