olling of
the chariot wheels grew more frequent over the worn stones. A cherry
sapling brought home by a veteran told us of the far-distant conquests
of a Consul, and odes sung to the lyre related the victories of Rome,
mistress of the world.

"All the countries where the great Dionysus had journeyed, changing wild
beasts into men, and making the fruit and grain bloom and ripen beneath
the passing of his Maenads, now breathed the Pax Romana. The nursling of
the she-wolf, soldier and labourer, friend of conquered nations, laid
out roads from the margin of the misty sea to the rocky slopes of the
Caucasus; in every town rose the temple of Augustus and of Rome, and
such was the universal faith in Latin justice that in the gorges of
Thessaly or on the wooded borders of the Rhine, the slave, ready to
succumb under his iniquitous burden, called aloud on the name of Caesar.

"But why must it be that on this ill-starred globe of land and water,
all should perish and die and the fairest things be ever the most
fleeting? O adorable daughters of Greece! O Science! O Wisdom! O
Beauty! kindly divinities, you were wrapt in heavy slumber ere you
submitted to the outrages of the barbarians, who already in the marshy
wastes of the North and on the lonely steppes, ready to assail you,
bestrode bare-backed their little shaggy horses.

"While, dear Arcade, the patient legionary camped by the borders of the
Phasis and the Tanais, the women and the priests of Asia and of
monstrous Africa invaded the Eternal City and troubled the sons of Remus
with their magic spells. Until now, Iahveh, the persecutor of the
laborious demons, was unknown to the world that he pretended to have
created, save to certain miserable Syrian tribes, ferocious like
himself, and perpetually dragged from servitude to servitude. Profiting
by the Roman peace which assured free travel and traffic everywhere, and
favoured the exchange of ideas and merchandise, this old God insolently
made ready to conquer the Universe. He was not the only one, for the
matter of that, to attempt such an undertaking. At the same time a crowd
of gods, demiurges, and demons, such as Mithra, Thammuz, the good Isis,
and Eubulus, meditated taking possession of the peace-enfolded world. Of
all the spirits, Iahveh appeared the least prepared for victory. His
ignorance, his cruelty, his ostentation, his Asiatic luxury, his disdain
of laws, his affectation of rendering himself invisible, all these