CHAPTER XV.

EXPLANATIONS.

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

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

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

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

“How was it done?” asked a third.

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

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

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

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

Calpurnius delivered himself, with great pompousness, as follows:

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

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

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

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

“Dreadful!” all cried out.

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

“Fearful!” joined in the chorus.

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

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

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

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

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

“And what is that?” sneeringly asked Fulvius.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she passed on, singing blithely. But Sebastian begged her to stay one moment.