a faggot over it to keep it down, and drown its crackling. There it frizzled, and writhed, and cracked, and shrunk, first one letter or word coming up, then another; first an emperor’s praise, and then an anti-Christian blasphemy; till all had subsided into a black ashy mass.
And what else, or more, would those be in a few years who had issued that proud document, when their corpses should have been burnt on a pile of cedar-wood and spices, and their handful of ashes be scraped together, hardly enough to fill a gilded urn? And what also, in very few years more, would that heathenism be, which it was issued to keep alive, but a dead letter at most, and as worthless a heap of extinguished embers as lay on that hearth? And the very empire which these “unconquered” Augusti were bolstering up by cruelty and injustice, how in a few centuries would it resemble that annihilated decree? the monuments of its grandeur lying in ashes, or in ruins, and proclaiming that there is no true Lord but one stronger than Cæsars, the Lord of lords; and that neither counsel nor strength of man shall prevail against Him.
Something like this did Sebastian think, perhaps, as he gazed abstractedly on the expiring embers of the pompous and cruel edict which they had torn down, not for a wanton frolic, but because it contained blasphemies against God and His holiest truths. They knew that if they should be discovered, tenfold tortures would be their lot; but Christians in those days, when they contemplated and prepared for martyrdom, made no calculation on that head. Death for Christ, whether quick and easy, or lingering and painful, was the end for which they looked; and, like brave soldiers going to battle, they did not speculate where a shaft or a sword might strike them, whether a death-blow would at once stun them out of existence, or they should have to writhe for hours upon the ground, mutilated or pierced, to die by inches among the heaps of unheeded slain.
Sebastian soon recovered, and had hardly the heart to reprove the perpetrators of this deed. In truth, it had its ridiculous side, and he was inclined to laugh at the morrow’s dismay. This view he gladly took, for he saw Pancratius watched his looks with some trepidation, and his centurion looked a little disconcerted. So, after a hearty laugh, they sat down cheerfully to their meal; for it was not midnight, and the hour for commencing the fast, preparatory to receiving the holy Eucharist, was not arrived. Quadratus’s object, besides kindness, in this arrangement, was partly, that if surprised, a reason for their being there might be apparent, partly to keep up the spirits of his younger companion and of Diogenes’s household, if alarmed at the bold deed just performed. But there was no appearance of any such feeling. The conversation soon turned upon recollections of Diogenes’s youth, and the good old fervent times, as Pancratius would persist in calling them. Sebastian saw his friend home, and then took a round, to avoid the Forum in seeking his own abode. If any one had seen Pancratius that night, when alone in his chamber preparing to retire to rest, he would have seen him every now and then almost laughing at some strange but pleasant adventure.
A Monogram of Christ, found in the Catacombs.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DISCOVERY.
