CHAPTER XII.THE NOMENTAN VILLA.

The Anchor and Fishes, an emblem of Christianity, found in the Catacombs.

She saw not, with her blind eyes, how her two companions snatched the wreaths from their heads, to put on hers; but a sign from the Pontiff checked them; and amidst moistened eyes, she was led forth, all joyous, in her thorny crown; emblem of what the Church has always taught, that the very queenship of virtue is innocence crowned by penance.

THE Nomentan road goes from Rome eastward, and between it and the Salarian is a deep ravine, beyond which on the side of the Nomentan way lies a gracefully undulating ground. Amidst this is situated a picturesque round temple, and near it a truly beautiful basilica, dedicated to St. Agnes. Here was the villa belonging to her, situated about a mile and a half from the city; and thither it had been arranged that the two, now the three, newly consecrated should repair, to spend the day in retirement and tranquil joy. Few more such days, perhaps, would ever be granted them.

We need not describe this rural residence, except to say that everything in it breathed contentment and happiness. It was one of those genial days which a Roman winter supplies. The rugged Apennines were slightly powdered with snow; the ground was barely crisp, the atmosphere transparent, the sunshine glowing, and the heavens cloudless. A few greyish curls of melting smoke from the cottages, and the leafless vines, alone told that it was December. Everything living seemed to know and love the gentle mistress of the place. The doves came and perched upon her shoulder or her hand; the lambs in the paddock frisked, and ran to her the moment she approached, and took the green fragrantherbs which she brought them, with evident pleasure; but none owned her kindly sway so much as old Molossus, the enormous watchdog. Chained beside the gate, so fierce was he, that none but a few favorite domestics durst go near him. But no sooner did Agnes appear than he crouched down, and wagged his bushy tail, and whined, till he was let loose; for now a child might approach him. He never left his mistress’s side; he followed her like a lamb; and if she sat down he would lie at her feet, looking into her face, delighted to receive, on his huge head, the caresses of her slender hand.

It was indeed a peaceful day; sometimes calm and quiet, soft and tender, as the three spoke together of the morning’s happiness, and of the happier morning of which it was a pledge, above the liquid amber of their present skies; sometimes cheerful and even merry, as the two took Cæcilia to task for the trick she had played them. And she laughed cheerily, as she always did, and told them she had a better trick in store for them yet; which was, that she would cut them out when that next morning came; for she intended to be the first at it, and not the last.

Fabiola had, in the meantime, come to the villa to pay her first visit to Agnes after her calamity, and to thank her for her sympathy. She walked forward, but stopped suddenly on coming near the spot where this happy group were assembled. For when she beheld the two who could see the outward brightness of heaven, hanging over her who seemed to hold all its splendor within her soul, she saw at once, in the scene, the verification of her dream. Yet unwilling to intrude herself unexpectedly upon them, and anxious to find Agnes alone, and not with her own slave and a poor blind girl, she turned away before she was noticed, and walked towards a distant part of the grounds. Still she could not help asking herself, why she could not be cheerful and happy as they? Why was there a gulf between them?

But the day was not destined to finish without its clouds; it would have been too blissful for earth. Besides Fabiola, another person had started from Rome, to pay a less welcome visit to Agnes. This was Fulvius, who had never forgotten the assurances of Fabius, that his fascinating address and brilliant ornaments had turned the weak head of Agnes. He had waited till the first days of mourning were over, and he respected the house in which he had once received such a rude reception, or rather suffered such a summary ejectment. Having ascertained that, for the first time, she had gone without her parents, or any male attendants, to her suburban villa, he considered it a good opportunity for pressing his suit. He rode out of the Nomentan gate, and was soon at Agnes’s. He dismounted; said he wished to see her on important business, and, after some importunity, was admitted by the porter. He was directed along a walk, at the end of which she would be found. The sun was declining, and her companions had strolled to a distance, and she was sitting alone in a bright sunny spot, with old Molossus crouching at her feet. The slightest approach to a growl from him, rare when he was with her, made her look up from her work of tying together such winter flowers as the others brought her, while she suppressed, by raising a finger, this expression of instinctive dislike.

Fulvius came near with a respectful, but freer air than usual, as one already assured of his request.

“I have come, Lady Agnes,” he said, “to renew to you the expression of my sincere regard; and I could not have chosen a better day, for brighter or fairer scarcely the summer sun could have bestowed.”

“Fair, indeed, and bright it has been to me,” replied Agnes, borne back in mind to the morning’s scene; “and no sun in my life has ever given me fairer,—it can only give meonemore fair.”

Fulvius was flattered, as if the compliment was to his presence, and answered, “The day, no doubt you mean, of your espousals with one who may have won your heart.”

“That is indeed done,” she replied, as if unconsciously; “and this is his own precious day.”

“And was that wreathed veil upon your head, placed there in anticipation of this happy hour?”

“Yes; it is the sign my beloved has placed upon my countenance, that I recognize no lover but himself.”[136]

“And who is this happy being? I was not without hopes, nor will I renounce them yet, that I have a place in your thoughts, perhaps in your affections.”

Agnes seemed scarcely to heed his words. There was no appearance of shyness or timidity in her looks or manner, no embarrassment even:

“Spotless without, and innocent within,She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.”

Her childlike countenance remained bright, open, and guileless; her eyes, mildly beaming, looked straight upon Fulvius’s face with an earnest simplicity, that made him almost quail before her. She stood up now, with graceful dignity, as she replied:

“Milk and honey exhaled from his lips, as the blood from his stricken cheek impressed itself on mine.”[137]

She is crazed, Fulvius was just beginning to think; when the inspired look of her countenance, and the clear brightness of her eye, as she gazed forwards towards some object seen by herself alone, overawed and subdued him. She recovered in an instant; and again he took heart. He resolved at once to pursue his demand.

“Madam,” he said, “you are trifling with one who sincerely admires and loves you. I know from the best authority,—yes, thebestauthority,—that of a mutual friend departed, that you have been pleased to think favorably of me, and to express yourself not opposed to my urging my claims to your hand. I now, therefore, seriously and earnestly solicit it. I may seem abrupt and informal, but I am sincere and warm.”

“Begone from me, food of corruption!” she said with calm majesty; “for already a lover has secured my heart, for whom alone I keep my troth, to whom I intrust myself with undivided devotion; one whose love is chaste, whose caress is pure, whose brides never put off their virginal wreaths.”[138]

Fulvius, who had dropped on his knee as he concluded his last sentence, and had thus drawn forth that severe rebuke, rose, filled with spite and fury, at having been so completely deluded. “Is it not enough to be rejected,” he said, “after having been encouraged, but must insult be heaped on me too? and must I be told to my face that another has been before me to-day?—Sebastian, I suppose, again——”

“Who are you?” exclaimed an indignant voice behind him, “that dare to utter with disdain, the name of one whose honor is untarnished, and whose virtue is as unchallenged as his courage?”

He turned round, and stood confronted with Fabiola, who, having walked for some time about the garden, thought she would now probably find her cousin disengaged, and by herself. She had come upon him suddenly, and had caught his last words.

Fulvius was abashed, and remained silent.

Fabiola, with a noble indignation, continued. “And who, too, are you, who, not content with having once thrust yourself into my kinswoman’s house, to insult her, presume now to intrude upon the privacy of her rural retreat?”

“Haughty Roman dame! thou shalt bitterly rue this day and hour.”

“And who are you,” retorted Fulvius, “who take upon yourself to be imperious mistress in another’s house?”

“One,” replied the lady, “who, by allowing my cousin to meet you first at her table, and there discovering your designs upon an innocent child, feels herself bound inhonor and duty to thwart them, and to shield her from them.”

She took Agnes by the hand, and was leading her away; and Molossus required what he never remembered to have received before, but what he took delightedly, a gentle little tap, to keep him from more than growling; when Fulvius, gnashing his teeth, muttered audibly:

“Haughty Roman dame! thou shalt bitterly rue this day and hour. Thou shalt know and feel how Asia can revenge.”

A Lamb between Wolves, emblematic of the Church, from a picture in the Cemetery of St. Prætextatus.

THE day being at length arrived for its publication in Rome, Corvinus fully felt the importance of the commission intrusted to him, of affixing in its proper place in the Forum, the edict of extermination against the Christians, or rather the sentence of extirpation of their very name. News had been received from Nicodemia, that a brave Christian soldier, named George, had torn down a similar imperial degree, and had manfully suffered death for his boldness. Corvinus was determined that nothing of the sort should happen in Rome; for he feared too seriously the consequences of such an occurrence to himself; he therefore took every precaution in his power. The edict had been written in large characters, upon sheets of parchment joined together; and these were nailed to a board, firmly supported by a pillar, against which it was hung, not far from the Puteal Libonis, the magistrate’s chair in the Forum. This, however, was not done till the Forum was deserted, and night had well set in. It was thus intended that the edict should meet the eyes of the citizens early in the morning, and strike their minds with more tremendous effect.

To prevent the possibility of any nocturnal attempt to destroy the precious document, Corvinus, with much the same cunning precaution as was taken by the Jewish priests to prevent the Resurrection, obtained for a night-guard to theForum, a company of the Pannonian cohort, a body composed of soldiers belonging to the fiercest races of the North, Dacians, Pannonians, Sarmatians, and Germans, whose uncouth features, savage aspect, matted sandy hair, and bushy red moustaches, made them appear absolutely ferocious to Roman eyes. These men could scarcely speak Latin, but were ruled by officers of their own countries, and formed, in the decline of the empire, the most faithful body-guard of the reigning tyrants, often their fellow-countrymen; for there was no excess too monstrous for them to commit, if duly commanded to execute it.

A number of these savages, ever rough and ready, were distributed so as to guard every avenue of the Forum, with strict orders to pierce through, or hew down, any one who should attempt to pass without the watchword, orsymbolum. This was every night distributed by the general in command, through his tribunes and centurions, to all the troops. But to prevent all possibility of any Christian making use of it that night, if he should chance to discover it, the cunning Corvinus had one chosen which he felt sure no Christian would use. It was NUMEN IMPERATORUM: the “Divinity of the Emperors.”

The last thing which he did was to make his rounds, giving to each sentinel the strictest injunctions; and most minutely to the one whom he had placed close to the edict. This man had been chosen for his post on account of his rude strength and huge bulk, and the peculiar ferocity of his looks and character. Corvinus gave him the most rigid instructions, how he was to spare nobody, but to prevent any one’s interference with the sacred edict. He repeated to him again and again the watchword; and left him, already half-stupid withsabaiaor beer,[139]in the merest animal consciousness, thatit was his business, not an unpleasant one, to spear, or sabre, some one or other before morning. The night was raw and gusty, with occasional sharp and slanting showers; and the Dacian wrapped himself in his cloak, and walked up and down, occasionally taking a long pull at a flask concealed about him, containing a liquor said to be distilled from the wild cherries of the Thuringian forests; and in the intervals muddily meditating, not on the wood or river, by which his young barbarians were at play, but how soon it would be time to cut the present emperor’s throat, and sack the city.

While all this was going on, old Diogenes and his hearty sons were in their poor house in the Suburra, not far off, making preparations for their frugal meal. They were interrupted by a gentle tap at the door, followed by the lifting of the latch, and the entrance of two young men, whom Diogenes at once recognized and welcomed.

“Come in, my noble young masters; how good of you thus to honor my poor dwelling! I hardly dare offer you our plain fare; but if you will partake of it, you will indeed give us a Christian love-feast.”

“Thank you most kindly, father Diogenes,” answered the elder of the two, Quadratus, Sebastian’s sinewy centurion: “Pancratius and I have come expressly to sup with you. But not as yet; we have some business in this part of the town, and after it we shall be glad to eat something. In the meantime one of your youths can go out and cater for us. Come, we must have something good; and I want you to cheer yourself with a moderate cup of generous wine.”

Saying this he gave his purse to one of the sons, with instructions to bring home some better provisions than he knew the simple family usually enjoyed. They sat down;and Pancratius, by way of saying something, addressed the old man. “Good Diogenes, I have heard Sebastian say that you remember seeing the glorious Deacon Laurentius die for Christ. Tell me something about him.”

“With pleasure,” answered the old man. “It is now nearly forty-five years since it happened,[140]and as I was older then than you are now, you may suppose I remember all quite distinctly. He was indeed a beautiful youth to look at: so mild and sweet, so fair and graceful; and his speech was so gentle, so soft, especially when speaking to the poor. How they all loved him! I followed him everywhere; I stood by as the venerable Pontiff Sixtus was going to death, and Laurentius met him, and so tenderly reproached him, just as a son might a father, for not allowing him to be his companion in the sacrifice of himself, as he had ministered to him in the sacrifice of our Lord’s body and blood.”

“Those were splendid times, Diogenes, were they not?” interrupted the youth; “how degenerate we are now! What a different race! Are we not, Quadratus?”

The rough soldier smiled at the generous sincerity of his complaint, and bid Diogenes go on.

“I saw him too as he distributed the rich plate of the Church to the poor. We have never had any thing so splendid since. There were golden lamps and candlesticks, censors, chalices, and patens,[141]besides an immense quantity of silver melted down, and distributed to the blind, the lame, and the indigent.”

“But tell me,” asked Pancratius, “how did he endure his last dreadful torment? It must have been frightful.”

“I saw it all,” answered the old fossor, “and it would have been intolerably frightful in another. He had been first placed on the rack, and variously tormented, and he had notuttered a groan; when the judge ordered that horrid bed, or gridiron, to be prepared and heated. To look at his tender flesh blistering and breaking over the fire, and deeply scored with red burning gashes that cut to the bone where the iron bars went across; to see the steam, thick as from a cauldron, rise from his body, and hear the fire hiss beneath him, as he melted away into it; and every now and then to observe the tremulous quivering that crept over the surface of his skin, the living motion which the agony gave to each separate muscle, and the sharp spasmodic twitches which convulsed, and gradually contracted, his limbs; all this, I own, was the most harrowing spectacle I have ever beheld in all my life. But to look into his countenance was to forget all this. His head was raised up from the burning body, and stretched out, as if fixed on the contemplation of some most celestial vision, like that of his fellow-deacon Stephen. His face glowed indeed with the heat below, and the perspiration flowed down it; but the light from the fire shining upwards, and passing through his golden locks, created a glory round his beautiful head and countenance, which made him look as if already in heaven. And every feature, serene and sweet as ever, was so impressed with an eager, longing look, accompanying the upward glancing of his eye, that you would willingly have changed places with him.”

“That I would,” again broke in Pancratius, “and, as soon as God pleases! I dare not think that I could stand what he did; for he was indeed a noble and heroic Levite, while I am only a weak imperfect boy. But do you not think, dear Quadratus, that strength is given in that hour, proportionate to our trials, whatever they may be? You, I know, would stand any thing; for you are a fine stout soldier, accustomed to toil and wounds. But as for me, I have only a willing heart to give. Is that enough, think you?”

“Quite, quite, my dear boy,” exclaimed the centurion, fullof emotion, and looking tenderly on the youth, who with glistening eyes, having risen from his seat, had placed his hands upon the officer’s shoulders. “God will give you strength, as He has already given you courage. But we must not forget our night’s work. Wrap yourself well up in your cloak, and bring your toga quite over your head; so! It is a wet and bitter night. Now, good Diogenes, put more wood on the fire, and let us find supper ready on our return. We shall not be long absent; and just leave the door ajar.”

“Go, go, my sons,” said the old man, “and God speed you! whatever you are about, I am sure it is something praiseworthy.”

Quadratus sturdily drew his chlamys, or military cloak, around him, and the two youths plunged into the dark lanes of the Suburra, and took the direction of the Forum. While they were absent, the door was opened, with the well-known salutation of “thanks to God;” and Sebastian entered, and inquired anxiously if Diogenes had seen any thing of the two young men; for he had got a hint of what they were going to do. He was told they were expected in a few moments.

A quarter of an hour had scarcely elapsed, when hasty steps were heard approaching; the door was pushed open, and was as quickly shut, and then fast barred, behind Quadratus and Pancratius.

“Here it is,” said the latter, producing, with a hearty laugh, a bundle of crumpled parchment.

“What?” asked all eagerly.

“Why, the grand decree, of course,” answered Pancratius, with boyish glee; “look here, ‘Domini nostri Diocletianus et Maximianus, invicti, seniores Augusti, patres Imperatorum et Cæsarum,’[142]and so forth. Here it goes!” And he thrust it into the blazing fire, while the stalwart sons of Diogenes threw

“Here it goes!” And he thrust it into the blazing fire.

a faggot over it to keep it down, and drown its crackling. There it frizzled, and writhed, and cracked, and shrunk, first one letter or word coming up, then another; first an emperor’s praise, and then an anti-Christian blasphemy; till all had subsided into a black ashy mass.

And what else, or more, would those be in a few years who had issued that proud document, when their corpses should have been burnt on a pile of cedar-wood and spices, and their handful of ashes be scraped together, hardly enough to fill a gilded urn? And what also, in very few years more, would that heathenism be, which it was issued to keep alive, but a dead letter at most, and as worthless a heap of extinguished embers as lay on that hearth? And the very empire which these “unconquered” Augusti were bolstering up by cruelty and injustice, how in a few centuries would it resemble that annihilated decree? the monuments of its grandeur lying in ashes, or in ruins, and proclaiming that there is no true Lord but one stronger than Cæsars, the Lord of lords; and that neither counsel nor strength of man shall prevail against Him.

Something like this did Sebastian think, perhaps, as he gazed abstractedly on the expiring embers of the pompous and cruel edict which they had torn down, not for a wanton frolic, but because it contained blasphemies against God and His holiest truths. They knew that if they should be discovered, tenfold tortures would be their lot; but Christians in those days, when they contemplated and prepared for martyrdom, made no calculation on that head. Death for Christ, whether quick and easy, or lingering and painful, was the end for which they looked; and, like brave soldiers going to battle, they did not speculate where a shaft or a sword might strike them, whether a death-blow would at once stun them out of existence, or they should have to writhe for hours upon the ground, mutilated or pierced, to die by inches among the heaps of unheeded slain.

Sebastian soon recovered, and had hardly the heart to reprove the perpetrators of this deed. In truth, it had its ridiculous side, and he was inclined to laugh at the morrow’s dismay. This view he gladly took, for he saw Pancratius watched his looks with some trepidation, and his centurion looked a little disconcerted. So, after a hearty laugh, they sat down cheerfully to their meal; for it was not midnight, and the hour for commencing the fast, preparatory to receiving the holy Eucharist, was not arrived. Quadratus’s object, besides kindness, in this arrangement, was partly, that if surprised, a reason for their being there might be apparent, partly to keep up the spirits of his younger companion and of Diogenes’s household, if alarmed at the bold deed just performed. But there was no appearance of any such feeling. The conversation soon turned upon recollections of Diogenes’s youth, and the good old fervent times, as Pancratius would persist in calling them. Sebastian saw his friend home, and then took a round, to avoid the Forum in seeking his own abode. If any one had seen Pancratius that night, when alone in his chamber preparing to retire to rest, he would have seen him every now and then almost laughing at some strange but pleasant adventure.

A Monogram of Christ, found in the Catacombs.

AT the first dawn of morning, Corvinus was up; and, notwithstanding the gloominess of the day, proceeded straight to the Forum. He found his outposts quite undisturbed, and hastened to the principal object of his care. It would be useless to attempt describing his astonishment, his rage, his fury, when he saw the blank board, with only a few shreds of parchment left, round the nails; and beside it standing, in unconscious stolidity, his Dacian sentinel.

He would have darted at his throat, like a tiger, if he had not seen, in the barbarian’s twinkling eye, a sort of hyena squint, which told him he had better not. But he broke out at once into a passionate exclamation:

“Sirrah! how has the edict disappeared? Tell me directly!”

“Softly, softly, Herr Kornweiner,” answered the imperturbable Northern. “There it is as you left it in my charge.”

“Where, you fool? Come and look at it.”

The Dacian went to his side, and for the first time confronted the board; and after looking at it for some moments, exclaimed: “Well, is not that the board you hung up last night?”

“Yes, you blockhead, but there was writing on it, which is gone. That is what you had to guard.”

“Why, look you, captain, as to writing, you see I know nothing, having never been a scholar; but as it was raining all night, it may have been washed out.”

“And as it was blowing, I suppose the parchment on which it was written was blown off?”

“No doubt, Herr Kornweiner; you are quite right.”

“Come, sir, this is no joking matter. Tell me, at once, who came here last night.”

“Why, two of them came.”

“Two of what?”

“Two wizards, or goblins, or worse.”

“None of that nonsense for me.” The Dacian’s eye flashed drunkenly again. “Well, tell me, Arminius, what sort of people they were, and what they did.”

“Why, one of them was but a stripling, a boy, tall and thin; who went round the pillar, and I suppose must have taken away what you miss, while I was busy with the other.”

“And what of him? What washelike?”

The soldier opened his mouth and eyes, and stared at Corvinus for some moments, then said, with a sort of stupid solemnity, “What was he like? Why, if he was not Thor himself, he wasn’t far from it. I never felt such strength.”

“What did he do to show it?”

“He came up first, and began to chat quite friendly, asked me if it was not very cold, and that sort of thing. At last I remembered that I had to run through any one that came near me——”

“Exactly,” interrupted Corvinus; “and why did you not do it?”

“Only because he wouldn’t let me. I told him to be off, or I should spear him, and drew back and stretched out my javelin; when in the quietest manner, but I don’t know how,he twisted it out of my hand, broke it over his knee, as if it had been a mountebank’s wooden sword, and dashed the iron-headed piece fast into the ground, where you see it, fifty yards off.”

“Then why did you not rush on him with your sword, and despatch him at once? But whereisyour sword? it is not in your scabbard.”

The Dacian, with a stupid grin, pointed to the roof of the neighboring basilica, and said: “There, don’t you see it shining on the tiles, in the morning light?” Corvinus looked, and there indeed he saw what appeared like such an object, but he could hardly believe his own eyes.

“How did it get there, you stupid booby?” he asked.

The soldier twisted his moustache in an ominous way, which made Corvinus ask again more civilly, and then he was answered:

“He, or it, whatever it was, without any apparent effort, by a sort of conjuring, whisked it out of my hand, and up where you see it, as easily as I could cast a quoit a dozen yards.”

“And then?”

“And then, he and the boy, who came from round the pillar, walked off in the dark.”

“What a strange story!” muttered Corvinus to himself; “yet there are proofs of the fellow’s tale. It is not every one who could have performed that feat. But pray, sirrah, why did you not give the alarm, and rouse the other guards to pursuit?”

“First, Master Kornweiner, because, in my country, we will fight any living men, but we do not choose to pursue hobgoblins. And, secondly, what was the use? I saw the board that you gave into my care all safe and sound.”

“Stupid barbarian!” growled Corvinus, but well within his teeth; then added: “This business will go hard with you; you know it is a capital offence.”

“What is?”

“Why, to let a man come up and speak to you, without giving the watchword.”

“Gently, captain; who says he did not give it? I never said so.”

“But did he, though? Then it could be no Christian.”

“Oh yes, he came up, and said quite plainly, ‘Nomen Imperatorum.’”[143]

“What?” roared out Corvinus.

“Nomen Imperatorum.”

“‘Numen Imperatorum’ was the watchword,” shrieked the enraged Roman.

“NomenorNumen, it’s all the same, I suppose. A letter can’t make any difference. You call me Arminius, and I call myself Hermann, and they mean the same. How shouldIknow your nice points of language?”

Corvinus was enraged at himself; for he saw how much better he would have gained his ends, by putting a sharp, intelligent prætorian on duty, instead of a sottish, savage foreigner. “Well,” he said, in the worst of humors, “you will have to answer to the emperor for all this; and you know he is not accustomed to pass over offences.”

“Look you now, Herr Krummbeiner,” returned the soldier, with a look of sly stolidity; “as to that, we are pretty well in the same boat.” (Corvinus turned pale, for he knew this was true.) “And you must contrive something to save me, if you want to save yourself. It was you the emperor made responsible, for the what-d’ye-call-it?—that board.”

“You are right, my friend; I must make it out that a strong body attacked you, and killed you at your post. So shut yourself up in quarters for a few days, and you shall have plenty of beer, till the thing blows over.”

The soldier went off, and concealed himself. A few daysafter, the dead body of a Dacian, evidently murdered, was washed on the banks of the Tiber. It was supposed he had fallen in some drunken row; and no further trouble was taken about it. The fact was indeed so; but Corvinus could have given the best account of the transaction. Before, however, leaving the ill-omened spot in the Forum, he had carefully examined the ground, for any trace of the daring act; when he picked up, close under the place of the edict, a knife, which he was sure he had seen at school, in possession of one of his companions. He treasured it up, as an implement of future vengeance, and hastened to provide another copy of the decree.

An Emblem of Paradise, found in the Catacombs.

WHEN morning had fairly broken, crowds streamed, from every side, into the Forum, curious to read the tremendous edict so long menaced. But when they found only a bare board, there was a universal uproar. Some admired the spirit of the Christians, so generally reckoned cowardly; others were indignant at the audacity of such an act; some ridiculed the officials concerned in the proclamation; others were angry that the expected sport of the day might be delayed.

At an early hour the places of public fashionable resort were all occupied with the same theme. In the great Antonian Thermæ a group of regular frequenters were talking it over. There were Scaurus the lawyer, and Proculus, and Fulvius, and the philosopher Calpurnius, who seemed very busy with some musty volumes, and several others.

“What a strange affair this is, about the edict!” said one.

“Say rather, what a treasonable outrage against the divine emperors!” answered Fulvius.

“How was it done?” asked a third.

“Have you not heard,” said Proculus, “that the Dacian guard stationed at the Puteal was found dead, with twenty-seven poniard-wounds on him, nineteen of which would have sufficed each by itself to cause death?”

“No, that is quite a false report,” interrupted Scaurus; “it was not done by violence, but entirely by witchcraft. Two women came up to the soldier, who drove his lance at one, and it passed clean through her, and stuck in the ground on the other side, without making any wound in her. He then hacked at the other with his sword, but he might as well have struck at marble. She then threw a pinch of powder upon him, and he flew into the air, and was found, asleep and unhurt, this morning, on the roof of the Æmilian basilica. A friend of mine, who was out early, saw the ladder up, by which he had been brought down.”

“Wonderful!” many exclaimed. “What extraordinary people these Christians must be!”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” observed Proculus. “There is no such power in magic; and certainly I don’t see why these wretched men should possess it more than their betters. Come, Calpurnius,” he continued, “put by that old book, and answer these questions. I learnt more, one day after dinner, about these Christians from you, than I had heard in all my life before. What a wonderful memory you must have, to remember so accurately the genealogy and history of that barbarous people! Is what Scaurus has just told us possible, or not?”

Calpurnius delivered himself, with great pompousness, as follows:

“There is no reason to suppose such a thing impossible; for the power of magic has no bounds. To prepare a powder that would make a man fly in the air, it would be only necessary to find some herbs in which air predominates more than the other three elements. Such for instance are pulse, or lentils, according to Pythagoras. These, being gathered when the sun is in Libra, the nature of which is to balance even heavy things in the air, at the moment of conjunction with Mercury, a winged power as you know, and properly energizedby certain mysterious words, by a skilful magician, then reduced to powder in a mortar made out of an aerolite, or stone that had flown up into the sky, and come down again, would no doubt, when rightly used, enable, or force a person to fly up into the air. It is well known, indeed, that the Thessalian witches go at pleasure through the clouds, from place to place, which must be done by means of some such charm.

“Then, as to the Christians; you will remember, excellent Proculus, that in the account to which you have done me the honor to allude, which was at the deified Fabius’s table, if I remember right, I mentioned that the sect came originally from Chaldæa, a country always famous for its occult arts. But we have a most important evidence bearing on this matter, recorded in history. It is quite certain, that here in Rome, a certain Simon, who was sometimes called Simon Peter, and at other times Simon Magus, actually in public flew up high into the air; but his charm having slipped out of his belt, he fell and broke both his legs; for which reason he was obliged to be crucified with his head downwards.”

“Then are all Christians necessarily sorcerers?” asked Scaurus.

“Necessarily; it is part of their superstition. They believe their priests to have most extraordinary power over nature. Thus, for example, they think they can bathe the bodies of people in water, and their souls acquire thereby wonderful gifts and superiority, should they be slaves, over their masters, and the divine emperors themselves.”

“Dreadful!” all cried out.

“Then, again,” resumed Calpurnius, “we all know what a frightful crime some of them committed last night, in tearing down a supreme edict of the imperial deities; and even suppose (which the gods avert) that they carried their treasons still further, and attempted their sacred lives, they believe that they have only to go to one of those priests, own thecrime, and ask for pardon; and, if he gives it, they consider themselves as perfectly guiltless.”

“Fearful!” joined in the chorus.

“Such a doctrine,” said Scaurus, “is incompatible with the safety of the state. A man who thinks he can be pardoned by another man of every crime, is capable of committing any.”

“And that, no doubt,” observed Fulvius, “is the cause of this new and terrible edict against them. After what Calpurnius has told us about these desperate men, nothing can be too severe against them.”

Fulvius had been keenly eyeing Sebastian, who had entered during the conversation; and now pointedly addressed him.

“And you, no doubt, think so too, Sebastian; do you not?”

“I think,” he calmly replied, “that if the Christians be such as Calpurnius describes them, infamous sorcerers, they deserve to be exterminated from the face of the earth. But even so, I would gladly give them one chance of escape.”

“And what is that?” sneeringly asked Fulvius.

“That no one should be allowed to join in destroying them, who could not prove himself freer from crime than they. I would have no one raise his hand against them, who cannot show that he has never been an adulterer, an extortioner, a deceiver, a drunkard, a bad husband, father, or child, a profligate, or a thief. For with being any of these, no one charges the poor Christians.”[144]

Fulvius winced under the catalogue of vices, and still more under the indignant, but serene, glance of Sebastian. But at the word “thief,” he fairly leapt. Had the soldier seen him pick up the scarf in Fabius’s house? Be it so or not, the dislike he had taken to Sebastian, at their first meeting, had ripened into hatred at their second; and hatred in that heart was only written in blood. He had only intensity now to add to that feeling.

Sebastian went out; and his thoughts got vent in familiar words of prayer. “How long, O Lord! how long? What hopes can we entertain of the conversion of many to the truth, still less of the conversion of this great empire, so long as we find even honest and learned men believing at once every calumny spoken against us; treasuring up, from age to age, every fable and fiction about us; and refusing even to inquire into our doctrines, because they have made up their minds that they are false and contemptible?”

He spoke aloud, believing himself alone, when a sweet voice answered him at his side: “Good youth, whoever thou art that speakest thus, and methinks I know thy voice, remember that the Son of God gave light to the dark eye of the body, by spreading thereon clay; which, in man’s hands, would have only blinded the seeing. Let us be as dust beneath His feet, if we wish to become His means of enlightening the eyes of men’s souls. Let us be trampled on a little longer in patience; perhaps even from our ashes may come out the spark to blaze.”

“Thank you, thank you, Cæcilia,” said Sebastian, “for your just and kind rebuke. Whither tripping on so gaily on this first day of danger?”

“Do you not know that I have been named guide of the cemetery of Callistus? I am going to take possession. Pray, that I may be the first flower of this coming spring.”

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