"You may be sure, my friends, that we both took a careful note of the hour, the day, the week, month, year; and I intend to inquire everywhere whether in other lands any similar phenomena have appeared; and what overwhelming, unexampled event can have taken place on this little planet of ours to bring the heavens themselves into confusion, and coerce all the powers of nature into so awful a manifestation of sympathy or of horror."
He ended by conveying to Aglais and Paulus the loving remembrance of the Lady Damarais.
Aglais and her son and Esther were spell-bound with amazement when this letter had been read; and Paulus exclaimed:
"What will Dion say when he hears that we also saw this very darkness at the same moment; that the veil of the Temple here has been rent in twain; and that he who expired amid these and so many other portents, Esther, and in the full culmination of the prophecies, is again living, speaking, acting, the Conqueror of death, as he was the Lord of life?"
"Let us go to Athens; let us bring our friends, the Lady Damarais and our dear Dion, to learn and understand what we have ourselves been mercifully taught."
So spoke Aglais, offering at the same time to Esther a mother's protection and love along the journey. Paulus was silent, but gazed pleadingly at Esther.
It was agreed. But in the political dangers of that reign, Paulus, owing to his fame itself, had to take so many precautions that much time was unavoidably lost.
Meanwhile, he had again asked the Jewish maiden to become his wife. Need we say that this time his suit was successful? Paulus and Esther were married.
Christianity in the interim grew from month to month and from year to year, and our wanderers had but just arrived at last in Athens in time to hear, near the statue of "the unknown God," while Damarais, the friend of Aglais, and Dion, the friend of them all, stood near, a majestic stranger, a Roman citizen, him who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the glorious Apostle of the Gentiles, who had been "faithful to the heavenly Vision," though he had not seen the Resurrection, explain to the Athenians "him whom they had ignorantly worshipped." And when the sublime messenger of glad tidings related the circumstances of the Passion, the scenes which had been enacted in Pilate's house (so well remembered by them), the next day's dread event, and when he touched upon the preternatural accompaniments of that final catastrophe, and described the darkness which had overspread the earth from the sixth hour of that day, Dionysius, turning pale, drew out the tablets which he carried habitually, examined the date of which, at Heliopolis, he and Apollophanes had jointly made note, and showed symptoms of an emotion such as he had never before experienced.
He and Damarais, as is well known, were among the converts of Saint Paul on that great occasion. How our other characters felt we need not describe.