cundus, almost mimicking him in
his indignation; "pray! who thanks you for your prayers? what's the good
of prayers? Prayers, indeed! ha, ha! A little loyalty is worth all the
praying in the world. I'll tell you what, Agellius; you are, I am sorry to
say it, but you are hand and glove with a set of traitors, who shall and
will be smoked out like a nest of wasps. _You_ don't know; _you_ are not
in the secret, nor the wretched slave, poor beast, who was pulled to
pieces yesterday (ah! you don't know of him) at the Flamen's, nor a
multitude of other idiots. But, d'ye see," and he chucked up his head
significantly, "there are puppets, and there are wires. Few know what is
going on. They won't have done (unless we put them down; but we will) till
they have toppled down the state. But Rome will put them down. Come, be
sensible, listen to reason; now I am going to put facts before my poor,
dear, well-meaning boy. Oh that you saw things as I do! What a trouble you
are to me! Here am I"----

"My dearest uncle, Jucundus," cried Agellius, "I assure you, it is the
most intense pain to me"----

"Very well, very well," interrupted the uncle in turn, "I believe it, of
course I believe it; but listen, listen. Every now and then," he continued
in a more measured and lower tone, "every now and then the secret is
blabbed--blabbed. There was that Tertullianus of Carthage, some fifty years
since. He wrote books; books have done a great deal of harm before now;
but _read_ his books--read and ponder. The fellow has the insolence to tell
the proconsul that he and the whole government, the whole city and
province, the whole Roman world, the emperors, all but the pitiful
_clique_ to which he belongs, are destined, after death, to flames for
ever and ever. There's loyalty! but the absurdity is greater than the
malevolence. Rightly are the fellows called atheists and men-haters. Our
soldiers, our statesmen, our magistrates, and judges, and senators, and
the whole community, all worshippers of the gods, every one who crowns his
head, every one who loves a joke, and all our great historic names,
heroes, and worthies,--the Scipios, the Decii, Brutus, Caesar, Cato, Titus,
Trajan, Antoninus,--are inmates, not of the Elysian fields, if Elysian
fields there be, but of Tartarus, and will never find a way out of it."

"That man, Tertullianus, is nothing to us, uncle," answered Agellius; "a
man of great ability, but he quarrelled with us, and left us."