I too had my stimulants to hatred. Where was I? In exile, in desperate hazard; I had been torn from home, robbed of my child, made miserable by the fear of apostasy in my house; and by whom was this comprehensive evil done? The name of Christian was gall to me. I heard of the popular vengeance, and called it justice; I saw the distant fires in which the Christians were being consumed, and calculated how many each night of those horrors would subtract from the guilty number. Man becomes cruel by the sight of cruelty, and when thousands and hundreds of thousands were shouting for vengeance; when every face looked fury, and every tongue was wild with some new accusation; when the great and the little, the philosopher and the ignorant, raised up one roar of reprobation against the Christian, was the solitary man of mercy to be looked for in one bleeding from head to foot with wrongs irreparable? [Sidenote: Preparations for Executions] On one of those dreadful nights, I was gazing from the housetop on the fire forcing its way through the remaining quarters, the melancholy gleams through the country showing the extent of the flight, and in the midst of the blackened and dreary wastes of Rome, the spots of livid flame where the Christians were perishing at the pile, when I was summoned to a consultation below. A Jew had just brought an imperial edict proclaiming pardon of all offenses to the discoverer of Christians. I would not have purchased my life by the life of a dog. But my safety was important to the Jewish cause, and I was pressed on every side by arguments on the wisdom, nay, the public duty, of accepting freedom on any terms. And what was to be the price?—the life of criminals long obnoxious to the laws and now stained beyond mercy. I loathed delay; I loathed Rome; I was wild to return to the great cause of my country, which never could have a fairer hope than now. An emissary was sent out; money soon effected the discovery of a Christian assemblage; I appeared before the prætor with my documents, and brought back in my hand the imperial pardon, given with the greater good will as the assemblage chanced to comprehend the chiefs of the heresy. They were seized, ordered forthwith to the pile, and I was commanded to be present at this completion of my national service.