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By this time Jucundus had recovered from the qualm which Juba’s intelligence had caused him, and he cried out, “Cease your rubbish; old Gurta’s jealous; I know her spite; Christian is the most blackguard word in her vocabulary, its Barbar for toad or adder. I see it all; no, Callista, the divine Callista, must take in hand this piece of wax, sing a charm, and mould him into a Vertumnus.
“Ha, ha! to be sure!” returned Jucundus; “to be sure! yet why shouldn’t he worship a handsome Greek girl as well as any of those mummies and death’s heads and bogies of his, which I should blush to put up here alongside even of Anubis, or a scarabæus?” “Mother thinks she is not altogether the girl you take her for,” said his nephew.
Ah, poor Agellius! a fascination is upon you; and so you are thinking of some middle term, which is to reconcile your uncle and you; and therefore you begin as follows:— “I see by your silence, Jucundus, that you are displeased with me, you who are always so kind. Well, it comes from my ignorance of things; it does indeed.
“You think this persecution, then, will be soon at an end?” asked Jucundus. “I judge by the past,” answered Agellius; “there have been times of trial and of rest hitherto, and I suppose it will be so again. And one place has hitherto been exempt from the violence of our enemies, when another has been the scene of it.”
She ought not to be there! Yet how wonderful!” “Well, I am sure of it, too,” said Jucundus; “I’d stake the best image in my shop that she’s not a Christian; but what if she is perverse enough to say she is? and such things are not uncommon. Then, I say, what in the world is to be done? If she says she is, why she is. There you are; and what can you do?”
Agellius had thought of the end more than of the means, and had had a vision of Callista as a Christian, when the question of rites and forms would have been answered by the decision of the Church without his trouble. He was somewhat sobered by the question, though in a different way from what his uncle wished and intended. Jucundus proceeded—“First, there is matrimonium confarreationis.
But he thought Jucundus over-sanguine; much as he should like to live with him and tend him in his old age, he did not think he should ever be permitted to return to Sicca. He was a Christian, and must seek some remote corner of the world, or at least some city where he was unknown.
Think of the delight of passing, in companionship with such a mind, through scenes and circumstances entirely new to it! Lewes, too, was a most delightful companion, the cheeriest of philosophers! The old saying of "Comes jucundus in viâ pro vehiculo est," was especially applicable to him.
“Then,” said the boy, “I could not say my Virgil, and he tore the shirt from off my back, and gave it me with the leather.” “Ay,” answered Jucundus, “ ‘arma virumque’ branded on your hide.” “Afterwards I ate his dinner for him,” continued the boy, “and then he screwed my head, and kept me without food for two days.”
Jucundus opened his mind fully to the tribune, and persuaded him to take him to Septimius, his military superior, and in the presence of the latter many good words were uttered both by Calphurnius and Jucundus.
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