nce, for I judged that love alone could inspire the
like tenderness. More than once I saw love in her look, in her face;
and, wilt thou believe me? among those simple people then in that poor
chamber, which was at once a culina and a triclinium, I felt happier
than ever before. No; she was not indifferent to me--and to-day even I
cannot think that she was. Still that same Lygia left Miriam's dwelling
in secret because of me. I sit now whole days with my head on my hands,
and think, Why did she do so? Have I written thee that I volunteered
to restore her to Aulus? True, she declared that to be impossible at
present, because Aulus and Pomponia had gone to Sicily, and because news
of her return going from house to house, through slaves, would reach the
Palatine, and Caesar might take her from Aulus again. But she knew that I
would not pursue her longer; that I had left the way of violence; that,
unable to cease loving her or to live without her, I would bring her
into my house through a wreathed door, and seat her on a sacred skin at
my hearth. Still she fled! Why? Nothing was threatening her. Did she not
love me, she might have rejected me. The day before her flight, I made
the acquaintance of a wonderful man, a certain Paul of Tarsus, who spoke
to me of Christ and His teachings, and spoke with such power that every
word of his, without his willing it, turns all the foundations of our
society into ashes. That same man visited me after her flight, and said:
'If God open thy eyes to the light, and take the beam from them as He
took it from mine, thou wilt feel that she acted properly; and then,
perhaps, thou wilt find her.' And now I am breaking my head over these
words, as if I had heard them from the mouth of the Pythoness at Delphi.
I seem to understand something. Though they love people, the Christians
are enemies of our life, our gods, and our crimes; hence she fled from
me, as from a man who belongs to our society, and with whom she would
have to share a life counted criminal by Christians. Thou wilt say that
since she might reject me, she had no need to withdraw. But if she loved
me? In that case she desired to flee from love. At the very thought of
this I wish to send slaves into every alley in Rome, and command them
to cry throughout the houses, 'Return, Lygia!' But I cease to understand
why she fled. I should not have stopped her from believing in her
Christ, and would myself have reared an altar to Him in the atrium