Yet Sophronia owed no special gratitude to heathen goddesses; on the seashore nearby lived the wise Eusebius, the descendant of the apostle, and the beautiful girl had long attended the secret meetings where the holy man announced to the followers of Christ the doctrine of the one God who dwells in the soul. Old Mesembrius knew that his favourite daughter was secretly a proselyte of the new faith, and he did not oppose it; nay, he did not even let his daughter perceive that he had any idea of it. Young sons of patrician families often came from Rome, lured by the fame of the maiden's beauty, and all cherishing the hope of obtaining her hand and with it her millions. Mesembrius received them very kindly, arranged great banquets in their honour, and brought out wine a century old. The youths were soon intoxicated by the liquid fire, and after the last libation each one showed himself in his true colours and poured forth the most secret thoughts in his heart. Old Mesembrius listened and reflected. One unmasked himself as a profligate; another was free from such tastes, but developed great talent for being slave and despot in the same person; and even if an _omnibus numeris salutus_ was found, he showed, when the last subject--his opinion of Christianity--was introduced, like all the rest, that it was his conviction that the Christian religion was nothing more than a sect which denied the gods and, by withdrawing from the popular pleasures, games, and combats in the arena, embittered every joy by their obdurate melancholy and in their stead celebrated horrible rites in gloomy caverns, compelled their followers to pierce with their knives the heart of an infant rolled in flour, and to drink its blood; till the gods, in their wrath, visited the earth with floods, pestilences, earthquakes, and barbarians, and that consequently there could not be enough of these people boiled in oil, burned in pitch, torn by wild beasts, and buried alive to avert from the land the severe punishments sent by the wrathful gods. Mesembrius had heard enough, and gave his daughter to none of these youths. He honoured the martyrs, but did not wish to find Sophronia's name among them. Not one of the rejected suitors saw her face. One day a sun-burned youth entered Mesembrius's dwelling. The old man, who sat in the trichinum of his summer-house, saw him, and, in spite of the cataracts on his eyes, shouted: "Are you coming to see me, Manlius Sinister? Come, come, here I am." The old man could still see when he chose. The youth hastened up to him, embraced him, and pressed his hand. "How manly you have grown!" said Mesembrius, smiling; and, as if his eyes were not enough, he felt with his hands the youth's face, arms, and shoulders. "You have become a man indeed since you marched away with Probus. So you've come to ask me for my daughter's hand?" Manlius seemed disconcerted by this straightforward question.