Chapter LXIII

AFTER the spectacle in Cæsar’s gardens the prisons were emptied

considerably. It is true that victims suspected of the Oriental

superstition were seized yet and imprisoned, but pursuit brought in

fewer and fewer persons,--barely enough for coming exhibitions, which

were to follow quickly. People were sated with blood; they showed

growing weariness, and increasing alarm because of the unparalleled

conduct of the condemned. Fears like those of the superstitious

Vestinius seized thousands of people. Among the crowds tales more and

more wonderful were related of the vengefulness of the Christian God.

Prison typhus, which had spread through the city, increased the general

dread. The number of funerals was evident, and it was repeated from

ear to ear that fresh piacula were needed to mollify the unknown god.

Offerings were made in the temples to Jove and Libitina. At last, in

spite of every effort of Tigellinus and his assistants, the opinion kept

spreading that the city had been burned at command of Cæsar, and that

the Christians were suffering innocently.

But for this very reason Nero and Tigellinus were untiring in

persecution. To calm the multitude, fresh orders were issued to

distribute wheat, wine, and olives. To relieve owners, new rules were

published to facilitate the building of houses; and others touching

width of streets and materials to be used in building so as to avoid

fires in future. Cæsar himself attended sessions of the Senate, and

counselled with the “fathers” on the good of the people and the city;

but not a shadow of favor fell on the doomed. The ruler of the world

was anxious, above all, to fix in people’s minds a conviction that such

merciless punishments could strike only the guilty. In the Senate no

voice was heard on behalf of the Christians, for no one wished to offend

Cæsar; and besides, those who looked farther into the future insisted

that the foundations of Roman rule could not stand against the new

faith.

The dead and the dying were given to their relatives, as Roman law took

no vengeance on the dead. Vinicius received a certain solace from the

thought that if Lygia died he would bury her in his family tomb,

and rest near her. At that time he had no hope of rescuing her; half

separated from life, he was himself wholly absorbed in Christ, and

dreamed no longer of any union except an eternal one. His faith had

become simply boundless; for it eternity seemed something incomparably

truer and more real than the fleeting life which he had lived up to that

time. His heart was overflowing with concentrated enthusiasm. Though

yet alive, he had changed into a being almost immaterial, which desiring

complete liberation for itself desired it also for another. He imagined

that when free he and Lygia would each take the other’s hand and go to

heaven, where Christ would bless them, and let them live in light as

peaceful and boundless as the light of dawn. He merely implored Christ

to spare Lygia the torments of the Circus, and let her fall asleep

calmly in prison; he felt with perfect certainty that he himself would

die at the same time. In view of the sea of blood which had been shed,

he did not even think it permitted to hope that she alone would be

spared. He had heard from Peter and Paul that they, too, must die as

martyrs. The sight of Chilo on the cross had convinced him that even a

martyr’s death could be sweet; hence he wished it for Lygia and himself

as the change of an evil, sad, and oppressive fate for a better.

At times he had a foretaste of life beyond the grave. That sadness which

hung over the souls of both was losing its former burning bitterness,

and changing gradually into a kind of trans-terrestrial, calm abandon to

the will of God. Vinicius, who formerly had toiled against the current,

had struggled and tortured himself, yielded now to the stream, believing

that it would bear him to eternal calm. He divined, too, that Lygia, as

well as he, was preparing for death,--that, in spite of the prison walls

separating them, they were advancing together; and he smiled at that

thought as at happiness.

In fact, they were advancing with as much agreement as if they had

exchanged thoughts every day for a long time. Neither had Lygia any

desire, any hope, save the hope of a life beyond the grave. Death was

presented to her not only as a liberation from the terrible walls of the

prison, from the hands of Cæsar and Tigellinus,--not only as liberation,

but as the hour of her marriage to Vinicius. In view of this unshaken

certainty, all else lost importance. After death would come her

happiness, which was even earthly, so that she waited for it also as a

betrothed waits for the wedding-day.

And that immense current of faith, which swept away from life and bore

beyond the grave thousands of those first confessors, bore away Ursus

also. Neither had he in his heart been resigned to Lygia’s death;

but when day after day through the prison walls came news of what was

happening in the amphitheatres and the gardens, when death seemed the

common, inevitable lot of all Christians and also their good, higher

than all mortal conceptions of happiness, he did not dare to pray to

Christ to deprive Lygia of that happiness or to delay it for long years.

In his simple barbarian soul he thought, besides, that more of those

heavenly delights would belong to the daughter of the Lygian chief, that

she would have more of them than would a whole crowd of simple ones to

whom he himself belonged, and that in eternal glory she would sit nearer

to the “Lamb” than would others. He had heard, it is true, that before

God men are equal; but a conviction was lingering at the bottom of his

soul that the daughter of a leader, and besides of a leader of all the

Lygians, was not the same as the first slave one might meet. He hoped

also that Christ would let him continue to serve her. His one secret

wish was to die on a cross as the “Lamb” died. But this seemed a

happiness so great that he hardly dared to pray for it, though he knew

that in Rome even the worst criminals were crucified. He thought that

surely he would be condemned to die under the teeth of wild beasts;

and this was his one sorrow. From childhood he had lived in impassable

forests, amid continual hunts, in which, thanks to his superhuman

strength, he was famous among the Lygians even before he had grown to

manhood. This occupation had become for him so agreeable that later,

when in Rome, and forced to live without hunting, he went to vivaria and

amphitheatres just to look at beasts known and unknown to him. The sight

of these always roused in the man an irresistible desire for struggle

and killing; so now he feared in his soul that on meeting them in the

amphitheatre he would be attacked by thoughts unworthy of a Christian,

whose duty it was to die piously and patiently. But in this he committed

himself to Christ, and found other and more agreeable thoughts to

comfort him. Hearing that the “Lamb” had declared war against the powers

of hell and evil spirits with which the Christian faith connected all

pagan divinities, he thought that in this war he might serve the “Lamb”

greatly, and serve better than others, for he could not help believing

that his soul was stronger than the souls of other martyrs. Finally, he

prayed whole days, rendered service to prisoners, helped overseers, and

comforted his queen, who complained at times that in her short life she

had not been able to do so many good deeds as the renowned Tabitha of

whom Peter the Apostle had told her. Even the prison guards, who feared

the terrible strength of this giant, since neither bars nor chains could

restrain it, came to love him at last for his mildness. Amazed at his

good temper, they asked more than once what its cause was. He spoke with

such firm certainty of the life waiting after death for him, that they

listened with surprise, seeing for the first time that happiness might

penetrate a dungeon which sunlight could not reach. And when he urged

them to believe in the “Lamb,” it occurred to more than one of those

people that his own service was the service of a slave, his own life the

life of an unfortunate; and he fell to thinking over his evil fate, the

only end to which was death.

But death brought new fear, and promised nothing beyond; while that

giant and that maiden, who was like a flower cast on the straw of the

prison, went toward it with delight, as toward the gates of happiness.