"Marcus Aurelius was a just ruler and a philosopher," he was saying, "and he saw the necessity for suppressing the Christian factions. He was among the severest persecutors of the early Christians.--What does that argue, you fool?" "Nothing against my contention with regard to the seven-headed beast in the Apocalypse," replied the Bleeding Lamb with a defiant snort. "The seven-headed beast has nothing to do with the case," retorted his interlocutor, putting all the warmth into his monotonous drawl of which he appeared capable. "The seven-headed beast can't alter history, and my case is conclusively proved in the course of this little work, to the production of which I have devoted the best years of my life. The seven-headed beast indeed! Pshaw for your seven-headed beast, you dunder-headed dreamer!" Whilst I gazed on dumbfounded at this little scene, making futile efforts to grasp the vexed point under discussion, the strange new-comer, whom the Lamb addressed as Gresham, deposited on the floor a huge and shapeless brown-paper parcel, under whose weight he was staggering, and sitting down by its side he carefully untied the string, and dragged triumphantly forth tome after tome of carefully-written MSS., which he proceeded to read out without further preamble. "'Atheism _v._ Christianity,'" he drawled, commencing at the title, "'being a short treatise on the Persecutions of the Early Christians, the object of which is to prove that they were persecuted by the just emperors and protected by the unjust; that, consequently, they were wrong; that Christianity is wrong, and the Deity a palpable fraud; by Tobias Jonathan Gresham,'--and let the seven-headed beast in the Apocalypse put that in his pipe and smoke it!" casting a defiant glance at the Bleeding Lamb. As this concluding remark was made in the same monotone as the foregoing sentence, I was at some loss to determine whether or not it formed part of the title of that momentous work.