CHAPTER II.

THE STRANGER IN ROME.

Early next morning, the pilgrim was passing through the Forum, when he saw a group of persons gathered round one whom they were evidently teasing. He would have paid but little attention to such a scene in a public thoroughfare, had not his ear caught a name familiar to it. He therefore drew nigh. In the centre was a man, younger than himself; but if _he_ looked older than he was, from being wan and attenuated, the other did so much more from being the very contrary. He was bald and bloated, with a face swelled, and red, and covered with blotches and boils. A drunken cunning swam in his eye, and his gait and tone were those of a man habitually intoxicated. His clothes were dirty, and his whole person neglected.

“Ay, ay, Corvinus,” one youth was saying to him, “won’t you get your deserts, now? Have you not heard that Constantine is coming this year to Rome, and don’t you think the Christians will have their turn about now?”

“Not they,” answered the man we have described, “they have not the pluck for it. I remember we feared it, when Constantine published his first edict, after the death of Maxentius, about liberty for the Christians, but next year he put us out of fear, by declaring all religions to be equally permitted.”[237]

“That is all very well, as a general rule,” interposed another, determined further to plague him; “but is it not supposed that he is going to look up those who took an active part in the late persecution, and have the _lex talionis_,[238] executed on them; stripe for stripe, burning for burning, and wild beast for wild beast?”

“Who says so?” asked Corvinus turning pale.

“Why, it would surely be very natural,” said one.

“And very just,” added another.

“Oh, never mind,” said Corvinus, “they will always let one off for turning Christian. And, I am sure, I would turn any thing, rather than stand--”

“Where Pancratius stood,” interposed a third, more malicious.

“Hold your tongue,” broke out the drunkard, with a tone of positive rage. “Mention his name again, if you dare!” And he raised his fist, and looked furiously at the speaker.

“Ay, because he told you how you were to die,” shouted the youngster, running away. “Heigh! Heigh! a panther here for Corvinus!”

All ran away before the human beast, now lashed into fury, more than they would have done from the wild one of the desert. He cursed them, and threw stones after them.

The pilgrim, from a short distance, watched the close of the scene, then went on. Corvinus moved slowly along the same road, that which led towards the Lateran basilica, now the Cathedral of Rome. Suddenly a sharp growl was heard, and with it a piercing shriek. As they were passing by the Coliseum, near the dens of the wild beasts, which were prepared for combats among themselves, on occasion of the emperor’s visit, Corvinus, impelled by the morbid curiosity natural to persons who consider themselves victims of some fatality, connected with a particular object, approached the cage in which a splendid panther was kept. He went close to the bars, and provoked the animal, by gestures and words; saying: “Very likely, indeed, that you are to be the death of me! You are very safe in your den.” In that instant, the enraged animal made a spring at him, and through the wide bars of the den, caught his neck and throat in its fangs, and inflicted a frightful lacerated wound.

The wretched man was picked up, and carried to his lodgings, not far off. The stranger followed him, and found them mean, dirty, and uncomfortable in the extreme; with only an old and decrepit slave, apparently as sottish as his master, to attend him. The stranger sent him out to procure a surgeon, who was long in coming; and, in the meantime, did his best to stanch the blood.

While he was so occupied, Corvinus fixed his eyes upon him with a look of one delirious, or demented.

“Do you know me?” asked the pilgrim, soothingly.

“Know you? No--yes. Let me see--Ha! the fox! my fox! Do you remember our hunting together those hateful Christians. Where have you been all this time? How many of them have you caught?” And he laughed outrageously.

“Peace, peace, Corvinus,” replied the other. “You must be very quiet, or there is no hope for you. Besides, I do not wish you to allude to those times; for I am myself now a Christian.”

“You a Christian?” broke out Corvinus savagely. “You who have shed more of their best blood than any man? Have you been forgiven for all this? Or have you slept quietly upon it? Have no furies lashed you at night? no phantoms haunted you? no viper sucked your heart? If so, tell me how you have got rid of them all, that I may do the same. If not, they will come, they will come! Vengeance and fury! why should they not have tormented you as much as me?”

“Silence, Corvinus; I have suffered as you have. But I have found the remedy, and will make it known to you, as soon as the physician has seen you, for he is approaching.”

The doctor saw him, dressed the wound, but gave little hope of recovery, especially in a patient whose very blood was tainted by intemperance.

The stranger now resumed his seat beside him, and spoke of the mercy of God, and His readiness to forgive the worst of sinners; whereof he himself was a living proof. The unhappy man seemed to be in a sort of stupor; if he listened, not comprehending what was said. At length his kind instructor, having expounded to him the fundamental mysteries of Christianity, in hope, rather than certainty, of being attended to, went on to say:

“And now, Corvinus, you will ask me, how is forgiveness to be applied to one who believes all this? It is by Baptism, by being born again of water and the Holy Ghost.”

“What?” exclaimed the sick man loathingly.

“By being washed in the laver of regenerating water.”

He was interrupted by a convulsive growl rather than a moan. “Water! water! no water for me! Take it away!” And a strong spasm seized the patient’s throat.

His attendant was alarmed, but sought to calm him. “Think not,” he said, “that you are to be taken hence in your present fever, and to be plunged into water” (the sick man shuddered, and moaned); “in clinical baptism,[239] a few drops suffice, not more than is in this pitcher.” And he showed him the water in a small vessel. At the sight of it, the patient writhed and foamed at the mouth, and was shaken by a violent convulsion. The sounds that proceeded from him, resembled a howl from a wild beast, more than any utterance of human lips.

The pilgrim saw at once that hydrophobia, with all its horrible symptoms, had come upon the patient, from the bite of the enraged animal. It was with difficulty that he and the servant could hold him down at times. Occasionally he broke out into frightful paroxysms of blasphemous violence against God and man. And then, when this subsided, he would go on moaning thus;

“Water they want to give me! water! water! none for me! It is fire! fire! that I have, and that is my portion. I am already on fire, within, without! Look how it comes creeping up, all round me, it advances every moment nearer and nearer!” And he beat off the fancied flame with his hands on either side of his bed, and he blew at it round his head. Then turning towards his sorrowful attendants, he would say, “why don’t you put it out? you see it is already burning me.”

Thus passed the dreary day, and thus came the dismal night, when the fever increased, and with it the delirium, and the violent accesses of fury, though the body was sinking. At length he raised himself up in bed, and looking with half-glazed eyes straight before him, he exclaimed in a voice choked with bitter rage:

“Away, Pancratius, begone! Thou hast glared on me long enough. Keep back thy panther! Hold it fast; it is going to fly at my throat. It comes! Oh!” And with a convulsive grasp, as if pulling the beast from off his throat, he plucked away the bandage from his wound. A gush of blood poured over him, and he fell back, a hideous corpse, upon the bed.

His friend saw how unrepenting persecutors died.