Quintus sank on the stone bench[90] that served as a bed-place, utterly annihilated; the last drop of his self-command seemed to evaporate, as the echoing steps of the gaoler died into silence. He covered his face with his hands, and a wild groan broke from him; then for nearly an hour he sat stunned and motionless. Exhaustion and cold recalled him to his senses; a raw, damp atmosphere pervaded the underground vault. He shuddered and drew his cloak, which had fallen off, over his shoulders; then he looked round him. The cell was rather longer than it was wide, rectangular, and just high enough to allow of his standing upright. By day a niggardly ray of light might be admitted through a round hole in the roof; at present a smoky little oil-lamp was burning on one side of the room, opposite the bed-place. Besides this couch the cell contained a rough wooden bench and a short iron rivet, furnished with rings and chains, to which the temporary resident in the cell could be secured, and he perceived a second rivet of the same kind on the opposite side near the bed. With a tremulous hand he lightly touched the rattling irons; it made him shiver. He started to his feet, and began to pace the cell in feverish excitement. He involuntarily remembered that Gaetulian mountain lion which, at Ostia, had rushed so fiercely at the bars of its cage.... He, a proud and noble Roman, was caged now, no better off than a wild beast.--No better! His scornful laughter echoed uncannily through the vaults. He compared the lion’s airy and open cage with the hideous dungeon that held a man but just now free and happy--and he envied the brute. That clumsy, dull, black door confronted him as though it could never open again; he went close up to it, struck it with his fists, and tried to shake it. It neither moved nor rattled. It was as immovable in the masonry as the lid of some huge primeval sarcophagus. He suddenly felt helplessly inconsolable, and pressing his forehead against the cold iron plate, he cried like a child. What was that written in Greek characters--carefully, elaborately scratched by hands that had all-too-much time? He read through his tears a message of promise. “Jesus, my Saviour and Redeemer.--To Thee I live and die.”