The reader is in possession of Eurotas’s own revelations; it is sufficient to add, that being the elder brother, but conscious that his rough, morose, and sinister character did not fit him for sustaining the position of head of the family and administering quietly a settled property, and having a haughty ambition to raise his house into a nobler rank, and increase even its riches, he took but a moderate sum of money as capital, vanished for years, embarked in the desperate traffic of interior Asia, penetrated into China and India, and came back home with a large fortune, and a collection of rare gems, which helped his nephew’s brief career, but misguided him to ruin in Rome.
Eurotas, instead of a rich family, into which to pour superfluous wealth, found only a bankrupt house to save from ruin. But his family pride prevailed; and after many reproaches, and bitter quarrels with his brother, but concealed from all else, he paid off his debts by the extinction of his own capital, and thus virtually became master of all the wreck of his brother’s property, and of the entire family.
After a few years of weary life, the father sickened and died. On his death-bed, he told Orontius that he had nothing to leave him, that all he had lived on for some years, the very house over his head, belonged to his friend Eurotas, whose relationship he did not further explain, whom he must look up to entirely for support and guidance. The youth thus found himself, while full of pride, ambition, and voluptuousness, in the hands of a cold-hearted, remorseless, and no less ambitious man, who soon prescribed as the basis of mutual confidence, absolute submission to his will, while he should act in the capacity of an inferior, and the understood principle, that nothing was too great or too little, nothing too good or too wicked to be done, to restore family position and wealth.
To stay at Antioch was impossible after the ruin which had overtaken the house. With a good capital in hand, much might be done elsewhere. But now, even the sale of all left would scarcely cover the liabilities discovered after the father’s death. There was still untouched the sister’s fortune; and both agreed that this must be got from her. Every artifice was tried, every persuasion employed, but she simply and firmly resisted; both in obedience to her mother’s dying orders, and because she had in view the establishment of a house for consecrated virgins, in which she intended to pass her days. She was now just of legal age to dispose of her own property. She offered them every advantage that she could give them; proposed that for a time they should all live together upon her means. But this did not answer their purpose; and when every other course had failed, Eurotas began to hint, that one who stood so much in their way should be got rid of at any cost.
Orontius shuddered at the first proposal of the thought. Eurotas familiarized him gradually with it, till—shrinking yet from the actual commission of fratricide—he thought he had almost done something virtuous, as the brothers of Joseph imagined they did, by adopting a slower and less sanguinary method of dealing with an obnoxious brother. Stratagem and unseen violence, of which no law could take cognizance, and which no one would dare reveal, offered him the best chance of success.
Among the privileges of Christians in the first ages, we have already mentioned that of reserving the Blessed Eucharist at home for domestic communion. We have described the way in which it was enfolded in an orarium, or linen cloth, again often preserved in a richer cover. This precious gift was kept in a chest (arca) with a lid, as St. Cyprian has informed us.[220] Orontius well knew this; and he was moreover aware that its contents were more prized than silver or gold; that, as the Fathers tell us, to drop negligently a crumb of the consecrated bread was considered a crime;[221] and that the name of “pearl,” which was given to the smallest fragment,[222] showed that it was so precious in a Christian’s eye, that he would part with all he possessed to rescue it from sacrilegious profanation.
The scarf richly embroidered with pearls, which has more than once affected our narrative, was the outer covering in which Miriam’s mother had preserved this treasure; and her daughter valued it both as a dear inheritance, and as a consecrated object, for she continued its use.
One day, early in the morning, she knelt before her ark; and after fervent preparation by prayer, proceeded to open it. To her dismay she found it already unlocked, and her treasure gone! Like Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre, she wept bitterly, because they had taken her Lord, and she knew not where they had laid Him. Like her, too, “as she was weeping she stooped down and looked” again into her ark, and found a paper, which in the confusion of the first glance she had overlooked.
It informed her that what she sought was safe in her brother’s hands, and might be ransomed. She ran at once to him, where he was closeted with the dark man, in whose presence she always trembled; threw herself on her knees before him, and entreated him to restore what she valued more than all her wealth. He was on the point of yielding to her tears and supplications, when Eurotas fixed his stern eye upon him, overawed him, then himself addressed her, saying:
“Miriam, we take you at your word. We wish to put the earnestness and reality of your faith to a sufficient test. Are you truly sincere in what you offer?”