victims. The priests of the temples
heading the furious crowds, they hastened from the hill in every
direction, assailing, as they reached them, the houses of the
Christians, and dragging the wretched inhabitants to the presence of
their barbarous judges. Although in the present edicts the people are
not let loose as authorized murderers upon the Christians, they are
nevertheless exhorted and required to inform against them and bring them
before the proper tribunals on the charge of Christianity, so that there
is lodged in their hands a fearful power to harrass and injure--a power
which is used as you may suppose Romans would use it. Every species of
violence has this day been put in practice upon this innocent people;
their perpetrators feeling sure that, in the confusion, deeds at which
even Varus or Aurelian might take offence will be overlooked. The
tribunals have been thronged from noon till night with Christians and
their accusers. As the examination of those who have been brought up has
rarely occupied but a few moments, the evidence always being
sufficiently full to prove them Christians, and, when that has been
wanting, their own ready confession supplying the defect--the prisons
are already filling with their unhappy tenants, and extensive provisions
are making to receive them in other buildings set apart for the time to
this office. A needless provision. For it requires but little knowledge
of Aurelian to know that his impatient temper will not long endure the
tedious process of a regular accusation, trial, condemnation, and
punishment. A year, in that case, would scarce suffice to make way with
the Christians of Rome. Long before the prisons can be emptied in a
legal way of the tenants already crowding them, will the Emperor resort
to the speedier method of a general and indiscriminate massacre. No one
can doubt this, who is familiar as I am with Aurelian, and the spirits
who now rule him.

* * * * *

Let me tell you now of the fate of Probus.

He was seated within his own quiet home at the time the edicts were
proclaimed from the steps of the capitol. The moment the herald who
proclaimed them had pronounced the last word, and was affixing them to
the column, the name of Probus was heard shouted from one side of the
hill to the other, and, while the multitude scattered in every direction
in pursuit of those who were known to them severally as Christians, a
large division of