“Thascius Cæcilius Cyprianus, Bishop of Carthage.”
Hardly had she read the inscription when the voices of several men were heard in the very neighbourhood of the cottage; and hoping to effect a diversion in favour of Cæcilius, and being at once unsuspicious of danger to herself, and careless of her life, she ran quickly forward to meet them. Cæcilius ought to have taken to flight without a moment’s delay, but a last sacred duty detained him. He knelt down and took the pyx from his bosom. He had eaten nothing that day; but even if otherwise, it was a crisis which allowed him to consume the sacred species without fasting. He hastily opened the golden case, adored the blessed sacrament, and consumed it, purifying its receptacle, and restoring it to its hiding-place. Then he rose at once and left the cottage.
He looked about; Callista was nowhere to be seen. She was gone; so much was certain, no enemy was in sight; it only remained for him to make off too. In the confusion he turned in the wrong direction; instead of making off at the back of the cottage from which the voices had scared him, he ran across the garden [pg 228]into the hollow way. It was all over with him in an instant; he fell at once into the hands of the vanguard of the mob.
Many mouths were opened upon him all at once. “The sorcerer!” cried one; “tear him to shreds; we’ll teach him to brew his spells against the city.” “Give us back our grapes and corn,” said a second. “Have a guard,” said a third; “he can turn you into swine or asses while there is breath in him,” “Then be the quicker with him,” said a fourth, who was lifting up a crowbar to discharge upon his head. “Hold!” said a tall swarthy youth, who had already warded off several blows from him, “hold, will you? don’t you see, if you kill him he can’t undo the spell. Make him first reverse it all; make him take the curse off us. Bring him along; take him to Astarte, Hercules, or old Saturn. We’ll broil him on a gridiron till he turns all these canes into vines, and makes olive berries of the pebbles, and turns the dust of the earth into fine flour for our eating. When he has done all this he shall dance a jig with a wild cow, and sit down to supper with an hyena.”
A loud scream of exultation broke forth from the drunken and frantic multitude. “Along with him!” continued the same speaker in a jeering tone. “Here, put him on the ass and tie his hands behind his back. He shall go back in triumph to the city which he loves. Mind, and don’t touch him before the time. If you kill him, you’ll never get the curse off. Come here, you priests of Cybele,” he added, “and be his [pg 229]body-guard.” And he continued to keep a vigilant eye and hand over the old man, in spite of them.
The ass, though naturally a good-tempered beast, had been most sadly tried through the day. He had been fed, indeed, out of mockery, as being the Christians’ god; but he did not understand the shouts and caprices of the crowd, and he only waited for an opportunity to show that he by no means acquiesced in the proceedings of the day. And now the difficulty was to move at all. The people kept crowding up the hollow road, and blocked the passage, and though the greater part of the rioters had either been left behind exhausted in Sicca itself, or had poured over the fields on each side of Agellius’s cottage, or gone right over the hill down into the valley beyond, yet still it was some time before the ass could move a step, and a time of nervous suspense it was both to Cæcilius and the youth who befriended him. At length what remained of the procession was persuaded to turn about and make for Sicca, but in a reversed order. It could not be brought round in so confined a space, so its rear went first and the ass and its burden came last. As they descended the hill back again, Cæcilius, who was mounted upon the linen and silk which had adorned the Dea Syra before the Tertullianist had destroyed the idol, saw before him the whole line of march. In front were flaunted the dreadful emblems of idolatry, so far as their bearers were able still to raise them. Drunken women, ragged boys mounted on men’s shoulders, ruffians and bullies, savage-looking Getu[pg 230]lians, half-human monsters from the Atlas, monkeys and curs jabbering and howling, mummers, bacchanals, satyrs, and gesticulators, formed the staple of the procession. Midway between the hill which he was descending and the city lay the ravine, of which we have several times spoken, widening out into the plain or Campus Martius, which reached round to the steep cliffs on the north. The bridle-path, along which he was moving, crossed it just where it was opening and became level, so as to present no abrupt descent and ascent at the place where the path was lowest. On the left every vestige of the ravine soon ceased, and a free passage extended to the plain.
The youth who had placed Cæcilius on the ass still kept close to him and sung at the pitch of his voice, in imitation of the rest—
“Sporting and snorting in shades of the night,
His ears pricking up, and his hoofs striking light,
And his tail whisking round, in the speed of his flight.”