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 bad 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.