"Then it is so!" cried Demetrius, grinding his teeth and thumping his
fist down on the table. "The lies sown by one single man have produced a
deadly weed that is smothering this miserable house! You--to be sure,
what can you know of our father? I knew him; I have been present when he
and his friends, the philosophers, have laughed to scorn things which not
only you Christians but even pious heathen regard as sacred. Lucretius
was his evangelist, and the Cosmogony of that utter atheist lay by his
pillow and was his companion wherever he went."

"He admired the heathen poets, but he was a Christian all the same,"
replied Marcus.

"Neither more nor less than Porphyrius, our uncle, or myself," retorted
his brother. "Since the day when our grandfather Philippus was baptized,
wealth and happiness have deserted this house. He gave up the old gods
solely that he might not lose the right of supplying the city and the
Emperor with corn, and became a Christian and made his sons Christians.
But he had us educated by his heathen friends, and though we passed for
Christians we were not so in fact. When it was absolutely necessary he
showed himself in church with us; but our daily life, our pleasures, our
pastimes were heathen, and when life began for us in earnest we offered a
bleeding sacrifice to the gods. It was impossible to retract honestly,
since a renegade Christian returning to the worship of the old gods is
incapacitated by law from making a will. You know this; and when you ask
me why I am content to live alone, without either wife or child--and I
love children, even those of other people--a solitary man dragging out my
days and nights joylessly enough--I tell you: I am openly and honestly a
worshipper of our old gods, and I will not go to church because I scorn
a lie. What should I do with children who, in consequence of my