The Apostle remained unmoved. Onesimus told afterwards that he had not felt the tremor of a single muscle as the storm of the Emperor’s rage burst over him. Nero stood amazed—his wrath stilled before so majestic an indifference.
‘Tell me more,’ he said again, in a voice of entreaty.
‘Think, rather,’ said the Apostle, ‘that thy hour of judgment is nigh at hand—yea, it standeth at the door. The blood of the innocent, slain by thee, cries against thee from the ground. I pity thee—Paul the prisoner, Paul the aged, pities thee, and he will pray for thee if haply the thoughts of thy heart, and the shames of thy wickedness, may be forgiven.’
‘Dismiss this man,’ whispered Phaon to the Emperor, impatiently. ‘He is a Jew, evidently half insane with dreamings in prison. Were it otherwise, I would here and now chastise his insolence.’
‘Nay,’ said the boy Patroclus, in a voice of deep emotion. ‘Rather listen to him. O Nero, I will confess to thee that I have talked to Acte; I have talked to Christian slaves—once my fellow-slaves—in thy Palace and the household of Narcissus, and I know that the gods—or that God, if (as they say) there be but one God—is with them. Dismiss Paulus, I entreat thee; set him free. He tells the truth.’And with these words the young cupbearer flung himself on his knees with a gesture of appeal.[120]
Nero had been startled—almost moved—by the solemn tones and inspired aspect of the Apostle; but the appeal of Patroclus and his mention of Acte produced a different effect from what the youth had intended. The Emperor was jealous that such potent influences should have been at work in his own Palace; that in spite of his persecution of the Saints, in spite of his having made Christianity an illegal religion, those who had been so near to his own person as Acte and Patroclus should reject his divinity, and own Jesus as their king.
‘Thou art bewitched,’ he said to Patroclus, rudely pushing the boy aside.
And, unhappily, at that moment Gaditanian strains, accompanied by the words of a gay song, reached his ear from an adjoining room in which some of his light companions and favourites were sitting. The sound awoke all his heartless and incurable frivolity. Bursting into a forced laugh, he said, ‘I see there is no more to be got out of this Jew. Take him hence,’ he said to the Prætorian in attendance, ‘and see that he be led to death as soon as the day shall dawn.’
‘He is a Roman citizen,’ said the centurion.
‘Yes,’ said the Emperor. ‘He has been tried and condemned. I will here countersign the condemnation which orders him to be beheaded.’