self-accusation and regret, and dread lest some, at least, of the
blood which had been shed might be required at his hands.
Therefore, sitting upon his palm-mat there in Troe, he wept his life
away; happier, nevertheless, and more honourable in the sight of God
and man than if, like a Mazarin or a Talleyrand, and many another
crafty politician, both in Church and State, he had hardened his
heart against his own mistakes, and, by crafty intrigue and adroit
changing of sides at the right moment, had contrived to secure for
himself, out of the general ruin, honour and power and wealth, and
delicate food, and a luxurious home, and so been one of those of
whom the Psalmist says, with awful irony, "So long as thou doest
well unto thyself, men will speak good of thee."

One good deed at least Arsenius had seen done--a deed which has
lasted to all time, and done, too, to the eternal honour of his
order, by a monk--namely, the abolition of gladiator shows. For
centuries these wholesale murders had lasted through the Roman
Republic and through the Roman Empire. Human beings in the prime of
youth and health, captives or slaves, condemned malefactors, and
even free-born men, who hired themselves out to death, had been
trained to destroy each other in the amphitheatre for the amusement,
not merely of the Roman mob, but of the Roman ladies. Thousands
sometimes, in a single day, had been


"Butchered to make a Roman holiday."


The training of gladiators had become a science. By their weapons
and their armour, and their modes of fighting, they had been