,--whose single
glance might abase, it is true, but might also exalt beyond measure.

That day Lygia too had to take part in such a feast. Fear, uncertainty,
and a dazed feeling, not to be wondered at after the sudden change, were
struggling in her with a wish to resist. She feared Nero; she feared the
people and the palace whose uproar deprived her of presence of mind;
she feared the feasts of whose shamelessness she had heard from Aulus,
Pomponia Graecina, and their friends. Though young, she was not without
knowledge, for knowledge of evil in those times reached even children's
ears early. She knew, therefore, that ruin was threatening her in the
palace. Pomponia, moreover, had warned her of this at the moment of
parting. But having a youthful spirit, unacquainted with corruption, and
confessing a lofty faith, implanted in her by her foster mother, she
had promised to defend herself against that ruin; she had promised
her mother, herself and also that Divine Teacher in whom she not only
believed, but whom she had come to love with her half-childlike heart
for the sweetness of his doctrine, the bitterness of his death, and the
glory of his resurrection.

She was confident too that now neither Aulus nor Pomponia would be
answerable for her actions; she was thinking therefore whether it would
not be better to resist and not go to the feast. On the one hand fear
and alarm spoke audibly in her soul; on the other the wish rose in her
to show courage in suffering, in exposure to torture and death. The
Divine Teacher had commanded to act thus. He had given the example
himself. Pomponia had told her that the most earnest among the adherents
desire with all their souls such a test, and pray for it. And Lygia,
when still in the house of Aulus, had been mastered at moments by a
similar desire. She had seen herself as a martyr, with wounds on her
feet and hands, white as snow, beautiful with a beauty not of earth, and
borne by equally white angels into the azure sky; and her imagination
admired such a vision. There was in it much childish brooding, but
there was in it also something of delight in herself, which Pomponia had
reprimanded. But now, when opposition to Caesar's will might draw after
it some terrible punishment, and the martyrdom scene of imagination
become a reality, there was added to the beautiful visions and to the
delight a kind of curiosity mingled with dread, as to how they would
punish her, and what kind of to