ss. To believe that, it is enough to see you.'

'I suppose you are right. Julia is always right, Piso.'

So our talk ran on; sometimes into graver and then into lighter
themes--often stopping and lingering long over you, and Calpurnius, and
Gracchus. You wished to know more of Livia and her thoughts, and I have
given her to you in just the mood in which she happened to be.

* * * * *

The wife of Macer has just been here, seeking from Julia both assistance
and comfort. She implores us to do what we may to calm and sober her
husband.

'As the prospect of danger increases,' she said to Julia, 'he grows but
the more impetuous and ungovernable. He is abroad all the day and every
day, preaching all over Rome, and brings home nothing for the support of
the family; and if it were not for the Emperor's bounty, we should
starve.'

'And does that support you?'

'O no, lady! it hardly gives us food enough to subsist upon. Then we
have besides to pay for our lodging and our clothes. But I should mind
not at all our labor nor our poverty, did I not hear from so many that
my husband is so wild and violent in his preaching, and when he disputes
with the gentiles, as he will call them. I am sure it is a good cause
to suffer in, if one must suffer; but if our dear Macer would only work
half the time, there would be no occasion to suffer, which we should now
were it not for Demetrius the jeweler--who lives hard by, and who I am
sure has been very kind to us--and our good AElia.'

'You do not then,' I asked, 'blame your religion nor weary of it?'

'O, sir, surely not. It is our greatest comfort. We all look out with
expectation of our greatest pleasure, when Macer returns home, after his
day's labors,--and labors they surely are, and will destroy him, unless
he is persuaded to leave them off. For when he is at home the children
all come round him, and he teaches them in his way what religion is.
Sometimes it is a long story he gives them of his life, when he was a
little boy and knew nothing about Christ, and what wicked things he did,
and sometimes about his serving as a soldier under the Emperor. But he
never ends without showing them what Christ's religion tells them to
think of such ways of life. And then, sir, before we go to bed he reads
to us from the gospels--which he bought when he was in the army, and was
richer than he is now--and prays for us all, for the city, and the
Emperor, and the