his circumstance; but it must be taken
to account for the examination of Callista in the Forum, and for some
other details which may follow before we come to the end of it.

The populace was collected about the gates and within the ample space of
the Basilica, but they gave expression to no strong feeling on the subject
of a Christian delinquent. The famine, the sickness, and, above all, the
lesson which they had received so lately from the soldiers, had both
diminished their numbers and cowed their spirit. They were sullen, too,
and resentful; and, with the changeableness proverbial in a multitude, had
rather have witnessed the beheading of a magistrate, or the burning of a
tribune, than the torture and death of a dozen of wretched Christians.
Besides, they had had a glut of Christian blood; a reaction of feeling had
taken place, and, in spite of the suspicion of witchcraft, the youth and
the beauty of Callista recommended her to their compassion.

The magistrates were seated on the _subsellia_, one of the Duumvirs
presiding, in his white robe bordered with purple; his lictors, with
staves, not fasces, standing behind him. In the vestibule of the court, to
confront the prisoner on her first entrance, were the usual instruments of
torture. The charge was one which can only be compared, in the estimation
of both state and people in that day, to that of witchcraft, poisoning,
parricide, or other monstrous iniquity in Christian times. There were the
heavy _boiae_, a yoke for the neck, of iron, or of wood; the fetters; the
_nervi_, or stocks, in which hands and feet were inserted, at distances
from each other which strained or dislocated the joints. There, too, were
the _virgae_, or rods with thorns in them; the _flagra_, _lori_, and
_plumbati_, whips and thongs, cutting with iron or bruising with lead; the
heavy clubs; the hook for digging into the flesh; the _ungula_, said to
have been a pair of scissors; the _scorpio_, and _pecten_, iron combs or
rakes for tearing. And there was the wheel, fringed with spikes, on which
the culprit was stretched; and there was the fire ready lighted, with the
water hissing and groaning in the large caldrons which were placed upon
it. Callista had lost for ever that noble intellectual composure of which
we have several times spoken; she shuddered at what she saw, and almost
fainted, and, while waiting for her summons, leaned heavily against the
merciless _cornicularius_ at her side.