playing mora; I have been in laundries, in drying-sheds, in cheap
kitchens; I have seen mule-drivers and carvers; I have seen people who
cure bladder complaints and pull teeth; I have talked with dealers in
dried figs; I have been at cemeteries; and do ye know why? This is why;
so as to outline a fish everywhere, look people in the eyes, and hear
what they would say of that sign. For a long time I was unable to learn
anything, till at last I saw an old slave at a fountain. He was drawing
water with a bucket, and weeping. Approaching him, I asked the cause of
his tears. When we had sat down on the steps of the fountain, he
answered that all his life he had been collecting sestertium after
sestertium, to redeem his beloved son; but his master, a certain Pansa,
when the money was delivered to him, took it, but kept the son in
slavery. 'And so I am weeping,' said the old man, 'for though I repeat,
Let the will of God be done, I, poor sinner, am not able to keep down my
tears.' Then, as if penetrated by a forewarning, I moistened my finger
in the water and drew a fish for him. To this he answered, 'My hope,
too, is in Christ.' I asked him then, 'Hast thou confessed to me by that
sign?' 'I have,' said he; 'and peace be with thee.' I began then to draw
him out, and the honest old man told me everything. His master, that
Pansa, is himself a freedman of the great Pansa; and he brings stones by
the Tiber to Rome, where slaves and hired persons unload them from the
boats, and carry them to buildings in the night time, so as not to
obstruct movement in the streets during daylight. Among these people
many Christians work, and also his son; as the work is beyond his son's
strength, he wished to redeem him. But Pansa preferred to keep both the
money and the slave. While telling me this, he began again to weep; and
I mingled my tears with his,--tears came to me easily because of my kind
heart, and the pain in my feet, which I got from walking excessively. I
began also to lament that as I had come from Naples only a few days
since, I knew no one of the brotherhood, and did not know where they