Æmilius, looking through a chink, saw the stranger lay his hand on the woman’s brow. He saw how the next moment he withdrew it, and how, turning to her daughter, he said:
“Do not lament for her. She has passed from death unto life. She sees Him, in whom she has believed, in whom she has hoped, whom she has loved.”
And the daughter wiped her eyes.
“Well,” said Æmilius to himself, “now I begin to see how these people are led to face death without fear. It is a pity that it should be delusion and mere talk. Where is the evidence that it is other? Where is the foundation for all this that is said?”
CHAPTER VII
OBLATIONS
The house into which the widow lady and her daughter entered was that used by the Christians of Nemausus as their church. A passage led into the atrium, a quadrangular court in the midst of the house into which most of the rooms opened, and in the center of which was a small basin of water. On the marble breasting of this tank stood, in a heathen household, the altar to the lares et penates, the tutelary gods of the dwelling. This court was open above for the admission of light and air, and to allow the smoke to escape. Originally this had been the central chamber of the Roman house, but eventually it became a court. It was the focus of family life, and the altar in it represented the primitive family hearth in times before civilization had developed the house out of the cabin.
Whoever entered a pagan household was expected, as token of respect, to strew a few grains of incense on the ever-burning hearth, or to dip his fingers in the water basin and flip a few drops over [pg 69]the images. But in a Christian household no such altar and images of gods were to be found. A Christian gave great offense by refusing to comply with the generally received customs, and his disregard on this point of etiquette was held to be as indicative of boorishness and lack of graceful courtesy, as would be the conduct nowadays of a man who walked into a drawing-room wearing his hat.
Immediately opposite the entrance into the atrium, on the further side of the tank, and beyond the altar to the lares et penates, elevated above the floor of the court by two or three white-marble steps, was a semicircular chamber, with elaborate mosaic floor, and the walls richly painted. This was the tablinum. The paintings represented scenes from heathen mythology in such houses as belonged to pagans, but in the dwelling of Baudillas, the deacon, the pictures that had originally decorated it had been plastered over, and upon this coating green vines had been somewhat rudely drawn, with birds of various descriptions playing among the foliage and pecking at the grapes.