For oh! it tells my Judge that He
Upon the cross vouchsafed to die,
To save from hell such fiends as I!”
Julius Claudius, recovered from the depths of sin and despair, remembered Adonijah, and, quitting the precious remains of his child and the society of his new-found sister, repaired to the place where Adonijah was confined, to make inquiries respecting his state. He learned that the wounds of the victorious gladiator were severe, and that he had neither taken nourishment nor spoken since he had been brought hither from the circus. Julius Claudius heard this account with feelings, oh! how unlike those that had actuated him to clamour for his death in the circus. The comfortless state of the Hebrew was not likely, his repentant master thought, to contribute to his recovery, and he felt that if Adonijah perished, remorse would haunt his bosom to the latest hour of his life.
With this impression on his mind Julius Claudius, forgetting the mortification he had lately experienced through the scornful wit of Berenice, hastened to the house of the all-powerful Licinius Mucianus to entreat his good offices with Titus for the pardon and restoration of Adonijah.
Mucianus, a dissipated man of letters, liked Julius Claudius, and was willing to solicit this boon for him. He was sorry for the bereavement Julius had sustained, and in making his request known to Titus took care to inform him of his disgraced favourite’s irreparable loss. Titus went in person to console Julius Claudius, to whom he spoke with kindness and even affection, and signed the necessary order, which admitted Julius into the Mamertine prison where Adonijah was confined.
The gladiator’s wounds had been dressed and bound up with some skill, but so little after-care had been taken of the despised and expatriated Jew, that he had been left to contend with increasing delirium alone.
Sadly and remorsefully the Roman patrician contemplated the languid form before him: could this feeble frame indeed enshrine the haughty and unsubdued spirit of Adonijah? At this moment the Hebrew opened his heavy eyes, and recognised his master regarding him with a piteous expression that pierced him to the heart. How unlike was this helpless look to that contemptuous one the gladiator had turned upon him as he fell, when his indignant glance flashed back defiance and disdain! His lost child, his lamented Lucius, had loved him too, had died invoking the Hebrew’s name, and the tears of the bereaved parent fell fast upon the burning brow of the slave.
Adonijah perceived his master’s emotion, but could not comprehend the cause of this change of feeling towards him. A sort of stupor came over his senses, and before he recovered from its effects he was on the way to Tivoli in a covered litter, supported in the arms of a confidential slave belonging to Julius’ household.
Leaving the unconscious Adonijah to the tender care of Lucia and her attendants, Julius Claudius remained at Rome to consign the remains of his child to their native dust. No costly funeral rites, no games, no pompous oration, no gathering of the ashes into the sumptuous urn, graced the obsequies of the young Lucius. Pious Christians consecrated with prayer the last sleep of the child, and laid him not with his heathen forefathers to rest, but in the subterranean chambers of the catacombs, as the heir of a better hope, to wait the dawn of everlasting day.