o fawn upon the mistress like a patient
slave, and, if the lord were to tire of her in the end and give himself
up to other captivations, to submit unmurmuringly to the unavoidable
necessity? All this some might consent to do; but surely not one like
herself, gifted with indomitable will, and stung to desperation with the
sense of great and irreparable sacrifices. To her there could be but one
course. She must abandon her slow and cautious policy, and seek the
earliest opportunity to urge the matter to its crisis. If, by sparing no
watchfulness or ingenuity, or by the exercise of bold and vigorous
manoeuvring, she could produce a quarrel and final separation between
Sergius and his wife, it might not be impossible for her to impress upon
him how much she was necessary to his happiness, and thereby elevate
herself into the vacant place. And if unsuccessful, at the least she
would be but sharing a ruin which would fall like an avalanche upon all
alike.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR.

The last great imperial persecution of the Christians under Diocletian
and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new
religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical
ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and
terrible disease (_morbus pedicularis_), described with great minuteness
by Eusebius and Lactantius. 'His body,' says Gibbon, 'swelled by an
intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with
ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have
given their name to a most loathsome disease.' Diocletian had withdrawn
from the throne in 305, and in 313 put an end to his imbittered life by
suicide. In his retirement he found more pleasure in raising cabbage
than he had found in ruling the empire; a confession we may readily
believe. (President Lincoln, of the United States, during the dark days
of the civil war, in December, 1862, declared that he would gladly
exchange his position with any common soldier in the tented field.)
Maximin, who kept up the persecution in the East, even after the
toleration edict, as long as he could, died likewise a violent death by
poison, in 313. In this tragical end of their last three imperial
persecutors the Christians saw a palpable judgment of God. The edict of
toleration was an involuntary and irresistible concession of the
incurable impotence of heathenism and the indestructible power of
Christ