Part 33 (1/2)

'No,' said the priest. 'Rome will need you more than Thrace, till the edicts have been published, and the work well begun. Then, Aurelian, may it be safely entrusted, so far as zeal and industry shall serve, to those behind.'

'I believe it, Fronto. I see myself doubly reflected in thee: and almost so in Varus. The Christians, were I gone, would have four Aurelians for one. Well, let us rejoice that piety is not dead. The sacrifice this morning was propitious. I feel its power in every thought and movement.'

'But while all things else seem propitious, Aurelian, one keeps yet a dark and threatening aspect.'

'What mean you?'

'Piso!--'

'Fronto, I have in that made known my will, and more than once. Why again dispute it?'

'I know no will, great Caesar, that may rightly cross or surmount that of the G.o.ds. They, to me, are supreme, not Aurelian.'

Aurelian moved from the priest, and paced the room.

'I see not, Fronto, with such plainness the will of Heaven in this.'

”Tis hard to see the divine will, when the human will and human affections are so strong.'

'My aim is to please the G.o.ds in all things,' replied the Emperor.

'Love too, Aurelian, blinds the eye, and softening the heart toward our fellow, hardens it toward the G.o.ds.' This he uttered with a strange significancy.

'I think, Fronto, mine has been all too hard toward man, if it were truly charged. At least, of late, the G.o.ds can have no ground of blame.'

'Rome,' replied the priest, 'is not slow to see and praise the zeal that is now crowning her seven hills with a greater glory than ever yet has rested on them. Let her see that her great son can finish what has been so well begun.'

'Fronto, I say it, but I say it with some inward pain, that were it plain the will of the G.o.ds were so--'

'Piso should die!' eagerly interrupted the priest.

'I will not say it yet, Fronto.'

'I see not why Aurelian should stagger at it. If the will of the G.o.ds is in this whole enterprise; if they will that these hundreds and thousands, these crowds of young and old, little children and tender youth, should all perish, that posterity by such sacrifice now in the beginning may be delivered from the curse that were else entailed upon them, then who can doubt, to whom truth is the chief thing, that they will, nay, and ordain in their sacred b.r.e.a.s.t.s, that he who is their chief and head, about whom others cl.u.s.ter, from whose station and power they daily draw fresh supplies of courage, should perish too; nay, that he should be the first great offering, that so, the mult.i.tudes who stay their weak faith on him, may, on his loss, turn again unharmed to their ancient faith. That too, were the truest mercy.'

'There may be something in that, Fronto. Nevertheless, I do not yet see so much to rest upon one life. If all the rest were dead, and but one alive, and he Piso, I see not but the work were done.'

'A thousand were better left, Aurelian, than Piso and the lady Julia!

They are more in the ears and eyes of Rome than all the preachers of this accursed tribe. They are preaching, not on their holydays to a mob of beggarly knaves, men and women dragged up by their hot and zealous caterers from the lanes and kennels of the city, within the walls of their filthy synagogues, but they preach every day, to the very princes and n.o.bles of the state--at the capitol to the Senate--here in thy palaces to all the greatest and best of Rome and, by the G.o.ds! as I believe, make more converts to their impieties than all the army of their atheistical priesthood. Upon Probus, Piso, and Julia, hang the Christians of Rome. Hew them away, end the branches die. Probus, ere tomorrow's sun is set, feeds the beasts of the Flavian--then--'

'Hold, Fronto! I will no more of it now. I have, besides, a.s.sured Piso of his safety.'

'There is no virtue like that of those, who, having erred, repent.'

Aurelian looked for the moment as if he would willingly have hurled Fronto, and his temple after him, to Tartarus. But the bold man heeded him not.

'Shall I,' he continued, 'say what it is that thus ties the hands of the conqueror of the world?'