Fabiola was utterly amazed, as she exclaimed: “What an utter barbarian you have become, my wise old judge! What shadow of reason can you give to justify so outrageous a proceeding?” “Why, you see, as I have grown older, I have grown wiser! and I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Jupiter and Mrs. Juno are no more gods than you or I; so I summarily got rid of them.” “Yes, that may be very well; and I, though neither old nor wise, have been long of the same opinion. But why not retain them as mere works of art?” “Because they had been set up here, not in that capacity, but as divinities. They were here as impostors, under false pretences; and as you would turn out of your house, for an intruder, any bust or image found among those of your ancestors, but belonging to quite another family, so did I these pretenders to a higher connection with me, when I found it false. Neither could I run a risk of their being bought for the continuance of the same imposture.” “And pray, my most righteous old friend, is it not an imposture to continue calling your villa _Ad Statuas_, after not a single statue is left standing in it?” “Certainly,” replied Chromatius, amused at her sharpness, “and you will see that I have planted palm-trees all about; and, as soon as they show their heads above the evergreens, the villa will take the title of _Ad Palmas_[65] instead.” “That will be a pretty name,” said Fabiola, who little thought of the higher sense of appropriateness which it would contain. She, of course, was not aware that the villa was now a training-school, in which many were being prepared, as wrestlers or gladiators used to be, in separate institutions, for the great combat of faith, martyrdom to death. They who had entered in, and they who would go out, might equally say they were on their way to pluck the conqueror’s palm, to be borne by them before God’s judgment-seat, in token of their victory over the world. Many were the palm-branches shortly to be gathered in that early Christian retreat. But we must here give the history of the demolition of Chromatius’s statues, which forms a peculiar episode in the “Acts of St. Sebastian.”