power to resolve your doubts, and set your mind at ease.'

'Rest not then,' said Aurelian with impatience--'but say on.'

'You sought the gods and read the omens with but one prayer and thought.
And you have construed them as all bearing upon one point and having one
significancy--because you have looked in no other direction. I believe
they bear upon a different point, and that when you look behind and
before, you will be of the same judgment.'

'Whither tends all this?'

'To this--that the omens of the day bear not upon your eastern
expedition, but upon the new religion! You are warned as the great high
priest, by these signs in heaven and on earth--not against this
projected expedition, which is an act of piety,--but against this
accursed superstition, which is working its way into the empire, and
threatening the extermination and overthrow of the very altars on which
you laid your costly offerings. What concern can the divinities feel in
the array of an army, destined to whatever service, compared with that
which must agitate their sacred breasts as they behold their altars cast
down or forsaken, their names profaned, their very being denied, their
worshippers drawn from them to the secret midnight orgies of a tribe of
Atheists, whose aim is anarchy in the state and in religion; owning
neither king on earth nor king in heaven--every man to be his own
priest--every man his own master! Is not this the likeliest reading of
the omens?'

'I confess, Fronto,' the Emperor replied, the cloud upon his brow
clearing away as he spoke, 'that what you say possesses likelihood. I
believe I have interpreted according to my fears. It is as you say--the
East only has been in my thoughts. It cannot in reason be thought to be
this enterprize, which, as you have said, is an act of piety--all Rome
would judge it so--against which the heavens have thus arrayed
themselves. Fronto! Fronto! I am another man! Slave,' cried he aloud to
one of the menials as he passed, 'let Mucapor be instantly summoned. Let
there be no delay. Now can my affairs be set on with something more of
speed. When the gods smile, mountains sink to mole-hills. A divine
energy runs in the current of the blood and lends more than mortal force
to the arm and the will.'

As he spoke, never did so malignant a joy light up the human countenance
as was to be seen in the face of Fronto.

'And what then,' he hastily put in as the Emperor paused, 'what shall be
done with