But for the poor Christians of Rome, though the days were so evil, life had neither tumult nor terror. They had found that which more than compensated them for the trials of the world. Their life was a spiritual life. To them, to live was Christ. They possessed the strange secret of joy in sorrow, the boast of which upon the lips of the Stoics was an idle vaunt. That secret lay in a spiritual conviction, an indomitable faith, above all, in an In-dwelling Presence which breathed into their souls a peace which the world could neither give nor take away. The life which was to most of their contemporaries a tragedy without dignity, or a comedy without humour, was to them a gift sweet and sacred, a race to be bravely run under that lucent cloud which shone with the faces of angel witnesses,--a mystery indeed, yet a mystery luminous with a ray which streamed to them out of God’s Eternity from the Glory of their Risen Lord. CHAPTER XXXV _THE MATRICIDE_ ‘It was not in the battle, No tempest gave the shock; She sprang no fatal leak, She ran upon no rock’---- COWPER. ‘Hæc monstra Neroni Nec jussæ quondam præstiteratis aquæ.’ MART. iv. 63. Baiæ in the springtide of A.D. 59 must have been as lovely a place as the world can show. Its blue sky, its soft air, its sparkling sea, its delightful shore, its dry hard yellow sands and rocks gleaming in the clear water, its green and wooded heights, combined with its healing waters and splendid buildings to make it a fairyland of beauty and enjoyment. Marius, Pompey, Cæsar, had built villas there, and the whole line of coast to Puteoli had gradually become crowded with the gay houses of the Roman aristocracy. Temples, and baths, and theatres, and palaces rose on every side, among groves enriched with grottoes and blooming like a garden of enchantment with fruits and flowers. Passing the promontory of Misenum, the traveller first arrived at the bright town of Baiæ itself, and then at the more quiet and exclusive Bauli, until he reached the lakes of Lucrine and Avernus, of which the former had been joined to the sea by a canal, and protected by the magnificent causeway of Agrippina’s grandfather Agrippa. Beyond these was Puteoli, with the stately and pillared fane of Serapis, the ruins of which still attest its former magnificence. The festive splendour of the lovely and dissolute resort was heightened by the universal holiday of the Quinquatrus, or Feast of Minerva. It was kept almost like our Christmastide. All the boys had five days’ holiday, beginning on March 19, and were at home from their various schools, adding fresh mirth to the joyous watering-place. There were exhibitions of wild beasts, and plays, and poetic and oratorical contests; and on the fifth day of the festival, which was called the Tubilustrium, all the trumpets were blown, and the sacred implements of the temples lustrated.