The two slaves, Onesimus and Syrus, bear their torture with constancy, refusing to testify otherwise than in grateful praise of Paul. The emperor, at Seneca's prompting, has secretly overheard their testimony, and, obeying a caprice of justice and of pity, he follows a further hint from Seneca to let Paul go free under bond to appear again when formal accusation shall be laid against him from Jerusalem. Paul thus released sends home to Holy Land the friends that had thence accompanied him to Rome, and accomplishes his last missionary tours, with Luke only for companion.
Meantime Drusilla, in a desperate hope revived by the rumored fall from imperial favor of Poppæa, sends Simon once more to secure for his mistress the long-postponed meeting with Nero. Simon plays Drusilla false and pretends to the emperor that she had indulgently sent him, Simon, to sue on his own behalf for the privilege of practising his art in the palace. Nero agrees that he may do this on condition that he shall first have secured from his mistress fresh consent to receive an imperial visit in her house. Simon, stung by the emperor's scorn of him, had wrought himself up to the temerity of attempting to play on Nero's guilty conscience by an exhibition that should bring up before the tyrant a dreadful recollection of one of his own most heinous crimes. The result proves suddenly fatal to Simon.
Paul, brought back in due time for trial, becomes the victim not only of enmity openly working under legal forms against him, but of secret intrigue for unholy personal purposes on the emperor's part. Condemned to die, after having been permitted first to speak in his own defence, the apostle is led to a suburb of Rome, and there beheaded. Luke, enjoined thereto by Paul, gives to his kindred and friends in Palestine an account of the end, of which he was eye-witness.
THE END.
Onesimus and Syrus had been seized
To make them swear a dreadful perjury;
It was persuasion from Drusilla wrought
With Tigellinus to commit this deed
Of outrage against ruth and righteousness:
Those bondmen should be brought, by utmost pangs
Wreaked on them in the anguish of the rack,
To charge Paul with the poisoning of her spouse.
Drusilla first had vainly sought to bribe
Poor Syrus to that lie and perfidy.
Smiles, blandishments, entreaties, promises,
Failing—she next, with scourgings from her tongue,
Threats, thrusts from female weapons in her hands,
Had striven to warp him to her wish—in vain.
At last she, giving him up for torture, yet
Bade him remember he need only swear,
Therein supported by Onesimus,
That from Paul's hand he had a dust received—
Impalpable, so fine—of unknown power
To work unknown effect upon a man,
And had by Paul instructed been to sift
This secretly into some draught his lord
Would drink, and watch how it would gladden him—
That he had only to protest that lie,
Confessing then that, in all innocence
Of childish curiosity to see,
He did it when his mistress sent by him
A sleeping-draught to Felix in his bath—
Only just this, and straight for both of them,
Onesimus with Syrus, the sharp pains
And rending of the question should be stayed.
Syrus said sadly to Onesimus:
"O, would that Paul were here to give us heart!"
"Jesus is here, and He will give us heart,"
Onesimus replied; "let us trust Him."
"I fear I shall be broken to their will,"
Said Syrus, "and swear whatever they desire;
I am so in terror of the frightful pain!"
This was while they were binding the poor slaves
Upon the rack. His comrade spoke in cheer:
"'Lo, I am with you alway,' Jesus said;
He will not let us suffer overmuch.
I shall not wonder if He take away
The pain, almost—or altogether even.
For He abideth faithful—so Paul says,
And Paul has proved it over and over again.
At any rate, the promise Jesus made
To Paul once, when his need was very sore,
Will be as good to us in this our stead;
His grace will be sufficient for us still.
The dread is heavier than the pain will be."
And it was so; for after the first wrench,
Which well-nigh solved the jointings of their limbs,
The spirit rose the sovereign of the flesh
And bore those helpless victims of the rack
Triumphant as in painless ecstasy.
Their mortal frames became as instruments
Of music underneath the player's hand;
For every quivering nerve within them strung
Responded to the running torture's touch
In bursts of exclamation like the notes
Of a song sung to some pathetic tune
Wherein the pathos still keeps triumphing:
"Lord Jesus, this for Thee!" "And this!" "O, joy
That we are counted worthy thus to suffer!"
"It is not suffering, since for Thee we suffer!"
Meanwhile to every challenge touching Paul,
Though thrills of anguish broke their speech to cries,
They said, and would forever only say:
"He taught us nothing but to reverence
Our masters with all good fidelity
Of service rendered them out of true hearts
As to the Lord in heaven and not to men."