The bowed head fell heavily on the clasped hands, and the old man sank slowly on his knees. At that moment a stray sunbeam, the first of a murky morning, touched his white hair as with a crown of brightness, then faded and the clouded heavens grew dark. The guards stooped to lift him. He was dead.
“What a dramatic talent those Christians have!” said the emperor to his friend Apulius, who stood beside his throne. “Pity they do not apply it to better purpose. Guards! let that old man go free—we pity his gray hairs—ha! ha!”
“He is dead, most noble emperor,” replied one of the soldiers, not without something of softness in his voice.
“Ah! so? Remove the corpse then; and thou, good Marcellus, be sure thou hast those fifty Syrian Christian torches well pitched and oiled ere night—for it will be dark, and we must needs be lighted to Phryma’s banquet. Come Apulius—make way, lictors.”
So Nero passed beneath the arched doorway from his tyrant throne—and at the same moment some timid Christians near its foot bore away the body of a saint for burial.
ART AND SCIENCE.
A wild swan and an eagle side by side
I marked, careering o’er the ocean-plain,
Emulous a heaven more heavenly each to gain,