"You may stay for aught I care. It is all the same now!"

So far his wife had left him to himself, for she was used to his violent
and eccentric behavior whenever anything had crossed him; but now she
peremptorily desired to be informed what had happened to him and he at
once acceded. He had been unwilling to frighten them sooner than was
needful, but they must learn it sooner or later: Cynegius had arrived to
overthrow the image of Serapis, and what must ensue they knew only too
well. "To-day," he cried, "we will live; but by to-morrow--a thousand to
one-by to-morrow there will be an end of all our joys and the earth will
swallow up the old home and us with it!"

His words fell on prepared ground; his wife and daughter were appalled,
and as Medius went on to paint the imminent catastrophe in more vivid
colors, his energy growing in proportion to its effect on them, they
began at first to sob and whimper and then to wail loudly. When the
children, who by this time were in bed, heard the lamentations of their
elders, they, too, set up a howl, and even Dada caught the infection.
As for Medius himself, he had talked himself into such a state of terror
by his own descriptions of the approaching destruction of the world that
he abandoned all claim to his proud reputation as a strong-minded man,
and quite forgot his favorite theory that everything that went by the
name of God was a mere invention of priests and rulers to delude and
oppress the ignorant; at last he even went so far as to mutter a, prayer,
and when his wife begged to be allowed to join a family of neighbors in
sacrificing a black lamb at daybreak, he recklessly gave her a handful
of money.

None of the party closed an eye that night. Dada could not bear to
remain in the house. Perhaps all these horrors existed only in Medius'