Part 22 (1/2)

'Moreover,' I continued, 'in every time of persecution, there are those--sincere believers, but timid--who dare not meet the threatened horrors. These deny not their faith, but they shrink from sight; they for a season disappear; their hearts wors.h.i.+p as ever, but their tongues are silent; and search as they may, your emissaries of blood cannot find them. But soon as the storm is over-past, then do they come forth again, as insects from the leaves that sheltered them from the storm, and fill again the forsaken churches.'

'Nevertheless I will try for them.'

'Then will you be, Aurelian, as one that sheds blood, because he will shed it--seeing that the end at which you aim cannot in such way be reached. Confiscation, imprisonment, scourging, fires, torture, and death, will all be in vain; and with no more prospect that by such oppression Christianity can be annihilated, than there would be of rooting out poppies from your fields when as you struck off the heads or tore up the old roots, the ripe seeds were scattered abroad over the soil, a thousand for every parent stalk that fell. You will drench yourself in the blood of the innocent, only that you may do it--while no effect shall follow.'

'Let it be so then; even so. Still I will not forbear. But this I know, Piso, that when a disaffection has broken out in a legion, and I have caused the half thereof, or its tenth, to be drawn forth and cut to pieces by the other part, the danger has disappeared. The physic has been bitter, but it has cured the patient! I am a good surgeon; and well used to letting blood. I know the wonders it works and shall try it now, not doubting to see some good effects. When poison is in the veins, let out the blood, and the new that comes in is wholesome. Rome is poisoned!'

'Great Emperor,' I replied, 'you know nothing, allow me to say, whereof you affirm. You know not the Christians, and how can you deem them poison to the state? A purer brotherhood never has the world seen. I am but of late one among them, and it is but a few months since I thought of them as you now do. But I knew nothing of them. Now I know them. And knowledge has placed them before me in another light. If, Aurelian--'

'I know nothing of them, Piso, it is true; and I wish to know nothing--nothing more, than that they are Christians! that they deny the good G.o.ds! that they aim at the overthrow of the religion of the state--that religion under whose fostering care Rome has grown up to her giant size--that they are fire-brands of discord and quarrel in Rome and throughout the world! Greater would my name be, could I extirpate this accursed tribe than it would be for triumphing over both the East and West, or though I gained the whole world.'

'Aurelian,' I replied, 'this is not the language I used to hear from your lips. Another spirit possesses you and it is not hard to tell whence it comes.'

'You would say--from Fronto.'

'I would. There is the rank poison, that has turned the blood in the veins of one, whom justice and wisdom once ruled, into its own accursed substance.'

'I and Rome, Piso,' said Aurelian, 'owe much to Fronto. I confess that his spirit now possesses me. He has roused the latent piety into action and life, which I received with my mother's milk, but which, the G.o.ds forgive me! carried away by ambition, had well nigh gone quite out in my soul. My mother--dost thou know it?--was a priestess of Apollo, and never did G.o.d or G.o.ddess so work by unseen influence to gain a mortal's heart, as did she to fill mine with reverence of the deities of heaven--specially of the great G.o.d of light. I was early a wayward child. When a soldier in the legions I now command, my life was what a soldier's is--a life of action, hards.h.i.+p, peril, and blood. The deities of Heaven soon became to me as if they were not. And so it has been for well nigh all the years of my life. But, the G.o.ds be thanked, Fronto has redeemed me! and since I have worn this diadem have I toiled, Rome can testify with what zeal, to restore to her G.o.ds their lost honors--to purge her wors.h.i.+p of the foul corruptions that were bringing it into contempt--and raise it higher than ever in the honor of the people, by the magnificence of the temples I have built; by the gifts I have lavished upon them; by the ample riches wherewith I have endowed the priesthood. And more than once, while this work has been achieving, has the form of my revered parent, beautiful in the dazzling robes of her office, stood by my bedside--whether in dream, or in vision, or in actual presence, I cannot tell--and blessed me for my pious enterprise--”The G.o.ds be thanked,” the lips have said, or seemed to say, ”that thy youth lasts not always but that age has come, and with it second childhood in thy reverence of the G.o.ds, whose wors.h.i.+p it was mine to put into thy infant heart. Go on thy way, my son! Build up the fallen altars, and lay low the aspiring fanes of the wicked. Finish what thou hast begun, and all time shall p.r.o.nounce thee greatest of the great.”

Should I disobey the warning? The G.o.ds forbid! and save me from such impiety. I am now, Piso, doubly armed for the work I have taken in hand--first by the zeal of the pious Fronto, and second, by the manifest finger of Heaven pointing the way I should go. And, please the Almighty Ruler! I will enter upon it, and it shall not be for want of a determined will and of eyes too used to the shedding of blood to be frightened now though an ocean full were spilled before them, if this race be not utterly swept from the face of the earth, from the suckling to the silver head, from the beggar to the prince--and from Rome all around to the four winds, as far as her almighty arms can reach.'

My heart sunk within me as he spoke, and my knees trembled under me. I knew the power and spirit of the man, and I now saw that superst.i.tion had claimed him for her own; that he would go about his work of death and ruin, armed with his own cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y mind, and urged behind by the fiercer spirit still of Pagan bigotry. It seemed to me, in spite of what I had just said myself, and thought I believed, as if the death-note of Christianity had now been rung in my ear. The voice of Aurelian as he spoke had lost its usual sharpness, and fallen into a lower tone full of meaning, and which said to me that his very inmost soul was pouring itself out, with the awful words he used. I felt utterly helpless and undone--like an ant in the pathway of a giant--incapable of resistance or escape. I suppose all this was visible in my countenance. I said nothing; and Aurelian, after pausing a moment, went on.

'Think me not, Piso, to be using the words of an idle braggart in what I have said. Who has known Aurelian, when once he has threatened death, to hold back his hand? But I will give thee earnest of my truth!'

'I require it not, Aurelian. I question not thy truth.'

'I will give it notwithstanding, Piso. What will you think--you will think as you ever have of me--if I should say that already, and upon one of my own house, infected with this h.e.l.l-begotten atheism, has the axe already fallen!'

Hearing the horrible truth from his own lips, it seemed as if I had never heard it before. I hardly had believed it.

'Tyrant!' I exclaimed, 'it cannot be! What, Aurelia?'

'Yes, Aurelia! Keep thy young blood cool, Piso. Yes, Aurelia! Ere I struck at others, it behoved me to reprove my own. It was no easy service, as you may guess, but it must be done. And not only was Aurelia herself pertinaciously wedded to this fatal mischief, but she was subduing the manly mind of Mucapor too, who, had he been successfully wrought upon, were as good as dead to me and to Rome--and he is one whom our legions cannot spare. We have Christians more than enough already in our ranks: a Christian general was not to be borne. This was additional matter of accusation against Aurelia, and made it right that she should die. But she had her free choice of life, honor, rank, riches, and, added to all, Mucapor, whose equal Rome does not hold, if she would but take them. One word spoken and they were all her own; with no small chance that she should one day be what Livia is. But that one word her obstinate superst.i.tion would not let her speak.'

'No, Aurelian; there is that in the Christian superst.i.tion that always forbids the uttering of that one word. Death to the Christian is but another word for life. Apostacy is the true death. You have destroyed the body of Aurelia, but her virtuous soul is already with G.o.d, and it is you who have girded upon her brow a garland that shall never fade. Of that much may you make your boast.'

'Piso, I bear with you, and shall; but there is no other in Rome who might say so much.'

'Nay, nay, Aurelian, there I believe you better than you make yourself.

To him who is already the victim of the axe or the beasts do you never deny the liberty of the tongue,--such as it then is.'

'Upon Piso, and he the husband of Julia, I can inflict no evil, nor permit it done.'

'I would take shelter, Aurelian, neither behind my own name, my father's, nor my wife's. I am a Christian--and such fate as may befall the rest, I would share. Yet not willingly, for life and happiness are dear to me as to you--and they are dear to all these innocent mult.i.tudes whom you do now, in the exercise of despotic power, doom to a sudden and abhorred death. Bethink yourself, Aurelian, before it be too late--'

'I have bethought myself of it all,' he replied--'and were the suffering ten times more, and the blood to be poured out a thousand times more, I would draw back not one step. The die has been cast; it has come up as it is, and so must be the game. I listen to no appeal.'

'Not from me,' I replied; 'but surely you will not deny a hearing to what these people may say in their own defence. That were neither just nor merciful; nor were it like Aurelian. There is much which by their proper organs they might say to place before you their faith in the light of truth. You have heard what you have received concerning it, chiefly from the lips of Fronto; and can he know what he has never learned? or tell it unperverted by prejudices black as night?'