“But ‘what of the Huns?’ perhaps you will ask. The Huns are some scores of miles away at present, and we are safe in Lyons. I suppose near the frontier they are so used to the roar of this advancing tide of the barbarians that they cease to hear it, like people who live close to a torrent, and only make their merriment a little louder to drown the tumultuous noise. Besides, all the time some of us, and among these my host, are doing what we can to keep off the Huns. Aetius is doing his best to cement the alliance with the Gothic king Theodoric, and we hope he is prospering.” The next letter was from a country house near Arles. “This villa reminds me of our palace on the Aventine. The vestibule is full of statues. There are books in all kinds of ornamental cases. The ladies read, and seem to love best the sacred Scriptures. At least I found these on the chair where the young daughter of the house had been sitting, a new copy of the Gospels in Jerome’s version. Also the relations between the master and his hundreds of slaves are pleasant and friendly. “Moreover, I am more in touch with Sidonius Apollinaris, who brought me here. I have seen him glow with a genuine passion of indignation against an oppressive Roman governor, who seems to have been ruining his district by exorbitant taxation, starving the labourers, grinding down the farmers, filling the prisons with the wretched victims of the paid informers—a worse invasion than that of the barbarians. I shall be able to endure the tinsel of his panegyrics now that I have seen him burn with a genuine fire against wrong. “But I am perplexed about this Hilary, Metropolitan of Arles, who died here not long since. The people seemed to think him such a saint, and to be indignant with our Leo for supporting a bishop of his province against his authority. Some say Leo is seeking to found a spiritual autocracy, an empire to tower above patriarch or emperor, above all authorities, ecclesiastical and secular. “I cannot understand the rights of the controversy. Leo, of course, feels intensely the necessity of unity. He has seen the ruin of the African Church through its own divisions, and seen it become the prey of the heretic Arians. He has seen the chilling of the temperature in the Eastern Church through endless metaphysical discussions and secular battles. He sees the whole Roman world crumbling into dust. And he believes the Church itself, as far as the Church is in the world, must crumble and fall if it is not kept at unity with itself. And also he believes that he himself is the Heir and Vicar of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and that he has to keep the Church one and indivisible amidst the crash and crumbling of everything else. Is not this what he means? Nevertheless it perplexes me about his dispute with the holy Hilary of Arles.