The prefect uttered an insulting remark with regard to my intellectual capabilities.
“Are you a Christian?” he asked.
I allowed that I was, “but”——. He cut me short as I was about to qualify the remark on the apostolic principle of being all things to all men, and not causing my brother to offend, and asked whether I would swear by the genius of the Emperor.
“By all means,” I replied, “the powers that be—you know the rest; well, in Grubbington I have got a lion and unicorn over the chancel arch. I have the utmost reverence for secular authority, and the blindest devotion to the Crown.”
“Have you any of the sacred writings in your possession?”
I felt in my numerous pockets; I had failed before in my endeavour to discover a certain publication of the Anglo-Continental Society, in my breast pocket, I now explored one of the receptacles in the tail of my coat. Yes! I came on a packet of the tracts of that society, in Latin. I handed them at once to the prefect, who ordered his secretary to take them.
“And,” continued he, addressing the executioner, “look out your apparatus of torture, Maximus. Here is a man who seems to be neither fish, nor flesh, nor fowl: he should have some special cooking.”
“My Lord, shall I roast him?”
“No, good Maximus, roasting is out of fashion.”
“Shall I boil him?”