"Nay, Your Majesty," said the crafty Fausta, while the abject priest cowered like a whipped cur; "'tis but his excess of zeal for Your Majesty's honour, which I fear the Empress betrays."
"Madam," said Galerius, sternly, "I am the guardian of my own honour. What the Christians are, I neither know nor care. What the Empress is, I know—the noblest soul that breathes in Rome. Who wags his tongue against her shall be given to the crows and kites. Dixi Fiat—I have spoken—so let it be," and his terrible frown, as he stalked from the room, showed that he meant what he said.
The three conspirators, for a moment, stared at each other in consternation. Then the wily Fausta faltered out, "Said I not, he would defy both gods and men? We must do by stealth what we cannot do by force. Juba must ply her most secret and most deadly arts. I have certain subtle spells myself; and if mortal hate can give them power, I will make her beauty waste away like a fading flower, and her strength wane like a dying lamp."
"'Tis a dangerous game," replied Naso. "Be wary how you play it. As for me, armed with this edict, I will strike at mine ancient foe, for whom I long have nursed a bitter spite. Curse him! I am tired of hearing him called Adauctus the Just. He held me to such a strict account that I had to make a full return of all the fines and mulcts paid in, without taking the toll which is my right." And he departed to gratify his double passion of revenge and greed.
It may seem strange that such a truculent monster as Galerius, of whom, in his later days, his Christian subjects were wont to say that "he never supped without human blood—Nec unquam sine cruore humano cœnabat,"[35]—should be so under the spell of his Christian wife. But the statement is corroborated by the records of history, and by the philosophy of the human mind. There is a power in moral goodness that can awe the rudest natures, a winsome spell that can subdue the hardest hearts. It was the story of Una and the Lion, of Beauty and the Beast over again; and one of the severest trials for a Christian wife in those days of the struggle between Christianity and Paganism for the mastery of the world, was that of being allied to a pagan husband. Tertullian, in the third century, thus describes the difficulties which a Christian woman married to an idolater must encounter in her religious life:
"At the time for worship the husband will appoint the use of the bath; when a fast is to be observed he will invite company to a feast When she would bestow alms, both safe and cellar are closed against her. What heathen will suffer his wife to attend the nightly meetings of the Church, the slandered Supper of the Lord, to visit the sick even in the poorest hovels, to kiss the martyrs' chains in prison, to rise in the night for prayer, to show hospitality to stranger brethren?"[36]
In time of persecution, or in the case of persons of such exalted rank as that of Valeria, the difficulty of adorning a Christian life, amid their pagan surroundings, was all the greater. Yet not a word of scandal has been breathed upon the character of the wife of the arch persecutor of the Christians; and even the sneering pen of Gibbon has only words of commendation for the Christian Empress who herself under subsequent persecution, remained steadfast even unto death.
The beauty and dignity of Christian wedlock in an age of persecution and strife are nobly expressed by Tertullian in the following passage, addressed to his own wife: "How can I paint the happiness," he exclaims, "of a marriage which the Church ratines, the Sacrament confirms, the benediction seals, angels announce, and our heavenly Father declares valid! What a union of two believers—one hope, one vow, one discipline, one worship! They are brother and sister, two fellow-servants, one spirit and one flesh. They pray together, fast together, exhort and support one another. They go together to the house of God, and to the table of the Lord. They share each other's trials, persecutions, and joys. Neither avoids, nor hides anything from the other. They delight to visit the sick, succour the needy, and daily to lay their offerings before the altar without scruple, and without constraint. They do not need to keep the sign of the cross hidden, nor to express secretly their Christian joy, nor to receive by stealth the eucharist. They join in psalms and hymns, and strive who best can praise God. Christ rejoices at the sight, and sends His peace upon them. Where two are in His name He also is; and where He is, there evil cannot come."
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum.