After some waiting a bar was withdrawn within, and the door, that consisted of two valves, was opened by an old, slightly lame slave. “Pedo,” said the deacon, “has all been well?” “All is well, master,” answered the man. “Enter, ladies,” said Baudillas. “My house is humble and out of repair, but it was once notable. Enter and rest you awhile. I will bid Pedo search for a change of garments for Perpetua.” “Hark,” exclaimed Quincta, “I hear a sound like the roar of the sea.” “It is the voice of the people. It is a roar like that for blood, that goes up from the amphitheater.” CHAPTER IV THE UTRICULARES The singular transformation that had taken place in the presiding deity of the fountain, from being a nymph into a male god, had not been sufficiently complete to alter the worship of the deity. As in the days of Druidism, the sacred source was under the charge of priestesses, and although, with the change of sex of the deity, priests had been appointed to the temple, yet they were few, and occupied a position of subordination to the chief priestess. She was a woman of sagacity and knowledge of human nature. She perceived immediately how critical was the situation. If Æmilius Lentulus were allowed to proceed with his speech he would draw to him the excitable Southern minds, and it was quite possible might provoke a tumult in which the temple would be wrecked. At the least, his words would serve to chill popular devotion. The period when Christianity began to radiate through the Roman world was one when the traditional paganism with its associated rights, that had contented a simpler age, had lost its hold on the thoughtful and cultured. Those who were esteemed the leaders of society mocked at religion, and although they conformed to its ceremonial, did so with ill‐disguised contempt. At their tables, before their slaves, they laughed at the sacred myths related of the gods, as absurd and indecent, and the slaves thought it became them to affect the same incredulity as their masters. Sober thinkers endeavored to save some form of religion by explaining away the monstrous legends, and attributing them to the wayward imagination of poets. The existence of the gods they admitted, but argued that the gods were the unintelligent and blind forces of nature; or that, if rational, they stood apart in cold exclusiveness and cared naught for mankind. Many threw themselves into a position of agnosticism. They professed to believe in nothing but what their senses assured them did exist, and asserted that as there was no evidence to warrant them in declaring that there were gods, they could not believe in them; that moreover, as there was no revelation of a moral law, there existed no distinction between right and wrong. Therefore, the only workable maxim on which to rule life was: “Let us eat and drink, for to‐morrow we may die.”