There was no room for doubt or for delay. “What is to become of you, Callista?” he said; “they will tear you to pieces.”
“Fear nothing for me, father,” she answered; “I am one of them. They know me. Alas, I am no Christian! I have not abjured their rites! but you, lose not a moment.”
“They are still at some distance,” he said, “though the wind gives us merciful warning of their coming.” He looked about the room, and took up the books of Holy Scripture which were on the shelf. “There is nothing else,” he said, “of special value here. Agellius could not take them. Here, my child, I am going to show you a great confidence. To few persons not Christians would I show it. Take this blessed parchment; it contains the earthly history of our Divine Master. Here you will see whom we Christians love. Read it; keep it safely; surrender it, when you have the opportunity, into Christian keeping. My mind tells me I am not wrong in lending it to you.” He handed to her the Gospel of St. Luke, [pg 227]while he put the two other volumes into the folds of his own tunic.
“One word more,” she said; “your name, should I want you.”
He took up a piece of chalk from the shelf, and wrote upon the wall in distinct characters,
Hardly had she read the inscription when the voices of several men were heard in the very neighbourhood of the cottage; and hoping to effect a diversion in favour of Cæcilius, and being at once unsuspicious of danger to herself, and careless of her life, she ran quickly forward to meet them. Cæcilius ought to have taken to flight without a moment’s delay, but a last sacred duty detained him. He knelt down and took the pyx from his bosom. He had eaten nothing that day; but even if otherwise, it was a crisis which allowed him to consume the sacred species without fasting. He hastily opened the golden case, adored the blessed sacrament, and consumed it, purifying its receptacle, and restoring it to its hiding-place. Then he rose at once and left the cottage.
He looked about; Callista was nowhere to be seen. She was gone; so much was certain, no enemy was in sight; it only remained for him to make off too. In the confusion he turned in the wrong direction; instead of making off at the back of the cottage from which the voices had scared him, he ran across the garden [pg 228]into the hollow way. It was all over with him in an instant; he fell at once into the hands of the vanguard of the mob.
Many mouths were opened upon him all at once. “The sorcerer!” cried one; “tear him to shreds; we’ll teach him to brew his spells against the city.” “Give us back our grapes and corn,” said a second. “Have a guard,” said a third; “he can turn you into swine or asses while there is breath in him,” “Then be the quicker with him,” said a fourth, who was lifting up a crowbar to discharge upon his head. “Hold!” said a tall swarthy youth, who had already warded off several blows from him, “hold, will you? don’t you see, if you kill him he can’t undo the spell. Make him first reverse it all; make him take the curse off us. Bring him along; take him to Astarte, Hercules, or old Saturn. We’ll broil him on a gridiron till he turns all these canes into vines, and makes olive berries of the pebbles, and turns the dust of the earth into fine flour for our eating. When he has done all this he shall dance a jig with a wild cow, and sit down to supper with an hyena.”
A loud scream of exultation broke forth from the drunken and frantic multitude. “Along with him!” continued the same speaker in a jeering tone. “Here, put him on the ass and tie his hands behind his back. He shall go back in triumph to the city which he loves. Mind, and don’t touch him before the time. If you kill him, you’ll never get the curse off. Come here, you priests of Cybele,” he added, “and be his [pg 229]body-guard.” And he continued to keep a vigilant eye and hand over the old man, in spite of them.
The ass, though naturally a good-tempered beast, had been most sadly tried through the day. He had been fed, indeed, out of mockery, as being the Christians’ god; but he did not understand the shouts and caprices of the crowd, and he only waited for an opportunity to show that he by no means acquiesced in the proceedings of the day. And now the difficulty was to move at all. The people kept crowding up the hollow road, and blocked the passage, and though the greater part of the rioters had either been left behind exhausted in Sicca itself, or had poured over the fields on each side of Agellius’s cottage, or gone right over the hill down into the valley beyond, yet still it was some time before the ass could move a step, and a time of nervous suspense it was both to Cæcilius and the youth who befriended him. At length what remained of the procession was persuaded to turn about and make for Sicca, but in a reversed order. It could not be brought round in so confined a space, so its rear went first and the ass and its burden came last. As they descended the hill back again, Cæcilius, who was mounted upon the linen and silk which had adorned the Dea Syra before the Tertullianist had destroyed the idol, saw before him the whole line of march. In front were flaunted the dreadful emblems of idolatry, so far as their bearers were able still to raise them. Drunken women, ragged boys mounted on men’s shoulders, ruffians and bullies, savage-looking Getu[pg 230]lians, half-human monsters from the Atlas, monkeys and curs jabbering and howling, mummers, bacchanals, satyrs, and gesticulators, formed the staple of the procession. Midway between the hill which he was descending and the city lay the ravine, of which we have several times spoken, widening out into the plain or Campus Martius, which reached round to the steep cliffs on the north. The bridle-path, along which he was moving, crossed it just where it was opening and became level, so as to present no abrupt descent and ascent at the place where the path was lowest. On the left every vestige of the ravine soon ceased, and a free passage extended to the plain.
The youth who had placed Cæcilius on the ass still kept close to him and sung at the pitch of his voice, in imitation of the rest—
“Old man,” he continued to Cæcilius in a low voice, and in Latin, “your curse has not worked on me yet.”
“My son,” answered the priest, “you are granted one day more for repentance.”
“Lucky for you as well as for me,” was the reply: and he continued his song:—
He then turned to Cæcilius and whispered, “You see, old father, that others, besides Christians, can forgive and forget. Henceforth call me generous Juba.” And he tossed his head.
By this time they had got to the bottom of the hill, and the deep shadows which filled the hollow showed that the sun was rapidly sinking in the west. Suddenly, as they were crossing the bottom as it opened into the plain, Juba seized and broke the thong which bound Cæcilius’s arms, and bestowing a tremendous cut with it upon the side of the ass, sent him forward upon the plain at his greatest speed. The youth’s manœuvre was successful to the full. The asses of Africa can do more on an occasion of this kind than our own. Cæcilius for the moment lost his seat; but, instantly recovering it, took care to keep the animal from flagging; and the cries of the mob, and the howlings of the priests of Cybele cooperated in the task. At length the gloom, increasing every minute, hid him from their view; and even in daylight his recapture would have been a difficult matter for a wearied-out, famished, and intoxicated rabble. Before Cæcilius well had time to return thanks for this unexpected turn of events, he was out of pursuit, and was ambling at a pace more suitable to the habits of the beast of [pg 232]burden that carried him, over an expanse of plain which would have been a formidable night-march to a fasting man.
We must not conclude the day without relating what was its issue to the persecutors, as well as to their intended victim. It is almost a proverb that punishment is slow in overtaking crime; but the present instance was an exception to the rule. While the exiled Bishop of Carthage escaped, the crowd, on the other hand, were caught in the trap which had been laid for them. We have already said it was a ruse on the part of the governing authorities of the place to get the rioters out of the city, that they might at once be relieved of them, and then deal with them just as they might think fit. When the mob was once outside the walls, they might be refused re-admittance, and put down with a strong hand. The Roman garrison, who, powerless to quell the tumult in the narrow and winding streets and multiplied alleys of the city, had been the authors of the manœuvre, now took on themselves the stern completion of it, and determined to do so in the sternest way. Not a single head of all those who poured out in the afternoon should return at night. It was not to be supposed that the soldiers had any tenderness for the Christians, but they abominated and despised the rabble of the town. They were indignant at their rising, thought it a personal insult to themselves, and resolved they should never do so again. [pg 233]The gates were commonly in the custody of the city guard, but the Porta Septimiana, by which the mob passed out, was on this occasion claimed by the Romans. It was most suitably circumstanced for the use they intended to make of it. Immediately outside of it was a large court of the same level as the ground inside, bordered on the right and left by substantial walls, which after a time were drawn to meet each other, and contracted the space to the usual breadth of a road. The walls continued to run along this road for some distance, till they joined the way which led to the Campus Martius, and from this point the ground was open till it reached the head of the ravine. The soldiers drew up at the gate, and as the worn-out and disappointed, brutalized and half-idiotic multitudes returned towards it from the country, those who were behind pushed on between the border walls those who were in front, and, while they jammed together their ranks, also made escape impossible. It was now that the Roman soldiers began their barbarous, not to say cowardly, assault upon them. With heavy maces, with the pike, with iron gauntlets, with stones and bricks, with clubs, with scourge, with the sword, with the helmet, with whatever came to hand, they commenced the massacre of that large concourse of human beings, who did not offer one blow in return. They slaughtered them like sheep; they trampled them down; they threw the bodies of the wounded over the walls. Attempting to run back, numbers of the poor [pg 234]wretches came into conflict with the ranks behind them, and an additional scene of confusion and overthrow took place; many of them straggled over to the open country or woods, and perished, either from the weather, or from hunger, or even from the wild beasts. Others, weakened by excess and famine, fell a prey to the pestilence that was raging. After some days a remnant of them was allowed silently and timidly to steal back into the city as best they could. It was a long day before the Plebs Siccensis ventured to have any opinion of its own upon the subject of Christianity, or any other political, social, or ecclesiastical topic whatever.
When Jucundus rose next morning, and heard the news, he considered it to be more satisfactory than he could have supposed possible. He was a zealous imperialist, and a lover of tranquillity, a despiser of the natives and a hater of the Christians. The Christians had suffered enough to vindicate the Roman name, to deter those who were playing at Christianity, and to show that the people of Sicca had their eyes about them. And the mob had received a severe lesson too; and the cause of public order had triumphed, and civic peace was re-established. His anxiety, too, about Agellius had terminated, or was terminating. He had privately denounced him to the government, come to an understanding with the military authorities, and obtained the custody of him. He had met him at the very door to which the boy Firmian brought him, with an apparitor of the military staff (or what answered to it), and had clapped him into prison in an underground cellar in which he kept damaged images, and those which had gone out of fashion, and were otherwise unsaleable. He was not at all sorry, by some suffering, and by some [pg 236]fright, to aid the more potent incantation which Callista was singing in his ears. He did not, however, at all forget Juba’s hint, and was careful not to overdo the rack-and-gridiron dodge, if we may so designate it; yet he thought just a flavour or a thought of the inconveniences which the profession of Christianity involved might be a salutary reflection in the midst of the persuasives which the voice and eyes of Callista would kindle in his heart. There was nothing glorious or heroic in being confined in a lumber cellar, no one knowing anything about it; and he did not mean to keep him there for ever.
As the next day wore on towards evening, rumour brought a piece of news which he was at first utterly unable to credit, and which for the moment seemed likely to spoil the appetite which promised so well for his evening repast. He could hardly believe his ears when he was told that Callista was in arrest on a charge of Christianity, and at first it made him look as black as some of those Egyptian gods which he had on one shelf of his shop. However, he rallied, and was very much amused at the report. The imprisonment indeed was a fact, account for it as one could; but who could account for it? “Varium et mutabile:” who could answer for the whims and fancies of womankind? If she had fallen in love with the owl of Minerva, or cut off her auburn tresses, or turned rope-dancer, there might have been some shrugging of shoulders, but no one would have tried to analyze [pg 237]the motive; but so much his profound sagacity enabled him to see, that, if there was one thing more than another likely to sicken Agellius of Christianity, it was to find one who was so precious to him suffering from the suspicion of it. It was bad enough to have suffered one’s self in such a cause; still he could conceive, he was large-minded enough to grant, that Agellius might have some secret satisfaction in the antagonist feeling of resentment and obstinacy which that suffering might engender: but it was carrying matters too far, and no comfort in any point of view, to find Callista, his beloved, the object of a similar punishment. It was all very well to profess Christianity as a matter of sentiment, mystery, and singularity; but when it was found to compromise the life or limbs of another, and that other Callista, why it was plain that Agellius would be the very first to try and entreat the wayward girl to keep her good looks for him, and to be loyal to the gods of her country; and he chuckled over the thought, as others have done in other states of society, of a love-scene or a marriage being the termination of so much high romance and fine acting.
However, the next day Aristo came down to him himself, and gave him an account at once more authentic and more extended on the matter which interested him. Callista had been called up before the tribunal, and had not been discharged, but remanded. The meaning of it was as obscure as ever; Aristo could give no account of it; it almost led him to be[pg 238]lieve in the evil eye; some unholy practices, some spells such as only potent wizards know, some deplorable delusion or hallucination, had for the time got the mastery of his sister’s mind. No one seemed quite to know how she had found her way into the hands of the officers; but there she was, and the problem was how to get her out of them.
However, whatever mystery, whatever anxiety, attached to the case, it was only still more urgent to bring the matter home to Agellius without delay. If time went on before the parties were brought together, she might grow more obstinate, and kindle a like spirit in him. Oh that boys and girls would be giving old people, who wish them well, so much trouble! However, it was no good thinking of that just then. He considered that, at the present moment, they would not be able to bear the sight of each other in suffering and peril; that mutual tenderness would make them plead with each other in each other’s behalf, and that each would be obliged to set the example to each of a concession, to which each exhorted each; and on this fine philosophical view he proceeded to act.
For thirty-six hours Agellius had been confined in his underground receptacle, light being almost excluded, a bench and a rug being his means of repose, and a full measure of bread, wine, and olives being his dole. The shrieks and yells of the rioters could be distinctly heard in his prison, as the day of his seizure went on, and they passed by the temple of Astarte; but what happened at his farm, and how it fared with Cæcilius, he had no means of conjecturing; nor indeed how it was to fare with himself, for on the face of the transaction, as was in form the fact, he was in the hands of the law, and only indulged with the house of a relative for his prison. On the second night he was released by his uncle’s confidential slave, who brought him up to a small back closet on the ground floor, which was lighted from the roof, and next morning, being the second day after the riot, Jucundus came in to have his confidential conversation with him.
His uncle began by telling him that he was a government prisoner, but that he hoped by his influence in high places to get him off and out of [pg 240]Sicca without any prejudice to his honour. He told him that he had managed it privately, and if he had treated him with apparent harshness up to the evening before, it was in order to save appearances with the apparitors who had attended him. He then went on to inform him that the mob had visited his cottage, and had caught some man there; he supposed some accomplice or ally of his nephew’s. They had seized him, and were bringing him off, but the fellow had been clever enough to effect his escape. He did not know more than this, but it had happened very fortunately, for the general belief in the place was, that it was Agellius who had been taken, and who had managed to give them the slip. Since it could not any longer be safely denied that he was a Christian, though he (Jucundus) did not think so himself, he had encouraged or rather had given his confirmation to the report; and when some persons who had means of knowing had asserted that the culprit was double the age of his nephew and more, and not at all of his make or description, but a sort of slave, or rather that he was the slave of Agellius who had belonged to his father Strabo, Jucundus had boldly asserted that Agellius, in the emergency, had availed himself of some of the remarkably powerful charms which Christians were known to possess, and had made himself seem what he really was not, in order to escape detection. It had not indeed answered the purpose entirely, for he had actually been taken; but no blame in the charm, which [pg 241]perhaps, after all, had enabled him to escape. However, Agellius was gone, he told people, and a good riddance, and he hoped never to see him again. “But you see, my dear boy,” he concluded, “this was all talk for the occasion, for I hope you will live here many years in respectability and credit. I intend you should close my eyes when my time comes, and inherit whatever I have to leave you; for as to that fellow Juba, he inspires me with no confidence in him at all.”
Agellius thanked his uncle with all his heart for his kind and successful efforts on his behalf; he did not think there was a word he had said, in the future he had sketched for him, which he could have wished altered. But he thought Jucundus over-sanguine; much as he should like to live with him and tend him in his old age, he did not think he should ever be permitted to return to Sicca. He was a Christian, and must seek some remote corner of the world, or at least some city where he was unknown. Every one in Sicca would point at him as the Christian; he would experience a thousand rubs and collisions, even if the mob did not rise against him, without corresponding advantage; on the other hand, he would have no influence. But were he in the midst of a powerful and widely-extended community of Christians, he might in his place do work, and might extend the faith as one of a number, unknown himself, and strong in his brethren. He therefore proposed as soon as [pg 242]possible to sell his effects and stock, and retire from the sight of men, at least for a time.
“You think this persecution, then, will be soon at an end?” asked Jucundus.
“I judge by the past,” answered Agellius; “there have been times of trial and of rest hitherto, and I suppose it will be so again. And one place has hitherto been exempt from the violence of our enemies, when another has been the scene of it.”
“A new time is coming, trust me,” said Jucundus, gravely. “Those popular commotions are all over. What happened two days ago is a sample of what will come of them; they have received their coup-de-grâce. The State is taking up the matter, Rome itself, thank the gods! a tougher sort of customer than these villain ratcatchers and offal-eaters, whom you had to do with two days since. Great Rome is now at length in earnest, my boy, which she ought to have been a long time back, before you were born; and then you know,” and he nodded, “you would have had no choice; you wouldn’t have had the temptation to make a fool of yourself.”
“Well, then,” answered Agellius, “if a new time is really coming, there is less chance than ever of my continuing here.”
“Now be a sensible fellow, as you are when you choose,” said his uncle; “look the matter in the face, do. You cannot wrestle with impossibilities, you cannot make facts to pattern. There are lawful religions, there are illicit. Christianity is illicit; it [pg 243]is not tolerated; that’s not your fault; you cannot help it; you would, if you could; you can’t. Now you have observed your point of honour; you have shown you can stand up like a man, and suffer for your own fancy. Still Rome does not give way; and you must make the best of it. You must give in, and you are far too good (I don’t compliment, I speak my mind), far too amiable, excellent, sweet a boy for so rascally a superstition.”
“There is something stronger than Rome,” said the nephew almost sternly.
Jucundus cut him short. “Agellius!” he said, “you must not say that in this house. You shall not use that language under my roof. I’ll not put up with it, I tell you. Take your treason elsewhere.... This accursed obstinacy!” he said to himself; “but I must take care what I am doing;” then aloud, “Well, we both of us have been railing; no good comes of railing; railing is not argument. But now, I say, do be sensible, if you can. Is not the imperial government in earnest now? better late than never, but it is now in earnest. And now mark my words, by this day five years, five years at the utmost,—I say by this day five years there will not be a single ragamuffin Christian in the whole Roman world.” And he looked fierce. “Ye gods! Rome, Rome has swept from the earth by her very breath conspiracies, confederacies, plots against her, without ever failing; she will do so now with this contemptible, Jew-begotten foe.”
[pg 244]“In what are we enemies to Rome, Jucundus?” said Agellius; “why will you always take it for granted?”
“Take it for granted!” answered he, “is it not on the face of the matter? I suppose they are enemies to a state, whom the state calls its enemies. Besides, why a pother of words? Swear by the genius of the emperor, invoke the Dea Roma, sacrifice to Jove; no, not a bit of it, not a whisper, not a sign, not a grain of incense. You go out of your way to insult us; and then you come with a grave face, and say you are loyal. You kick our shins, and you wish us to kiss you on both cheeks for it. A few harmless ceremonies; we are not entrapping you; we are not using your words against yourselves; we tell you the meaning beforehand, the whole meaning of them. It is not as if we tied you to the belief of the nursery: we don’t say, ‘If you burn incense, you profess to believe that old Jupiter is shivering atop of Olympus;’ we don’t say, ‘You swear by the genius of Cæsar, therefore he has a genius, black, or white, or piebald,’ No, we give you the meaning of the act; it is a mere expression of loyalty to the empire. If then you won’t do it, you confess yourself ipso facto disloyal. It is incomprehensible.” And he had become quite red.
“My dear uncle,” said Agellius, “I give you my solemn word, that the people whom you so detest do pray for the welfare of the imperial power continually, as a matter of duty and as a matter of interest.”
[pg 245]“Pray! pray! fudge and nonsense!” cried Jucundus, almost mimicking him in his indignation; “pray! who thanks you for your prayers? what’s the good of prayers? Prayers, indeed! ha, ha! A little loyalty is worth all the praying in the world. I’ll tell you what, Agellius; you are, I am sorry to say it, but you are hand and glove with a set of traitors, who shall and will be smoked out like a nest of wasps. You don’t know; you are not in the secret, nor the wretched slave, poor beast, who was pulled to pieces yesterday (ah! you don’t know of him) at the Flamen’s, nor a multitude of other idiots. But, d’ye see,” and he chucked up his head significantly, “there are puppets, and there are wires. Few know what is going on. They won’t have done (unless we put them down; but we will) till they have toppled down the state. But Rome will put them down. Come, be sensible, listen to reason; now I am going to put facts before my poor, dear, well-meaning boy. Oh that you saw things as I do! What a trouble you are to me! Here am I”——
“My dearest uncle, Jucundus,” cried Agellius, “I assure you, it is the most intense pain to me”——
“Very well, very well,” interrupted the uncle in turn, “I believe it, of course I believe it; but listen, listen. Every now and then,” he continued in a more measured and lower tone, “every now and then the secret is blabbed—blabbed. There was that Tertullianus of Carthage, some fifty years since. He wrote books; books have done a great deal of harm before [pg 246]now; but read his books—read and ponder. The fellow has the insolence to tell the proconsul that he and the whole government, the whole city and province, the whole Roman world, the emperors, all but the pitiful clique to which he belongs, are destined, after death, to flames for ever and ever. There’s loyalty! but the absurdity is greater than the malevolence. Rightly are the fellows called atheists and men-haters. Our soldiers, our statesmen, our magistrates, and judges, and senators, and the whole community, all worshippers of the gods, every one who crowns his head, every one who loves a joke, and all our great historic names, heroes, and worthies,—the Scipios, the Decii, Brutus, Cæsar, Cato, Titus, Trajan, Antoninus,—are inmates, not of the Elysian fields, if Elysian fields there be, but of Tartarus, and will never find a way out of it.”
“That man, Tertullianus, is nothing to us, uncle,” answered Agellius; “a man of great ability, but he quarrelled with us, and left us.”
“I can’t draw nice distinctions,” said Jucundus. “Your people have quarrelled among themselves perhaps on an understanding; we can’t split hairs. It’s the same with your present hierophant at Carthage, Cyprianus. Nothing can exaggerate, I am told, the foulness of his attack upon the gods of Rome, upon Romulus, the Augurs, the Ancilia, the consuls, and whatever a Roman is proud of. As to the imperial city itself, there’s hardly one of their high priests that has not died under the hands of the executioner, as a [pg 247]convict. The precious fellows take the title of Pontifex Maximus; bless their impudence! Well, my boy, this is what I say; be, if you will, so preternaturally sour and morose as to misconceive and mislike the innocent, graceful, humanising, time-honoured usages of society; be so, for what I care, if this is all; but it isn’t all. Such misanthropy is wisdom, absolute wisdom, compared with the Titanic presumption and audacity of challenging to single combat the sovereign of the world. Go and kick down Mount Atlas first.”
“You have it all your own way, Jucundus,” answered his nephew, “and so you must move in your own circle, round and round. There is no touching you, if you first assume your premisses, and then prove them by means of your conclusion.”
“My dear Agellius,” said his uncle, giving his head a very solemn shake, “take the advice of an old man. When you are older than you are, you will see better who is right and who is wrong. You’ll be sorry you despised me, a true, a prudent, an experienced friend; you will. Shake yourself, come do. Why should you link your fortunes, in the morning of life, with desperate men, only because your father, in his last feeble days, was entrapped into doing so? I really will not believe that you are going to throw away hope and life on so bad a bargain. Can’t you speak a word? Here you’ve let me speak, and won’t say one syllable for yourself. I don’t think it kind of you.”
Thus adjured, Agellius began. “Well,” he said, [pg 248]“it’s a long history; you see, we start, my dear uncle, from different points. How am I possibly to join issue with you? I can only tell you my conclusion. Hope and life, you say. Why, my only hope, my only life, my only joy, desire, consolation, and treasure is that I am a Christian.”
“Hope and life!” interrupted Jucundus, “immortal gods! life and hope in being a Christian! do I hear aright? Why, man, a prison brings despair, not hope; and the sword brings death, not life. By Esculapius! life and hope! you choke me, Agellius. Life and hope! you are beyond three Anticyras. Life and hope! if you were old, if you were diseased, if you were given over, and had but one puff of life left in you, then you might be what you would, for me; but your hair is black, your cheek is round, your limbs are strong, your voice is full; and you are going to make all these a sacrifice to Hecate! has your good genius fed that plump frame, ripened those goods looks, nerved your arm, bestowed that breadth of chest, that strength of loins, that straightness of spine, that vigour of step, only that you may feed the crows? or to be torn on the rack, scorched in the flame, or hung on the gibbet? is this your gratitude to nature? What has been your price? for what have you sold yourself? Speak, man, speak. Are you dumb as well as dement? Are you dumb, I say, are you dumb?”
“O Jucundus,” cried Agellius, irritated at his own inability to express himself or hold an argument, “if you did but know what it was to have the Truth! The [pg 249]Christian has found the Truth, the eternal Truth, in a world of error. That is his bargain, that is his hire; can there be a greater? Can I give up the Truth? But all this is Punic or Barbar to you.”
It certainly did pose Jucundus for half a minute, as if he was trying to take in, not so much the sense, as the words of his nephew’s speech. He looked bewildered, and though he began to answer him at once, it took several sentences to bring him into his usual flow of language. After one or two exclamations, “The truth!” he cried, “this is what I understand you to say,—the truth. The truth is your bargain; I think I’m right, the truth; Hm; what is truth? What in heaven and earth do you mean by truth? where did you get that cant? What oriental tomfoolery is bamboozling you? The truth!” he cried, staring at him with eyes, half of triumph, half of impatience, “the truth! Jove help the boy!—the truth! can truth pour me out a cup of melilotus? can truth crown me with flowers? can it sing to me? can it bring Glyceris to me? drop gold into my girdle? or cool my brows when fever visits me? Can truth give me a handsome suburban with some five hundred slaves, or raise me to the duumvirate? Let it do this, and I will worship it; it shall be my god; it shall be more to me than Fortune, Fate, Rome, or any other goddess on the list. But I like to see, and touch, and feel, and handle, and weigh, and measure what is promised me. I wish to have a sample and an instalment. I am too old for chaff. Eat, drink, and be merry, that’s my philosophy, [pg 250]that’s my religion; and I know no better. To-day is ours, to-morrow is our children’s.”
After a pause, he added, bitterly, “If truth could get Callista out of prison, instead of getting her into it, I should have something to say to truth.”
“Callista in prison!” cried Agellius with surprise and distress, “what do you mean, Jucundus?”
“Yes, it’s a fact; Callista is in prison,” answered he, “and on suspicion of Christianity.”
“Callista! Christianity!” said Agellius, bewildered, “do I hear aright? She a Christian! oh, impossible, uncle! you don’t mean to say that she is in prison. Tell me, tell me, my dear, dear Jucundus, what this wonderful news means.”
“You ought to know more about it than I,” answered he, “if there is any meaning in it. But if you want my opinion, here it is. I don’t believe she is more a Christian than I am; but I think she is over head and ears in love with you, and she has some notion that she is paying you a compliment, or interesting you in her, or sharing your fate—(I can’t pretend to unravel the vagaries and tantarums of the female mind)—by saying that she is what she is not. If not, perhaps she has done it out of spite and contradiction. You can never answer for a woman.”
“Whom should she spite? whom contradict?” cried Agellius, thrown for the moment off his balance. “O Callista! Callista in prison for Christianity! Oh if it’s true that she is a Christian! but what if she is not?” he added with great terror, “what if she’s not, and yet [pg 251]in prison, as if she were? How are we to get her out, uncle? Impossible! no, she’s not a Christian—she is not at all. She ought not to be there! Yet how wonderful!”
“Well, I am sure of it, too,” said Jucundus; “I’d stake the best image in my shop that she’s not a Christian; but what if she is perverse enough to say she is? and such things are not uncommon. Then, I say, what in the world is to be done? If she says she is, why she is. There you are; and what can you do?”
“You don’t mean to say,” exclaimed Agellius, “that that sweet delicate child is in that horrible hole; impossible!” and he nearly shrieked at the thought. “What is the meaning of it all? dear, dear uncle, do tell me something more about it. Why did you not tell me before? What can be done?”
Jucundus thought he now had him in his hand. “Why, it’s plain,” he answered, “what can be done. She’s no Christian, we both agree. It’s certain, too, that she chooses to say she is, or something like it. There’s just one person who has influence with her, to make her tell the truth.”
“Ha!” cried Agellius, starting as if an asp had bitten him.
Jucundus kept silence, and let the poison of the said asp work awhile in his nephew’s blood.
Agellius put his hands before his eyes; and with his elbows on his knees, began moving to and fro, as if in intense pain.
[pg 252]“I repeat what I have said,” Jucundus observed at length; “I do really think that she imagines a certain young gentleman is likely to be in trouble, and that she is determined to share the trouble with him.”
“But it isn’t true,” cried Agellius with great vehemence; “it’s not true.... If she really is not a Christian, O my dear Lord, surely they won’t put her to death as if she was?”
“But if she has made up her mind to be in the same boat with you, and will be a Christian while you are a Christian, what on earth can we do, Agellius?” asked Jucundus. “You have the whole matter in a nutshell.”
“She does not love me,” cried Agellius; “no, she has given me no reason to think so. I am sure she does not. She’s nothing to me. That cannot be the reason of her conduct. I have no power over her; I could not persuade her. What, what does all this mean? and I shut up here?” and he began walking about the little room, as if such locomotion tended to bring him out of it.
“Well,” answered Jucundus, “it is easy to ascertain. I suppose you could be let out to see her.”
But he was going on too fast; Agellius did not attend to him. “Poor, sweet Callista,” he exclaimed, “she’s innocent, she’s innocent; I mean she’s not a Christian. Ah!” he screamed out in great agony, as the whole state of the case unrolled itself to his apprehension, “she will die though not a Christian; she will die without faith, without love; she will die [pg 253]in her sins. She will die, done to death by false report of accepting that, by which alone she could be carried safely through death unto life. O my Lord, spare me!” and he sank upon the ground in a collapse of misery.
Jucundus was touched, and still more alarmed. “Come, come, my boy,” he said, “you will rouse the whole neighbourhood. Give over; be a man; all will be right. If she’s not a Christian (and she’s not), she shall not die a Christian’s death; something will turn up. She’s not in any hole at all, but in a decent lodging. And you shall see her, and console her, and all will be right.”
“Yes, I will see her,” said Agellius, in a sort of musing manner; “she is either a Christian, or she is not. If she is a Christian ...” and his voice faltered; “but if she is not, she shall live till she is.”
“Well said!” answered Jucundus, “till she is. She shall live till she is. Yes, I can get you to see her. You shall bring her out of prison; a smile, a whisper from you, and all her fretfulness and ill-humour will vanish, like a mist before the powerful burning sun. And we shall all be as happy as the immortal gods.”
“O my uncle!” said Agellius, gravely. The language of Jucundus had shocked him, and brought him to a better mind. He turned away from Jucundus, and leant his face against the wall. Then he turned round again, and said, “If she is a Christian, I ought to rejoice, and I do rejoice; God be praised. If she is not a Christian, I ought at once to [pg 254]make her one. If she has already the penalty of a Christian, she is surely destined for the privilege. And how should I go,” he said, half speaking to himself, “how should I go to tell her that she is not yet a Christian, and bid her swear by Jupiter, because that is her god, in order that she may escape imprisonment and death? Am I to do the part of a heathen priest or infidel sophist? O Cæcilius, how am I forgetting your lessons! No; I will go on no such errand. Go, I will, if I may, Jucundus, but I will go on no conditions of yours. I go on no promise to try to get her out of prison anyhow, poor child. I will not go to make her sacrifice to a false god; I go to persuade her to stay in prison, by deserving to stay. Perhaps I am not the best person to go; but if I go, I go free. I go willing to die myself for my Lord; glad to make her die for Him.”
Agellius said this in so determined a way, so calmly, with such a grasp of the existing posture of affairs, and of the whole circumstances of the case, that it was now Jucundus’s turn to feel surprise and annoyance. For a time he did not take in what Agellius meant, nor could he to the last follow his train of feeling. When he saw what may be called the upshot of the matter, he became very angry, and spoke with great violence. By degrees he calmed; and then the strong feeling came on him again that it was impossible, if a meeting took place between the two, that it could end in any way but one. He defied [pg 255]any two young people who loved each other, to come to any but one conclusion. Agellius’s mood was too excited, too tragic to last. The sight of Callista in that dreadful prison, perhaps in chains, waiting, in order to be free, for ability to say the words, “I am not a Christian;” and that ability waiting for the same words from himself, would bring the affair to a very speedy issue. As if he could love a fancy better than he loved Callista! Agellius, too, had already expressed a misgiving himself on that head; so far they were agreed. And, to tell the truth, it was a very difficult transaction for a young man; and giving our poor Agellius all credit for pure intention and firm resolve, we really should have been very sorry to see him involved in a trial, which would have demanded of him a most heroic faith and the detachment of a saint. We, therefore, are not sorry that in matter of fact he gained the merit of so virtuous a determination, without being called on to execute it. For it so happened, that a most unexpected event occurred to him not many hours afterwards, which will oblige us to take up here rather abruptly the history of one of our other personages.