“And pray—is she a visiting acquaintance of the family?”
“She is our freedwoman. Paris was freed by my father likewise. Are you content? I may add that she has met with an accident and is crippled and confined to her bed.”
“Oh!” with a vulgar laugh, “and you are infected with the Christian malady, and go among the sick and starving.”
“I know naught of this Christian malady. What is it?”
“We have had the contagion touch us. There is my cousin Clemens, and his wife Domitilla, both taken badly with it. He is a poor, mean-spirited fool. He has been offered excellent situations, with money to be made in them, in bushels, but he refuses—will not swear by the genius of my father, will not offer sacrifice to the Gods. Such thin gruel minds I cannot away with. Were I Augustus, such as would not serve the Commonwealth should be sent to kick their heels in a desert island. These Christians are the enemies of the human race.”
“What, because they visit the sick and relieve the poor?”
“The sick are smitten by the Gods and should be left to die. The poor are encumbrances and should be left to rot away. But a man of rank and of family—”
“Flavius Clemens! of what family?”
Domitian bit his lip. The Flavians were of no ancestry; money-lenders, tax-collectors, jobbers in various ways, with no connections save through the mother of Vespasian, and that middle-class only.
“I say that a man who will not serve his country should be pitched out of it.”