The affectation of piety that had led Julius to adorn the tomb of his brother with this master-piece of art, did not compel him to view it when completed. The mortified sculptor received his gold, but not his commendations. In this hour, however, he gained in the thrill of agony that vibrated from the brain of Julius to every nerve and rigid muscle the reward due to the admirable fidelity of genius. As he gazed upon the image of his brother, guilty years of retrospect rushed upon his memory, till far and vista-like they blended with the happier ones of boyhood, when he was not this blot upon the face of nature, this loathsome compound of luxury and crime. Then he smote upon his breast, and called upon the stately roof to fall and crush him into the atom he wished to be, yet feared he was not. Upon his agony a voice intruded, a voice whose well-remembered tones increased his mental misery almost to madness. He turned round and saw his sister Lucia at his side. From the mild majestic shade he fled affrighted forth, rushing from street to street, still haunted by her voice, her look, her wrongs. In midnight silence and darkness Julius Claudius pursued his way; he would have given wealth untold at that moment to hear human converse, to see human faces. Suddenly, to his great relief, he encountered on the Julian Way a number of persons, to whom, without being aware of the object for which they were gathering together, he joined himself, reckless of everything but the relief of finding himself among his fellow-men once more. He followed them to the cemetery of Ostorius, entering with them the house of death; whereupon a veiled female, rising from a tripod, admitted him with the rest into a spacious cavity, illuminated by many lamps. Then Julius Claudius comprehended that he was among a midnight assembly of Christians. The females, closely veiled, ranged themselves on one side of the subterranean temple, the men on the other; but the bewildered intruder shrank behind what appeared to be a tomb, and concealing his features in his mantle remained a silent spectator of the worship of the primitive times. The Christians’ fervent prayers, their melodious and solemn hymns, at once soothed and awed the soul of the guilty man who had so strangely become a witness of their mysterious rites, and when their bishop rose to address the little flock he was almost “persuaded to become a Christian.” The venerable countenance of the preacher seemed not unknown to his new auditor; the august tones of his voice awakened some chord in his memory. The place, too, appeared familiar to his eyes. Suddenly the conviction that he was then present with those Christians from whom he had torn his sister, to compel her to become the wife of Nymphidius, passed through his mind with the rapidity of lightning, but he had then entered this oratory by a different route.