"No use bursting your lungs," grumbled the shoemaker. "When we get to that stage, you'll be the first to turn tail and let the others die!"
"You're a set of cowards," chimed in a painted woman, dressed in a poor and tawdry dress. She was a street-walker, nicknamed by her admirers the She-wolf. "Do you know," she went on wrathfully, "what the holy martyrs Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tertian replied to their executioners?"
"No, She-wolf, tell us."
"Well, I've heard. At Myrrha, in Phrygia, three young men, Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tertian, had burst into a Greek temple by night, and smashed the idols to the glory of God. The proconsul Amachius had them seized, stretched them on dripping-pans, and ordered fires to be lighted under them. The three martyrs said: 'If you want to taste cooked flesh, Amachius, turn us over on the other side, that we may not be served up to you half-cooked!' and all three laughed and spat in the face of the proconsul. And everybody saw an angel come down out of heaven with three crowns! You wouldn't have spoken so! You're too fearful for your skins.... It's heart-breaking, just to look at you!"
The She-wolf turned away in disgust.
Cries rose from the street.
"Perhaps they're breaking up idols?" suggested the shoemaker pleasantly.
"Forward, citizens! Follow me!" shouted Strombix, waving his arms; but he slipped on the table, and would have fallen had not Aragaris caught him.
Everybody rushed to the door. An enormous crowd was advancing down the principal street and, filling the narrow cross-roads, brought up before the baths.
"Old Pamva! Old Pamva!" the idlers were shouting. "He's come from the desert to help the people; to pull down the great, and to save the humble and poor!"