impoverishment by his father, who, seeking to atone for sins by
fanaticism, had sold the little he possessed to found a pilgrims'
hospice at Portus, whither, accompanied by the twelve-year-old boy,
he went to live as monk-servitor In a year or two the penitent died;
Decius, in revolt against the tasks to which he was subjected,
managed to escape, made his way to Rome, and appealed to Maximus.
Nominally he still held the post of secretary to his benefactor, but
for many years he had enjoyed entire leisure, all of it devoted to
study. Several times illness had brought him to the threshold of
death, yet it had never conquered his love of letters, his
enthusiasm for his country's past. Few liked him only one or two
understood him: Decius was content that it should be so.

'Let us speak of it,' he continued, unrolling a manuscript of Virgil
some two hundred years old, a gift to him from Maximus. 'Tell me,
dear lord, your true thought: is it indeed a prophecy of the Divine
Birth? To you'--he smiled his gentle, beautiful smile--'may I
not confess that I have doubted this interpretation? Yet'--he cast
his eyes down--'the doubt is perhaps a prompting of the spirit of
evil.'

'I know not, Decius, I know not,' replied the sick man with
thoughtful melancholy. 'My father held it a prophecy his father
before him.--But forgive me, I am expecting anxiously the return
of Basil; yonder sail--is it his? Your eyes see further than
mine.'

Decius at once put aside his own reflections, and watched the
oncoming bark. Before long there was an end of doubt. Rising in
agitation to his feet, Maximus gave orders that the litter, which