“Then, to be a worthy citizen, I must choke the truth?”
“Not the truth—only lies. The weeds have been allowed to grow too long, and now we must mow down the crop, which threatens to choke the good seed! Here comes the boy to tell us the time. In an hour the Senate meets. Let us enjoy the interval without vexing each other.”
“Then you persist in extreme measures? Every one who confesses the Nazarene must die?”
“Without reprieve, be he slave or senator.”
Quintus was fighting an agonizing battle; his lips trembled, already parted to cry in despair to the inexorable judge: “Father, you are condemning your son to death...!” but he controlled himself in time. He rose.
“Farewell,” he said in a low voice, and he held out both hands to his father. “I am very busy,” he added in a steady voice. “Important business—you need not laugh, Lucilia—requires my return. Father, when it is your turn to speak in the Senate, remember your son—perhaps the thought may soften your heart; the Christians, too, whom you doom to death, are fathers ... sons....”
He rushed away. He was on the verge of tears, but he set his teeth and clenched his fist.
“Oh! misery, misery!” he said to himself. “Father! Father! who could have foreseen this severance when I, as a boy, sat at your feet? Nay, quite lately, when you spoke to me so gravely!—How happy, how gay they all were; and he, so calm in the sense of doing his duty! If he only knew—it would kill him!”
He hurried through the atrium, almost beside himself; Blepyrus, to whom he had only yesterday granted his pardon, was waiting there with others of his clients and slaves.
His family looked after him in silence. Octavia was the first to speak.