to heart; you are making too much of them, my good friend.
They have not even got the present, and you are giving them the future,
which is just what they want."

"If Jucundus will listen to me," said Aristo, "I could satisfy him that
the Christians are actually falling off. They once were numerous in this
very place; now there are hardly any. They have been declining for these
fifty years; the danger from them is past. Do you want to know how to
revive them? Put out an imperial edict, forbid them, denounce them. Do you
want them to drop away like autumn leaves? Take no notice of them."

"I can't deny that in Italy they _have_ grown," said Cornelius; "they
_have_ grown in numbers and in wealth, and they intermarry with us. Thus
the upper class becomes to a certain extent infected. We may find it
necessary to repress them; but, as you would repress vermin, without
fearing them."

"The worshippers of the gods are the many, and the Christians are the
few," persisted Aristo; "if the two parties intermarry, the weaker will
get the worst of it. You will find the statues of the gods gradually
creeping back into the Christian chapel; and a man must be an honest
fellow who buys our images, eh, Jucundus?"

"Well, Aristo," said the paterfamilias, whose violence never lasted long,
"if your sister's bright eyes win back my poor Agellius you will have
something more to say for yourself than, at present, I grant."

"I see," said Cornelius, gravely, "I begin to understand it. I could not
make out why our good host had such great fear for the stability of Rome.
But it is one of those things which the experience of life has taught me.
I have often seen it in the imperial city itself. Whenever you find a man
show special earnestness against these fanatics, depend on it there is
something that touches him personally in the matter. There was a very
great man, the present Flamen Dialis, for whom I have unbounded respect;
for a long time I was at a loss to conceive why a person of his weight,
sound, sensible, well-judging, should have such a fear of the Christians.
One day he made an oration against them in the senate-house; he wanted to
send them to the rack. But the secret came out; the good man was on the
rack himself about his daughter, who persisted in calling herself a
Christian, and refused to paint her face or go to the amphitheatre. To be
sure, a most trying affair this for the old gentleman. The venerable Pater
Patratus, too, w