________________________________________________
_ AFTER the spectacle in Caesar'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 Caesar, 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. Caesar 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 Caesar; 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 Caesar 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,'aethey 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. _
Read next: CHAPTER LXIV
Read previous: CHAPTER LXII
Table of content of Quo Vadis
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
