The past of ancient Rome—Republican, Imperial, Pagan, Christian—stood visibly before the young Irish girl. On the Capitol, around the Forum, throughout the city, still rose the ancient temples, despoiled indeed of many of their statues and shrines, and no longer devoted to the worship of the ancient gods, but still standing, not turned to other uses. The temple where the Vestal Virgins had kept the fire of Vesta ever burning, the sacred hearth-fire of Rome, and the cells where they had lived, were still there. Only forty years before, the last of the Vestals had cursed, with a curse of which most men still believed the power, Serena, niece of the great Theodosius, when she dared, in the temple on the Capitol, to take the jewelled necklace from the neck of Rhea, Mother of the Gods, and place it on her own. The Vestal Virgins, the ancient gods and goddesses, all were gone, but the sacrilegious Serena, alas! people still said with awe, had been put to a violent death. The palaces on the Palatine were still Imperial dwellings. The Pantheon was not yet consecrated to Christian worship. They were indeed empty of shrines and worshippers, those grand old temples; but they were still there, whether awaiting the return of the old gods, or the consecration of Christian worship, or mere destruction, not a few still doubted. August presences seemed to many still to hover round them, whether good or evil, still mighty to avenge if not to save. And there stood the Coliseum, a continual gathering-place of all Rome, attracted thither day by day by the tumultuous excitement of the games and races. Early one morning Damaris took Ethne there. With triumph she pointed out how that arena was never more to be stained with the blood of martyrs or gladiators. Eagerly Ethne drank in the stories of the Christian martyrs, rejoicing to go by any path to Christ, fearlessly awaiting the opening of the cages of the lions. Especially she delighted in the last martyr story of the Coliseum, which had closed the gladiatorial games for ever. “I was a little child of seven,” Damaris said; “but I remember to this day how my father came back, and told us of the unknown Egyptian monk who had suddenly flashed on the world from the solitudes of his African deserts, and had stood in the arena between the combatants with outstretched arms pleading for the slaughter to cease; how for the moment there was a pause in the onset of the gladiators, a hush in the fierce shouts of the spectators; and then a fiercer yell than ever, showers of stones hurled at the monk, until he fell, crushed to death, until the last Christian martyr had fallen at what his martyrdom made the last gladiatorial show. The cry of wrong from the great city had pierced the monk’s heart in his African solitudes, and driven him, alone, across desert and sea, to stop it; and that great sacrifice of pity had pierced the heart of the Emperor. And so one more great wrong was swept out of the world for ever.”