"Strangers and beggars are all sent by Zeus,
And dear to them is the little we give."[11]
The Emperor went into the inner court. A graceful Ionic colonnade ran round it. The hospice had formerly been a palæstra or wrestling-ground. It was a soft and sunny afternoon, before sunset, but a heavy atmosphere came to the portico from the inner rooms.
There, massed together, children and old men were crawling about, Christians and Pagans, the sound and the sick; folk disabled, deformed, enfeebled, dropsical, consumptive; folk bearing on their faces the stamp of every vice and every form of suffering.
A half-naked old woman, with a tanned skin like the colour of dead leaves, was rubbing her sore, pockmarked back against the pure marble of a pillar.
In the middle of the court stood a statue of the Pythian Apollo, bow in hand, quiver on shoulder. At the foot of the statue was seated a wrinkled monster who seemed neither young nor old. His arms were huddled round his knees, his head rested on one side; and swinging himself from right to left with a stupid air, he kept declaiming in a monotone—
"Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy upon us, the lost, lost, lost!"
At last the principal inspector, Marcus Ausonius, appeared, pale and trembling—
"Most wise and merciful Cæsar, will you not deign to come into my house? The atmosphere is hurtful here ... there are contagious maladies...."
"No, I am not afraid. Are you the inspector?"