hey
will do so by us.'

'I am hardly willing,' I replied, 'to believe what I have heard; nor
will I believe it. It were an act, so mad and unwise, as well as so
cruel, that I will not believe it though coming from the lips of
Aurelian!'

'It is true, Piso, as the light of yonder sun! But if thou wilt not
believe, wait a day or two and proof enough shall thou have--proof that
shall cure thy infidelity in a river of Christian blood.'

'Still, Aurelian,' I answered. 'I believe not: nor will, till that
river shall run down before my eyes red and thick as the Orontes!'

'How, Piso, is this? I thought you knew me!'

'In part I am sure I do. I know you neither to be a madman nor a fool,
both which in one would you be to attempt what you have now threatened.'

'Young Piso, you are bold!'

'I make no boast of courage,' I replied; 'I know that in familiar speech
with Aurelian, I need not fear him. Surely you would not converse on
such a subject with a slave or a flatterer. A Piso can be neither. I can
speak, or I can be silent; but if I speak--'

'Say on, say on, in the name of the gods!'

'What I would say to Aurelian then is this, that slaughter as he may,
the Christians cannot be exterminated; that though he decimated, first
Rome and then the empire, there would still be left a seed that would
spring up and bear its proper harvest. Nay, Aurelian, though you halved
the empire, you could not win your game. The Christians are more than
you deem them.'

'Be it so,' replied the Emperor; 'nevertheless I will try. But they are
not so many as you rate them at, neither by a direct nor an indirect
enumeration.'

'Let that pass, then,' I answered. 'Let them be a half, a quarter, a
tenth part of what I believe them to be, it will be the same; they
cannot be exterminated. Soon as the work of death is done, that of life
will begin again, and the growth will be the more rank for the blood
spilled around. Outside of the tenth part, Aurelian, that now openly
professes this new religion, there lies another equal number of those
who do not openly profess it, but do so either secretly, or else view it
with favor and with the desire to accept it. Your violence, inflicted
upon the open believers, reaches not them, for they are an invisible
multitude; but no sooner has it fallen and done its work of ruin, than
this other multitude slowly reveals itself, and stands forth heirs and
professors of the persecuted faith, and ready, like thos