“This, too, is thy father’s blood, Pancratius,” she said, with faltering voice and streaming eyes. “I gathered it myself from his death-wound, as, disguised, I stood by his side, and saw him die from the wounds he had received for Christ.” She gazed upon it fondly, and kissed it fervently; and her gushing tears fell on it, and moistened it once more. And thus liquefied again, its color glowed bright and warm, as if it had only just left the martyr’s heart. [Illustration: A piece of a “Gold glass” found in the Catacombs.] The holy matron put it to her son’s quivering lips, and they were empurpled with its sanctifying touch. He venerated the sacred relic with the deepest emotions of a Christian and a son; and felt as if his father’s spirit had descended into him, and stirred to its depths the full vessel of his heart, that its waters might be ready freely to flow. The whole family thus seemed to him once more united. Lucina replaced her treasure in its shrine, and hung it round the neck of her son, saying: “When next it is moistened, may it be from a nobler stream than that which gushes from a weak woman’s eyes!” But heaven thought not so; and the future combatant was anointed, and the future martyr was consecrated, by the blood of his father mingled with his mother’s tears. CHAPTER IV. THE HEATHEN HOUSEHOLD. While the scenes described in the three last chapters were taking place, a very different one presented itself in another house, situated in the valley between the Quirinal and Esquiline hills. It was that of Fabius, a man of the equestrian order, whose family, by farming the revenues of Asiatic provinces, had amassed immense wealth. His house was larger and more splendid than the one we have already visited. It contained a third large peristyle, or court, surrounded by immense apartments; and besides possessing many treasures of European art, it abounded with the rarest productions of the East. Carpets from Persia were laid on the ground, silks from China, many-colored stuffs from Babylon, and gold embroidery from India and Phrygia covered the furniture; while curious works in ivory and in metals, scattered about, were attributed to the inhabitants of islands beyond the Indian ocean, of monstrous form and fabulous descent.