click to read pdf file - The Preterist Archive

178 DARKNESS AND DAWN
said, with a slight wave of the hand, ' I arn tired of this. I
bid farewell to the guests. You may go without ceremony.'
Every one felt that the Emperor's ill-humour had thrown
a deadly chill over the gladdest night of the year. With
mutual glancings, and slight shrugs of the shoulder, and
almost imperceptible liftings of the eyebrow, they departed.
Only Tigellinus remained.
'
'
What does Caesar think of Britannicus now ? he asked in
malignant triumph.
'
I think,' said Nero, savagely, ' that swans sing sweetest
before they die.'
'
Ah-h !
'
first step in the Sejanus-course
said the base plotter ;
and he knew that now the
of his ambition was accomplished.
But Britannicus went straight from the supper to the rooms
of his sister. Octavia sat there in the old Roman fashion of
matronly simplicity. She was spinning wool at her distaff,
and with kind heart she often gave what she spun to the
children of her slaves. And while she spun, a maiden was
reading to her.
It was the Christian girl Tryphasna. Usually she read
from the Roman poets, and Octavia was never tired of hearing
the finer odes of Horace, or the ^Eneid and Bucolics of
Virgil. Sometimes she listened to the history of Livy, and to
the treatises of Seneca, which she liked better than their
author. But this evening Trvphsena between whom and
her young mistress there was a confidence akin to affection
'
had timidly asked whether she might read a Christian
writing.' She knew that the Empress had been interested in
the Christians by the conversation of Pomponia, and she was
anxious to show how shamefully her brethren and sisters in
the faith were misrepresented and slandered.
She drew forth from her bosom a manuscript, which had
been lent her as a precious favour by the Christian Presbyter
Cletus. It was a copy of a general letter of the Apostle
Peter, which had been written to encourage the struggling
Christian communities. It was not the letter which we now
know as the First Epistle of St. Peter, which was written perhaps
ten years later, but one of those circular addresses which
touched, as did so many of the Epistles, upon the same
universal duties, and used in many passages the same form of