It certainly did pose Jucundus for half a minute, as if he was trying to take in, not so much the sense, as the words of his nephew’s speech. He looked bewildered, and though he began to answer him at once, it took several sentences to bring him into his usual flow of language. After one or two exclamations, “The truth!” he cried, “this is what I understand you to say,—the truth. The truth is your bargain; I think I’m right, the truth; Hm; what is truth? What in heaven and earth do you mean by truth? where did you get that cant? What oriental tomfoolery is bamboozling you? The truth!” he cried, staring at him with eyes, half of triumph, half of impatience, “the truth! Jove help the boy!—the truth! can truth pour me out a cup of melilotus? can truth crown me with flowers? can it sing to me? can it bring Glyceris to me? drop gold into my girdle? or cool my brows when fever visits me? Can truth give me a handsome suburban with some five hundred slaves, or raise me to the duumvirate? Let it do this, and I will worship it; it shall be my god; it shall be more to me than Fortune, Fate, Rome, or any other goddess on the list. But I like to see, and touch, and feel, and handle, and weigh, and measure what is promised me. I wish to have a sample and an instalment. I am too old for chaff. Eat, drink, and be merry, that’s my philosophy, [pg 250]that’s my religion; and I know no better. To-day is ours, to-morrow is our children’s.”
After a pause, he added, bitterly, “If truth could get Callista out of prison, instead of getting her into it, I should have something to say to truth.”
“Callista in prison!” cried Agellius with surprise and distress, “what do you mean, Jucundus?”
“Yes, it’s a fact; Callista is in prison,” answered he, “and on suspicion of Christianity.”
“Callista! Christianity!” said Agellius, bewildered, “do I hear aright? She a Christian! oh, impossible, uncle! you don’t mean to say that she is in prison. Tell me, tell me, my dear, dear Jucundus, what this wonderful news means.”
“You ought to know more about it than I,” answered he, “if there is any meaning in it. But if you want my opinion, here it is. I don’t believe she is more a Christian than I am; but I think she is over head and ears in love with you, and she has some notion that she is paying you a compliment, or interesting you in her, or sharing your fate—(I can’t pretend to unravel the vagaries and tantarums of the female mind)—by saying that she is what she is not. If not, perhaps she has done it out of spite and contradiction. You can never answer for a woman.”
“Whom should she spite? whom contradict?” cried Agellius, thrown for the moment off his balance. “O Callista! Callista in prison for Christianity! Oh if it’s true that she is a Christian! but what if she is not?” he added with great terror, “what if she’s not, and yet [pg 251]in prison, as if she were? How are we to get her out, uncle? Impossible! no, she’s not a Christian—she is not at all. She ought not to be there! Yet how wonderful!”
“Well, I am sure of it, too,” said Jucundus; “I’d stake the best image in my shop that she’s not a Christian; but what if she is perverse enough to say she is? and such things are not uncommon. Then, I say, what in the world is to be done? If she says she is, why she is. There you are; and what can you do?”
“You don’t mean to say,” exclaimed Agellius, “that that sweet delicate child is in that horrible hole; impossible!” and he nearly shrieked at the thought. “What is the meaning of it all? dear, dear uncle, do tell me something more about it. Why did you not tell me before? What can be done?”
Jucundus thought he now had him in his hand. “Why, it’s plain,” he answered, “what can be done. She’s no Christian, we both agree. It’s certain, too, that she chooses to say she is, or something like it. There’s just one person who has influence with her, to make her tell the truth.”