or, though they knew
all languages, all secrets, and all sciences, they would be nothing
without love, which is kind, enduring, which does not return evil, which
does not desire honor, suffers all things, believes all things, hopes
all things, is patient of all things.

And so his life had passed in teaching people this truth. And now he
said in spirit: What power can equal it, what can conquer it? Could
Caesar stop it, though he had twice as many legions and twice as many
cities, seas, lands, and nations?

And he went to his reward like a conqueror.

The detachment left the main road at last, and turned toward the east on
a narrow path leading to the Aquae Salviae. The red sun was lying now on
the heather. The centurion stopped the soldiers at the fountain, for the
moment had come.

Paul placed Plautilla's veil on his arm, intending to bind his eyes with
it; for the last time he raised those eyes, full of unspeakable peace,
toward the eternal light of the evening, and prayed. Yes, the moment
had come; but he saw before him a great road in the light, leading to
heaven; and in his soul he repeated the same words which formerly he had
written in the feeling of his own finished service and his near end,--

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."

Chapter LXXI

ROME had gone mad for a long time, so that the world-conquering city
seemed ready at last to tear itself to pieces for want of leadership.
Even before the last hour of the Apostles had struck, Piso's conspiracy
appeared; and then such merciless reaping of Rome's highest heads, that
even to those who saw divinity in Nero, he seemed at last a divinity of
death. Mourning fell on the city, terror took its lodgment in houses and
in hearts, but porticos were crowned with ivy and flowers, for it was
not permitted to show sorrow for the dead. People waking in the morning
asked themselves whose turn would come next. The retinue of ghosts
following Caesar increased every day.

Piso paid for the conspiracy with his head; after him followed Seneca,
and Lucan, Fenius Rufus, and Plautius Lateranus, and Flavius Scevinus,
and Afranius Quinetianus, and the dissolute companion of Caesar's
madnesses, Tullius Senecio, and Proculus, and Araricus, and Tugurinus,
and Gratus, and Silanus, and Proximus,--once devoted with his whole
soul to Nero,--and Sulpicius Asper. Some wer