The
command to love your neighbor, to seek peace, to thirst after truth, the
injunction to judge the tree by its fruit, and to fear more for the soul
than the body, were quite to his mind.

He was so rich that the gifts of the visitors to the temple, which his
predecessors had insisted on, were of no importance to him. Thus he
mingled a great deal that was Christian with the faith of which he was
chief minister and guardian. Only the conviction with which men like
Clemens and Origen, who were friends of his wife, declared that the
doctrine to which they adhered was the only right one--was, in fact, the
truth itself--seemed to the skeptic "foolishness."

His wife's friends had converted his brother Zeno to Christianity; but he
had no need to fear lest Euryale should follow them. She loved him too
much, and was too quiet and sensible, to be baptized, and thus expose
him, the heathen high-priest, to the danger of being deprived of the
power which she knew to be necessary to his happiness.

Every Alexandrian was free to belong to any other than the heathen
creeds, and no one had taken offence at his skeptical writings. When
Euryale acted like the best of the Christian women, he could not take it
amiss; and he would have scorned to blame her preference for the teaching
of the crucified God.

As to Caesar's character he had not yet made up his mind.

He had expected to find him a half-crazy villain, and his rage after he
had heard the epigram against himself, left with the rope, had
strengthened the chief priest's opinion. But since then he had heard of
much that was good in him; and Timotheus felt sure that his judgment was
unbiased by the high esteem Caesar showed to him, while he treated others
like slaves. His improved opinion had been raised by the intercourse he
had held with Caesar. The much-abused man had on these occasions shown
that he was not only well educated but also thoughtful; and yesterday
evening, before Caracalla had gone to rest exhausted, the high-priest,
with his wise experience, had received exactly the same impressions as
the easily influenced artist; for Caesar had bewailed his sad fate in
pathetic terms, and confessed himself indeed deeply guilty, but declared
that he had intended to act for the best, had sacrificed fortune, peace
of mind, and comfort to the welfare of the state. His keen eye had marked
the evils of the time, and he had acknowledged that his efforts to
extirpate the old maladie