The nuptials of Lucia Claudia with Nymphidius was the result of Adonijah’s treachery, but such had not been his intention. To destroy the Christians, and prevent her from receiving baptism, was his motive in betraying her retreat to Julius. That discovery threw her into the arms of his rival. The thought was like fire to his proud heart, and a burning fever seized his brain, and before he recovered she had been many weeks a wife. ----- [12] See Appendix, Note VI. [13] The Roman bride was carried into her bridegroom’s house with counterfeited violence, in remembrance of the manner in which the Sabine virgins had been forcibly wedded by her Roman ancestors. CHAPTER XV. “In my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.” MILTON. If the death-pangs of hope prevailed over the haughty spirit and manly strength of the Hebrew, how did they rend the softer bosom of the newly wedded bride united to the cruel, licentious Præfect. Unequally yoked with an unbeliever, did Lucia Claudia betray by her manner to him in their domestic intercourse the greater horror and disgust with which the closer view of his character inspired her? No; the Christian wife of Nymphidius strove to correct his errors, and, though foiled in her attempt, concealed the crimes she could not soften. He loved her—if a passion so selfish, so madly jealous, was worthy of the name of love; but knowing that he never possessed her heart, he watched her closely and secluded her from every eye. This seclusion was grateful to his wife, who in the brightest bloom of beauty consented to remain a prisoner in the house of her husband, who feared that the charms that enamoured him might captivate some more favoured suitor. A sense of degradation made Lucia shrink from the public gaze, but her retirement was not passed in vain regrets and useless complaints. She endeavoured to implant Christian principles throughout her heathen household; gathered together such of her slaves as were willing to profit by her instructions, and taught them the truth “as it is in Jesus.” Incapable of virtue himself, the Præfect loved and venerated it in his wife, who vainly tried to win him to the Lord. Ambition, a mightier passion than that softer one he felt for her, ruled his soul. The belief that he drew his birth from Caligula, which had haunted him while a slave, still like an ignis fatuus urged him onwards. Freedom, fortune, rank, power, the unbounded favour of Nero, were gifts too mean to content his insatiable desires. The empire of the world, which he considered his birthright—for even the worst of men assign some plausible motive under which they seek to disguise their crimes from their own view—was the only thing that could satisfy his ambition. To compass this end he