“I agree,” said Cornelius; “certainly, to set up any new worship is treason; not a doubt of it. The gods keep us from such ingratitude! We have grown great by means of them, and they are part and parcel of the law of Rome. But there is no great chance of our forgetting this; Decius won’t; that’s a fact. You will see. Time will show; perhaps to-morrow, perhaps next day,” he added, mysteriously.

“Why in the world should you have this frantic dread of these poor scarecrows of Christians,” said Aristo, “all because they hold an opinion? Why are you not afraid of the bats and the moles? It’s an opinion: there have been other opinions before them, and there will be other opinions after. Let them alone and they’ll die away; make a hubbub about them and they’ll spread.”

“Spread?” cried Jucundus, who was under the twofold excitement of personal feeling and of wine, “spread, they’ll spread? yes, they’ll spread. Yes, grow, like scorpions, twenty at a birth. The country already swarms with them; they are as many as frogs or grasshoppers; they start up everywhere under one’s nose, when one least expects them. The air breeds them like plague-flies; the wind drifts them like locusts. No one’s safe; any one may be a Christian; it’s an epidemic. Great Jove! I may be a Christian before I know where I am. Heaven and earth! is it not monstrous?” he continued, with increasing fierceness. “Yes, Jucundus, my poor man, you may wake and find yourself a Christian, without knowing it, against your will. Ah! my friends, pity me! I may find myself a beast, and obliged to suck blood and live among the tombs as if I liked it, without power to tell you how I loathe it, all through their sorcery. By the genius of Rome something must be done. I say, no one is safe. You call on your friend; he is sitting in the dark, unwashed, uncombed, undressed. What is the matter? Ah! his son has turned Christian. Your wedding-day is fixed, you are expecting your bride; she does not come; why? she will not have you; she has become a Christian. Where’s young Nomentanus? Who has seen Nomentanus? in the forum, or the campus, in the circus, in the bath? Has he caught the plague or got a sunstroke? Nothing of the kind; the Christians have caught hold of him. Young and old, rich and poor, my lady in her litter and her slave, modest maid and Lydia at the Thermæ, nothing comes amiss to them. All confidence is gone; there’s no one we can reckon on. I go to my tailor’s: ‘Nergal,’ I say to him, ‘Nergal, I want a new tunic,’ The wretched hypocrite bows, and runs to and fro, and unpacks his stuffs and cloths, like another man. A word in your ear. The man’s a Christian, dressed up like a tailor. They have no dress of their own. If I were emperor, I’d make the sneaking curs wear a badge, I would; a dog’s collar, a fox’s tail, or a pair of ass’s ears. Then we should know friends from foes when we meet them.”