“And what is that?” sneeringly asked Fulvius.
“That no one should be allowed to join in destroying them, who could not prove himself freer from crime than they. I would have no one raise his hand against them, who cannot show that he has never been an adulterer, an extortioner, a deceiver, a drunkard, a bad husband, father, or child, a profligate, or a thief. For with being any of these, no one charges the poor Christians.”[144]
Fulvius winced under the catalogue of vices, and still more under the indignant, but serene, glance of Sebastian. But at the word “thief,” he fairly leapt. Had the soldier seen him pick up the scarf in Fabius’s house? Be it so or not, the dislike he had taken to Sebastian, at their first meeting, had ripened into hatred at their second; and hatred in that heart was only written in blood. He had only intensity now to add to that feeling.
Sebastian went out; and his thoughts got vent in familiar words of prayer. “How long, O Lord! how long? What hopes can we entertain of the conversion of many to the truth, still less of the conversion of this great empire, so long as we find even honest and learned men believing at once every calumny spoken against us; treasuring up, from age to age, every fable and fiction about us; and refusing even to inquire into our doctrines, because they have made up their minds that they are false and contemptible?”
He spoke aloud, believing himself alone, when a sweet voice answered him at his side: “Good youth, whoever thou art that speakest thus, and methinks I know thy voice, remember that the Son of God gave light to the dark eye of the body, by spreading thereon clay; which, in man’s hands, would have only blinded the seeing. Let us be as dust beneath His feet, if we wish to become His means of enlightening the eyes of men’s souls. Let us be trampled on a little longer in patience; perhaps even from our ashes may come out the spark to blaze.”
“Thank you, thank you, Cæcilia,” said Sebastian, “for your just and kind rebuke. Whither tripping on so gaily on this first day of danger?”
“Do you not know that I have been named guide of the cemetery of Callistus? I am going to take possession. Pray, that I may be the first flower of this coming spring.”
A Monogram of Christ, found in the Catacombs.
And she passed on, singing blithely. But Sebastian begged her to stay one moment.