turn his good opinion," replied Petrus, "and it is no ordinary
matter that estranges. He thinks that he only holds the true faith, and
ought to fight for it; he calls all artistic work a heathen abomination;
he never felt the purifying influence of the beautiful, and regards all
pictures and statues as tending to idolatry. Still he allows himself to
admire Polykarp's figures of angels and the Good Shepherd, but the lions
put the old warrior in a rage. 'Accursed idols and works of the devil,'
are what he calls them."

"But there were lions even in the temple of Solomon," cried Dorothea.

"I urged that, and also that in the schools of the catechists, and in the
educational history of animals which we possess and teach from, the
Saviour himself is compared to a lion, and that Mark, the evangelist, who
brought the doctrine of the gospel to Alexandria, is represented with a
lion. But he withstood me more and more violently, saying that Polykarp's
works were to adorn no sacred place, but the Caesareum, and that to him
is nothing but a heathen edifice, and the noble works of the Greeks that
are preserved there he calls revolting images by which Satan ensnares the
souls of Christian men. The other senators can understand his hard words,
but they cannot follow mine; and so they vote with him, and my motion to
construct the roadway was thrown over, because it did not become a
Christian assembly to promote idolatry, and to smooth a way for the
devil."

"I can see that you must have answered them sharply!"

"Indeed I believe so," answered Petrus, looking down. "Many painful
things were no doubt said, and it was I that suffered for them. Agapitus,
who was looking at the deacons' reports, was especially dissatisfied with
the account that I laid before them; they blamed us severely because you
gave away as much bread to heathen households as to Christians. It is no
doubt true, but--"

"But," cried Dorothea eagerly, "hunger is just as painful to the
unbaptized, and their Christian neighbors do not help them, and yet they
too are our flesh and blood. I should ill fulfil my office if I were to
let them starve, because the highest comfort is lacking to them."

"And yet," said Petrus, "the council decided that, for the future, you
must apply at the most a fourth part of the grain allotted to their use.
You need not fear for them; for the future some of our own produce may go
to them out of what we have hitherto sold. You need not with