given in the name
of Christ, had delivered him to executioners. Never had one person
inflicted more dreadful or bloody wrongs on another. Now the victim was
burning on the pitched pillar, and the executioner was standing at
his feet. The eyes of Glaucus did nor leave the face of the Greek. At
moments they were hidden by smoke; but when the breeze blew this away,
Chilo saw again those eyes fixed on him. He rose and tried to flee, but
had not strength. All at once his legs seemed of lead; an invisible
hand seemed to hold him at that pillar with superhuman force. He was
petrified. He felt that something was overflowing in him, something
giving way; he felt that he had had a surfeit of blood and torture,
that the end of his life was approaching, that everything was vanishing,
Caesar, the court, the multitude, and around him was only a kind of
bottomless, dreadful black vacuum with no visible thing in it, save
those eyes of a martyr which were summoning him to judgment. But
Glaucus, bending his head lower down, looked at him fixedly. Those
present divined that something was taking place between those two men.
Laughter died on their lips, however, for in Chilo's face there was
something terrible: such pain and fear had distorted it as if those
tongues of fire were burning his body. On a sudden he staggered, and,
stretching his arms upward, cried in a terrible and piercing voice,--

"Glaucus! in Christ's name! forgive me!"

It grew silent round about, a quiver ran through the spectators, and all
eyes were raised involuntarily.

The head of the martyr moved slightly, and from the top of the mast was
heard a voice like a groan,--

"I forgive!"

Chilo threw himself on his face, and howled like a wild beast; grasping
earth in both hands, he sprinkled it on his head. Meanwhile the flames
shot up, seizing the breast and face of Glaucus; they unbound the myrtle
crown on his head, and seized the ribbons on the top of the pillar, the
whole of which shone with great blazing.

Chilo stood up after a while with face so changed that to the Augustians
he seemed another man. His eyes flashed with a light new to him, ecstasy
issued from his wrinkled forehead; the Greek, incompetent a short time
before, looked now like some priest visited by a divinity and ready to
reveal unknown truths.

"What is the matter? Has he gone mad?" asked a number of voices.

But he turned to the multitude, and, raising his right hand, cried, or
rather sho