“You will take Sebastian to your quarters; and early to-morrow morning,--not this evening, mind, for I know that by this time of day you are all drunk,--but to-morrow morning, when your hands are steady, you will tie him to a tree in the grove of Adonis, and you will slowly shoot him to death. Slowly, mind; none of your fine shots straight through the heart or the brain, but plenty of arrows, till he die exhausted by pain and loss of blood. Do you understand me? Then take him off at once. And mind, silence; or else----” [Illustration: A Monogram of Christ, found in the Catacombs.] CHAPTER XXV. THE RESCUE. In spite of every attempt at concealment, the news was soon spread among all connected with the court, that Sebastian had been discovered to be a Christian, and was to be shot to death on the morrow. But on none did the double intelligence make such an impression as on Fabiola. Sebastian a Christian! she said to herself; the noblest, purest, wisest of Rome’s nobility a member of that vile, stupid sect? Impossible! Yet, the fact seems certain. Have I, then, been deceived? Was he not that which he seemed? Was he a mean impostor, who affected virtue, but was secretly a libertine? Impossible, too! Yes, this was indeed impossible! She had certain proofs of it. He knew that he might have had her hand and fortune for the asking, and he had acted most generously and most delicately towards her. He was what he seemed, that she was sure--not gilded, but gold. Then how account for this phenomenon, of a Christian being all that was good, virtuous, amiable? One solution never occurred to Fabiola’s mind, that he was all this _because_ he was a Christian. She only saw the problem in another form; how could he be all that he was _in spite_ of being a Christian? She turned it variously in her mind, in vain. Then it came to her thought thus. Perhaps, after all, good old Chromatius was right, and Christianity may not be what I have fancied; and I ought to have inquired more about it. I am sure Sebastian never did the horrible things imputed to Christians. Yet every body charges them with them. Might there not be a more refined form of this religion, and a more grovelling one; just as she knew there was in her own sect, Epicureanism? one coarse, material, wallowing in the very mire of sensualism; the other refined, sceptical and reflective. Sebastian would belong to the higher class, and despise and loathe the superstitions and vices of the commoner Christians. Such a hypothesis might be tenable; but it was hard to reconcile to her intellect, how a man like that noble soldier could, any way, have belonged to that hated race. And yet he was ready to die for their faith! As to Zoë and the others, she had heard nothing, for she had only returned the day before from a journey made into Campania, to arrange her father’s affairs.