"Amen!"
They echoed all, with not even Krishna mute;
Then silently and solemnly withdrew.
BOOK XV.
YOUNG STEPHEN AND FELIX.
Drusilla has a confidential conference with Simon the sorcerer, now recovered, though still weak. He tempts her to think of ensnaring the emperor with her charms. He insinuates into her mind the idea of making away with Felix on the ground of his being an obstacle in her path to success With this in view, he forms suddenly a plot to convict Felix in his wife's eyes of infidelity to herself. He easily awakens Drusilla's jealousy, and she, with her own motives, enters into Simon's present proposals. Eunicé is accordingly invited to visit Drusilla as one repentant and desirous of being a Christian—Felix having meantime been filled by Simon with the notion that Eunicé is enamored of him, Felix. She comes with her mother to Felix's house, and the two are there entrapped; but at the crisis of danger they are rescued by young Stephen.
YOUNG STEPHEN AND FELIX.
That bland sweet weather changed to truculent
At sunset, and through all the winter night
Raged with wild wind and sleet of rain and hail.
The roofs, the doors, the casements, of the house
Where Felix and Drusilla sojourned, shook
As toward dilapidation of its frame.
Drusilla lay in terror of her life
Tossing upon her couch and could not sleep.
Brief intervals and lulls of tempest came;
But images of distant danger then
Mixed with the imminent menaces of the night.
So with the earliest morning—furious yet
The unabated rack of elements—
Drusilla sent for Simon, rallied now
Out of his low estate, and, tremulous
With weakness, through that very weakness made
More searchingly clairvoyant than his wont.