‘Grieve not for Octavia,’ said Pomponia. ‘I have heard all about her death. She died forgiving all her enemies, and in perfect peace.’
‘Peace? Where is it to be had?’ asked Poppæa. ‘It is not a pearl, I think, of any earthly ocean.’
‘No,’ said Pomponia, ‘but of a heavenly.’
‘Heavenly? What is heaven?’ asked Poppæa, wearily. ‘All that we know is life; and life has given me all that pleasure can give, and rank and riches, and the adoration of self; and it has left me so miserable that life itself has grown hateful to me, while yet I fear death.’
Pomponia listened in profound sadness. ‘Poppæa,’ she said, ‘I need not fear now to tell you that I am a Christian; and we Christians have been taught that “he who saveth his life shall lose it, and he who loseth it for Christ’s sake, shall find it.” It is too late for you to redeem the life which you have flung away, or to find the pleasure which you have slain in seeking for it. But while there is life, there is hope. The God in whom we Christians believe is a God of mercy, and we believe also that Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins, and that by Him they may be washed away.’
‘All the waters of Adria would not wash mine away. Oh, Pomponia, do you know that Seneca, and Octavia, and many others owed their deaths to me?’
‘You have sinned deeply; but you have, I know, been taught about the sacred books of the Jews, and have you not read there of a guilty king, an adulterer and murderer, who yet prayed “Oh, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great”? And has no Jewish teacher read you the promise of God by His prophet, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”?’
‘I have heard those words,’ said Poppæa. ‘They were quoted to me once by Helen, Queen of Adiabene, who is now living as a proselyte at Jerusalem; and I have been taught that there is but one God.’
‘Oh, pray to Him, then,’ said Pomponia, ‘for He is abundant in pardon.’
‘I know not how to pray,’ said the dying Empress; ‘pray for me.’