an opinion?
Why are you not afraid of the bats and the moles? It's an opinion: there
have been other opinions before them, and there will be other opinions
after. Let them alone and they'll die away; make a hubbub about them and
they'll spread."

"Spread?" cried Jucundus, who was under the twofold excitement of personal
feeling and of wine, "spread, they'll spread? yes, they'll spread. Yes,
grow, like scorpions, twenty at a birth. The country already swarms with
them; they are as many as frogs or grasshoppers; they start up everywhere
under one's nose, when one least expects them. The air breeds them like
plague-flies; the wind drifts them like locusts. No one's safe; any one
may be a Christian; it's an epidemic. Great Jove! _I_ may be a Christian
before I know where I am. Heaven and earth! is it not monstrous?" he
continued, with increasing fierceness. "Yes, Jucundus, my poor man, you
may wake and find yourself a Christian, without knowing it, against your
will. Ah! my friends, pity me! I may find myself a beast, and obliged to
suck blood and live among the tombs as if I liked it, without power to
tell you how I loathe it, all through their sorcery. By the genius of Rome
something must be done. I say, no one is safe. You call on your friend; he
is sitting in the dark, unwashed, uncombed, undressed. What is the matter?
Ah! his son has turned Christian. Your wedding-day is fixed, you are
expecting your bride; she does not come; why? she will not have you; she
has become a Christian. Where's young Nomentanus? Who has seen Nomentanus?
in the forum, or the campus, in the circus, in the bath? Has he caught the
plague or got a sunstroke? Nothing of the kind; the Christians have caught
hold of him. Young and old, rich and poor, my lady in her litter and her
slave, modest maid and Lydia at the Thermae, nothing comes amiss to them.
All confidence is gone; there's no one we can reckon on. I go to my
tailor's: 'Nergal,' I say to him, 'Nergal, I want a new tunic,' The
wretched hypocrite bows, and runs to and fro, and unpacks his stuffs and
cloths, like another man. A word in your ear. The man's a Christian,
dressed up like a tailor. They have no dress of their own. If I were
emperor, I'd make the sneaking curs wear a badge, I would; a dog's collar,
a fox's tail, or a pair of ass's ears. Then we should know friends from
foes when we meet them."

"We should think that dangerous," said Cornelius; "however, you are taking
it too much