Gliding along the shore in his boat, Manlius constantly drew nearer to the singing which so strangely thrilled his heart, and soon reached an arm of the Tiber, at whose mouth about twenty empty boats were rocking on the water.
He looked around, and saw by the dim, uncertain moonlight, a large round, massive building, shaded by huge Italian pines, from whose interior the music seemed to issue.
He walked around it. The moon was shining through the windows and colonnades, but no human being was visible. Manlius thought with a shudder of the tales of witches which he had heard in his childhood, of the Sabbath of wicked souls that met in invisible forms in places shunned by all men. His superstitious terror increased as he associated the vision of his dream with this tradition. He always saw before him the face of lovely, gentle Sophronia when he tried to think of these accursed sorcerers; and against the gloomy, horrible background her smiling countenance appeared.
At last he summoned up his courage, and releasing his hand from his cloak, he strode resolutely into the vestibule of the building. As he entered, his thoughts, at the first glance, took a different direction; for in the centre of this vestibule a square stone had been raised from the floor, and through the opening thus formed, a subterranean hall could be seen, from which rose the singing.
So this was the Agapeia of the Christians.
Concealed by the darkness and the shadow of a pillar Manlius saw before him two long rows of figures. The heads of the men were covered with hoods, the women were closely veiled. All were singing a gentle, mournful melody. The tones expressed self-sacrificing sorrow, a sublime, quiet suffering, blended with a strange suggestion of grief which sent a cold shiver through the nerves of the listening Roman.
A few small oil lamps were burning at the end of the dimly lighted hall, by whose faint glimmer Manlius perceived a lifeless human form, whose feet and hands, stretched in the form of a cross, were pierced with nails, while a crown of thorns adorned the brow, and a freshly bleeding wound was visible in the side.
"So these are the terrible people who under the shelter of night hold their abominable meetings," thought Manlius, panting for breath as his hand sought the hilt of his sword; while in his excitement he fancied he saw the head of the figure nailed to the cross sink lower and lower.
The singing ceased, and after a long, soughing sound, which is the universal sigh of a devout assembly, an old man, whose snow-white beard floated far down on the breast of his black robe, came forward. Taking a cup which stood at the feet of the crucified form, he raised it to his lips and kissed it three times with devout fervour.
But instead of devotion Manlius saw an expression of loathsome bloodthirstiness in the face of the grey-haired monster, while the penitent kneeling of the men and women seemed to him an evil, obscene movement; and the cup before which all bowed their heads, in his imagination, was filled with blood, the blood of a man murdered in a terrible manner.