‘Tryphæna says it is part of a letter written to Christians, who are scattered everywhere, by a fisherman, Peter of Galilee, who, she says, was one of the apostles of Christus.’
‘Octavia,’ said Britannicus, ‘I feel as if voices out of heaven were calling me. I feel as if this unknown Christus were drawing me irresistibly to Himself. It is a message to me—and a message before my death.’
‘Your death, Britannicus?’ said the Empress, starting, and turning pale. ‘Oh, withdraw those ill-omened words.’
‘Do not fear omens, Octavia. But you must hear what has happened to me.’
‘You have been at the Saturnalitian feast, and you are soon to lay aside the golden ball and the embroidered toga,’ said Octavia, proudly; ‘and very well you will look in your new manly toga and the purple tunic underneath it.’
‘Yes, but it reminds me of Homer. It is a “purple death,” as Alexander the Great called it.’
‘Why are your thoughts so full of gloom?’ asked his sister, pushing back the hair from his forehead, and looking into his face.
He told her all that had happened that night. She saw the fatal significance of what had occurred.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sobbing, ‘the gods are too cruel. What have we done that they should thus afflict our innocence? I lift up my hands against them.’
‘Hush, Octavia! All these ridiculous and polluted deities—who believes in them any longer? But they represent the Divine, and what the Divine does must be for some good end, and we must breast the storm like Romans and like rulers, if we cannot reach the peace of which this poor Christian fisherman has written.’