“Not exactly,” replied the honest artist; “but you are not perhaps aware that Cucumio the capsarius[79] and his wife are Christians?”
“Is it possible; where shall we find them next?”
“Well, so it is; and moreover they are making a tomb for themselves in the cemetery of Callistus; and I had to show them Majus’s inscription for it.”
“Here it is,” said the latter, exhibiting it, as follows:
CVCVMIO ET VICTORIA
SE VIVOS FECERVNT
CAPSARARIVS DE ANTONINIANAS.[80]
“Capital!” exclaimed Pancratius, amused at the blunders in the epitaph; “but we are forgetting Torquatus.”
“As I entered the building, then,” said Severus, “I was not a little surprised to find in one corner, at that early hour, this Torquatus in close conversation with the present prefect’s son, Corvinus, the pretended cripple, who thrust himself into Agnes’s house, you remember, when some charitable unknown person (God bless him!) gave large alms to the poor there. Not good company I thought, and at such an hour, for a Christian.”
“True, Severus,” returned Pancratius, blushing deeply; “but he is young as yet in the faith, and probably his old friends do not know of his change. We will hope for the best.”
The two young men offered to accompany Pancratius, who rose to leave, and see him safe through the poor and profligate neighborhood. He accepted their courtesy with pleasure, and bade the old excavator a hearty good night.
