ildhood in thy reverence of the gods, whose worship it was mine
to put into thy infant heart. Go on thy way, my son! Build up the fallen
altars, and lay low the aspiring fanes of the wicked. Finish what thou
hast begun, and all time shall pronounce thee greatest of the great."
Should I disobey the warning? The gods forbid! and save me from such
impiety. I am now, Piso, doubly armed for the work I have taken in
hand--first by the zeal of the pious Fronto, and second, by the manifest
finger of Heaven pointing the way I should go. And, please the Almighty
Ruler! I will enter upon it, and it shall not be for want of a
determined will and of eyes too used to the shedding of blood to be
frightened now though an ocean full were spilled before them, if this
race be not utterly swept from the face of the earth, from the suckling
to the silver head, from the beggar to the prince--and from Rome all
around to the four winds, as far as her almighty arms can reach.'

My heart sunk within me as he spoke, and my knees trembled under me. I
knew the power and spirit of the man, and I now saw that superstition
had claimed him for her own; that he would go about his work of death
and ruin, armed with his own cruel and bloody mind, and urged behind by
the fiercer spirit still of Pagan bigotry. It seemed to me, in spite of
what I had just said myself, and thought I believed, as if the
death-note of Christianity had now been rung in my ear. The voice of
Aurelian as he spoke had lost its usual sharpness, and fallen into a
lower tone full of meaning, and which said to me that his very inmost
soul was pouring itself out, with the awful words he used. I felt
utterly helpless and undone--like an ant in the pathway of a
giant--incapable of resistance or escape. I suppose all this was visible
in my countenance. I said nothing; and Aurelian, after pausing a moment,
went on.

'Think me not, Piso, to be using the words of an idle braggart in what I
have said. Who has known Aurelian, when once he has threatened death, to
hold back his hand? But I will give thee earnest of my truth!'

'I require it not, Aurelian. I question not thy truth.'

'I will give it notwithstanding, Piso. What will you think--you will
think as you ever have of me--if I should say that already, and upon one
of my own house, infected with this hell-begotten atheism, has the axe
already fallen!'

Hearing the horrible truth from his own lips, it seemed as if I had
never heard it