"I can fully enter into your feelings," observed Gaius. "I myself have been crossed more than once by these Nazarenes; although, were it not that our order is in some peril, I confess that I have felt no great antipathy to them. Indeed, some years ago, my only sister Livia became indoctrinated with their opinions, and married one of them. He was seized, and died, with many hundreds more, in yonder arena but she escaped, and disappeared for some years from sight. I again at length met her, reduced to great distress, supported, I believe, by her co-religionists; but so poverty-stricken were they that they could afford her but the common necessaries of life. She was a sweet and gentle creature and, though I condemned her heresy, I had not the heart to leave her to perish. You will say, Coecus, that I should have been more stoical, but I had a motive which will excuse me in your sight. She had an only child, a handsome boy, the young Jovinian, who reminded me of her in the days of her youth and beauty. Once, too. I should have said, she tended me when I was sick, and might have died, in spite of all the offerings my friends made to Aesculapius, and the skill of the physicians who attended me, had it not been for her watchful care. Gratitude induced me to visit her; I procured the best assistance medical skill could afford; but whether it was counteracted by the visits of her Nazarene friends I know not,--so the gods willed it, she gradually sank. Her only thoughts seemed to be about the welfare of her boy, and in spite of all the offers I made to give him a college education befitting his patrician rank--for his father was of our order as well as his mother--and to watch over his advancement in life, she would not yield him to me, but preferred rather to confide him to the care of a miserable poverty-stricken relative, who was the means originally of her perversion from the ancient faith. Visiting her one day, I found her boy with her. She was evidently much worse. In vain I endeavoured to console her: she breathed her last shortly afterwards. It was truly piteous to hear the child calling on her to speak to him. At length, discovering the truth, he sank fainting over her inanimate body. I took him in my arms, and, in spite of his struggles, bore him away, intending to send the Libertinarii to arrange for poor Livia's funeral. Wrapping him in a lacerna, and shrouding his head in the hood to stifle his cries, I committed him to the slaves in attendance outside, who carried him off to our college, where he could be well looked after. As they bore him along the narrow streets several persons, who were, I suspect, Nazarenes, looked out from the overhanging balconies to watch us. My object was to prevent my relative Amulius from discovering what had become of the boy. I had little doubt that I should soon reconcile him to the change, and teach him to worship the gods of his fathers. I have had, I must own, more difficulty than I had