“I have long been watching for you,” answered Rufina, in a low voice, drawing Jovinian aside. “There are some friends not far off who greatly desire to embrace you—one especially, by whom your mother Livia was greatly beloved: Eugenia, now the wife of the presbyter Severus—and should you desire to escape from the thraldom in which you are held, they will afford you a secure asylum where the pontiff Gaius can never find you. Fear not,” she added, as she observed Jovinian glance towards Eros; “the Numidian will not stop you. I have communicated with him, and promised to secure his safety. Though he may not accompany you, he can no longer willingly serve a heathen master, and the price of his freedom has been provided.”
“Can you assure me of this?” asked Jovinian. “Much as I desire to obtain my liberty, I would not risk the safety of Eros, now that he is a Christian; and terrible would be his punishment were Gaius to discover that he had willingly allowed me to escape.”
“I will speak to him, and his answer shall convince you that I am not mistaken,” said Rufina; and, advancing towards Eros, she told him what Jovinian had said, adding, “I will now bid you farewell.”
“I desire not to impede you from going whithersoever you wish, though grieved that I may not accompany you,” said Eros. “My prayer is that we shall soon meet again, and that I may serve you as a freedman; and I rejoice to know that no longer as a slave shall I be compelled to act the guard and spy upon you. Farewell, Jovinian: Rufina forbids me to follow your footsteps, or I would thankfully accompany you. But do not be alarmed about my safety; she has provided a refuge where I can remain concealed, for I would avoid the enmity of Gaius,—he is aware that I know too many of the secrets of the college to allow me to retain my liberty, or even my life, could he get me into his power.”
Jovinian, satisfied on hearing that Eros was cared for, followed Rufina, who hastily led him along over the uncultivated country, which even in her palmiest days surrounded the city, till they reached one of the entrances to those subterranean labyrinths which have already been described. Jovinian followed her without hesitation; he had been well acquainted with them in his younger days, when he had dwelt in concealment with his mother and many other Christians. A well-trimmed lamp, which Rufina found within, enabled her to guide him through the intricate turnings of the labyrinth. Although several years had elapsed since he had entered them, he recognised, as they went along, many of the tombs of those who had departed in the faith. She stopped suddenly before one of them; he read the inscription on it. “Livia, the well-beloved! She rests in Christ.” The symbol above it was a dove, with an anchor carved on its breast. He gazed at it earnestly, and knew at once that it indicated his mother’s tomb.
“They brought her here to rest in peace, as she desired. And may I ever possess that sure and certain hope, the anchor of the soul, which enabled her to endure without wavering the storms and trials of life,” he mused.
Rufina stopped to throw a light on the slab, unwilling to interrupt his meditations, and remained without speaking. At length she observed, “We must hurry on, or the oil in the lamp may be exhausted before we reach our destination.”
They continued their course, proceeding along several galleries,—now descending some flights of steps, now ascending others,—till they reached a slab of stone, which resembled many they had passed, let into the wall, with rude inscriptions on them. Rufina knocked three times on the slab with a small mallet which she carried in her basket. Placing her ear against the slab, she listened, when, in the course of a few minutes, she heard the sound of a bolt being withdrawn, and the stone slowly swung back, allowing an opening sufficiently large for a person to pass through. Rufina taking the hand of her young companion, they entered, when the slab was immediately closed behind them. So rapid had been their movements, that to any one following them they would seem to have vanished. The janitor, a humble fossor, after saluting Rufina as a sister, led them on to the end of a long passage, when another door, of a similar character to the first, being opened for them to pass through, they found themselves, after advancing a short distance further, at the entrance of a small hall, from the roof of which hung a silver lamp, its rays casting a pale light on several persons assembled within. Jovinian hung back, not recognising those he saw before him; but no sooner had Rufina stated who he was than he heard himself greeted by friendly voices.
“Welcome, son of our well-beloved: thou hast been faithful as she was!” said the aged Gentianus, who was seated at a table in the centre of the hall. He drew Jovinian towards him, and placing his hand on the lad’s head, gazed into his face as he spoke. “We indeed rejoice that you have escaped from the power of the pontiff Gaius, and still more that you have resisted the temptations he offered you to depart from the faith. May the Holy Spirit ever strengthen and support you in the fiery trials you may be called on to go through. The mystery of iniquity doth already work, and who shall escape its toils? Those alone who cling fast to Christ. May you be among them, my son!”
Much more to the same effect was said by the patrician Gentianus, when his daughter Eugenia, and her husband Severus, advancing, welcomed Jovinian. His mother’s dearest friend was well disposed to treat him with affection. By her side was a young girl—her daughter Julia. As the maiden took his hand, Jovinian gazed at her with admiration. Her lovely features beamed with intelligence, and the light of Christian virtue. Firm in the faith, had the days of persecution returned she would have been ready to suffer martyrdom rather than renounce the Saviour who had bought her. Since their childhood Jovinian and Julia had not met, for Gentianus and his household had resided far away to the south, on the sunny slopes of the Apennines, where he and Severus had devoted themselves to the spreading of the truth among their heathen neighbours of all ranks. They had lately returned, called by important business, both secular and on matters relating to the Church; but, warned of the undying hostility of Coecus the pontiff, they had judged it prudent to take up their residence in their former abode, whence, undiscovered, they could communicate freely with their friends in the city, and afford an asylum to those Christian converts who might be compelled to escape from the malice of their idolatrous relatives. There was persecution even in those days; for though heathenism, as a system, was crumbling away, and few of the better educated or wealthy believed in the myths of the gods of Olympus, yet many clung to the ancient faith, or rather to its form, simply because it was ancient, and their ancestors were supposed to have believed in it. These persons in most instances treated with supreme contempt, and often with great cruelty, any of their relatives or dependents who openly professed a belief in Christ, refusing to have any transactions with them, and endeavouring to ruin or drive them into exile. Still more terrible were the penalties inflicted by the sacerdotal orders on any of their number who, abandoning idolatry, embraced the truth. If unable to escape from Rome, the dagger or poison too generally overtook them. Their safest place of refuge was in the subterranean galleries in which Jovinian now found himself. Thus it happened that he met numerous visitors at the abode of Gentianus. He had been conversing with his old friends, when he saw emerging into the light a lady of radiant beauty, habited in white, without the slightest ornament on her dress or head, a purple band round her forehead confining her close-cut hair. A second glance convinced him that he had seen her before, seated in a silver chariot on the day of the procession.