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.

A few years later, when the son had reached manhood, and had abundantly unfolded his character, the mother died. Before her end, she had seen symptoms of her husband’s impending ruin; and, determined that her daughter should not be dependent on his careless administration, nor on her son’s ominous selfishness and ambition, she secured effectually from the covetousness of both, her own large fortune, which was settled on her daughter. She resisted every influence, and every art, employed to induce her to release this property, or allow it to merge in the family resources, and be made available towards relieving their embarrassments. And on her death-bed, among other solemn parental injunctions, she laid this on her daughter’s filial sense of duty, that she never would allow, after coming of age, any alteration in this arrangement.

Matters grew worse and worse; creditors pressed; property had been injudiciously disposed of; when a mysterious person, called Eurotas, made his appearance in the family. No one but its head seemed to know him; and he evidently looked upon him as at once a blessing and a curse, the bearer both of salvation and of ruin.

The reader is in possession of Eurotas’s own revelations; it is sufficient to add, that being the elder brother, but conscious that his rough, morose, and sinister character did not fit him for sustaining the position of head of the family and administering quietly a settled property, and having a haughty ambition to raise his house into a nobler rank, and increase even its riches, he took but a moderate sum of money as capital, vanished for years, embarked in the desperate traffic of interior Asia, penetrated into China and India, and came back home with a large fortune, and a collection of rare gems, which helped his nephew’s brief career, but misguided him to ruin in Rome.

Eurotas, instead of a rich family, into which to pour superfluous wealth, found only a bankrupt house to save from ruin. But his family pride prevailed; and after many reproaches, and bitter quarrels with his brother, but concealed from all else, he paid off his debts by the extinction of his own capital, and thus virtually became master of all the wreck of his brother’s property, and of the entire family.

After a few years of weary life, the father sickened and died. On his death-bed, he told Orontius that he had nothing to leave him, that all he had lived on for some years, the very house over his head, belonged to his friend Eurotas, whose relationship he did not further explain, whom he must look up to entirely for support and guidance. The youth thus found himself, while full of pride, ambition, and voluptuousness, in the hands of a cold-hearted, remorseless, and no less ambitious man, who soon prescribed as the basis of mutual confidence, absolute submission to his will, while he should act in the capacity of an inferior, and the understood principle, that nothing was too great or too little, nothing too good or too wicked to be done, to restore family position and wealth.

To stay at Antioch was impossible after the ruin which had overtaken the house. With a good capital in hand, much might be done elsewhere. But now, even the sale of all left would scarcely cover the liabilities discovered after the father’s death. There was still untouched the sister’s fortune; and both agreed that this _must_ be got from her. Every artifice was tried, every persuasion employed, but she simply and firmly resisted; both in obedience to her mother’s dying orders, and because she had in view the establishment of a house for consecrated virgins, in which she intended to pass her days. She was now just of legal age to dispose of her own property. She offered them every advantage that she could give them; proposed that for a time they should all live together upon her means. But this did not answer their purpose; and when every other course had failed, Eurotas began to hint, that one who stood so much in their way should be got rid of at any cost.

Orontius shuddered at the first proposal of the thought. Eurotas familiarized him gradually with it, till--shrinking yet from the actual commission of fratricide--he thought he had almost done something virtuous, as the brothers of Joseph imagined they did, by adopting a slower and less sanguinary method of dealing with an obnoxious brother. Stratagem and unseen violence, of which no law could take cognizance, and which no one would dare reveal, offered him the best chance of success.

Among the privileges of Christians in the first ages, we have already mentioned that of reserving the Blessed Eucharist at home for domestic communion. We have described the way in which it was enfolded in an _orarium_, or linen cloth, again often preserved in a richer cover. This precious gift was kept in a chest (_arca_) with a lid, as St. Cyprian has informed us.[220] Orontius well knew this; and he was moreover aware that its contents were more prized than silver or gold; that, as the Fathers tell us, to drop negligently a crumb of the consecrated bread was considered a crime;[221] and that the name of “pearl,” which was given to the smallest fragment,[222] showed that it was so precious in a Christian’s eye, that he would part with all he possessed to rescue it from sacrilegious profanation.

The scarf richly embroidered with pearls, which has more than once affected our narrative, was the outer covering in which Miriam’s mother had preserved this treasure; and her daughter valued it both as a dear inheritance, and as a consecrated object, for she continued its use.

One day, early in the morning, she knelt before her ark; and after fervent preparation by prayer, proceeded to open it. To her dismay she found it already unlocked, and her treasure gone! Like Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre, she wept bitterly, because they had taken her Lord, and she knew not where they had laid Him. Like her, too, “as she was weeping she stooped down and looked” again into her ark, and found a paper, which in the confusion of the first glance she had overlooked.

It informed her that what she sought was safe in her brother’s hands, and might be ransomed. She ran at once to him, where he was closeted with the dark man, in whose presence she always trembled; threw herself on her knees before him, and entreated him to restore what she valued more than all her wealth. He was on the point of yielding to her tears and supplications, when Eurotas fixed his stern eye upon him, overawed him, then himself addressed her, saying:

“Miriam, we take you at your word. We wish to put the earnestness and reality of your faith to a sufficient test. Are you truly sincere in what you offer?”

“I will surrender any thing, all I have, to rescue from profanation the Holy of Holies.”

“Then sign that paper,” said Eurotas, with a sneer.

She took the pen in her hand, and after running her eye over the document, signed it. It was a surrender of her entire property to Eurotas. Orontius was furious when he saw himself overreached, by the man to whom he had suggested the snare for his sister. But it was too late; he was only the faster in his unsparing gripe. A more formal renunciation of her rights was exacted from Miriam, with the formalities required by the Roman law.

For a short time she was treated soothingly; then hints began to be given to her of the necessity of moving, as Orontius and his friend intended to proceed to Nicomedia, the imperial residence. She asked to be sent to Jerusalem, where she would obtain admission into some community of holy women. She was accordingly embarked on board a vessel, the captain of which bore a suspicious character, and was very sparingly supplied with means. But she bore round her neck what she had given proof of valuing, more than any wealth. For, as St. Ambrose relates of his brother Satyrus, yet a catechumen, Christians carried round their necks the Holy Eucharist, when embarking for a voyage.[223] We need not say that Miriam bore it securely folded in the only thing of price she cared to take from her father’s house.

When the vessel was out at sea, instead of coasting towards Joppe or any port on the coast, the captain stood straight out, as if making for some distant shore. What his purpose was, it was difficult to conjecture; but his few passengers became alarmed, and a serious altercation ensued. This was cut short by a sudden storm; the vessel was carried forward at the mercy of the winds for some days, and then dashed to pieces on a rocky island near Cyprus. Like Satyrus, Miriam attributed her reaching the shore in safety to the precious burden which she bore. She was almost the only survivor; at least she saw no other person saved. Those, therefore, that did live besides, on returning to Antioch, reported her death, together with that of the remaining passengers and crew.

She was picked up on the shore by men who lived on such spoil. Destitute and friendless, she was sold to a trader in slaves, taken to Tarsus, on the mainland, and again sold to a person of high rank, who treated her with kindness.

After a short time, Fabius instructed one of his agents in Asia to procure a slave of polished manners and virtuous character, if possible, at any price, to attend on his daughter; and Miriam, under the name of Syra, came to bring salvation to the house of Fabiola.