third had been
let loose, and with no better effect, nay, with less--for he, when he
had at length approached Probus, fawned upon him, and laid himself at
his feet--the people, superstitious as you know beyond any others, now
cried out aloud, "An omen! an omen!" and made the sign that Probus
should be spared and removed.

Aurelian himself seemed almost of the same mind, and I can hardly doubt
would have ordered him to be released, but that Fronto at that moment
approached him, and by a few of those words, which, coming from him, are
received by Aurelian as messages from Heaven, put within him a new and
different mind; for rising quickly from his seat he ordered the keeper
of the vivaria to be brought before him. When he appeared below upon the
sands, Aurelian cried out to him,

'Why, knave, dost thou weary out our patience thus--letting forth beasts
already over-fed? Do thus again, and thou thyself shall be thrown to
them. Art thou too a Christian?'

'Great Emperor,' replied the keeper, 'than those I have now let loose,
there are not larger nor fiercer in the imperial dens, and since the
sixth hour of yesterday they have tasted nor food nor drink. Why they
have thus put off their nature 'tis hard to guess, unless the general
cry be taken for the truth, "that the gods have touched them."

Aurelian was again seen to waver, when a voice from the benches cried
out,

'It is, O Emperor, but another Christian device! Forget not the voice
from the temple! The Christians, who claim powers over demons, bidding
them go and come at pleasure, may well be thought capable to change, by
the magic imputed to them, the nature of a beast.'

'I doubt not,' said the Emperor, 'but it is so. Slave! throw up now the
doors of all thy vaults, and let us see whether both lions and tigers be
not too much for this new necromancy. If it be the gods who interpose,
they can shut the mouths of thousands as of one.

At those cruel words, the doors of the vivaria were at once flung open,
and an hundred of their fierce tenants, maddened both by hunger and the
goads that had been applied, rushed forth, and in the fury with which in
a single mass they fell upon Probus--then kneeling upon the sands--and
burying him beneath them, no one could behold his fate, nor, when that
dark troop separated and ran howling about the arena in search of other
victims, could the eye discover the least vestige of that holy man.----
I then fled from the theatre as one