“Pray! pray! fudge and nonsense!” cried Jucundus, almost mimicking him in his indignation; “pray! who thanks you for your prayers? what’s the good of prayers? Prayers, indeed! ha, ha! A little loyalty is worth all the praying in the world. I’ll tell you what, Agellius; you are, I am sorry to say it, but you are hand and glove with a set of traitors, who shall and will be smoked out like a nest of wasps. You don’t know; you are not in the secret, nor the wretched slave, poor beast, who was pulled to pieces yesterday (ah! you don’t know of him) at the Flamen’s, nor a multitude of other idiots. But, d’ye see,” and he chucked up his head significantly, “there are puppets, and there are wires. Few know what is going on. They won’t have done (unless we put them down; but we will) till they have toppled down the state. But Rome will put them down. Come, be sensible, listen to reason; now I am going to put facts before my poor, dear, well-meaning boy. Oh that you saw things as I do! What a trouble you are to me! Here am I”——
“My dearest uncle, Jucundus,” cried Agellius, “I assure you, it is the most intense pain to me”——
“Very well, very well,” interrupted the uncle in turn, “I believe it, of course I believe it; but listen, listen. Every now and then,” he continued in a more measured and lower tone, “every now and then the secret is blabbed—blabbed. There was that Tertullianus of Carthage, some fifty years since. He wrote books; books have done a great deal of harm before [pg 246]now; but read his books—read and ponder. The fellow has the insolence to tell the proconsul that he and the whole government, the whole city and province, the whole Roman world, the emperors, all but the pitiful clique to which he belongs, are destined, after death, to flames for ever and ever. There’s loyalty! but the absurdity is greater than the malevolence. Rightly are the fellows called atheists and men-haters. Our soldiers, our statesmen, our magistrates, and judges, and senators, and the whole community, all worshippers of the gods, every one who crowns his head, every one who loves a joke, and all our great historic names, heroes, and worthies,—the Scipios, the Decii, Brutus, Cæsar, Cato, Titus, Trajan, Antoninus,—are inmates, not of the Elysian fields, if Elysian fields there be, but of Tartarus, and will never find a way out of it.”
“That man, Tertullianus, is nothing to us, uncle,” answered Agellius; “a man of great ability, but he quarrelled with us, and left us.”
“I can’t draw nice distinctions,” said Jucundus. “Your people have quarrelled among themselves perhaps on an understanding; we can’t split hairs. It’s the same with your present hierophant at Carthage, Cyprianus. Nothing can exaggerate, I am told, the foulness of his attack upon the gods of Rome, upon Romulus, the Augurs, the Ancilia, the consuls, and whatever a Roman is proud of. As to the imperial city itself, there’s hardly one of their high priests that has not died under the hands of the executioner, as a [pg 247]convict. The precious fellows take the title of Pontifex Maximus; bless their impudence! Well, my boy, this is what I say; be, if you will, so preternaturally sour and morose as to misconceive and mislike the innocent, graceful, humanising, time-honoured usages of society; be so, for what I care, if this is all; but it isn’t all. Such misanthropy is wisdom, absolute wisdom, compared with the Titanic presumption and audacity of challenging to single combat the sovereign of the world. Go and kick down Mount Atlas first.”
“You have it all your own way, Jucundus,” answered his nephew, “and so you must move in your own circle, round and round. There is no touching you, if you first assume your premisses, and then prove them by means of your conclusion.”
“My dear Agellius,” said his uncle, giving his head a very solemn shake, “take the advice of an old man. When you are older than you are, you will see better who is right and who is wrong. You’ll be sorry you despised me, a true, a prudent, an experienced friend; you will. Shake yourself, come do. Why should you link your fortunes, in the morning of life, with desperate men, only because your father, in his last feeble days, was entrapped into doing so? I really will not believe that you are going to throw away hope and life on so bad a bargain. Can’t you speak a word? Here you’ve let me speak, and won’t say one syllable for yourself. I don’t think it kind of you.”
Thus adjured, Agellius began. “Well,” he said, [pg 248]“it’s a long history; you see, we start, my dear uncle, from different points. How am I possibly to join issue with you? I can only tell you my conclusion. Hope and life, you say. Why, my only hope, my only life, my only joy, desire, consolation, and treasure is that I am a Christian.”
“Hope and life!” interrupted Jucundus, “immortal gods! life and hope in being a Christian! do I hear aright? Why, man, a prison brings despair, not hope; and the sword brings death, not life. By Esculapius! life and hope! you choke me, Agellius. Life and hope! you are beyond three Anticyras. Life and hope! if you were old, if you were diseased, if you were given over, and had but one puff of life left in you, then you might be what you would, for me; but your hair is black, your cheek is round, your limbs are strong, your voice is full; and you are going to make all these a sacrifice to Hecate! has your good genius fed that plump frame, ripened those goods looks, nerved your arm, bestowed that breadth of chest, that strength of loins, that straightness of spine, that vigour of step, only that you may feed the crows? or to be torn on the rack, scorched in the flame, or hung on the gibbet? is this your gratitude to nature? What has been your price? for what have you sold yourself? Speak, man, speak. Are you dumb as well as dement? Are you dumb, I say, are you dumb?”
“O Jucundus,” cried Agellius, irritated at his own inability to express himself or hold an argument, “if you did but know what it was to have the Truth! The [pg 249]Christian has found the Truth, the eternal Truth, in a world of error. That is his bargain, that is his hire; can there be a greater? Can I give up the Truth? But all this is Punic or Barbar to you.”