“Begone, begone,” exclaimed piteously the tortured sinner. “They will forgive me still. God——”
“Silence; utter not His name: you are degraded, perjured, hopelessly lost. You are a beggar; to-morrow you must beg your bread. You are an outcast, a ruined prodigal and gamester. Who will look at you? will your Christian friends? And nevertheless you are a Christian; you will be torn to pieces by some cruel death for it; yet you will not be worshipped by them as one of their martyrs. You are a hypocrite, Torquatus, and nothing more.”
“Who is it that is tormenting me?” he exclaimed, and looked up. Fulvius was standing with folded arms at his side. “And if all this be true, what is it to you? What have you to say more to me?” he continued.
“Much more than you think. You have betrayed yourself into my power completely. I am master of your money”—(and he showed him Fabiola’s purse)—“of your character, of your peace, of your life. I have only to let your fellow-Christians know what you have done, what you have said, what you have been to-night, and you dare not face them. I have only to let that ‘bully—that big brute,’ as you called him, but who is son of the prefect of the city, loose upon you, (and no one else can now restrain him after such provocation), and to-morrow you will be standing before his father’s tribunal to die for that religion which you have betrayed and disgraced. Are you ready now, any longer, to reel and stagger as a drunken gambler, to represent your Christianity before the judgment-seat in the Forum?”
The fallen man had not courage to follow the prodigal in repentance, as he had done in sin. Hope was dead in him; for he had relapsed into his capital sin, and scarcely felt remorse. He remained silent, till Fulvius aroused him by asking, “Well, have you made your choice; either to go at once to the Christians with to-night on your head, or to-morrow to the court? Which do you choose?”
Torquatus raised his eyes to him, with a stolid look, and faintly answered, “Neither.”
“Come, then, what will you do?” asked Fulvius, mastering him with one of his falcon glances.
“What you like,” said Torquatus, “only neither of those things.”
Fulvius sat down beside him, and said, in a soft and soothing voice, “Now, Torquatus, listen to me; do as I tell you, and all is mended. You shall have house, and food, and apparel, ay, and money to play with, if you will only do my bidding.”
“And what is that?”