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So bidding farewell to Petronius, he went hurriedly to the overseer of the "Putrid Pits" for his tessera. But disappointment was in waiting, the overseer would not give the tessera. "Pardon me," said he, "I have done what I could for thee, but I cannot risk my life. To-night they are to conduct the Christians to Cæsar's gardens. The prisons will be full of soldiers and officials.
Here he turned toward the grating in the wall, as if in answer to himself, and said, "In that way but there are soldiers outside " "A hundred pretorians." "Then we cannot pass?" "No!" The Lygian rubbed his forehead, and asked again, "How didst thou enter?" "I have a tessera from the overseer of the 'Putrid Pits." Then Vinicius stopped suddenly, as if some idea had flashed through his head.
Further, they testify against a direct and active, free and voluntary paying of tribute and other dues, unto such, and that for conscience sake, as unto the ordinance of God, according to his precept; and particularly, when these dues are required as a tessera of loyalty to such; or when required, as an evidence of a person's active contributing to the accomplishment of some wicked action, expressly declared to be the immediate end of the imposition.
The very earth within those walls had a reddish cast owing to the innumerable fragments of red tile and tessera mixed with it. Larks and finches were busily searching for seeds in the reddish-brown soil.
Although the mark was to be received at the instance and by the authority of the two horned beast of the earth, it was not enjoined as a mark of devotion to himself. It was manifestly commanded by him as a tessera of loyalty to the ten-horned beast of the sea, the obvious symbol of corrupt and tyrannical civil power.
Shouldst thou be recognized, I and my children would be lost." Vinicius understood that it would be vain to insist. The hope gleamed in him, however, that the soldiers who had seen him before would admit him even without a tessera; so, with the coming of night, he disguised himself as usual in the tunic of a corpse-bearer, and, winding a cloth around his head, betook himself to the prison.
Porcelain, glass and statuary are fragile, and paintings liable to injury from dampness and rough handling; while an antique mosaic, like the "Carthaginian Lion," a hundred square feet in superficies, might, after resuscitation from its subterranean sleep of twenty centuries with its minutest tessera intact and every tint as fresh as the Phoenician artist left it, suffer irreparable damage from a moment's carelessness on the voyage to its temporary home in the New World.
"By the Passion of the Redeemer," said he, in a hurried voice, "I will stay here. Let her take my tessera; she can wrap her head in a cloth, cover her shoulders with a mantle, and pass out. Among the slaves who carry out corpses there are several youths not full grown; hence the pretorians will not notice her, and once at the house of Petronius she is safe."
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