“There have been great voices in the Church, not so long ago: Athanasius of Alexandria, firm against the world; John of Antioch and Constantinople, the Golden-mouthed; and our old lion Jerome, so rude to feminine affectations, so suspicious of feminine wiles, so reverent and tender to true womanhood—Jerome, who spoke in this our palace, who gave us the Bible in the vulgar tongue—in Latin every one can read. But they are all silent now—Athanasius for seventy years, Chrysostom more than forty, Jerome thirty, Augustine only ten—great voices. And three of them, Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome, were heard in the streets, in the palaces, in the basilicas of our Rome.” “It must have been easier and better to live forty or fifty years ago,” said the maiden; “but we cannot help having to live now,” she added, looking up suddenly into her mother’s eyes. “Mother, did Athanasius, and Chrysostom, and Augustine, and Jerome think their own times so very good to live in? Were they pleased with the men and women around them? It scarcely seems so from the bits I have heard father read from Augustine’s _City of God_, or Jerome’s letters to our relations, the good women of the Aventine of old. But are there no great voices now?” Damaris thought a little, and then she said humbly and softly— “There is our own Leo, thank God. God forbid we should be among those who only recognize the saints when we have to build their sepulchres.” Lucia knelt down beside her mother’s couch. “Father says Bishop Leo is a real Roman, not in miniature,” she said; “and Marius says, though a priest, he is worth all the generals and consuls and prefects together. Oh, mother, it is good to hear of some one strong and good in these days.” “Let us say our Leo’s prayer,” said Damaris softly: “‘Give us the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful, that we who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy Will.’” As they sat together silent afterwards, sounds came from the neighbouring hill, the Cœlian, and along the quays by the Tiber below, of chariot-wheels, and broken strains of songs and laughter, with tumultuous voices, as of a crowd of revellers dispersing hither and thither. In a few minutes one of those waves of sound broke against their own palace. Dogs barked welcomes from within; there was a rush of slaves to meet the coming cavalcade, and soon the father and brother came into the porch, and greeted the mother and Lucia. “A magnificent banquet,” said Fabricius, “our cousin Petronius Maximus excelled himself. Gold and silver and gems, wines from every coast, viands from every land, troops of slaves robed like Oriental satraps; songs in every language, mimes, actors, dancing-girls; and yet everything irreproachably virtuous and respectable.”