Chapter VII: Letter V: From Piso to Fausta (2)

'It is not strange,' I replied; 'nor that, refusing to believe in the fact of a God until you should be able to comprehend him perfectly, you should to this hour be without faith. If I had waited before believing, until I understood, I should at this moment be as faithless as you, or as I was before I received Christianity. Do I comprehend the Deity? Can I describe the mode of his being? Can I tell you in what manner he sprang into existence? And whether he is necessarily everywhere in his works, and as it were constituting them? Or whether he has power to contract himself, and dwell apart from them, their omniscient observer, and omnipotent Lord? I know nothing of all this; the religion which I receive, teaches nothing of all this. Christianity does not demonstrate the being of a God, it simply proclaims it; hardly so much as that indeed. It supposes it, as what was already well known and generally believed. I cannot doubt that it is left thus standing by itself, untaught and unexplained, only because the subject is intrinsically incomprehensible by us. It is a great fact or truth, which all can receive, but which none can explain or prove. If it is not believed, either instinctively, or through the recognition of it, and declaration of it, in some revelation, it cannot be believed at all. It needs the mind of God to comprehend God. The mind of man is no more competent to reach and grasp the theme through reason, than his hands are to mould a sun. All the reasonings, imaginations, guesses, of self-styled philosophers, are here like the prattlings of children. They make you smile, but they do not instruct.'

'I fear,' said Marcus, 'I shall then never believe, for I can believe nothing of which I cannot form a conception.'

'Surely,' I answered, 'our faith is not bounded by our conceptions, or our knowledge, in other things. We build the loftiest palaces and temples upon foundations of stone, though we can form no conception whatever of the nature of a stone. So I think we may found a true and sufficient religion on our belief in the fact of a God, although we can form no conception whatever of his nature and the mode of his existence.'

But I should fatigue you, Fausta, were I to give you more of our conversation. It ran on equally pleasant, I believe, to all of us, to a quite late hour; in which time, almost all that is peculiar to the faith of the Christians came under our review. It was more than midnight when we rose from our seats to retire to our chambers. But before we did that, a common feeling directed our steps to the tomb of Gallus, which was but a few paces from where we had been sitting. There these childless parents again gave way to their grief and was I stone, that I should not weep with them?

When this act of duty and piety had been performed, we sought our pillows. As for me, I could not sleep for thinking of my friends and their now desolate house. For even to me, who was to that child almost a stranger, and had been so little used to his presence, this place is no longer the same: all its brightness, life, and spirit of gladness, are gone. Everything seems changed. From every place and scene something seems to have been subtracted to which they were indebted for whatever it was that made them attractive. If this is so to me, what must it be to Marcus and Lucilia? It is not difficult to see that a sorrow has settled upon their hearts, which no length of time can heal. I suppose if all their estates had been swept away from them in a night, and all their friends, they would not have been so overwhelmed as by this calamity--in such a wonderful manner were they each woven into the child, and all into each other, as one being. They seem no longer to me like the same persons. Not that they are not often calm, and in a manner possessed of themselves; but that even then, when they are most themselves, there has a dulness, a dreamy absence of mind, a fixed sadness, come over them that wholly changes them. Though they sit and converse with you, their true thoughts seem far away. They are kind and courteous as ever, to the common eye, but I can see that all the relish of life and of intercourse is now to them gone. All is flat and insipid. The friend is coldly saluted; the meal left untasted, or partaken in silence and soon abandoned; the affairs of the household left to others, to any who will take charge of them. They tell me that this will always be so; that however they may seem to others, they must ever experience a sense of loss; not any less than they would if a limb had been shorn away. A part of themselves, and of the life of every day and hour, is taken from them.

How strange is all this, even in the light of Christian faith! How inexplicable, we are ready to say, by any reason of ours, the providence of God in taking away the human being in the first blossoming; before the fruit has even shown itself, much less ripened! Yet is not immortality, the hope, the assurance of immortality, a sufficient solution? To me it is. This will not indeed cure our sorrows--they spring from somewhat wholly independent of futurity, of either the hope, or despair of it,--but it vindicates the ways of the Omnipotent, and justifies them to our reason and our affections. Will Marcus and Lucilia ever rejoice in the consolations which flow from this hope? Alas! I fear not. They seem in a manner to be incapable of belief.

In the morning I shall start for Rome. As soon as there, you shall hear from me again. Farewell.

* * * * *

While Piso was absent from Rome on this visit to his friend, it was my fortune to be several times in the city upon necessary affairs of the illustrious Queen, when I was both at the palace of Aurelian and that of Piso. It was at one of these later visits, that it became apparent to me, that the Emperor seriously meditated the imposing of restrictions of some kind upon the Christians; yet no such purpose was generally apprehended by that sect itself, nor by the people at large. The dark and disastrous occurrences on the day of the dedication, were variously interpreted by the people; some believing them to point at the Christians, some at the meditated expedition of the Emperor, some at Aurelian himself. The popular mind was, however, greatly inflamed against the Christians, and every art was resorted to by the priests of the temples, and those who were as bigoted and savage as themselves among the people, to fan to a devouring flame the little fire that began to be kindled. The voice from the temple, however some might with Fronto himself doubt whether it were not from Heaven, was for the most part ascribed to the Christians, although they could give no explanation of the manner in which it had been produced. But, as in the case of Aurelian himself, this was forgotten in the horror occasioned by the more dreadful language of the omens, which, in such black and threatening array, no one remembered ever to have been witnessed before. None thought or talked of anything else. It was the universal theme.

This may be seen in a conversation which I had with a rustic, whom I overtook as I rode toward Rome, seated on his mule, burdened on either side and behind with the multifarious produce of his farm. The fellow, as I drew near to him, seeming of a less churlish disposition than most of those whom one meets upon the road, who will scarcely return a friendly salute, I feared not to accost him. After giving him the customary good wishes, I remarked upon the excellence of the vegetables which he had in his panniers.

'Yes,' he said, 'these lettuces are good, but not what they would have been but for the winds we have had from the mountains. It has sadly nipped them. I hear the Queen pines away just as my plants do. I live at Norentum. I know you, sir, though you cannot know me. You pass by my door on your way to the city. My children often call me from my work to look up, for there goes the secretary of the good Queen on his great horse. There's no such horse as that on the road. Ha, ha, my baskets reach but to your knee! Well, there are differences in animals and in men too. So the gods will it. One rides upon a horse with golden bits, another upon a mule with none at all. Still I say, let the gods be praised.'

'The gods themselves could hardly help such differences,' I said, 'if they made one man of more natural strength, or more natural understanding than another. In that case one would get more than another. And surely you would not have men all run in one mould--all five feet high, all weighing so much, all with one face, and one form, one heart, and one head! The world were then dull enough.'

'You say true,' he replied; 'that is very good. If we were all alike, there would be no such thing as being rich or poor--no such thing as getting or losing. I fear it would be dull enough, as you say. But I did not mean to complain, sir. I believe I am contented with my lot. So long as I can have my little farm, with my garden and barns, my cattle and my poultry, a kind neighbor or so, and my priest and temple, I care for nothing more.'

'You have a temple then at Norentum?'

'Yes, to Jupiter Pluvius. And a better priest has not Rome itself. It is his brother, some officer of the Emperor's, I take these vegetables to. I hope to hear more this morning of what I heard something when I was last at market. And I think I shall, for, as I learn, the city is a good deal stirred since the dedication the other day.' 'I believe it is,' I answered. 'But of what do you look to hear, if I may ask? Is there news from the East?'

'O no, I think not of the East or the South. It was of something to be done about these Christians. Our temple, you must know, is half forsaken and more, of late. I believe that half the people of Norentum, if the truth were known, have turned Christians or Jews. Unless we wake up a little, our worship cannot be supported, and our religion will be gone. And glad am I to hear, through our priest, that even the Emperor is alarmed, and believes something must be done. You know, than he, there is not a more devout man in Rome. So it is said. And one thing that makes me think so, is this. The brother of our priest, where I am going with these vegetables--here is poultry too, look! you never saw fatter, I warrant you--told him that he knew it for certain, that the Emperor meant to make short work with even his own niece--you know who I mean--Aurelia, who has long been suspected to be a Christian. And that's right. If he punishes any, he ought not to spare his own.'

'That I suppose would be right. But why should he punish any? You need not be alarmed or offended; I am no Christian.'

'The gods be praised therefor! I do not pretend to know the whole reason why. But that seems to be the only way of saving the old religion; and I don't know what way you can possibly have of showing that a religion of yesterday is true, if a religion of a thousand years old is to be made out false. If religion is good for anything--and I for one think it is--I think men ought to be compelled to have it and support it, just as they should be to eat wholesome food, rather than poisonous or hurtful. The laws won't permit us to carry certain things to market, nor others in a certain state. If we do, we are fined or imprisoned. Treat a Christian in the same way, say I. Let them just go thoroughly to work, and our temples will soon be filled again.'

'But these Christians,' I observed, 'seem to be a harmless people.'

'But they have no religion, that anybody can call such. They have no gods, nor altars, nor sacrifices; such can never be harmless. To be sure, as to sacrifices, I think there is such a thing as doing too much. I am not for human sacrifices. Nor do I see the need of burning up a dozen fat oxen or heifers, as was done the other day at the Temple of the Sun. We in Norentum burn nothing but the hoofs and some of the entrails, and the rest goes to the priest for his support. As I take it, a sacrifice is just a sign of readiness to do everything and lose everything for the gods. We are not expected to throw either ourselves, or our whole substance upon the altar; making the sign is sufficient. But, as I said, these Christians have no altar and no sacrifice, nor image of god or goddess. They have, at Norentum, an old ruinous building--once a market--where they meet for worship; but those who have been present say, that nothing is to be seen; and nothing heard but prayers--to what god no one knows--and exhortations of the priests. Some say, that elsewhere they have what they call an altar, and adorn their walls with pictures and statues. However all this may be, there seems to be some charm about them, or their worship, for all the world is running after them. I long for the news I shall get from Varenus Hirtius. If these omens have not set the Emperor at work for us, nothing will. Here we are at the gates, and I turn toward the Claudian market. May the day go happily with you.'

So we parted; and I bent my way toward the gardens of Sallust.

As I moved slowly along through the streets, my heart was filled with pity for this people, the Christians; threatened, as it seemed to me, with a renewal of the calamities that had so many times swept over them before. They had ever impressed me as a simple-minded, virtuous community, of notions too subtle for the world ever to receive, but which, upon themselves, appeared to exert a power altogether beneficial. Many of this faith I had known well, and they were persons to excite my highest admiration for the characters which they bore. Need I name more than the princess Julia, and her husband, the excellent Piso? Others like them, what wonder if inferior! had also, both in Palmyra, and at Tibur and Rome--for they were to be found everywhere--drawn largely both on my respect and my affections. I beheld with sorrow the signs which now seemed to portend suffering and disaster. And my sympathies were the more moved seeing that never before had there been upon the throne a man who, if he were once entered into a war of opposition against them, had power to do them greater harm, or could have proved a more stern and cruel enemy. Not even Nero or Domitian were in their time to be so much dreaded. For if Aurelian should once league him with the state against them, it would not with him be matter of mere cruel sport, but of conscience. It would be for the honor of the gods, the protection of religion, the greatness and glory of the empire, that he would assail and punish them; and the same fierce and bloody spirit that made him of all modern conquerors the bloodiest and fiercest, it was plain would rule him in any encounter with this humble and defenceless tribe. I could only hope that I was deceived, as well as others, in my apprehensions, or, if that were not so, pray that the gods would be pleased to take their great subject to themselves.

Full of such reflections and emotions I arrived at the palace, and was ushered into the presence of Livia. There was with her the melancholy Aurelia--for such she always seems--who appeared to have been engaged in earnest talk with the Empress, if one might judge by tears fast falling from her eyes. The only words which I caught as I entered were these from Aurelia, 'but, dear lady, if Mucapor require it not, why should others think of it so much? Were he fixed, then should I indeed have to ask strength of God for the trial--' then, seeing me, and only receiving my salutations, she withdrew.

Livia, after first inquiring concerning Zenobia and Faustula, returning to what had just engaged her, said,

'I wish, good Nicomachus, that I had your powers of speech, of which, as you can remember, I have been witness in former days--those happy days in Syria--when you used, so successfully, to withstand and subdue my giddy or headstrong mind. Here have I been for weary hours--not weary neither, for their aim has, I am sure, been a worthy one--but, here have I been persuading, with all the reason and eloquence I could bring to bear, this self-willed girl to renounce these fantastic notions she has imbibed from the Christians, and their books, were it only for the sake of domestic peace. Aurelian is growing daily more and more exasperated against this obscure tribe, and drops, oftener than I love to hear them, dark hints of what awaits them, not excepting, he says, any of whatever rank or name. Not that I suppose that either he, or the senate, would proceed further than imprisonments, banishment, suppression of free speech, the destruction of books and churches; so much indeed I understand from him. But even thus far, and we might lose Aurelia--a thing not to be thought of for a moment. He has talked with her himself, reasoned with her, threatened her; but in vain. Now he has imposed the same task upon me--it is equally in vain. I know not what to do.'

'Because,' I replied, 'nothing can be done. Where it is possible to see, you have eyes within you that can penetrate the thickest darkness as well as any. But here you fail; but only where none could succeed. A sincere honest mind, princess, is not to be changed either by persuasion or force. Its belief is not subject to the will. Aurelia, if I have heard aright, is a Christian from conviction. Evidence made her a Christian--stronger evidence on the side of her former faith can alone unmake her.'

'I cannot reason with her to that extent, Nicomachus,' replied the Empress. 'I know not the grounds of the common faith, any more than those of Christianity. I only know that I wish Aurelia was not a Christian. Will you, Nicomachus, reason with her? I remember your logic of old.'

'Alas, princess, I can engage in no such task! Where I have no faith myself, I should in vain attempt to plant it in others. How, either, can I desire that any mind should remain an hour longer oppressed by the childish and abominable superstitions which prevail in Rome? I cannot but congratulate the excellent Aurelia, so far as the question of truth is concerned, that in the place of the infinite stupidities of the common religion, she has received the, at least, pure and reasonable doctrines of the Christians. You cannot surely, princess, desire her re-conversion?'

'Only for her own sake, for the sake of her safety, comfort, happiness.'

'But in her judgment these are best and only secured where she now is. How thinks Mucapor?'

'As I believe,' answered Livia, 'he cares not in the matter, save for her happiness. He will not wish that she should have any faith except such as she herself wishes. I have urged him to use his power to constrain her, but he loves liberty himself too dearly, he says, to put force upon another.'

'That is right and noble,' I said; 'it is what I should have looked for from Mucapor.'

'In good sooth, Nicomachus, I believe you still take me but for what I was in Palmyra. Who am I?'

'From a princess you have become an Empress, Empress of Rome, that I fully understand, and I trust never to be wanting in the demeanor that best becomes a subject; but you are still Livia, the daughter of Zenobia, and to her I feel I can never fear to speak with sincerity.'

'How omnipotent, Nicomachus, are simplicity and truth! They subdue me when I most would not. They have conquered me in Aurelia and now in you. Well, well, Aurelia then must take the full weight of her uncle's wrath, which is not light.'

At this moment Aurelian himself entered, accompanied by Fronto. Livia, at the same time, arose and withdrew, not caring, I thought, to meet the eyes of that basilisk, who, with the cunning of a priest, she saw to be usurping a power over Aurelian which belonged of right to her. I was about also to withdraw, but the Emperor constraining me, as he often does, I remained, although holding the priest in still greater abhorrence, I believe, than Livia herself.

'While you have been absent from the city, Fronto,' said Aurelian, 'I have revolved the subjects upon which we last conversed, and no longer doubt where lie, for me, both duty, and the truest glory. The judgment of the colleges, lately rendered, agrees both with yours and mine. So that the very finger of the god we worship points the way.'

'I am glad,' replied Fronto, 'for myself, for you, for Rome, and for the world, that truth possesses and is to sway you. It will be a great day for Rome, greater than when your triumphal array swept through the streets with the world at your chariot-wheels, when the enemy that had so long waged successful war within the very gates, shall lie dead as the multitudes of Palmyra.'

'It will, Fronto. But first I have this to say, and, by the gods, I believe it true, that it is the corruptions of our own religion and its ministers, that is the offence that smells to heaven, quite as much as the presumptuous novelties of this of Judea. I perceive you neither assent to this nor like it. But it is true, I am persuaded, as the gods themselves. I have long thought so; and, while with one hand, I aim at the Gallilean atheism, with the other, I shall aim at those who dishonor, by their vices and hypocrisies, the religion they profess to serve.'

Fronto was evidently disturbed. His face grew pale as the frown gathered and darkened on the brow of Aurelian. He answered not, and Aurelian went on.

'Hellenism, Fronto, is disgraced, and its very life threatened by the vices of her chief ministers. The gods forgive me! in that, while I have purged my legions of drunkards and adulterers, I have left them in the temples. Truly did you say, I have had but one thought in my mind, I have looked but to one quarter of the heavens. My eyes are now unsealed, and I see both ways, and every way. How can we look for the favor of the gods, while their houses of worship, I speak it, Fronto, with sorrow and indignation, but with the knowledge too of the truth of what I say, are houses of appointment while the very inner sanctuaries, and the altars themselves, are little better than the common stews, while the priests are the great fathers of iniquity, corrupters of innocence, the seducers of youth, examples themselves, beyond the fear of rivalry, of all the vice they teach! At their tables, too, who so swollen with meats and drink as the priests? Who, but they, are a by-word, throughout the city, for all that is vilest? What word but priest, stands, with all, as an abbreviation and epitome, of whatever pollutes, and defiles the name of man? Porphyrius says 'that since Jesus has been worshipped in Rome no one has found by experience the public assistance of the gods.' I believe it; and Rome will never again experience it till this black atheism is rooted out. But it is as true, I doubt not, that since their ministers have become ministers of demons, and, from teachers of morals, have turned instructers in vice--for this reason too, as well as for the other, the justly offended deities of Rome have hid themselves from their impious worshippers. Here then, Fronto, is a double labor to be undergone, a double duty to be done, not less than some or all of the labors of Hercules. We are set for this work, and, not till I have begun it--if not finished--will I so much as dream of Persia. What say you?'

Fronto looked like one who had kindled a larger flame than he intended, or knew well how to manage.

'The faults of which you speak, great Emperor, it can be denied by none, are found in Rome, and can never be other than displeasing to the gods. But then, I would ask, when was it ever otherwise? In the earlier ages of the republic, I grant, there was a virtue in the people which we see not now. But that grew not out of the purer administration of religion, but was the product of the times in part--times, in comparison with these, of a primeval simplicity. To live well, was easier then. Where no temptation is, virtue is easy, is necessary. But then it ceases to be virtue. It is a quality, not an acquisition--a gift of the gods, an accident, rather than man's meritorious work.'

'That is very true--well.'

'There may be as much real virtue now, as then. May it not be so?'

'Perhaps--it may. What then?'

'Our complaints of the present, should be softened. But, what chiefly I would urge is this, that since those ages of early virtue--after all, perhaps, like all else at the same period, partly fabulous--Rome has been but what it is, adorned by virtues that have claimed the admiration of the world, and polluted by vices that have drawn upon her the reprobation of the good, yet, which are but such as the world shows its surface over, from the farthest India, to the bleak wastes of Britain. It is, Aurelian, a thing neither strange nor new that vices thrive in Rome. And, long since, have there been those, like Nerva and the good Severus, and the late censor Valerian, who have aimed at their correction. These, and others who, before and since, have wrought in the same work, have done well for the empire. Their aim has been a high one, and the favor of the gods has been theirs. Aurelian may do more and better in the same work, seeing his power is greater and his piety more zealous.'

'These are admitted truths, Fronto, save the last; but whither do they tend?'

'To this. Because, Aurelian, vice has been in Rome; because even the priesthood has been corrupt, and the temples themselves the sties you say they now are--for this, have the gods ever withdrawn their protection? Has Rome ever been the less prosperous? What is more, can we conceive that they who made us of their own fiery mould, so prone to violate the bounds of moderation, would, for yielding to such instincts, interpose in wrath, as if that had happened which was not foreseen, and against which, they had made sure provision? Are the heavens to blaze with the fires of the last day, thunders to roll as if earth were shaken to her centre, the entrails of dumb beasts to utter forth terrific prophecy of great and impending wo, because, forsooth, the people of Rome are by no means patterns of purity--because, perchance, within the temples themselves, an immorality may have been purposed, or perpetrated--because, even the priests themselves have not been, or are not, white and spotless as their robes?'

'There seems some reason in what you say.'

'But, great Emperor, take me not as if I would make myself the shield of vice, to hide it from the blow that would extirpate or cure it. I see, and bewail, the corruptions of the age; but, as they seem not fouler than those of ages which are past, especially than those of Nero and of Commodus, I cannot think that it is against these the gods have armed themselves, but, Aurelian, against an evil which has been long growing, and often assailed and checked, but which has now got to such giant size and strength, that except it be absolutely hewn down, and the least roots torn up and burned, both the altars of our gods, and their capital, called Eternal, and the empire itself, now holding the world in its wide-spread, peace-giving arms, are vanished, and anarchy, impiety, atheism, and the rank vices, which in such times would be engendered, will then reign omnipotent, and fill the very compass of the earth, Christ being the universal king! It is against this the heavens have arrayed their power; and to arouse an ungrateful, thoughtless, impious people, with their sleeping king, that they have spoken in thunder.'

'Fronto, I almost believe you right.'

'Had we, Aurelian, but the eyes of moles, when the purposes of the gods are to be deciphered in the character of events, we should long since have seen that the series of disasters which have befallen the empire since the Gallilean atheism has taken root here, have pointed but to that--that they have been a chastisement of our supineness and sloth. When did Rome, almighty Rome, ever before tremble at the name of barbarian, or fly before their arms? While now, is it not much that we are able to keep them from the very walls of the Capital? They now swarm the German forests in multitudes, which no man can count; their hoarse murmurs can be heard even here, ready, soon as the reins of empire shall fall into the hands of another Gallienus, to pour themselves upon the plains of Italy, changing our fertile lands and gorgeous cities into another Dacia. These things were not so once; and what cause there is in Rome, so deep, and high, and broad, to resolve for us the reason of this averted face of heaven, save that of which I speak, I cannot guess.'

'Nor I,' said Aurelian; 'I confess it. It must be so My work is not three, nor two; but one. I have brought peace to the empire in all its borders. My legions all rest upon their arms. Not a sword, but is in its sheath--there, for the present, let it be glued fast. The season, so propitious for the great work of bringing again the empire into peace and harmony with the angry gods, seems to have been provided by themselves. How think you, Nicomachus?'--turning suddenly to me, as if now, for the first time, aware that I was standing at his side.

I answered, 'that I was slow to receive the judgment of Fronto or of himself in that matter. That I could not believe that the gods, who should be examples of the virtues to mankind, would ever ordain such sufferings for their creatures as must ensue, were the former violences to be renewed against the Christians. So far from thinking them a nuisance in the state, I considered them a benefit.'

'The Greek too,' said Fronto, breaking in, 'is then a Christian.'

'I am not a Christian, priest, nor, as I think, shall ever be one; but, far sooner would I be one, than take my faith from thee, which, however it might guide me well through the wine vaults of the temple, or to the best stalls of the market, or to the selectest retreats of the suburra, would scarce show the way to heaven. I affront but the corruptions of religion, Aurelian. Sincerity I honor everywhere. Hypocrisy nowhere.' I thought Fronto would have torn me with his teeth and nails. His white face grew whiter, but he stood still.

'Say on,' said the Emperor, 'though your bluntness be more even than Roman.'

'I think,' I continued, 'the Christians a benefit to the state, for this reason; not that their religion is what they pretend, a heaven-descended one, but that, by its greater strictness, it serves to rebuke the common faith and those who hold it, and infuse into it something of its own spirit. All new systems, as I take it, in their first beginning are strict and severe. It is thus by this quality they supersede older and degenerate ones; not because they are truer, but because they are purer. There is a prejudice among men, that the gods, whoever they may be, and whatever they may be, love virtue in men, and for that accept them. When, therefore, a religion fails to recommend and enforce virtue, it fails to meet the judgment of men concerning the true character and office of a religion, and so with the exception of such beasts, and such there always are, who esteem a faith in proportion to its corruptions, they look with favor upon any new one which promises to be what they want. It is for this reason that this religion from Judea has made its way so far and so soon. But, it will, by and by, degenerate from its high estate, just as others have done, and be succeeded by another that shall raise still higher expectations. In the meantime, it serves the state well, both by the virtue which it enjoins upon its own subjects, and the influence it exerts, by indirection, upon those of the prevalent faiths, and upon the general manners and morals.'

'What you say,' observed Aurelian musingly, 'has some show of sense. So much, at least, may be said for this religion.'

'Yet a lie,' said Fronto, 'can be none the less hateful to the gods, because it sometime plays the part of truth. It is a lie still.'

'Hold,' said Aurelian, 'let us hear the Greek. What else?'

'I little thought,' I replied, 'as I rode toward the city this morning, that I should at this hour be standing in the presence of the Emperor of Rome, a defender of the Christians. I am in no manner whatever fitted for the task. My knowledge is nothing; my opinions, therefore, worth but little, grounded as they are upon the loose reports which reach my ear concerning the character and doctrines of this sect, or upon what little observation I have made upon those whom I have known of that persuasion. Still, I honor and esteem them, and such aid as I can bring them in their straits, shall be very gladly theirs. I will, however, add one thing more to what I have said in answer to Fronto, who represents the gods as more concerned to destroy the Christians than to reform the common religion and the public morals. I cannot think that. Am I to believe that the gods, the supreme directors of human affairs, whose aim must be man's highest well-being, regard with more abhorrence an error than a vice?--an error too that acts more beneficently than most truth, and is the very seed of the purest virtues? I can by no means believe it. So that if I were interpreter of the late omens, I should rather see them pointed at the vices which prevail; at the corruptions of the public morals, which are fouler than aught I had so much as dreamed of before I was myself a witness of them, and may well be supposed to startle the gods from their rest, and draw down their hottest thunderbolts. But I will not say more, when there must be so many able to do so much better in behalf of what I must still believe to be a good cause. Let me entreat the Emperor, before he condemns, to hear. There are those in Rome, of warm hearts, sound heads, and honest souls, from whom, if from any on earth, truth may be heard, and who will set in its just light a doctrine too excellent to suffer, as it must, in my hands.'

'They shall be heard, Nicomachus. Not even a Jew or a Christian shall suffer without that grace; though I see not how it can avail.'

'If it should not avail to plant in your mind so good an opinion of their way as exists in mine,' I resumed, 'it might yet to soften it, and dispose it to a more lenient conduct; and so many are the miseries of life in the natural order of events, that the humane heart must desire to diminish, not increase them. Has Aurelian ever heard the name of Probus the Christian?'

The Emperor turned toward Fronto with a look of inquiry.

'Yes,' said the priest, 'you have heard his name. But that of Felix, the bishop of the Christians, as he is called, is more familiar to you.'

'Felix, Felix, that is the name I have heard most, but Probus too, if I err not.'

'He has been named to you, I am certain,' added Fronto. 'He is the real head of the Nazarenes,--the bishop, but a painted one.'

'Probus is he who turned young Piso's head. Is it not so?'

'The very same; and beside his, the lady Julia's.'

'No, that was by another, one Paul of Antioch, also a bishop and a fast friend of the Queen. The Christians themselves have of late set upon him, as they were so many blood-hounds, being bent upon expelling him from Antioch. It is not long since, in accordance with the decree of some assembled bishops there, I issued a rescript dislodging him from his post, and planting in his place one Domnus. If our purposes prosper, the ejected and dishonored priest may find himself at least safer if humbler. Probus,--I shall remember him. The name leads my thoughts to Thrace, where our greater Probus waits for me.'

'From Probus the Christian,' I said, 'you will receive,' whenever you shall admit him to your presence, a true account of the nature of the Christians' faith and of the actual condition of their community--all which, can be had only from a member of it.'

But little more was said, when I departed, and took my way again towards Tibur.

It seemed to me, from the manner of the Emperor more than from what he said, that he was settled and bound up to the bad work of an assault upon the Christians. To what extent it was in his mind to go, I could not judge; for his language was ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory. But that the darkest designs were harbored by him, over which he was brooding with a mind naturally superstitious, but now almost in a state of exasperation, from the late events, was most evident.