Perpetua. A Tale of Nimes in A.D. 213. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ He was indignant that the fools of Avenio should continue to treat him as though he were a wild beast that had to be glutted, and not as a god. All you parents that fear for your children! Some of you have already lost your daughters, and have trembled for them; combine, and with one voice proclaim that you will no more suffer this. Look to the urn of the divine Nemausus. See how evenly the ripples run. Dip your fingers in the water and feel how passionless it is. Has he blown forth a blast of seething water and steam like the hot springs of Aquæ Sextiæ? Has his fountain clouded with anger? Was the god powerless to avenge the act when I plunged in? If he had desired the death of the maiden would he have suffered me, a mortal, to pluck her from his gelid lips? Make room on Olympus, O ye gods, and prepare a throne for Common Sense, and let her have domain over the minds of men.”

      “There is no such god,” called one in the crowd.

      “Ye know her not, so besotted are ye.”

      “He blasphemes, he mocks the holy and immortal ones.”

      “It is ye who mock them when ye make of them as great clowns as yourselves. The true eternal gods laugh to hear me speak the truth. Look at the sun. Look at the water, with its many twinkling smiles. The gods approve.”

      Whilst the young man thus harangued and amused the populace, Baudillas and Quincta, assisted by two female slaves of the latter, removed the drenched, dripping, and half-drowned girl. They bore her with the utmost dispatch out of the crowd down a sidewalk of the city gardens to a bench, on which they laid her, till she had sufficiently recovered to open her eyes and recognize those who surrounded her.

      Then said the widow to one of the servants: “Run, Petronella, and bid the steward send porters with a litter. We must convey Perpetua as speedily as possible from hence, lest there be a riot, and the ministers of the devil stir up the people to insist upon again casting her into the water.”

      “By your leave, lady,” said Baudillas, “I would advise that, at first, she should not be conveyed to your house, but to mine. It is probable, should that happen which you fear, that the populace may make a rush to your dwelling, in their attempt to get hold of the lady, your daughter. It were well that she remained for a while concealed in my house. Send for the porters to bring the litter later, when falls the night.”

      “You are right,” said Quincta. “It shall be so.”

      “As in the Acts of the Blessed Apostles it is related that the craftsmen who lived by making silver shrines for Diana stirred up the people of Ephesus, so may it be now. There are many who get their living by the old religion, many whose position and influence depend on its maintenance, and such will not lightly allow a slight to be cast on their superstitions like as has been offered this day. But by evenfall we shall know the humor of the people. Young lady, lean on my arm and let me conduct thee to my lodging. Thou canst there abide till it is safe for thee to depart.”

      Then the brown-habited man took the maiden’s arm.

      Baudillas was a deacon of the Church in Nemausus – a man somewhat advanced in life. His humility, and, perhaps, also his lack of scholarship, prevented his aspiring to a higher office; moreover, he was an admirable minister of the Church as deacon, at a period when the office was mainly one of keeping the registers of the sick and poor, and of distributing alms among such as were in need.

      The deacon was the treasurer of the Church, and he was a man selected for his business habits and practical turn of mind. By his office he was more concerned with the material than the spiritual distresses of men. Nevertheless, he was of the utmost value to the bishops and presbyters, for he was their feeler, groping among the poorest, entering into the worst haunts of misery and vice, quick to detect tokens of desire for better things, and ready to make use of every opening for giving rudimentary instruction.

      Those who occupied the higher grades in the Church, even at this early period, were, for the most part, selected from the cultured and noble classes; not that the Church had respect of persons, but because of the need there was of possessing men who could penetrate into the best houses, and who, being related to the governing classes, might influence the upper strata of society, as well as that which was below. The great houses with their families of slaves in the city, and of servile laborers on their estates, possessed vast influence for good or evil. A believing master could flood a whole population that depended on him with light, and was certain to treat his slaves with Christian humanity. On the other hand, it occasionally happened that it was through a poor slave that the truth reached the heart of a master or mistress.

      Baudillas led the girl, now shivering with cold, from the garden, and speedily reached a narrow street. Here the houses on each side were lofty, unadorned, and had windows only in the upper stories, arched with brick and unglazed. In cold weather they were closed with shutters.

      The pavement of the street was of cobble-stones and rough. No one was visible; no sound issued from the houses, save only from one whence came the rattle of a loom; and a dog chained at a door barked furiously as the little party went by.

      “This is the house,” said Baudillas, and he struck against a door.

      After some waiting a bar was withdrawn within, and the door, that consisted of two valves, was opened by an old, slightly lame slave.

      “Pedo,” said the deacon, “has all been well?”

      “All is well, master,” answered the man.

      “Enter, ladies,” said Baudillas. “My house is humble and out of repair, but it was once notable. Enter and rest you awhile. I will bid Pedo search for a change of garments for Perpetua.”

      “Hark,” exclaimed Quincta, “I hear a sound like the roar of the sea.”

      “It is the voice of the people. It is a roar like that for blood, that goes up from the amphitheater.”

      CHAPTER IV

      THE UTRICULARES

      The singular transformation that had taken place in the presiding deity of the fountain, from being a nymph into a male god, had not been sufficiently complete to alter the worship of the deity. As in the days of Druidism, the sacred source was under the charge of priestesses, and although, with the change of sex of the deity, priests had been appointed to the temple, yet they were few, and occupied a position of subordination to the chief priestess. She was a woman of sagacity and knowledge of human nature. She perceived immediately how critical was the situation. If Æmilius Lentulus were allowed to proceed with his speech he would draw to him the excitable Southern minds, and it was quite possible might provoke a tumult in which the temple would be wrecked. At the least, his words would serve to chill popular devotion.

      The period when Christianity began to radiate through the Roman world was one when the traditional paganism with its associated rights, that had contented a simpler age, had lost its hold on the thoughtful and cultured. Those who were esteemed the leaders of society mocked at religion, and although they conformed to its ceremonial, did so with ill-disguised contempt. At their tables, before their slaves, they laughed at the sacred myths related of the gods, as absurd and indecent, and the slaves thought it became them to affect the same incredulity as their masters. Sober thinkers endeavored to save some form of religion by explaining away the monstrous legends, and attributing them to the wayward imagination of poets. The existence of the gods they admitted, but argued that the gods were the unintelligent and blind forces of nature; or that, if rational, they stood apart in cold exclusiveness and cared naught for mankind. Many threw themselves into a position of agnosticism. They professed to believe in nothing but what their senses assured them did exist, and asserted that as there was no evidence to warrant them in declaring that there were gods, they could not believe in them; СКАЧАТЬ