Manlius remained a long time in the triclinium, lost in thought. Leaning over the sill of the window above the Tiber he gazed dreamily into the waves, flooded with silver by the rising moon. Black boats glittered in her rays along the shore, and the notes of a mournful hymn echoed from the distance through the still air. The outlines of a woman's white-robed figure were visible in one of the boats. Manlius was reflecting upon the emotions that filled his heart. He fancied he was dreaming, as we sometimes dream that we are awake, and now imagined that he was dreaming of Sophronia's gentle, musing face.
He had no rest; some indescribable feeling oppressed his heart. His excited soul longed for the open air, and, taking his sword, he wrapped his paludamentum around him, entered one of the skiffs fastened under the window, and, loosing it from the chain, rowed in the direction of the mysterious melody.
CHAPTER II.
What a wonderful phenomenon it was that truth should triumph over fiction, and the simple doctrines of the Cross should conquer delusive mythology!
The religion of the poets, the dreamy groves, the flower-strewn shore, the chosen deities of the sunlit island worlds, who in the enthusiasm of this artistic nature rose from the foam of the sea, were pervaded by the fragrance of flowers, immortalized as stars. Warm ideal figures united with mankind by sweet love dalliance. How all this fabric vanished from the arms of its worshippers at one word from the mighty Being who, throned on a measureless height, is yet near to every human creature, whom no one can see, but everyone can feel, and who is the God of the stars as well as of the lilies of the field.
How the altars of the Olympian gods gradually grew cold, how the rose garlands vanished from the golden plinths, how the people disappeared from the perfumed halls to hear beneath the open sky, illumined by glowing sunlight, the words of an invisible truth.
This sky, this sunlit sky was the mystery of mysteries! The night-sky, with its thousand stars, was the mythological heaven; that of the day belonged to the faith of the truth indivisible. Neither the depth nor the height of the latter can be measured. We only feel the beneficent warmth, and from the infinite blue distance an eternal hope tells the heart that beyond this sky is another and a better world, of which this earth is only the shadow; and the darker, the more gloomy are the shadows here, the more radiant is the truth there.
This was the idea which won the victory. Earth ceased to be a prison; death was no affliction, and the Cæsar was no longer omnipotent.
In the time of Augustus Cæsar a poet said: