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When the republic was abolished, the emperors assumed the office of pontifex maximus, or chief pontiff, deeming its powers too extensive to be entrusted to a subject. The institution of vestal virgins was older than the city itself, and was regarded by the Romans as the most sacred part of their religious system.
He was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with football, nor in spite of all his efforts could he ever throw a ball or a stone. It soon became plain, therefore, to everyone that Pontifex was a young muff, a mollycoddle, not to be tortured, but still not to be rated highly.
"I don't know that he's a particularly fascinating young man, my dear," said Mrs Cowey, "and he's only a second son, but then he's got his fellowship, and even the second son of such a man as Mr Pontifex the publisher should have something very comfortable." "Why yes, my dear," rejoined Mrs Allaby complacently, "that's what one rather feels."
"Successores sunt, sed ita ut potius Vicarii dicendi sint Apostolorum, quam successores; contra, Romanus Pontifex, quia verus Petri successor est, nonnisi per quendam abusum ejus vicarius diceretur." Zaccar. Antifebr., p. 130. Mr. Highfly kept silence.
The pair had lived not unhappily together, for Mr Pontifex's temper was easy and he soon learned to bow before his wife's more stormy moods. Mr Pontifex was a carpenter by trade; he was also at one time parish clerk; when I remember him, however, he had so far risen in life as to be no longer compelled to work with his own hands. In his earlier days he had taught himself to draw.
He stumbled over an empty hamper; there was the sound of a fall a smash of broken glass, and in an instant the cellar floor was covered with the liquid that had been preserved so carefully for so many years. With his usual presence of mind Mr Pontifex gasped out a month's warning to Gelstrap. Then he got up, and stamped as Theobald had done when Christina had wanted not to order his dinner.
"If you want clothes to come in, order what you consider suitable, and desire that the bill be sent to me; I will pay it immediately, to an amount not exceeding eight or nine pounds, and if you will let me know what train you will come by, I will send the carriage to meet you. Believe me, Your affectionate father, T. PONTIFEX." Of course there could be no hesitation on Ernest's part.
I myself showed a taste for music at an early age, and old Mr Pontifex on finding it out, as he soon did, became partial to me in consequence. It may be thought that with so many irons in the fire he could hardly be a very thriving man, but this was not the case.
He, Adam, went to sleep as it might be himself, Theobald Pontifex, in a garden, as it might be the garden at Crampsford Rectory during the summer months when it was so pretty, only that it was larger, and had some tame wild animals in it.
Those who did not really look into such questions might go on considering themselves to believe in revelation, but the moment that a man seriously tackled the subject, his religion was bound to go, just as that of Ernest Pontifex did at the end of five minutes' conversation with an atheistic shoemaker.