Yielding to the entreaties of their beloved Dionysius, they actually loitered in Greece for a few years, during which Christianity had outstripped them and penetrated to Rome, where it was soon welcomed with fire and sword, and where "the blood of martyrs became the seed of Christians." Esther shuddered as she heard names dear to her in the murmured accounts of dreadful torments.
Resuming their westward course, how Paulus rejoiced that he had in time sold everything in Italy, and was armed with opulence in the midst of new and strange trials! They gave Italy a wide offing, and passing round by the south of Germany, with an armed escort which Thellus (who had also become a Christian, and had, while they were in Greece, sent for Prudentia) commanded, they never ceased their travels till they reached the banks of the Seine; and there, undiscernible to the vision of Roman tyranny in the distance, they obtained, by means of the treasures they had brought, hundreds of stout Gaulish hands to do their bidding, and soon founded a peaceful home amid a happy colony. Hence they sent letters to Agatha and Paterculus.
Two arrivals from the realms of civilization waked into excitement the peaceful tenor of their days. Paulus himself, hearing of the death of Paterculus, ventured quickly back to Italy, in the horrible, short reign of Caligula, and fetched his sister Agatha, now a widow, to live with them. Later still, they were surprised to behold arrive among them one whom they had often mourned as lost to them for ever. It was Dionysius. He came to found Christianity in Gaul, and settled, amidst the friends of his youth, on the banks of the Seine. Often they reverted, with a clear light, to the favorite themes of their boyhood; and often the principal personages who throughout this story have, we hope, interested the reader, gathered around that same Dionysius (who is, indeed, the St. Denis of France), and listened, near the place where Notre Dame now towers, to the first Bishop of Paris, correcting the theories which he had propounded to the Areopagus of Athens as the last of the great Greek philosophers.[5]
One other arrival greeted, indeed, the expatriated but happy settlement. Longinus found his way among them; and as the proud ideas of a social system upon which they had turned their back no longer tyrannized over Aglais or Paulus, the brave man, biding his time and watching opportunities, found no insurmountable obstacles in obtaining a fair reward for twenty years and more of patient and unalterable love. He and Agatha were married.
THE END.
EUROPE'S FUTURE.
FROM THE GERMAN.
To be able to form a correct judgment regarding the future of Europe, there are several points and theories which must be previously considered. First on the list comes—