your servants again touch and profane the hallowed remains of her, whom I have loved more than any thing on earth; but let me bear them hence to the sepulchre of her fathers; for she was noble as she was good.”

Tertullus was manifestly irritated, as he replied: “Madam, whoever you may be, your request cannot be granted. Catulus, see that the body be cast, as usual, into the river, or burnt.”

“I entreat you, sir,” the lady earnestly insisted, “by every claim which female virtue has upon you, by any tear which a mother has shed over you, by every soothing word which a sister has ever spoken to you, in illness or sorrow; by every ministration of their gentle hands, I implore you to grant my humble prayer. And if, when you return home this evening, you will be met at the threshold by daughters, who will kiss your hand, though stained with the blood of one, whom you may feel proud if they resemble, be able to say to them, at least, that this slightest tribute to the maidenly delicacy which they prize has not been refused.”

Such common sympathy was manifested that Tertullus, anxious to check it, asked her sharply:

“Pray, are you, too, a Christian?”

She hesitated for one instant, then replied, “No, sir, I am not; but I own that if anything could make me one, it would be what I have seen this day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, that to preserve the religion of the empire such beings as she whom you have slain” (her tears interrupted her for a moment) “should have to die; while monsters who disgrace the shape and name of man should have to live and flourish. Oh, sir, you know not what you have blotted out from earth this day! She was the purest, sweetest, holiest thing I ever knew upon it, the very flower of womanhood, though yet a child. And she might have lived yet, had she not scorned the proffered hand of a vile adventurer, who pursued her with his loathsome offers into the seclusion of her villa, into the sanctuary of her home, and even into the last retreat of her dungeon. For this she died, that she would not endow with her wealth, and ennoble by her alliance, that Asiatic spy.”

She pointed with calm scorn at Fulvius, who bounded forward, and exclaimed with fury: “She lies, foully and calumniously, sir. Agnes openly confessed herself a Christian.”

“Bear with me, sir,” replied the lady, with noble dignity, “while I convict him; and look on his face for proof of what I say. Didst thou not, Fulvius, early this morning, seek that gentle child in her cell, and deliberately tell her (for unseen, I heard you) that if she would but accept thy hand, not only wouldst thou save her life, but, despising the imperial commands, secure her still remaining a Christian?”

Fulvius stood, pale as death: stood, as one does for a moment who is shot through the heart, or struck by lightning. He looked like a man on whom sentence is going to be pronounced,—not of death, but of eternal pillory, as the judge addressed him, saying:

“Fulvius, thy very look confirms this grievous charge. I could arraign thee on it, for thy head, at once. But take my counsel, begone hence forever. Flee, and hide thyself, after such villany, from the indignation of all just men, and from the vengeance of the gods. Show not thy face again here, nor in the Forum, nor in any public place of Rome. If this lady pleases, even now I will take her deposition against thee. Pray, madam,” he asked most respectfully, “may I have the honor of knowing your name?”

“Fabiola,” she replied.

The judge was now all complacency, for he saw before him, he hoped, his future daughter-in-law. “I have often heard of you, madam,” he said, “and of your high accomplishments and exalted virtues. You are, moreover, nearly allied to this victim of treachery, and have a right to claim her body. It is at your disposal.” This speech was interrupted at its beginning by a loud hiss and yell that accompanied Fulvius’s departure. He was pale with shame, terror, and rage.

Fabiola gracefully thanked the prefect, and beckoned to Syra, who attended her. The servant again made a signal to some one else; and presently four slaves appeared bearing a lady’s litter. Fabiola would allow no one but herself and Syra to raise the relics from the ground, place them on the litter, and cover them with their precious pall. “Bear this treasure to its own home,” she said, and followed as mourner with her maid. A little girl, all in tears, timidly asked if she might join them.

“Who art thou?” asked Fabiola.

“I am poor Emerentiana, her foster-sister,” replied the child; and Fabiola led her kindly by the hand.

The moment the body was removed, a crowd of Christians, children, men, and women, threw themselves forward, with sponges and linen cloths, to gather up the blood. In vain did the guards fall on them, with whips, cudgels, and even with sharper weapons, so that many mingled their own blood with that of the martyr. When a sovereign, at his coronation, or on first entering his capital, throws, according to ancient custom, handfuls of gold and silver coins among the crowd, he does not create a more eager competition for his scattered treasures, than there was among those primitive Christians, for what they valued more than gold or precious stones, the ruby drops which a martyr had poured from his heart for his Lord. But all respected the prior claim of one; and here it was the deacon Reparatus, who, at risk of life, was present, phial in hand, to gather the blood of Agnes’s testimony; that it might be appended, as a faithful seal, to the record of martyrdom on her tomb.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE SAME DAY: ITS THIRD PART.

TERTULLUS hastened at once to the palace: fortunately, or unfortunately, for these candidates for martyrdom. There he met Corvinus, with the prepared rescript, elegantly engrossed in unical, that is, large capital letters. He had the privilege of immediate admission into the imperial presence; and, as a matter of business, reported the death of Agnes, exaggerated the public feeling likely to be caused by it, attributed it all to the folly and mismanagement of Fulvius, whose worst guilt he did not disclose for fear of having to try him, and thus bringing out what he was now doing; depreciated the value of Agnes’s property, and ended by saying that it would be a gracious act of clemency, and one sure to counteract unpopular feelings, to bestow it upon her relative, who by settlement was her next heir. He described Fabiola as a young lady of extraordinary intellect and wonderful learning, who was most zealously devoted to the worship of the gods, and daily offered sacrifice to the genius of the emperors.

“I know her,” said Maximian, laughing, as if at the recollection of something very droll. “Poor thing! she sent me a splendid ring, and yesterday asked me for that wretched Sebastian’s life, just as they had finished cudgelling him to death.” And he laughed immoderately, then continued: “Yes, yes, by all means; a little inheritance will console her, no doubt, for the loss of that fellow. Let a rescript be made out, and I will sign it.”

Tertullus produced the one prepared, saying he had fully relied on the emperor’s magnanimous clemency; and the imperial barbarian put a signature to it which would have disgraced a schoolboy. The prefect at once consigned it to his son.

Scarcely had he left the palace, when Fulvius entered. He had been home to put on a proper court attire, and remove from his features, by the bath and the perfumer’s art, the traces of his morning’s passion. He felt a keen presentiment that he should be disappointed. Eurotas’s cool discussion of the preceding evening had prepared him; the cross of all his designs, and his multiplied disappointments that day, had strengthened this instinctive conviction. One woman, indeed, seemed born to meet and baffle him whichever way he turned; but, “thank the gods,” he thought, “she cannot be in my way here. She has this morning blasted my character for ever; she cannot claim my rightful reward; she has made me an outcast; it is not in her power to make me a beggar.” This seemed his only ground of hope. Despair, indeed, urged him forward; and he determined to argue out his claims to the confiscated property of Agnes, with the only competitor he could fear, the rapacious emperor himself. He might as well risk his life over it, for if he failed, he was utterly ruined. After waiting some time, he entered the audience-hall, and advanced with the blandest smile that he could muster to the imperial feet.

“What want you here?” was his first greeting.

“Sire,” he replied, “I have come humbly to pray your royal justice, to order my being put into immediate possession of my share of the Lady Agnes’s property. She has been convicted of being a Christian upon my accusation, and she has just suffered the merited penalty of all who disobey the imperial edicts.”

“That is all quite right; but we have heard how stupidly you mismanaged the whole business as usual, and have raised murmurings and discontent in the people against us. So, now, the sooner you quit our presence, palace, and city, the better for yourself. Do you understand? We don’t usually give such warnings twice.”

“I will obey instantly every intimation of the supreme will. But I am almost destitute. Command what of right is mine to be delivered over to me, and I part immediately.”

“No more words,” replied the tyrant, “but go at once. As to the property which you demand with so much pertinacity, you cannot have it. We have made over the whole of it, by an irrevocable rescript, to an excellent and deserving person, the Lady Fabiola.”

Fulvius did not speak another word; but kissed the emperor’s hand and slowly retired. He looked a ruined, broken man. He was only heard to say, as he passed out of the gate: “Then, after all, she has made me a beggar too.” When he reached home, Eurotas, who read his answer in his nephew’s eye, was amazed at his calmness.

“I see,” he drily remarked, “it is all over.”

“Yes; are your preparations made, Eurotas?”

“Nearly so. I have sold the jewels, furniture, and slaves, at some loss; but, with the trifle I had in hand, we have enough to take us safe to Asia. I have retained Stabio, as the most trusty of our servants; he will carry our small travelling requisites on his horse. Two others are preparing for you and me. I have only one thing more to get for our journey, and then I am ready to start.”

“Pray what is that?”

“The poison. I ordered it last night, but it will only be ready at noon.”

“What is that for?” asked Fulvius, with some alarm.

“Surely you know,” rejoined the other, unmoved. “I am willing to make one more trial any where else; but our bargain is clear; my father’s family must not end in beggary. It must be extinguished in honor.”

Fulvius bit his lip, and said, “Well, be it as you like, I am weary of life. Leave the house as soon as possible, for fear of Ephraim, and be with your horses at the third mile on the Latin gate soon after dusk. I will join you there. For I, too, have an important matter to transact before I start.”

“And what is that?” asked Eurotas, with a rather keen curiosity.

“I cannot tell even you. But if I am not with you by two hours after sunset, give me up, and save yourself without me.”

Eurotas fixed upon him his cold dark eye, with one of those looks which ever read Fulvius through; to see if he could detect any lurking idea of escape from his gripe. But his look was cool and unusually open, and the old man asked no more. While this dialogue was going on, Fulvius had been divesting himself of his court garments, and attiring himself in a travelling suit. So completely did he evidently prepare himself for his journey, without necessity of returning home, that he even took his weapons with him; besides his sword, securing in his girdle, but concealed under his cloak, one of those curved daggers, of highest temper and most fatal form, which were only known in the East.

Eurotas proceeded at once to the Numidian quarters in the palace, and asked for Jubala; who entered with two small flasks of different sizes, and was just going to give some explanations, when her husband, half-drunk, half-furious, was seen approaching. Eurotas had just time to conceal the flasks in his belt, and slip a coin into her hand, when Hyphax came up. His wife had mentioned to him the offers which Eurotas had made to her before marriage, and had excited in his hot African blood a jealousy that amounted to hatred. The savage rudely thrust his wife out of the apartment, and would have picked a quarrel with the Syrian; had not the latter, his purpose being accomplished, acted with forbearance, assured the archer-chief that he should never more see him, and retired.

It is time, however, that we return to Fabiola. The reader is probably prepared to hear us say, that she returned home a Christian: and yet it was not so. For what as yet did she know of Christianity, to be said to profess it? In Sebastian and Agnes she had indeed willingly admired the virtue, unselfish, generous, and more than earthly, which now she was ready to attribute to that faith. She saw that it gave motives of actions, principles of life, elevation of mind, courage of conscience, and determination of virtuous will, such as no other system of belief ever bestowed. And even if, as she now shrewdly suspected, and intended in calmer moments to ascertain, the sublime revelations of Syra, concerning an unseen sphere of virtue, and its all-seeing Ruler, came from the same source, to what did it all amount more than to a grand moral and intellectual system, partly practical, partly speculative, as all codes of philosophic teaching were? This was a very different thing from Christianity. She had as yet heard nothing of its real and essential doctrines, its fathomless, yet accessible, depths of mystery; the awful, vast, and heaven-high structure of faith, which the simplest soul may contain; as a child’s eye will take in the perfect reflection and counterpart of a mountain, though a giant cannot scale it. She had never heard of a God, One in Trinity; of the co-equal Son incarnate for man. She had never been told of the marvellous history, of Redemption by God’s sufferings and death. She had not heard of Nazareth, or Bethlehem, or Calvary. How could she call herself a Christian, or be one, in ignorance of all this?

How many names had to become familiar and sweet to her which as yet were unknown, or barbarous—Mary, Joseph, Peter, Paul, and John? Not to mention the sweetest of all, His, whose name is balm to the wounded heart, or as honey dropping from the broken honeycomb. And how much had she yet to learn about the provision for salvation on earth, in the Church, in grace, in sacraments, in prayer, in love, in charity to others! What unexplored regions lay beyond the small tract which she had explored!

No; Fabiola returned home, exhausted almost by the preceding day and night, and the sad scenes of the morning, and retired to her own apartment, no longer perhaps even a philosopher, yet not a Christian. She desired all her servants to keep away from the court which she occupied, that she might not be disturbed by the smallest noise; and she forbade any one to have access to her. There she sat in loneliness and silence, for several hours, too excited to obtain rest from slumber. She mourned long over Agnes, as a mother might over a child suddenly carried off. Yet, was there not a tinge of light upon the cloud that overshadowed her, more than when it hung over her father’s bier? Did it not seem to her an insult to reason, an outrage to humanity, to think that she had perished; that she had been permitted to walk forward in her bright robe, and with her smiling countenance, and with her joyous, simple heart, straight on—into nothing; that she had been allured by conscience, and justice, and purity, and truth, on, on, till with arms outstretched to embrace them, she stepped over a precipice, beneath which yawned annihilation? No. Agnes, she felt sure, was happy somehow, somewhere; or justice was a senseless word.

“How strange,” she further thought, “that every one whom I have known endowed with superior excellence, men like Sebastian, women like Agnes, should turn out to have belonged to the scorned race of Christians! One only remains, and to-morrow I will interrogate her.”

When she turned from these, and looked round upon the heathen world, Fulvius, Tertullus, the Emperor, Calpurnius,—nay, she shuddered as she surprised herself on the point of mentioning her own father’s name—it sickened her to see the contrast of baseness with nobleness, vice with virtue, stupidity with wisdom, and the sensual with the spiritual. Her mind was thus being shaped into a mould, which some form of practical excellence must be found to fill, or it must be broken; her soul was craving as a parched soil, which heaven must send its waters to refresh, or it must become an eternal desert.

Agnes, surely, well deserved the glory of gaining, by her death, her kinswoman’s conversion; but was there not one, more humble, who had established a prior claim? One who had given up freedom, and offered life, for this unselfish gain?

While Fabiola was alone and desolate, she was disturbed by the entrance of a stranger, introduced under the ominous title of “A messenger from the emperor.” The porter had at first denied him admittance; but upon being assured that he bore an important embassy from the sovereign, he felt obliged to inquire from the steward what to do; when he was informed that no one with such a claim could be refused entrance.

Fabiola was amazed, and her displeasure was somewhat mitigated, by the ridiculous appearance of the person deputed in such a solemn character. It was Corvinus, who with clownish grace approached her, and in a studied speech, evidently got up very floridly, and intrusted to a bad memory, laid at her feet an imperial rescript, and his own sincere affection, the Lady Agnes’s estates, and his clumsy hand. Fabiola could not at all comprehend the connection between the two combined presents, and never imagined that the one was a bribe for the other. So she desired him to return her humble thanks to the emperor for his gracious act; adding, “Say that I am too ill to-day to present myself, and do him homage.”

“But these estates, you are aware, were forfeited and confiscated,” he gasped out in great confusion, “and my father has obtained them for you.”

“That was unnecessary,” said Fabiola, “for they were settled on me long ago, and became mine the moment”—she faltered, and after a strong effort at self-mastery, she continued—“the moment they ceased to be another’s; they did not fall under confiscation.”

Corvinus was dumb-foundered: at last he stumbled into something, meant for an humble petition to be admitted as an aspirant after her hand, but understood by Fabiola to be a demand of recompense, for procuring or bringing so important a document. She assured him that every claim he might have on her should be fully and honorably considered at a more favorable moment; but as she was exceedingly wearied and unwell, she must beg him to leave her at present. He did so quite elated, fancying that he had secured his prize.

After he was gone she hardly looked at the parchment, which he had left open on a small table by her couch, but sat musing on the sorrowful scenes she had witnessed, till it wanted about an hour to sunset. Sometimes her reveries turned to one point, sometimes to another of the late events; and, at last, she was dwelling on her being confronted with Fulvius, that morning, in the Forum. Her memory vividly replaced the entire scene before her, and her mind gradually worked itself into a state of painful excitement, which she at length checked by saying aloud to herself: “Thank heaven! I shall never behold that villain’s face again.”

The words were scarcely out of her mouth, when she shaded her eyes with her hand, as she raised herself up on her couch, and looked towards the door. Was it her overheated fancy which beguiled her, or did her wakeful eyes show her a reality? Her ears decided the question, by these words which they heard:

“Pray, madam, who is the man whom you honor by that gracious speech?”

“You, Fulvius,” she said, rising with dignity. “A further intruder still; not only into the house, the villa, and the dungeon, but into the most secret apartments of a lady’s residence; and what is worse, into the house of sorrow of one whom you have bereaved. Begone at once, or I will have you ignominiously expelled hence.”

“Sit down and compose yourself, lady,” rejoined the intruder; “this is my last visit to you; but we have a reckoning to make together of some weight. As to crying out, or bringing in help, you need not trouble yourself; your orders to your servants to keep aloof, have been too well obeyed. There is no one within call.”

It was true. Fulvius found the way prepared unwittingly for him by Corvinus; for upon presenting himself at the door the porter, who had seen him twice dine at the house, told him of the strict orders given, and assured him that he could not be admitted unless he came from the emperor, for such were his instructions. That, Fulvius said, was exactly his case; and the porter, wondering that so many imperial messengers should come in one day, let him pass. He begged that the door might be left unfastened, in case the porter should not be at his post when he retired; for he was in a hurry, and should not like to disturb the house in such a state of grief. He added that he required no guide, for he knew the way to Fabiola’s apartment.

Fulvius seated himself opposite to the lady, and continued:

“You ought not to be offended, madam, with my unexpectedly coming upon you, and overhearing your amiable soliloquies about myself; it is a lesson I learned from yourself in the Tullian prison. But I must begin my scores from an earlier date. When, for the first time, I was invited by your worthy father to his table, I met one whose looks and words at once gained my affections,—I need not now mention her name,—and whose heart, with instinctive sympathy, returned them.”

“Insolent man!” Fabiola exclaimed, “to allude to such a topic here; it is false that any such affection ever existed on either side.”

“As to the Lady Agnes,” resumed Fulvius, “I have the best authority, that of your lamented parent, who more than once encouraged me to persevere in my suit, by assuring me that his cousin had confided to him her reciprocating love.”

Fabiola was mortified; for she now remembered that this was too true, from the hints which Fabius had given her, of his stupid misunderstanding.

“I know well, that my dear father was under a delusion upon this subject; but I, from whom that dear child concealed nothing——”

“Except her religion,” interrupted Fulvius, with bitter irony.

“Peace!” Fabiola went on; “that word sounds like a blasphemy on your lips—I knew that you were but an object of loathing and abhorrence to her.”

“Yes, after you had made me such. From that hour of our first meeting you became my bitter and unrelenting foe, in conspiracy with that treacherous officer, who has received his reward, and whom you had destined for the place I courted. Repress your indignation, lady, for I will be heard out,—you undermined my character, you poisoned her feelings, and you turned my love into necessary enmity.”

“Your love!” now broke in the indignant lady; “even if all that you have said were not basely false, what love could you have for her? How could you appreciate her artless simplicity, her genuine honesty, her rare understanding, her candid innocence, any more than the wolf can value the lamb’s gentleness, or the vulture the dove’s mildness? No, it was her wealth, her family connection, her nobility, that you grasped at, and nothing more; I read it in the very flash of your eye, when first it fixed itself, as a basilisk’s, upon her.”

“It is false!” he rejoined; “had I obtained my request, had I been thus worthily mated, I should have been found equal to my position, domestic, contented, and affectionate; as worthy of possessing her as——”

“As any one can be,” struck in Fabiola, “who, in offering his hand, expresses himself equally ready, in three hours, to espouse or to murder the object of his affection. And she prefers the latter, and he keeps his word. Begone from my presence; you taint the very atmosphere in which you move.”

“I will leave when I have accomplished my task, and you will have little reason to rejoice when I do. You have then purposely, and unprovoked, blighted and destroyed in me every honorable purpose of life, withered my only hope, cut me off from rank, society, respectable ease, and domestic happiness.

“That was not enough. After acting in that character, with which you summed up my condemnation, of a spy, and listened to my conversation, you this morning threw off all sense of female propriety, and stood forward prominently in the Forum, to complete in public what you had begun in private, excite against me the supreme tribunal, and through it the emperor, and arouse an unjust popular outcry and vengeance; such as, but for a feeling stronger than fear, which brings me hither, would make me now skulk, like a hunted wolf, till I could steal out of the nearest gate.”

“And, Fulvius, I tell you,” interposed Fabiola, “that the moment you cross its threshold, the average of virtue will be raised in this wicked city. Again I bid you depart from my house, at least; or at any rate I will withdraw from this offensive intrusion.”

“We part not yet, lady,” said Fulvius, whose countenance had been growing every moment more flushed, as his lips had been becoming more deadly pale. He rudely grasped her arm, and pushed her back to her seat; “and beware,” he added, “how you attempt again either to escape or to bring aid; your first cry will be your last, cost me what it may.

“You have made me, then, an outcast, not only from society but from Rome, an exile, a houseless wanderer on a friendless earth; was not that enough to satisfy your vengeance? No: you must needs rob me of my gold, of my rightfully, though painfully earned wealth; peace, reputation, my means of subsistence, all you have stolen from me, a youthful stranger.”

“Wicked and insolent man!” exclaimed now the indignant Roman lady, reckless of consequences, “you shall answer heavily for your temerity. Dare you, in my own house, call me a thief?”

“I dare; and I tell you this is your day of reckoning, and not mine. I have earned, even if by crime, it is nothing to you, my full share of your cousin’s confiscated property. I have earned it hardly, by pangs and rendings of the heart and soul, by sleepless nights of struggles with fiends that have conquered; ay, and with one at home that is sterner than they; by days and days of restless search for evidence, amidst the desolation of a proud, but degraded spirit. Have I not a right to enjoy it?

“Ay, call it what you will, call it my blood-money; the more infamous it is, the more base in you to step in and snatch it from me. It is like a rich man tearing the carrion from the hound’s jaws, after he has swollen his feet and rent his skin in hunting it down.”

“I will not seek for further epithets by which to call you; your mind is deluded by some vain dream,” said Fabiola, with an earnestness not untinged with alarm. She felt she was in the presence of a madman, one in whom violent passion, carried off by an unchecked, deeply-moved fancy, was lashing itself up to that intensity of wicked excitement, which constitutes a moral frenzy,—when the very murderer thinks himself a virtuous avenger. “Fulvius,” she continued, with studied calmness, and looking fully into his eyes, “I now entreat you to go. If you want money, you shall have it; but go, in heaven’s name go, before you destroy your reason by your anger.”

“What vain fancy do you mean?” asked Fulvius.

“Why, that I should have ever dreamt about Agnes’s wealth or property on such a day, or should have taken any advantage of her cruel death.”

“And yet it is so; I have it from the emperor’s mouth that he has made it over to you. Will you pretend to make me believe, that this most generous and liberal prince ever parted with a penny unsolicited, ay, or unbribed?”

“Of this I know nothing. But I know, that I would rather have died of want than petitioned for a farthing of such property!”

“Then would you make me rather believe, that in this city there is any one so disinterested as, undesired, to have petitioned for you? No, no, Lady Fabiola, all this is too incredible. But what is that?” And he pounced with eagerness on the imperial rescript, which had remained unlooked at, since Corvinus had left it. The sensation to him was like that of Æneas when he saw Pallas’s belt upon the body of Turnus. The fury, which seemed to have been subdued by his subtlety, as he had been reasoning to prove Fabiola guilty, flashed up anew at the sight of this fatal document. He eyed it for a minute, then broke out, gnashing his teeth with rage:

“Now, madam, I convict you of baseness, rapacity, and unnatural cruelty, far beyond any thing you have dared to charge on me! Look at this rescript, beautifully engrossed, with its golden letters and emblazoned margins; and presume to say that it was prepared in the one hour that elapsed between your cousin’s death and the emperor’s telling me that he had signed it? Nor do you pretend to know the generous friend who procured you the gift. Bah! while Agnes was in prison at latest; while you were whining and moaning over her; while you were reproaching me for cruelty and treachery towards her,—me, a stranger and alien to her! you, the gentle lady, the virtuous philosopher, the loving, fondling kinswoman, you, my stern reprover, were coolly plotting to take advantage of my crime, for securing her property, and seeking out the elegant scribe, who should gild your covetousness with his pencil, and paint over your treason to your own flesh and blood, with his blushing minium.”[212]

“Cease, madman, cease!” exclaimed Fabiola, endeavoring in vain to master his glaring eye. But he went on in still wilder tone:

“And then, forsooth, when you have thus basely robbed me, you offer me money. You have out-plotted me, and you pity me! You have made me a beggar, and then you offer me alms,—alms out of my own wages, the wages which even hell allows its fated victims while on earth!”

Fabiola rose again, but he seized her with a maniac’s gripe, and this time did not let her go. He went on:

“Now listen to the last words that I will speak, or they may be the last that you will hear. Give back to me that unjustly obtained property; it is not fair that I should have the guilt, and you its reward. Transfer it by your sign manual to me as a free and loving gift, and I will depart. If not, you have signed your own doom.” A stern and menacing glance accompanied these words.

Fabiola’s haughty self rose again erect within her; her Roman heart, unsubdued, stood firm. Danger only made her fearless. She gathered her robe with matronly dignity around her, and replied:

“Fulvius, listen to my words, though they should be the last that I may speak; as certainly they shall be the last that you shall hear from me.

“Surrender this property to you? I would give it willingly to the first leper that I might meet in the street, but to you never. Never shall you touch thing that belonged to that holy maiden, be it a gem or be it a straw! That touch would be pollution. Take gold of mine, if it please you; but any thing that ever belonged to her, from me no treasures can ransom. And one legacy I prize more than all her inheritance. You have now offered me two alternatives, as last night you did her, to yield to your demands, or die. Agnes taught me which to choose. Once again, I say, depart.”

“And leave you to possess what is mine? leave you to triumph over me, as one whom you have outwitted—you honored, and I disgraced—you rich, and I penniless—you happy, and I wretched? No, never! I cannot save myself from what you have made me; but I can prevent your being what you have no right to be. For this I have come here; this is my day of Nemesis.[213] Now die!” While he was speaking these reproaches, he was slowly pushing her backwards with his left hand towards the couch from which she had risen; while his right was tremblingly feeling for something in the folds of his bosom.

As he finished his last word, he thrust her violently down upon the couch, and seized her by the hair. She made no resistance, she uttered no cry; partly a fainting and sickening sensation came over her; partly a noble feeling of self-respect checked any unseemly exhibition of fear, before a scornful enemy. Just as she closed her eyes, she saw something like lightning above her; she could not tell whether it was his glaring eye or flashing steel.

In another moment she felt oppressed and suffocated, as if a great weight had fallen upon her; and a hot stream was flowing over her bosom.

A sweet voice full of earnestness sounded in her ears:

“Cease, Orontius; I am thy sister Miriam!”

Fulvius, in accents choked by passion, replied:

“It is false; give me up my prey!”

A few words more were faintly spoken in a tongue unknown to Fabiola; when she felt her hair released, heard the dagger dashed to the ground, and Fulvius cry out bitterly, as he rushed out of the room:

“O Christ! this is Thy Nemesis!”

Fabiola’s strength was returning; but she felt the weight upon her increase. She struggled, and released herself. Another body was lying in her place, apparently dead, and covered with blood.

It was the faithful Syra, who had thrown herself between her mistress’s life and her brother’s dagger.

CHAPTER XXXI.

DIONYSIUS.

THE great thoughts, which this occurrence would naturally have suggested to the noble heart of Fabiola, were suppressed, for a time, by the exigencies of the moment. Her first care was to stanch the flowing blood with whatever was nearest at hand. While she was engaged in this work, there was a general rush of servants towards her apartment. The stupid porter had begun to be uneasy at Fulvius’s long stay (the reader has now heard his real name), when he saw him dash out of the door like a maniac, and thought he perceived stains of blood upon his garment. He immediately gave the alarm to the entire household.

Fabiola by a gesture stopped the crowd at the door of her room, and desired only Euphrosyne and her Greek maid to enter. The latter, since the influence of the black slave had been removed, had attached herself most affectionately to Syra, as we must still call her, and had, with great docility, listened to her moral instructions. A slave was instantly despatched for the physician who had always been sent for by Syra in illness, Dionysius, who, as we have already observed, lived in the house of Agnes.

In the meantime Fabiola had been overjoyed at finding the blood cease to flow so rapidly, and still more at seeing her servant open her eyes upon her, though only for a moment. She would not have exchanged for any wealth the sweet smile which accompanied that look.

In a few minutes the kind physician arrived. He carefully examined the wound, and pronounced favorably on it for the present. The blow, as aimed, would have gone straight to Fabiola’s heart. But her loving servant, in spite of prohibition, had been hovering near her mistress during the whole day; never intruding, but anxious for any opportunity which might offer, of seconding those good impressions of grace, which the morning’s scenes could not fail to have produced. While in a neighboring room she heard violent tones which were too familiar to her ears; and hastened noiselessly round, and within the curtain which covered the door of Fabiola’s own apartment. She stood concealed in the dusk, on the very spot where Agnes had, a few months before, consoled her.

She had not been there long when the last struggle commenced. While the man was pushing her mistress backwards, she followed him close behind; and as he was lifting his arm, passed him, and threw her body over that of his victim. The blow descended, but misdirected, through the shock she gave his arm; and it fell upon her neck, where it inflicted a deep wound, checked, however, by encountering the collar-bone. We need not say what it cost her to make this sacrifice. Not the dread of pain, nor the fear of death could for a moment have deterred her; it was the horror of imprinting on her brother’s brow the mark of Cain, the making him doubly a fratricide, which deeply anguished her. But she had offered her life for her mistress. To have fought with the assassin, whose strength and agility she knew, would have been useless; to try to alarm the house before one fatal blow was struck was hopeless; and nothing remained but to accomplish her immolation, by substituting herself for the intended victim. Still she wished to spare her brother the consummation of his crime, and in doing so manifested to Fabiola their relationship and their real names.

In his blind fury he refused her credit; but the words, in their native tongue, which said, “Remember my scarf which you picked up here,” brought back to his memory so terrible a domestic tale, that had the earth opened a cavern in that moment before his feet, he would have leaped into it, to bury his remorse and shame.

Strange, too, it proved, that he should not have ever allowed Eurotas to get possession of that family relic, but should, ever since he regained it, have kept it apart as a sacred thing; and when all else was being packed up, should have folded it up and put it in his breast. And now, in the act of drawing out his eastern dagger, he had plucked this out too, and both were found upon the floor.

Dionysius, immediately after dressing the wound, and administering proper restoratives, which brought back consciousness, desired the patient to be left perfectly quiet, to see as few persons as possible, so as to prevent excitement, and to go on with the treatment which he prescribed until midnight. “I will call,” he added, “very early in the morning, when I must see my patient alone.” He whispered a few words in her ear, which seemed to do her more good than all his medicines; for her countenance brightened into an angelic smile.

Fabiola had her placed in her own bed, and, allotting to her attendants the outward room, reserved to herself exclusively the privilege, as she deemed it, of nursing the servant, to whom a few months before she could hardly feel grateful for having tended her in fever. She had informed the others how the wound had been inflicted, concealing the relationship between her assailant and her deliverer.

Although herself exhausted and feverish, she would not leave the bedside of the patient; and when midnight was past, and no more remedies had to be administered, she sank to rest upon a low couch close to the bed. And now what were her thoughts, when, in the dim light of a sick room, she opened her mind and heart to them? They were simple and earnest. She saw at once the reality and truth of all that her servant had ever spoken to her. When she last conversed with her, the principles which she heard with delight, had appeared to her wholly beyond practice, beautiful theories, which could not be brought to action. When Miriam had described a sphere of virtue, wherein no approbation or reward of man was to be expected, but only the approving eye of God, she had admired the idea, which powerfully seized her generous mind; but she had rebelled against its becoming the constraining rule of hourly conduct. Yet, if the stroke under which she cast herself had proved fatal, as it might easily have done, where would have been her reward? What, then, could have been her motive but that very theory, as it seemed, of responsibility to an unseen power?

And when Miriam had discoursed of heroism in virtue as being its ordinary standard, how chimerical the principle had seemed! Yet here, without preparation, without forethought, without excitement, without glory,—nay, with marked desire of concealment, this slave had performed a deed of self-sacrifice, heroic in every way. From what could that result but from habitual heroism of virtue, ready at any hour to do what would ennoble forever a soldier’s name? She was no dreamer, then, no theorist, but a serious, real practiser of all that she taught. Could this be a philosophy? Oh, no, it must be a religion! the religion of Agnes and of Sebastian, to whom she considered Miriam every way equal. How she longed to converse with her again!

Early in the morning, according to his promise, the physician returned, and found his patient much improved. He desired to be left alone with her; when, having spread a linen cloth upon the table, and placed lighted tapers upon it, he drew from his bosom an embroidered scarf, and uncovered a golden box, the sacred contents of which she well knew. Approaching her he said:

“My dear child, as I promised you, I have now brought you not merely the truest remedy of every ailment, bodily and spiritual, but the very Physician Himself, who by His word alone restoreth all things,[215] whose touch opens the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, whose will cleanses lepers, the hem of whose garment sends forth virtue to cure all. Are you ready to receive Him?”

“With all my heart,” she replied, clasping her hands; “I long to possess Him whom alone I have loved, in whom I have believed, to whom my heart belongs.”

“Does no anger or indignation exist in your soul against him who has injured you? does any pride or vanity arise in your mind at the thought of what you have done? or are you conscious of any other fault requiring humble confession and absolution before receiving the sacred gift into your breast?”

“Full of imperfection and sin I know myself to be, venerable father; but I am not conscious of any knowing offence. I have had no need to forgive him to whom you allude; I love him too much for that, and would willingly give my life to save him. And of what have I to be proud, a poor servant, who have only obeyed my Lord’s commands?”

“Invite then, my child, this Lord into your house, that coming He may heal you, and fill you with His grace.”

Approaching the table, he took from it a particle of the Blessed Eucharist, in the form of unleavened bread, which, being dry, he moistened in water, and placed within her lips.[216] She closed them upon it, and remained for some time absorbed in contemplation.

And thus did the holy Dionysius discharge his twofold office of physician and priest, attributed to him on his tomb.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE SACRIFICE ACCEPTED.

THROUGH the whole of that day the patient seemed occupied with deep, but most pleasing thoughts. Fabiola, who never left her, except for moments to give necessary directions, watched her countenance with a mixture of awe and delight. It appeared as if her servant’s mind were removed from surrounding objects, and conversing in a totally different sphere. Now a smile passed like a sunbeam across her features, now a tear trembled in her eye, or flowed down her cheeks; sometimes her pupils were raised and kept fixed on heaven for a considerable time, while a blissful look of perfect and calm enjoyment sat unvarying upon her; and then she would turn round with an expression of infinite tenderness towards her mistress, and hold out her hand to be clasped in hers. And Fabiola could sit thus for hours in silence, which was as yet prescribed; feeling it an honor, and thinking it did her good, to be in contact with such a rare type of virtue.

At length, in the course of the day, after giving her patient some nourishment, she said to her, smiling: “I think you are much better, Miriam, already. Your physician must have given you some wonderful medicine.”

“Indeed he has, my dearest mistress.”

Fabiola was evidently pained; and leaning over her, said softly: “Oh, do not, I entreat you, call me by such a title. If it has to be used, it should be by me towards you. But, in fact, it is no longer true; for what I long intended has now been done; and the instrument of your liberation has been ordered to be made out, not as a freedwoman, but as an ingenua;[217] for such I know you are.”

Miriam looked her thanks, for fear of further hurting Fabiola’s feelings; and they continued to be happy together in silence.

Towards evening Dionysius returned, and found so great an improvement, that, ordering more nourishing food, he permitted a little quiet conversation.

“I must now,” said Fabiola, so soon as they were alone, “fulfill the first duty, which my heart has been burning to discharge, that of thanking you,—I wish I knew a stronger word,—not for the life which you have saved me, but for the magnanimous sacrifice which you made for it—and, let me add, the unequalled example of heroic virtue, which alone inspired it.”

“After all, what have I done, but simple duty? You had a right to my life, for a much less cause than to save yours,” answered Miriam.

“No doubt,” responded Fabiola, “it appears so to you, who have been trained to the doctrine which overpowered me, that the most heroic acts ought to be considered by men as performances of ordinary duties.”

“And thereby,” rejoined Miriam, “they cease to be what you have called them.”

“No, no,” exclaimed Fabiola, with enthusiasm; “do not try to make me mean and vile to my own heart, by teaching me to undervalue what I cannot but prize as an unrivalled act of virtue. I have been reflecting on it, night and day, since I witnessed it; and my heart has been yearning to speak to you of it, and even yet I dare not, or I should oppress your weakness with my overcharged feelings. It was noble, it was grand, it was beyond all reach of praise; though I know you do not want it. I cannot see any way in which the sublimeness of the act could have been enhanced, or human virtue rise one step higher.”

Miriam, who was now raised to a reclining position, took Fabiola’s hand between both hers; and turning round towards her, in a soft and mild, but most earnest tone, thus addressed her:

“Good and gentle lady, for one moment listen to me. Not to depreciate what you are good enough to value, since it pains you to hear it, but to teach you how far we still are from what might have been done, let me trace for you a parallel scene, but where all shall be reversed. Let it be a slave—pardon me, dear Fabiola, for another pang—I see it in your face, but it shall be the last—yes, a slave brutish, ungrateful, rebellious to the most benign and generous of masters. And let the stroke, not of an assassin, but of the minister of justice, impend over his head. What would you call the act, how would you characterize the virtue, of that master, if out of pure love, and that he might reclaim that wretched man, he should rush beneath the axe’s blow, ay, and its preceding ignominious stripes, and leave written in his will, that he made that slave heir to his titles and his wealth, and desired him to be considered as his brother?”

“O Miriam, Miriam, you have drawn a picture too sublime to be believed of man. You have not eclipsed your own deed, for I spoke of human virtue. To act as you have now described would require, if possible, that of a God!”

Miriam pressed the folded hand to her bosom, fixed on Fabiola’s wondering eyes a look of heavenly inspiration, as she sweetly and solemnly replied: “And Jesus Christ, who did all this for man, was truly God.”

Fabiola covered her face with both her hands, and for a long time was silent. Miriam prayed earnestly in her own tranquil heart.

“Miriam, I thank you from my soul,” at length Fabiola said; “you have fulfilled your promise of guiding me. For some time I have only been fearing that you might not be a Christian; but it could not be.

“Now tell me, are those awful, but sweet words, which you just now uttered, which have sunk into my heart as deeply, as silently, and as irrevocably as a piece of gold dropped upon the surface of the still ocean goes down into its depths,—are those words a mere part of the Christian system, or are they its essential principle?”

“From a simple allegory, dear lady, your powerful mind has, in one bound, reached and grasped the master-key of our whole teaching: the alembic of your fine understanding has extracted, and condensed into one thought, the most vital and prominent doctrines of Christianity. You have distilled them into their very essence.

“That man, God’s creature and bondsman, rebelled against his Lord; that justice irresistible had doomed and pursued him; that this very Lord ‘took the form of a servant, and in habit was found like a man;’[218] that in this form he suffered stripes, buffets, mockery, and shameful death, became the ‘Crucified One,’ as men here call Him, and thereby rescued man from his fate, and gave him part in His own riches and kingdom: all this is comprised in the words that I have spoken.

“And you had reached the right conclusion. Only God could have performed so godlike an action, or have offered so sublime an expiation.”

Fabiola was again wrapped up in silent thought, till she timidly asked:

“And was it to this that you referred in Campania, when you spoke of God alone being a victim worthy of God?”

“Yes; but I further alluded to the continuation of that sacrifice, even in our own days, by a marvellous dispensation of an all-powerful love. However, on this I must not yet speak.”

Fabiola resumed: “I every moment see how all that you have ever spoken to me coheres and fits together, like the parts of one plant; all springing one from another. I thought it bore only the lovely flowers of an elegant theory; you have shown me in your conduct how these can ripen into sweet and solid fruit. In the doctrine which you have just explained, I seem to myself to find the noble stem from which all the others branch forth—even to that very fruit. For who would refuse to do for another, what is much less than God has done for him? But, Miriam, there is a deep and unseen root whence springs all this, possibly dark beyond contemplation, deep beyond reach, complex beyond man’s power to unravel; yet perhaps simple to a confiding mind. If, in my present ignorance, I can venture to speak, it should be vast enough to occupy all nature, rich enough to fill creation with all that is good and perfect in it, strong enough to bear the growth of your noble tree, till its summit reach above the stars, and its branches to the ends of earth.

“I mean, your idea of that God, whom you made me fear, when you spoke to me as a philosopher of Him, and taught me to know as the ever-present watchman and judge; but whom I am sure you will make me love when, as a Christian, you exhibit Him to me as the root and origin of such boundless tenderness and mercy.

“Without some deep mystery in His nature, as yet unknown to me, I cannot fully apprehend that wonderful doctrine of man’s purchase.”

“Fabiola,” responded Miriam, “more learned teachers than I should undertake the instruction of one so gifted and so acute. But will you believe me if I attempt to give you some explanation?”

“Miriam,” replied Fabiola, with strong emphasis, “ONE WHO IS READY TO DIE FOR ANOTHER, WILL CERTAINLY NOT DECEIVE HIM.”

“And now,” rejoined the patient, smiling, “you have again seized a great principle—that of FAITH. I will, therefore, be only the simple narrator of what Jesus Christ, who truly died for us, has taught us. You will believe my word only as that of a faithful witness; you will accept His, as that of an unerring God.”

Fabiola bowed her head, and listened with reverential mind to her, in whom she had long honored a teacher of marvellous wisdom, which she drew from some unknown school; but whom now she almost worshipped as an angel, who could open to her the flood-gates of the eternal ocean, whose waters are the unfathomable Wisdom, overflowing on earth.

Miriam expounded, in the simple terms of Catholic teaching, the sublime doctrine of the Trinity; then after relating the fall of man, unfolded the mystery of the Incarnation, giving, in the very words of St. John, the history of the Eternal Word, till He was made flesh, and dwelt among men. Often was she interrupted by the expressions of admiration or assent which her pupil uttered; never by cavil or doubt. Philosophy had given place to religion, captiousness to docility, incredulity to faith.

But now a sadness seemed to have come over Fabiola’s heart: Miriam read it in her looks, and asked her its cause.

“I hardly dare tell you,” she replied. “But all that you have related to me is so beautiful, so divine, that it seems to me necessarily to end here.

“The Word (what a noble name!), that is, the expression of God’s love, the externation of His wisdom, the evidence of His power, the very breath of His life-giving life, which is Himself, becometh flesh. Who shall furnish it to Him? Shall He take up the cast-off slough of a tainted humanity, or shall a new manhood be created expressly for Him? Shall He take His place in a double genealogy, receiving thus into Himself a twofold tide of corruption; and shall there be any one on earth daring and high enough to call himself His father?”

“No,” softly whispered Miriam; “but there shall be one holy enough, and humble enough, to be worthy to call herself His mother!

“Almost 800 years before the Son of God came into the world, a prophet spoke, and recorded his words, and deposited the record of them in the hands of the Jews, Christ’s inveterate enemies; and his words were these: ‘Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and His name shall be called Emanuel,’[219] which in the Hebrew language signifies ‘God with us,’ that is with men.

“This prophecy was of course fulfilled in the conception and birth of God’s Son on earth.”

“And who was she?” asked Fabiola, with great reverence.

“One whose very name is blessed by every one that truly loves her Son. Mary is the name by which you will know her: Miriam, its original in her own tongue, is the one by which I honor her. Well, you may suppose, was she prepared for such high destiny by holiness and virtue; not as cleansed, but as ever clean; not as purified, but as always pure; not freed, but exempted, from sin. The tide of which you spoke, found before her the dam of an eternal decree, which could not brook that the holiness of God should mingle with what it could only redeem, by keeping extraneous to itself. Bright as the blood of Adam, when the breath of God sent it sparkling through his veins, pure as the flesh of Eve, while standing yet in the mould of the Almighty hands, as they drew it from the side of the slumbering man, were the blood and the flesh, which the Spirit of God formed into the glorious humanity, that Mary gave to Jesus.

“And after this glorious privilege granted to our sex, are you surprised that many, like your sweet Agnes, should have chosen this peerless Virgin as the pattern of their lives; should find in her, whom God so elected, the model of every virtue; and should, in preference to allowing themselves to be yoked, even by the tenderest of ties, to the chariot-wheels of this world, seek to fly upwards on wings of undivided love like hers?”

After a pause and some reflection, Miriam proceeded briefly to detail the history of our Saviour’s birth, His laborious youth, His active but suffering public life, and then His ignominious Passion. Often was the narrative interrupted by the tears and sobs of the willing listener and ready learner. At last the time for rest had come, when Fabiola humbly asked:

“Are you too fatigued to answer one question more?”

“No,” was the cheerful reply.

“What hope,” said Fabiola, “can there be for one who cannot say she was ignorant, for she pretended to know every thing; nor that she neglected to learn, for she affected eagerness after every sort of knowledge; but can only confess that she scorned the true wisdom, and blasphemed its Giver;—for one who has scoffed at the very torments which proved the love, and sneered at the death which was the ransoming, of Him whom she has mocked at, as the ‘Crucified?’”

A flood of tears stopped her speech.

Miriam waited till their relieving flow had subsided into that gentler dew which softens the heart; then in soothing tones addressed her as follows:

“In the days of our Lord there lived a woman who bore the same name as His spotless Mother; but she had sinned publicly, degradingly, as you, Fabiola, would abhor to sin. She became acquainted, we know not how, with her Redeemer; in the secrecy of her own heart, she contemplated earnestly, till she came to love intensely, His gracious and condescending familiarity with sinners, and His singular indulgence and forgivingness to the fallen. She loved and loved still more; and, forgetting herself, she only thought how she might manifest her love, so that it might bring honor, however slight, to Him, and shame, however great, on herself.

“She went into the house of a rich man, where the usual courtesies of hospitality had been withheld from its Divine guest, into the house of a haughty man who spurned, in the presumption of his heart, the public sinner; she supplied the attentions which had been neglected to Him whom she loved; and she was scorned, as she expected, for her obtrusive sorrow.”

“How did she do this, Miriam?”

“She knelt at His feet as He sat at table; she poured out upon them a flood of tears; she wiped them with her luxurious hair, she kissed them fervently, and she anointed them with rich perfume.”

“And what was the result?”

“She was defended by Jesus against the carping gibes of His host; she was told that she was forgiven on account of her love, and was dismissed with kindest comfort.”

“And what became of her?”

“When on Calvary He was crucified, two women were privileged to stand close to Him; Mary the sinless, and Mary the penitent: to show how unsullied and repentant love may walk hand in hand, beside Him who said that He had ‘come to call not the just, but sinners to repentance.’”

No more was said that night. Miriam, fatigued with her exertion, sank into a placid slumber. Fabiola sat by her side, filled to her heart’s brim with this tale of love. She pondered over it again and again; and she still saw more and more how every part of this wonderful system was consistent. For if Miriam had been ready to die for her, in imitation of her Saviour’s love, so had she been as ready to forgive her, when she had thoughtlessly injured her. Every Christian, she now felt, ought to be a copy, a representative of his Master; but the one that slumbered so tranquilly beside her was surely true to her model, and might well represent Him to her.

When, after some time, Miriam awoke, she found her mistress (for her patent of freedom was not yet completed) lying at her feet, over which she had sobbed herself to sleep. She understood at once the full meaning and merit of this self-humiliation; she did not stir, but thanked God with a full heart that her sacrifice had been accepted.

Fabiola, on awaking, crept back to her own couch, as she thought, unobserved. A secret, sharp pang it had cost her to perform this act of self-abasement; but she had thoroughly humbled the pride of her heart. She felt for the first time that her heart was Christian.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

MIRIAM’S HISTORY.

THE next morning, when Dionysius came, he found both patient and nurse so radiant and so happy, that he congratulated them both on having had a good night’s rest. Both laughed at the idea; but concurred in saying that it had been the happiest night of their lives. Dionysius was surprised, till Miriam, taking the hand of Fabiola, said:

“Venerable priest of God, I confide to your fatherly care this catechumen, who desires to be fully instructed in the mysteries of our holy faith, and to be regenerated by the waters of eternal salvation.”

“What!” asked Fabiola, amazed, “are you more than a physician?”

“I am, my child,” the old man replied; “unworthily I hold likewise the higher office of a priest in God’s Church.”

Fabiola unhesitatingly knelt before him, and kissed his hand. The priest placed his right hand upon her head, and said to her:

“Be of good courage, daughter; you are not the first of your house whom God has brought into His holy Church. It is now many years since I was called in here, under the guise of a physician, by a former servant, now no more; but in reality it was to baptize, a few hours before her death, the wife of Fabius.”

“My mother!” exclaimed Fabiola. “She died immediately after giving me birth. And did she die a Christian?”

“Yes; and I doubt not that her spirit has been hovering about you through life by the side of the angel who guards you, guiding you unseen to this blessed hour. And, before the throne of God, she has been unceasing in her supplications on your behalf.”

Joy tenfold filled the breasts of the two friends; and after arrangements had been made with Dionysius for the necessary instructions and preparations for Fabiola’s admission to baptism, she went up to the side of Miriam, and taking her hand, said to her in a low, soft voice:

“Miriam, may I from henceforth call you sister?” A pressure of the hand was the only reply which she could give.

With their mistress, the old nurse, Euphrosyne, and the Greek slave, placed themselves, as we now say, under instruction, to receive baptism on Easter-eve. Nor must we forget one who was already enrolled in the list of catechumens, and whom Fabiola had taken home with her and kept, Emerentiana, the foster-sister of Agnes. It was her delight to make herself useful, by being the ready messenger between the sick-room and the rest of the house.

During her illness, as her strength improved, Miriam imparted many particulars of her previous life to Fabiola; and as they will throw some light on our preceding narrative, we will give her history in a continuous form.

Some years before our story commenced, there lived in Antioch a man who, though not of ancient family, was rich, and moved in the highest circles of that most luxurious city. To keep his position, he was obliged to indulge in great expense; and from want of strict economy, he had gradually become oppressed with debt. He was married to a lady of great virtue, who became a Christian, at first secretly, and afterwards continued so, with her husband’s reluctant consent. In the meantime their two children, a son and daughter, had received their domestic education under her care. The former, Orontius, so called from the favorite stream which watered the city, was fifteen when his father first discovered his wife’s religion. He had learnt much from his mother of the doctrines of Christianity, and had been with her an attendant on Christian worship; and hence he possessed a dangerous knowledge, of which he afterwards made so fatal a use.

But he had not the least inclination to embrace the doctrines, or adopt the practices of Christianity; nor would he hear of preparing for baptism. He was wilful and artful, with no love for any restraint upon his passions, or for any strict morality. He looked forward to distinction in the world, and to his full share in all its enjoyments. He had been, and continued to be, highly educated; and besides the Greek language, then generally spoken at Antioch, he was acquainted with Latin, which he spoke readily and gracefully, as we have seen, though with a slight foreign accent. In the family, the vernacular idiom was used with servants, and often in familiar conversation. Orontius was not sorry when his father removed him from his mother’s control, and insisted that he should continue to follow the dominant and favored religion of the state.

As to the daughter, who was three years younger, he did not so much care. He deemed it foolish and unmanly to take much trouble about religion; to change it especially, or abandon that of the empire, was, he thought, a sign of weakness. But women being more imaginative, and more under the sway of the feelings, might be indulged in any fancies of this sort. Accordingly he permitted his daughter Miriam, whose name was Syrian, as the mother belonged to a rich family from Edessa, to continue in the free exercise of her new faith. She became, in addition to her high mental cultivation, a model of virtue, simple and unpretending. It was a period, we may observe, in which the city of Antioch was renowned for the learning of its philosophers, some of whom were eminent as Christians.