But his yearning to divine the future was only intensified, and Simon Magus persuaded him that he might learn it from the imprisoned Apostle, whom he represented as a powerful sorcerer.
Once more, therefore, the Apostle stood face to face with the Emperor, on one of the troubled tumultuous days which followed his hasty return from Naples, after he had received the news of the revolt of Vindex. It was an interview, not a judicial audience. The Emperor saw him in private, with no one about him except a few trusted freedmen, and one favourite slave, named Patroclus. Several amulets lay scattered round him to avert magic and the evil eye. For form’s sake he first asked the Apostle about the crimes with which Christians were charged, and heard once more the proofs of their righteousness, loyalty, and holiness. Then he offered Paul his freedom and pardon if he would reveal to him the future. Onesimus, who had been allowed to attend the Apostle, and who stood at the far end of the apartment among a group of slaves, used to say afterwards that if the Apostle would only have spoken a word of hope, or even some ambiguous promise which might be interpreted in almost any way, the chains would have been struck off his hands. But he answered that the secrets of the future were in the hands of God alone, and that he had no commission to reveal them. Nero was scanning his features with intense anxiety, and as the Apostle fixed on him his earnest, undaunted, pitying gaze, the Emperor—more than ever convinced that he could prophesy the unknown—told all the slaves except Phaon and Patroclus to withdraw. But Paul, weak with long imprisonment, and scarcely able to stand, begged that he might support his weary frame on the shoulder of Onesimus. Otherwise they were alone. The Emperor, who had no dignity at that hour of calamity, appealed to his prisoner. ‘They tell me,’ he said, ‘that thy God, or thy Chrestus, does enable thee to foretell events to come. I am in danger. The legions are revolting against me on all sides. The astrologers have promised me that I shall be King of Jerusalem. All is uncertain. See, I appeal to thee. I, the Emperor, ask thee, the doomed and wretched Jew, to tell me what will happen. Will Vindex conquer? Will Galba conquer? Will the guards be faithful? Shall I be murdered? Answer me these questions, and I will spare thy life, and send thee away with rich rewards.’
‘I answer,’ said the Apostle, ‘as a Prophet of the East answered a king before. If Nero should give me his house full of silver and gold, yet cannot I go beyond the word of the Lord; and the Lord has not bidden me to speak to thee. And what were wealth, and what were all the Empire to me? Thinkest thou, O Emperor, that I fear death? To us Christians to die is to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better; and Christ hath conquered death.’
‘Wilt thou not even tell me whether I shall be killed? I adjure thee by thy Christ, or thy Iao, or whatever thou holdest most sacred, tell me!’
The Emperor was trembling and weeping.
Another might have scorned his unmanliness, or rejoiced with malignant triumph over the disgrace of the enemy of all the good. But Paul knew too much of human weakness to indulge in scorn. He felt for him a sincere, a trembling, a yearning pity. He uplifted his eyes to heaven, paused for a moment, during which the Emperor’s eager and almost imploring gaze was fixed upon his face, and then solemnly replied—
‘Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.’
‘Tell me more,’ said Nero passionately.
‘I may not tell thee more. Only,’ he continued, raising his chained hand, ‘I say to thee, repent! Repent of thy life of crime and infamy! Repent of thy many murders—the murder of thy brother, the murder of thy mother, of—’
‘Accursed Jew, darest thou revile me?’ said Nero, leaping up from his gilded chair, his face burning with fury.