antine could not endure that she, of
all people, should mock at his Holy of Holies and drag it in the dust.

He must go--he must leave Gorgo, quit Alexandria, cost what it might. The
travellers' tales that he had heard from the captains of trading-vessels
and ships of war who frequented his father's house had filled him with a
love of danger and enterprise, and a desire to see distant lands and
foreign peoples. His father's business, for which he was intended, did
not attract him. Away--away--he would go away; and a happy coincidence
opened a path for him.

Porphyrius had taken him one day on some errand to Canopus; the elder man
had gone in his chariot, his two sons and Constantine escorting him on
horseback. At the city-gates they met Romanus, the general in command of
the Imperial army, with his staff of officers, and he, drawing rein by
the great merchant's carriage, had asked him, pointing to Constantine,
whether that were his son.

"No," replied Porphyrius, "but I wish he were." At these words the
ship-master's son colored deeply, while Romanus turned his horse round,
laid his hand on the young man's arm and called out to the commander of
the cavalry of Arsinoe: "A soldier after Ares' own heart, Columella! Do
not let him slip."

Before the clouds of dust raised by the officers' horses as they rode
off, had fairly settled, Constantine had made up his mind to be a
soldier. In his parents' house, however, this decision was seen under
various aspects. His father found little to say against it, for he had
three sons and only two shipyards, and the question seemed settled by the
fact that Constantine, with his resolute and powerful nature, was cut out
to be a soldier. His pious mother, on the other hand, appealed to the
learned works of Clemens and Tertullian, who forbid the faithful
Christian to draw the sword; and she related the legend of the holy
Maximilianus, who, being compelled, under Diocletian, to join the army,
had suffered death at the hands of the executioner rather than shed his
fellow-creatures' blood in battle. The use of weapons, she added, was
incompatible with a godly and Christian life.

His father, however, would not listen to this reasoning; new times, he
said, were come; the greater part of the army had been baptized; the
Church prayed for, victory, and at the head of the troops stood the great
Theodosius, an exemplar of an orthodox and zealous Christian.

Clemens was master in his own house,