'As the prospect of danger increases,' she said to Julia, 'he grows but the more impetuous and ungovernable. He is abroad all the day and every day, preaching all over Rome, and brings home nothing for the support of the family; and if it were not for the Emperor's bounty, we should starve.' 'And does that support you?' 'O no, lady! it hardly gives us food enough to subsist upon. Then we have besides to pay for our lodging and our clothes. But I should mind not at all our labor nor our poverty, did I not hear from so many that my husband is so wild and violent in his preaching, and when he disputes with the gentiles, as he will call them. I am sure it is a good cause to suffer in, if one must suffer; but if our dear Macer would only work half the time, there would be no occasion to suffer, which we should now were it not for Demetrius the jeweler--who lives hard by, and who I am sure has been very kind to us--and our good AElia.' 'You do not then,' I asked, 'blame your religion nor weary of it?' 'O, sir, surely not. It is our greatest comfort. We all look out with expectation of our greatest pleasure, when Macer returns home, after his day's labors,--and labors they surely are, and will destroy him, unless he is persuaded to leave them off. For when he is at home the children all come round him, and he teaches them in his way what religion is. Sometimes it is a long story he gives them of his life, when he was a little boy and knew nothing about Christ, and what wicked things he did, and sometimes about his serving as a soldier under the Emperor. But he never ends without showing them what Christ's religion tells them to think of such ways of life. And then, sir, before we go to bed he reads to us from the gospels--which he bought when he was in the army, and was richer than he is now--and prays for us all, for the city, and the Emperor, and the gentiles. So that we want almost nothing, as I may say, to make us quite contented and happy.' 'Have you ever been disturbed in your dwelling on Macer's account?' 'O yes, sir, and we are always fearing it. This is our great trouble. Once the house was attacked by the people of the street, and almost torn down--and we escaped, I and the children, through a back way into the shop of the good Demetrius. There we were safe; and while we were gone our little cabin was entered, and everything in it broken in pieces. Macer was not at home, or I think he would have been killed. 'Did you apply to the prefect?' 'No, sir, I do not believe there would be much use in that: they say he hates the Christians so.' 'But he is bound to preserve order in the city.'