Noe and the Ark, as a symbol of the Church, from a picture in the Catacombs.
“He must be found,” concluded Fabiola. “Dear Miriam, thou hadst, then, this consoling foresight in death!”
CHAPTER II.
THE STRANGER IN ROME.
“Ay, ay, Corvinus,” one youth was saying to him, “won’t you get your deserts, now? Have you not heard that Constantine is coming this year to Rome, and don’t you think the Christians will have their turn about now?”
“Not they,” answered the man we have described, “they have not the pluck for it. I remember we feared it, when Constantine published his first edict, after the death of Maxentius, about liberty for the Christians, but next year he put us out of fear, by declaring all religions to be equally permitted.”[237]
“That is all very well, as a general rule,” interposed another, determined further to plague him; “but is it not supposed that he is going to look up those who took an active part in the late persecution, and have the lex talionis,[238] executed on them; stripe for stripe, burning for burning, and wild beast for wild beast?”
“Who says so?” asked Corvinus turning pale.
“Why, it would surely be very natural,” said one.