aic
pavements were as smooth as mirrors.

'Where is my daughter Julia?' he asked.

'At the bath.'

'Ah! that reminds me!--time wanes!--and I must bathe also.'

Our story returns to Apaecides. On awaking that day from the broken and
feverish sleep which had followed his adoption of a faith so strikingly
and sternly at variance with that in which his youth had been nurtured,
the young priest could scarcely imagine that he was not yet in a dream;
he had crossed the fatal river--the past was henceforth to have no
sympathy with the future; the two worlds were distinct and
separate--that which had been, from that which was to be. To what a bold
and adventurous enterprise he had pledged his life!--to unveil the
mysteries in which he had participated--to desecrate the altars he had
served--to denounce the goddess whose ministering robe he wore! Slowly
he became sensible of the hatred and the horror he should provoke
amongst the pious, even if successful; if frustrated in his daring
attempt, what penalties might he not incur for an offence hitherto
unheard of--for which no specific law, derived from experience, was
prepared; and which, for that very reason, precedents, dragged from the
sharpest armoury of obsolete and inapplicable legislation, would
probably be distorted to meet! His friends--the sister of his
youth--could he expect justice, though he might receive compassion, from
them? This brave and heroic act would by their heathen eyes be regarded,
perhaps, as a heinous apostasy--at the best as a pitiable madness.

He dared, he renounced, everything in this world, in the hope of
securing that eternity in the next, which had so suddenly been revealed
to him. While these thoughts on the one hand invaded his breast, on the
other hand his pride, his courage, and his virtue, mingled with
reminiscences of revenge for deceit, of indignant disgust at fraud,
conspired to raise and to support him.

The conflict was sharp and keen; but his new feelings triumphed over his
old: and a mighty argument in favor of wrestling with the sanctities of
old opinions and hereditary forms might be found in the conquest over
both, achieved by that humble priest. Had the early Christians been
more controlled by 'the solemn plausibilities of custom'--less of
democrats in the pure and lofty acceptation of that perverted
word--Christianity would have perished in its cradle!

As each priest in succession slept several nights together in the