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uzzling their heads with what it is impossible they should understand, and by his sophistries alienating them from their venerable parent? Not so, by Hercules! I should ill deserve my office of supreme guardian of the honor and liberties of Rome, did I not mew him up in the Fabrician dungeons, or send him lower still to the Stygian shades.'
'But,' said Livia, who had seemed anxious to speak, 'though it may be right, and best for the interests of Rome, to suppress this new worship, yet why, Aurelian, need it be done at such expense of life? Can no way be devised by which the professors of this faith shall be banished, for instance, the realm, and no new teachers of it permitted to enter it afterward but at the risk of life, or some other appointed penalty? Sure I am, from what I heard from the Christian Probus, and what I have heard so often from the lips of Julia, this people cannot be the sore in the body of the state which Fronto represents them.'
'I cannot, Livia,' replied the Emperor, 'refuse to obey what to me have been warnings from the gods.'
'But may not the heavenly signs have been read amiss?' rejoined Livia.
'There is no truth in augury, if my duty be not where I have placed it,' answered Aurelian.
'And perhaps, Aurelian,' said the Empress, 'there is none. I have heard that the priests of the temples play many a trick upon their devout worshippers.'
'Livia, it has doubtless been so; but you would not believe that Fronto has trifled with Aurelian?'
'I believe Fronto capable of any crime by which the gods may be served. Have you not heard, Aurelian what fell from the dying Christian's lips?'
'I have, Livia; and have cast it from me as at best the coinage of a moonstruck mountebank. Shall the word of such a one as Macer the Christian, unseat my trust in such a one as Fronto? That were not reasonable, Livia.'
'Then, Aurelian, if not for any reason that I can give, for the love you bear me, withhold your hand from this innocent people. You have