Yes, she knew; but the source of her cheerful courage lay in those scrolls which had been handed to her attendants by Linus and by Luke. Ever since the lustral dews of baptism had touched her brow, she had felt a change in her whole being, but her deep peace was confirmed by what was now read to her daily by Onesimus, or Hermas, or Tryphæna.

It was with strange feelings that when she broke the silken thread of the small waxen tablets of Linus, she had read the salutation in which Paulus, the prisoner, wished grace, mercy, and peace to Octavia, Empress, and now beloved in Christ. But as she eagerly read the few lines which he had engraved with his trembling stylus for he had written this message in large letters with his own hand-she felt his words thrill into her soul with strange power. He rejoiced and thanked God that He had called her out of darkness into His marvellous light, and told her that this was a boon more precious than all the kingdoms of the world. He comforted her under all the affliction with which she was afflicted, with the comfort wherewith he too was comforted of God. He told her that she was a partaker of the sufferings of Christ, and that the sufferings of this present time were not worthy to be compared with that glory which shall be revealed in us. He exhorted her to look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Such words fall too often on our cold and careless ears with the triteness of long famaliarity; but to Octavia, as to all who first learnt to feel their meaning in that despairing age, they seemed to be written in sunbeams. The new wine of the Kingdom of Heaven filled them as with divine intoxication; that which to the Pagans appeared like a half-insane enthusiasm or a blank obstinacy 1 was, in truth, but the exhilaration of conviction, in comparison with whose preciousness the whole world and all the glory of it seemed but as the light dust of the balances. Octavia had not been unaccustomed to hear the paradoxes of the Stoics; and she regarded them as spurious ornaments of life's misery - spangles sewed upon its funeral pall. But in the words of Paul the prisoner, and of the poor persecuted Christians, there rang tones of perfect sincerity. Their doctrines were not learnt, but lived. They

1 Note 41. Christian Fortitude.

came attested by the evidence of characters not only innocent but holy; such as had been hitherto unknown to the world, and had no antitype even in the fabled age of gold. They came, morever, as the revelation of a law, not only general, but individual. In those who had grace to accept them, the Spirit Himself bore witness to their spirit that they were children of God.

Knowing the doom which trembled over Octavia's head, and the impossibility of her escape, the soldiers who were in charge were ordered to allow her such liberty as the little islet permitted, and not to intrude upon the occupations of her household. Hence, during the early evening hours, it was possible for her to call one or two of her Christian handmaids around her, while Onesimus, as the Greek reader, read to them the scrolls which Luke had sent as his parting present. He had selected those which he thought would convey the deepest consolation. As Onesimus read them to that little circle, they were as the oracular gems on Aaron's breast Urim and Thummim ardent with the light of heaven. One of them was the Parable of the Prodigal Son. To Onesimus it was as the voice of God calling him back from the far country and the rags and the swine. As he read its concluding verses, again and again his voice was broken with sobs. Even when he had read it aloud on several evenings he could never come to the verse

'I will arise, and go unto my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee

without stopping to recover from the emotion which stifled his utterance, and the tears which blinded his sight.

Another little fragment contained the Evangelist's record of the Sermon on the Mount. As Octavia heard it she felt more and more that her miseries had been blessings in disguise, and that if her life had been spent in the blaze of luxury and prosperity she could never have become an inheritor of that kingdom of which the commands were not burdens but beatitudes.

But what came most deeply home to all of them was that scroll on which Luke had written the story of the Crucifixion. They could never hear it read without requiring Onesimus to read after it the record of the last scroll, which contained the

story of the two disciples at Emmaus, of whom it was privately thought among the Christians that Luke himself had been one. As Octavia listened to those inspired records, if the dreadful act of dying had not lost its horror, yet the grave had lost its victory, and death his sting.

Entranced by the rapture of these wondrous narratives, they had been reading later than usual. It was the ninth of June. The dusk of evening had fallen; the lamps had been lit. They had been too much absorbed to notice the Liburnian galley whose red sail on the horizon had attracted all the inhabitants of their rocky prison to the shore. They had not seen the Prætorians from Rome, who landed at the little jetty.

Ah! but they could not be deaf to the unwonted murmur which began to swell about the villa, nor to the clank of legionaries, nor to the gruff unfamiliar voices of command. They knew too well the meaning of those sounds. With faces whitened by terror they heard the summons at the gate, and the tramp of armed feet, and the cry, A message from the Emperor!' Hardly knowing what they did, Onesimus and Hermas barred the entrance to the chamber where they were sitting, while Tryphæna and the two other maidens grouped themselves round their mistress. There came a thundering challenge, followed by fierce blows rained upon the door. A moment afterwards it gave way with a crash. Hermas and Onesimus, as if by an instinctive motion, thrust themselves in the path of the advancing soldiers. A legionary struck down Hermas with the flat of his sword; Onesimus was dashed aside by a blow of the centurion's iron glaive. They tore away the slave-girls who clung to their fainting mistress. Her they fettered, and opened her veins in many places. But she had sunk into a swoon, and the blood would not flow. Then they dragged her to the bath, heated it to boiling heat, and suffocated her in the burning vapour.

Nor was this enough for Nero's vengeance. The corpse of the daughter of Claudius, the chaste wife of the Emperor, was not suffered to rest in peace. Poppea would not be satisfied with anything short of the visible proof that her rival had

been swept forever out of her path. There lay the fair form, with its long dark hair and girlish beauty, and more beautiful than in life, for a look as of rapturous surprise had lit up her pale features. It availed not. The head was struck off by the centurion, and he carried to Rome the ghastly relic, at once to claim his reward, and to glut the eyes of Poppea with the sight of death made proud by pure and princely beauty.'

And for this crime the slavish and degraded Senate vowed gifts to the temples! In those days every unjust banishment, every judicial murder inflicted by the Emperor, was the signal for a fresh outburst of infamous adulation. The thanksgivings to the gods, which had once been the signs of public prosperity, became the certain memorials of private infamy and public disaster.

CHAPTER XLVII

A FETTERED AMBASSADOR

Ὥστε τοὺς δεσμούς μου φανεροὺς ἐν Χριστῷ γενέσθαι ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ Πραιτωρίῳ καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς πᾶσι. Ep. S. Paul. ad Phil. i. 13.

THERE was one spot in Rome which was calm amid all tumults, happy amid all calamities, though it was the last place where any of the Roman world would have deemed it. possible for happiness to dwell. It was the narrow room which served as a prison to Paul of Tarsus.

As long as Burrus was Præfect of the Prætorians the prisoner's lot had been made as easy as the strictness of Roman discipline allowed. He had been allowed to hire a lodging of his own, and no hindrance was placed on the visits or kindly offices of his friends. He was, indeed, compelled to submit to the one intolerable condition of being fastened night and day by a coupling-chain to the wrist of a Roman soldier; but Julius and others had spoken to Burrus about him in such warm terms that, as in the case of Agrippa I., care was taken that he should be consigned to the charge of a kind centurion, and that the Prætorians to whom in turn he was chained should, as far as possible, be good-tempered and reasonable

men.

There was no service which the soldiers more hated than this of guarding prisoners. Each soldier was for the time as much a prisoner as the prisoner to whom he was chained. To be chained to a Jew was regarded by most of the Prætorians as an intolerable humiliation. If indeed the Jew happened to be a handsome and cosmopolitan young prince like Agrippa, the duty had its alleviations; but at the present time the soldiers had in charge some Jewish priests sent to Rome by Festus, who shuddered to be brought into contact with them. To be chained to these haughty hierarchs, who did not conceal their disdain for their gentile guards, was a