“I might be something much worse, my man,” said the soldier.
“Well, it is lucky for you that you are not one just now,” retorted the other, “or we should have had you blazing away in a pitch tunic last night.”
“Ah,” said Pansa, “you may say what you like, but there is something in this business, you may be sure. You should have seen Paulus when the Emperor [194] heard his cause. The boldest man in Rome would not have liked to stand as he did before the Emperor alone, with not a friend to back him up; Nero with a frown on his face as black as thunder, and Popp?a at Nero’s side, whispering, as any one might have known, all kinds of mischief against him. You know she hates these Christians just as much as she loves the Jews. Well, I have been on guard pretty often at the hearing of a prisoner, but I never saw a man less disturbed.”
“Well, what became of him?” inquired one of Pansa’s audience.
“He was acquitted. At first, I could see plainly enough, Nero was dead against him. He would not let him speak a couple of sentences without interruption, and every now and then would burst out laughing. But he came round little by little. Even Popp?a was silenced. At last the Emperor said, ‘Paulus, whether you are mad or not, only the gods know; if you are, your madness is better than most men’s sound judgment. You seem to me not to have offended either against the majesty of the Roman people, or against the welfare of the human race. My sentence is that you are acquitted.’ Then the smith, who was waiting outside, was sent for to strike off the prisoner’s chain. While he was doing this the Emperor said, ‘How long have you been bound with that chain?’ Paulus answered, ‘For five years, wanting a month; that is to say, for two years and [195] four months at C?sarea, and for two years and two months here in Rome, and the journeying hither was five months, seeing that I suffered shipwreck on the way.’ Nero said, ‘You have endured a wrong.’ Then turning to Tigellinus, he said, ‘See that he be paid two hundred gold pieces.’ That evening Paulus sent for me to his house�the place where we had been in charge of him. When I got there, he said to me, ‘Pansa, I fear that I have been a great trouble to you and your comrades these two years past. Pardon me, if I have offended you in aught. I have not been ashamed of my chain, but I know that it tries a man’s patience sorely, and I may have erred in hastiness of speech.’ I declared, as indeed I had every reason to do, that no one could have borne himself more admirably. He went on, ‘I have given you no gifts in these years past, such as it is customary, I am told, for prisoners to give to them that keep them; I judged it not right to do aught that might savour of corruption, and indeed, I but seldom had the means out of which I might give. But now I am no longer bound with this constraint; will it therefore please you to take these twenty-five pieces out of C?sar’s liberality?’ Twenty-five gold pieces, gentlemen, do not often come in a poor soldier’s way; still I was loth to take them. ‘Surely, sir,’ I said, ‘you need them for yourself.’ ‘Nay,’ said he, ‘I am otherwise provided for.’ And I happen to know that he did not keep a single piece for himself. He gave [196] to Celer the same sum that he gave to me; the rest he distributed among the poor. After this he said to me, ‘Pansa, it may and will be that you and I shall not meet again. Now I have never spoken to you at any time during these two years past of that which was nearest to my heart. I thought�my God knows whether wrongly or rightly�that I should not, because you would be constrained to listen, whether you would or not; my Master would have free servants only. But now it is permitted to me to speak.’ After this he said many things which I cannot now repeat.”
“But he did not persuade you?” said one of the listeners.
“Nay; he seemed to ask too much. On my faith, it seemed to me that to be a Christian was to be little better than being dead. Yet I have often wished it otherwise; and, if I see him again�but perhaps it is better to be silent.”
“So you don’t think there is any harm in these Christians?” said the soldier who had first questioned him.
“None at all, as I am a Roman,” said Pansa.
“And you don’t believe they set the city on fire?”
“Impossible! The Emperor has been deceived, and it is not difficult to see who deceived him.”
After this there was a silence. Though the soldiers might boast of their freedom of speech, every one knew that there were limits to what might safely [197] be said, and that now they were very near to dangerous ground.
Before long the silence was broken by the entrance of a newcomer. The man, who was evidently in a state of great excitement, looked hurriedly round the room, and caught sight of Sisenna.
“Sisenna,” he cried, “you know Fannius, the gladiator?”
“I know him well,” replied Sisenna. “I served with him in Armenia, and an excellent soldier he was. Well, what of him?”
“He is near his end, and has sent for you.”
“Near his end!” cried Pansa in dismay. “Why, he had recovered from his wounds when I saw him a few days ago; and he told me that he was quite well. What ails him?”
“I will tell you as we go,” said the messenger; “but make haste, for there is no time to lose.”
________________________________________
IN THE PRISON
[198] THE story which Pansa heard on his way was briefly this. Part of it we know already. An old comrade and antagonist had informed against him. The man had been vanquished by Fannius in the arena, and, what was a more deadly offence, had been detected by him in a fraudulent attempt to bring about a result that would have greatly profited some disreputable patrons. The arrest of Fannius had followed. But the malignant spite of his enemy had not been satisfied. He had induced the officer in charge of the business to thrust this particular prisoner into the most noisome dungeon in Rome.
Fannius had a great reputation for courage and skill in arms, and it was not difficult to make the officer believe, by dwelling on his lawless and violent temper, that he was a highly dangerous person. Accordingly, all other places of confinement being full, and even more than full, Fannius was thrust into the Tullianum, an underground cell, damp and fetid to a degree that made it almost intolerable. In fact, its original use had been as a place of execution rather than of confinement. In this King Jugurtha, after being led in [199] triumph by his conqueror, had been left to starve. Here the profligate nobles who had conspired with Catiline against the Senate and people of Rome had been strangled by the hands of the public executioner. In fact, whether the executioner was there or no, imprisonment in this frightful dungeon, at least if continued for more than a few hours, was a sentence of death. So Fannius had found it. Though he had apparently recovered from the wounds received in his conflict with his savage antagonist, loss of blood and long confinement to his bed had really weakened him. On the third day of his imprisonment a malarial fever, due to the loathsome condition of the place, declared itself, and before forty-eight hours had passed his condition was desperate.
Happily he was not suffered to die in this miserable dungeon. His jailer was an old soldier, who would probably have viewed with indifference the sufferings of a civilian prisoner, but who had a soft spot in his heart for any one who had served under the eagles. The man sent for a physician, and the physician peremptorily ordered removal. “He can hardly live,” he told the jailer, when he had examined his patient; “but a dry chamber and wholesome air might give him a chance.” The jailer had him forthwith taken to his own house. This was technically considered to be part of the prison, so that he might plead that he was only transferring his charge from one cell to another, and one practically as safe, considering that [200] the sick man could not so much as put a foot to the ground, and indeed was more than half unconscious.
The change of air and the careful nursing of the jailer’s wife brought about a temporary amendment. Fannius recovered sufficient strength to be able to speak. Summoning his host, as he may be called, to his bedside, he whispered to him the names of two persons whom he particularly desired to see. One of them was Sisenna, an old comrade in arms, whom he was anxious to make executor of his will; the other was Epicharis.