"I have no friend on earth," mused Constantine, "except my mother and Eusebius of Cæsarea."
When the gloomy old prisoner of the Illyrian fortress heard of the murder of Fausta, upon this disgraceful charge of adultery with a guardsman, he said: "The grand name of Constantine is soaked with domestic blood and draggled in domestic filth. The royal oecumenical council beareth such strange and deadly fruit."
The officers of the fortress were held to be accountable with their lives for the heretic's safe-keeping, and vigilant spies reported to Constantine almost every word he uttered, and stole and transmitted to the emperor almost every line he wrote, and the old man's gloomy comments upon the condition of the Church, and his strange and seemingly inspired interpretations of prophecy, which he supposed to relate to Constantine and his new city of Constantinople, built upon seven hills, above the narrow straits whereto the commerce of the world resorted, doubtless aided Fausta's and Helena's conspiracies to lead him into the commission of those horrible crimes which shocked the moral sense of the world, and justified the pagans in breathless wonder as to what new atrocities would follow the legal establishment of the Christian faith--atrocities that perhaps afterward drove Julian the Apostate to struggle for the restoration of paganism. And doubtless Arius himself would long ago have perished, if the emperor had not hoped to obtain from his manuscripts and prophecies warning of every coming danger.
CHAPTER XII.
AN IMPERIAL REPENTANCE.
But, although these secret horrors, which degraded the noblest family of the empire, were kept as still as private crimes, and men dared scarcely speak of them except in terrified whispers, the knowledge thereof spread abroad, until enough was known to fill the Christian world with detestation of the emperor; and he whose governing passion had been to rule mankind, and to command their respect and reverence at any cost, found himself to be held by the popular verdict as an outcast from virtue and decency. His iron soul was proof against every shaft except this, but the wound it inflicted upon his boundless self-love was bitter and incurable. Realizing that he had outraged the moral sentiment of Christendom by these atrocious crimes, the emperor determined to overthrow what he called Christianity, and re-establish the pagan religion, charging his crimes to the blinding influences of the superstition and strong magic of the Church, and thereby win for himself the love and confidence of that large portion of his subjects who still adhered to the ancient idolatries. In pursuance of this design, Constantine applied to the flamens at Rome for purification from his domestic crimes, as the first step toward the rehabilitation of his moral nakedness and deformity; but the priests, who knew his crafty, unscrupulous, cruel, and atheistic nature, and who already had in training the young and gifted Julian, seized this opportunity to gratify their theological hate, by boldly declaring that the ancient rituals of paganism did not know any form of expiation for such fearful and unnecessary crimes as his.
Then Constantine turned away forever from heathenism, and sent for Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, who assured him that "in Christianity all sin, however great, may find forgiveness: for He saveth unto the uttermost all that come unto God by him."
"And what method must I use to secure this forgiveness?" asked the emperor.
"Only true repentance toward God, and humble, sincere faith in Jesus Christ," said the bishop.
Then, with a singular smile, Constantine looked at the bishop and answered: "Bishop, thou dost forget that thou art not now talking to a woman taken in adultery, nor to a thief upon the cross. Farewell!"