However necessary this prudential course might be, to prevent any wanton persecution, its consequences fell often heavily upon those who held it. The heathen world, the world of power, of influence, and of state, the world which made laws as best suited it, and executed them, the world that loved earthly prosperity and hated faith, felt itself surrounded, filled, compenetrated by a mysterious system, which spread, no one could see how, and exercised an influence derived no one knew whence. Families were startled at finding a son or daughter to have embraced this new law, with which they were not aware that they had been in contact, and which, in their heated fancies and popular views, they considered stupid, grovelling, and anti-social. Hence the hatred of Christianity was political as well as religious; the system was considered as un-Roman, as having an interest opposed to the extension and prosperity of the empire, and as obeying an unseen and spiritual power. The Christians were pronounced _irreligiosi in Cæsares_, “disloyal to the emperors,” and that was enough. Hence their security and peace depended much upon the state of popular feeling; when any demagogue or fanatic could succeed in rousing this, neither their denial of the charges brought against them, nor their peaceful demeanor, nor the claims of civilized life, could suffice to screen them from such measure of persecution as could be safely urged against them. After these digressive remarks, we will resume, and unite again the broken thread of our narrative. [Illustration: A Monogram of Christ.] CHAPTER XII. THE WOLF AND THE FOX. The hints of the African slave had not been thrown away upon the sordid mind of Corvinus. Her own hatred of Christianity arose from the circumstance, that a former mistress of hers had become a Christian and had manumitted all her other slaves; but, feeling it wrong to turn so dangerous a character as Afra, or rather Jubala (her proper name), upon the world, had transferred her to another proprietor. Corvinus had often seen Fulvius at the baths and other places of public resort, had admired and envied him, for his appearance, his dress, his conversation. But with his untoward shyness, or moroseness, he could never have found courage to address him, had he not now discovered, that though a more refined, he was not a less profound, villain than himself. Fulvius’s wit and cleverness might supply the want of these qualities in his own sottish composition, while his own brute force, and unfeeling recklessness, might be valuable auxiliaries to those higher gifts. He had the young stranger in his power, by the discovery which he had made of his real character. He determined, therefore, to make an effort, and enter into alliance with one who otherwise might prove a dangerous rival.