now better. If that and
that alone were intended you would build churches and chapels and send
us worthy priests--Eusebius and the like--and would try to win men's
hearts to your Lord by the love you are always talking so much about.
That was my advice to your mother, only this morning. I believe the end
might be attained by those means, among us as elsewhere; ultimately it
will, no doubt, be gained--but not to-day nor to-morrow. A peasant, when
he had become accustomed to the church and grasped a trust in the new
God, would of his own accord give up the old gods and their sanctuaries;
I could count you off a dozen such instances. That I could have looked
on at calmly, for I want only men's arms and legs and do not ask for
their souls; but to burn down the old house before you have collected
wood and stone to build a new one I call wicked.--It is cruelty and
madness, and when so shrewd a woman as your mother is bent on carrying
through such a measure, come what may, there is something more behind
it."

"You think she wants to get rid of you--you, Demetrius!" interrupted
Marcus eagerly. "But you are mistaken, you are altogether wrong. What
you have done for the estate..."

"Oh! as for that!" cried the other, "what has my work to do with all
this? Ere the year is out everything that can remind us of the heathen
gods is to be swept away from the hamlets and fields of the pious Mary.
That is what is intended! Then they will hurry off to the Bishop with
the great news and to crown one marvel with another, the reversion
will be secured of a martyr's nimbus. And this is what all this zeal is
for--this and nothing else!"

"You are speaking of my mother, remember!" cried Marcus, looking at his
brother with a touching appeal in his eyes. Demetrius shook his shaggy
head and spoke more temperately as he went on:

"Yes, child, I had forgotten that--and I may be mistaken of course, for
I am no more than human. Here one thing follows so close on another, and
in this house I feel so battered and storm-tossed, that I hardly know
myself. But old Phabis tells me that steps are being seriously taken to
procure the title of Martyr for our father Apelles."

"My mother is quite convinced that he died for the faith, and she loved
him devotedly..."

"Then it is so!" cried Demetrius, grinding his teeth and thumping his
fist down on the table. "The lies sown by one single man have produced
a deadly weed that is smothering this miserable ho