‘Yes. And I saw him when I was a boy in Ephesus.’
‘I know men when I see them,’ said Titus. ‘He is a man,’ and then he repeated the Greek line—
‘How gracious a thing is a man, if he be but a man.’[86]
‘He is a Jew; he is small and bent; he is ugly; yet somehow his ugliness is more beautiful tenfold than the beauty of Paris or Tigellinus.’
‘You should hear him speak!’ said Onesimus.
Titus shrugged his shoulders. ‘A Christian!’ he said; ‘a worshipper of a Jew whom they tell me Pilatus crucified! And yet,’ he added, ‘there is something more in these Christians than I can fathom. Britannicus was very much struck by them, and I believe Pomponia is a Christian. She told me once that “no weapon forged against these Christians prospers.” Pilatus, they say, came to a bad end.’
‘What happened to him?’ asked Onesimus.
‘They say he became a haunted man. His wife Claudia Procula turned Christian. He was banished to Helvetia and there committed suicide; and his ghost haunts a bare mountain, and is forever wringing and washing its hands. But I believe it is all nonsense,’ said Titus; ‘and here we are at Pomponia’s house.’
They found the gracious noble lady with her boy by her side in the peristyle tending her flowers among her doves, which were so tame that they would perch on her head and shoulder, and coo softly, as they suffered both her and the young Aulus to smooth their plumage.
‘Bathed in such hues as when the peacock’s neck