from the vineyard and from the fields
for their household gods. We had taught them that it sufficed to
approach the altar with clean hands, and that the gods rejoiced over a
modest offering.

"Nevertheless, the reign of Iahveh proclaimed its advent in a hundred
places by its extravagances. The Christians burnt books, overthrew
temples, set fire to the towns, and carried on their ravages as far as
the deserts. There, thousands of unhappy beings, turning their fury
against themselves, lacerated their sides with points of steel. And from
the whole earth the sighs of voluntary victims rose up to God like songs
of praise.

"My shadowy retreat could not escape for long from the fury of their
madness.

"On the summit of the hill which overlooked the olive woods, brightened
daily with the sounds of my flute, had stood since the earliest days of
the Pax Romana, a small marble temple, round as the huts of our
forefathers. It had no walls, but on a base of seven steps, sixteen
columns rose in a circle with the acanthus on the capitals, bearing a
cupola of white tiles. This cupola sheltered a statue of Love fashioning
his bow, the work of an Athenian sculptor. The child seemed to breathe,
joy was welling from his lips, all his limbs were harmonious and
polished. I honoured this image of the most powerful of all the gods,
and I taught the villagers to bear to him as an offering a cup crowned
with verbena and filled with wine two summers old.

"One day, when seated as my custom was at the feet of the god, pondering
precepts and songs, an unknown man, wild-looking, with unkempt hair,
approached the temple, sprang at one bound up the marble steps, and with
savage glee exclaimed:

"'Die, poisoner of souls, and joy and beauty perish with you.' He spoke
thus, and drawing an axe from his girdle raised it against the god. I
stayed his arm, I threw him down, and trampled him under my feet.

"'Demon,' he cried desperately, 'suffer me to overturn this idol, and
you may slay me afterwards.'

"I heeded not his atrocious plea, but leaned with all my might on his
chest, which cracked under my knee, and, squeezing his throat with my
two hands, I strangled the impious one.

"While he lay there, with purple face and lolling tongue, at the feet of
the smiling god, I went to purify myself at the sacred stream. Then
leaving this land, now the prey of the Christian, I passed through Gaul
and gained the banks of the Saone, whither Dionysus had,