Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Only a miracle could save Lygia; hence he beat the stone flags with his forehead and prayed for the miracle. But he knew enough yet to understand that Peter's prayers were more important than his own. Peter had promised him Lygia, Peter had baptized him, Peter had performed miracles, let him give aid and rescue. And a certain night he went to seek the Apostle.
"But the noble Vinicius became a Christian, lord. I swear by that radiance which comes from thee that I speak the truth, and that nothing pierces me with such disgust as lying. Pomponia Græcina is a Christian, little Aulus is a Christian, Lygia is a Christian, and so is Vinicius.
He had given the example himself. Pomponia had told her that the most earnest among the adherents desire with all their souls such a test, and pray for it. And Lygia, when still in the house of Aulus, had been mastered at moments by a similar desire.
"Here," said the young man, "I should have perished but for thee." "Do not mention that," answered Lygia, "and do not speak of it to Ursus." "Could I be revenged on him for defending thee? Had he been a slave, I should have given him freedom straightway." "Had he been a slave, Aulus would have freed him long ago."
Throwing himself at last on a couch in the atrium, he began to think confusedly of how he was to find and seize Lygia. To resign her, to lose her, not to see her again, seemed to him impossible; and at this thought alone frenzy took hold of him.
Just see, thou hast said a moment since, 'I love thee, and I could not have won these words from thy lips with all the might of Rome. O Lygia! Reason declares this religion divine, and the best; the heart feels it, and who can resist two such forces?" Lygia listened, fixing on him her blue eyes, which in the light of the moon were like mystic flowers, and bedewed like flowers.
A bottomless abyss yawned before Lygia again. "I ask," continued the young freedwoman, "for I have compassion on thee and I have compassion on the good Pomponia and Aulus, and on their child. It is long since I began to live in this house, and I know what Cæsar's anger is. No! thou art not at liberty to flee from here. One way remains to thee: implore Vinicius to return thee to Pomponia."
He understood that to free Lygia from the Esquiline dungeons was not to be dreamed of. He divined that very likely she had been taken from the Tullianum so as not to die of fever and escape the amphitheatre assigned to her. But for this very reason she was watched and guarded more carefully than others.
Thou art a hostage, and a daughter of the Lygian king. Aulus and Pomponia love thee as their own child; I am sure that they are ready to adopt thee. Vinicius might marry thee, Lygia." But Lygia answered calmly, and with still greater sadness, "I would rather flee to the Lygians."
I tell thee that, if I had been lying with a broken arm in my own house, and if my own peoples, even my own family, had nursed me, I should have had more comforts, of course, but I should not have received half the care which I found among them. "Know this, too, that Lygia is like the others. Had she been my sister or my wife, she could not have nursed me more tenderly.
Word Of The Day