ndustry of attention and
the same silence of emotion, the minutest acts of spoliation committed
by the most humble follower of the Christian ranks. It was only when
he entered with the victorious ravagers into the vast apartment
occupied by the idol Serapis that the man's countenance began to give
evidence of the agony under which his heart was writhing within him.
He mounted a private staircase cut in the hollow of the massive wall of
the room, and gaining a passage that ran round the extremities of the
ceiling, looked through a sort of lattice concealed in the ornaments of
the cornice. As he gazed down and saw the soldier mounting, axe in
hand, to the idol's head, great drops of perspiration trickled from his
forehead. His hot, thick breath hissed through his closed teeth, and
his hands strained at the strong metal supports of the lattice until
they bent beneath his grasp. When the stroke descended on the image,
he closed his eyes. When the fragment detached by the blow fell on the
floor, a groan burst from his quivering lips. For one moment more he
glared down with a gaze of horror upon the multitude at his feet, and
then with frantic speed he descended the steep stairs by which he had
mounted to the roof, and fled from the temple.

The same night this man was again seen by some shepherds whom curiosity
led to visit the desecrated building, weeping bitterly in its ruined
and deserted porticoes. As they approached to address him, he raised
his head, and with a supplicating action signed to them to leave the
place. For the few moments during which he confronted them, the
moonlight shone full upon his countenance, and the shepherds, who had
in former days attended the ceremonies of the temple, saw with
astonishment that the solitary mourner whose meditations they had
disturbed was no other than Ulpius the priest.

At the dawn of day these shepherds had again occasion to pass the walls
of the pillaged temple. Throughout the hours of the night the
remembrance of the scene of unsolaced, unpartaken grief that they had
beheld--of the awful loneliness of misery in which they had seen the
heart-broken and forsaken man, whose lightest words they had once
delighted to revere--inspired them with a feeling of pity for the
deserted Pagan, widely at variance with the spirit of persecution which
the spurious Christianity of their day would fain have instilled in the
bosoms of its humblest votaries. Bent on consolation, anx