'It will be a long time, I am persuaded,' said Julia, 'before the truths received then into many minds will cease to operate in our behalf. But what think you was the feeling of Aurelian? His countenance was hidden from me—yet that would reveal not much. It is immovable at those times, when he is deeply stirred, or has any motive to conceal his sentiments.'
'I cannot believe,' replied Probus, 'that any impression, such as we could wish, was made upon that hard and cruel heart. Not the brazen statue, against the base of which he leaned, stood in its place more dead to whatever it was that came from my lips than he. He has not been moved, we may well believe, to change any of his designs. Whatever yesterday it was in his intent to do, he will accomplish tomorrow. I do not believe we have anything to hope at his hands.'
'Alas, Lucius!' said Julia, 'that our faith in Christ, and our interest and concern for its progress in Rome, should after all come to this. How happy was I in Syria, with this belief as my bosom companion and friend; and free, too, to speak of it, to any and to all. How needless is all the misery which this rude, unlettered tyrant is about to inflict! How happily for all, would things take their course even here, might they but be left to run in those natural channels which would reveal themselves, and which would then conduct to those ends which the Divine Providence has proposed. But man wickedly interposes; and a misery is inflicted, which otherwise would have never fallen upon us, and which in the counsels of God was never designed. What now think you, Probus, will be the event?'
'I cannot doubt,' he replied, 'that tomorrow will witness all that report has already spread abroad as the purpose of Aurelian. Urged on by both Fronto and Varus, he will not pause in his course. Rome, ere the Ides, will swim in Christian blood. I see not whence deliverance is to come. Miracle alone could save us; and miracle has long since ceased to be the order of Providence. Having provided for us this immense instrument of moral reform in the authority and doctrine of Christ, we are now left, as doubtless it is on the whole best for our character and our virtues we should be, to our own unassisted strength, to combat with all the evils that may assail us, both from without and within. For myself, I can meet this tempest without a thought of reluctance or dread. I am a solitary man; having neither child nor relative to mourn my loss; I have friends indeed, whom I love, and from whom I would not willingly part; but, if any considerable purpose is to be gained by my death to that cause for which I have lived, neither I nor they can lament that it should occur. Under these convictions as to my own fate—and that of all, must I say and believe? no; I cannot, will not, believe that humanity has taken its final departure from the bosom of Aurelian—I turn to one bright spot, and there my thoughts dwell, and there my hopes gather strength, and that is here where you, Piso, and you, lady, will still dwell, too high for the aim of the imperial murderer to reach. Here I shall believe will there he an asylum for many a wearied spirit, a safe refuge from the sharp pelting of the storm without. And when a calm shall come again, from beneath this roof, as once from the ark of God, shall there go forth those who shall again people the waste-places of the church, and change the wilderness of death into a fruitful garden full of the plants of Heaven.'
'That it is the present purpose of Aurelian to spare me,' I answered, 'whatever provocation I may give him, I fully believe. He is true; and his word to that end, with no wish expressed on my part, has been given. But do not suppose that in that direction at least he may not change his purpose. Superstitiously mad as he now is, a mere plaything too in the bloody hands of Fronto—and nothing can well be esteemed as more insecure than even my life, privileged and secure as it may seem. If it should occur to him, in his day or his night visions and dreams, that I, more than others, should be an acceptable offering to his god, my life would be to him but that of an insect buzzing around his ear; and being dead by a blow, he would miss me no more. Still, let the mercy that is vouchsafed, whether great or little, be gratefully confessed.'
You then see, Fausta, the position in which your old friends now stand here in Rome. Who could have believed, when we talked over our dangers in Palmyra, that greater and more dreadful still awaited us in our own home. It has come upon us with such suddenness that we can scarce believe it ourselves. Yet are we prepared, with an even mind and a trusting faith, for whatever may betide.
It is happy for me, and for Julia, that our religion has fixed within us so firm a belief in a superintending Providence—who orders not only the greatest but the least events of life, who is as much concerned for the happiness and the moral welfare of the humblest individual, as he is for the orderly movement of a world—that we sit down under the shadows that overhang us, perfectly convinced that some end of good to the church or the world is to be achieved through these convulsions, greater than could have been achieved in any other way. The Supreme Ruler, we believe, is infinitely wise and infinitely good. But he would be neither, if unnecessary suffering were meted out to his creatures. This suffering then is not unnecessary. But through it, in ways which our sight now is not piercing enough to discern—but may hereafter be—shall a blessing redound both to the individuals concerned, to the present generation, and a remote posterity, which could not otherwise have been secured. This we must believe; or we must renounce all belief.
Forget not to remember us with affection to Gracchus and Calpurnius.
I also was present at the hearing of Probus. But of that I need say nothing; Piso having so fully written concerning it to the daughter of Gracchus.