Copyright, 1904, by IRVING BACHELLER.


All rights reserved.

Published August, 1904.




Vergilius

A Tale of the Coming of Christ




CHAPTER 1

Rome had passed the summits and stood looking into the dark valley of
fourteen hundred years. Behind her the graves of Caesar and Sallust
and Cicero and Catullus and Vergil and Horace; before her centuries of
madness and treading down; round about her a multitude sickening of
luxury, their houses filled with spoil, their mouths with folly, their
souls with discontent; above her only mystery and silence; in her
train, philosophers questioning if it were not better for a man had he
never been born--deeming life a misfortune and extinction the only
happiness; poets singing no more of "pleasantries and trifles," but
seeking favor with poor obscenities. Soon they were even to celebrate
the virtue of harlots, the integrity of thieves, the tenderness of