CONVERSION.
If there is a state of mind utterly forlorn, it is that in which we left
the poor prisoner after Polemo had departed. She was neither a Christian,
nor was she not. She was in the midway region of inquiry, which as surely
takes time to pass over, except there be some almost miraculous
interference, as it takes time to walk from place to place. You see a
person coming towards you, and you say, impatiently, “Why don’t you come
faster?—why are you not here already?” Why?—because it takes time. To see
that heathenism is false,—to see that Christianity is true,—are two acts,
and involve two processes. They may indeed be united, and the truth may
supplant the error; but they may not. Callista obeyed, as far as truth was
brought home to her. She saw the vanity of idols before she had faith in
Him who came to destroy them. She could safely say, “I discard Jupiter:”
she could not say, “I am a Christian.” Besides, what did she know of
Christians? How did she know that they would admit her, if she wished it?
They were a secret society, with an election, an initiation, and
oaths;—not a mere philosophical school, or a profession of opinion, open
to any individual. If they were the good people that she fancied them to
be,—and if they were not, she would not think of them at all,—they were
not likely to accept of her.
Still, though we may account for her conduct, its issue was not, on that
account, the less painful. She had neither the promise of this world, nor
of the next, and was losing earth without gaining heaven. Our Lord is
reported to have said, “Be ye good money-changers.” Poor Callista did not
know how to turn herself to account. It had been so all through her short
life. She had ardent affections, and keen sensibilities, and high
aspirations; but she was not fortunate in the application of them. She had
put herself into her brother’s hands, and had let him direct her course.
It could not be expected that he would be very different from the world.
We are cautioned against “rejoicing in our youth.” Aristo rejoiced in his
without restraint; and he made his sister rejoice in hers, if enjoyment it
was. He himself found in the pleasures he pointed out a banquet of
fruits:—she dust and ashes. And so she went on; not changing her life,
from habit, from the captivity of nature, but weary, disappointed,
fastidious, hungry, yet not knowing what she would have; yearning after
something, she did not well know what. And as heretofore she had cast her
lot with the world, yet had received no price for her adhesion, so now she
had bid it farewell; yet had nothing to take in its place.
As to her brother, after the visit of Polemo, he got more and more
annoyed—angry rather than distressed, and angry with her. One more
opportunity occurred of her release, and it was the last effort he made to
move her. Cornelius, in spite of his pomposity, had acted the part of a
real friend. He wrote from Carthage, that he had happily succeeded in his
application to government, and, difficult and unusual as was the grace,
had obtained her release. He sent the formal documents for carrying it
through the court, and gained the eager benediction of the excitable
Aristo. He rushed with the parchments to the magistrates, who recognised
them as sufficient, and got an order for admission to her room.
“Joy, my dearest,” he cried; “you are free! We will leave this loathsome
country by the first vessel. I have seen the magistrates already.”
The colour came into her wan face, she clasped her hands together, and
looked earnestly at Aristo. He proceeded to explain the process of
liberation. She would not be called on to sacrifice, but must sign a
writing to the effect that she had done so, and there would be an end of
the whole matter. On the first statement she saw no difficulty in the
proposal, and started up in animation. Presently her countenance fell; how
could she say that she had done what it was treason to her inward Guide to
do? What was the difference between acknowledging a blasphemy by a
signature or by incense? She smiled sorrowfully at him, shook her head,
and lay down again upon her rushes. She had anticipated the Church’s
judgment on the case of the _Libellatici_.
Aristo could not at first believe he heard aright, that she refused to be
saved by what seemed to him a matter of legal form; and his anger grew so
high as to eclipse and to shake his affection. “Lost girl,” he cried, “I
abandon you to the Furies!” and he shook his clenched hand at her. He
turned away, and said he would never see her again, and he kept his word.
He never came again. He took refuge, with less restraint than was usual to
him, in such pleasures as the city could supply, and strove to drive his
sister from his mind by dissipation. He mixed in the games of the Campus
Martius under the shadow of the mountain; took part with the revellers in
the Forum, and ended the evening at the Thermæ. Sometimes the image of
dear Callista, as once she looked, would rush into his mind with a force
which would not be denied, and he would weep for a whole night.
At length he determined to destroy himself, after the example of so many
great men. He gave a sumptuous entertainment, expending his means upon it,
and invited his friends to partake of it. It passed off with great gaiety;
nothing was wanting to make it equal to an occasion so special and
singular. He disclosed to his guests his purpose, and they applauded; the
last libations were made—the revellers departed—the lights were
extinguished. Aristo disappeared that night: Sicca never saw him again.
After some time it was found that he was at Carthage, and he had been
provident enough to take with him some of his best working tools, and some
specimens of his own and poor Callista’s skill.
Strange to say, Jucundus proved a truer friend to the poor girl than her
brother. In spite of his selfishness and hatred of Christians, he was
considerably affected as her case got more and more serious, and it became
evident that only one answer could be returned to the magistrates from
Carthage. He was quite easy about Agellius, who had, as he considered,
successfully made off with himself, and he was reconciled to the thought
of never seeing him again. Had it not been for this, one might have
fancied that some lurking anxiety about the fate of his nephew might have
kept alive the fidget which Callista’s dismal situation gave him, for the
philosopher tells us, that pity always has something in it of self; but,
under the circumstances, it would be rash judgment to have any such
suspicion of his motives. He was not a cruel man: even the “hoary-headed
Fabian,” or Cyprian, or others whom he so roundly abused, would have
found, when it came to the point, that his bluster was his worst weapon
against them; at any rate he had enough of the “milk of human kindness” to
feel considerable distress about that idiotic Callista.
Yet what could he do? He might as well stop the passage of the sun, as the
movements of mighty Rome, and a rescript would be coming to a certainty in
due time from Carthage, and would just say one thing, which would
forthwith be passing into the region of fact. He had no one to consult,
and to tell the truth, Callista’s fate was more than acquiesced in by the
public of Sicca. Her death seemed a solution of various perplexities and
troubles into which the edict had brought them; it would be purchasing the
praise of loyalty cheaply. Moreover, there were sets of men actually
hostile to her and her brother; the companies of statuaries, lapidaries,
and goldsmiths, were jealous of foreign artists like them, who showed
contempt for Africa, and who were acquainted, or rather intimate, with
many of the higher classes, and even high personages in the place. Well,
but could not some of those great people help her now? His mind glanced
towards Calphurnius, whom he had heard of as in some way or other
protecting her on the evening of the riot, and to him he determined to
betake himself.
Calphurnius and the soldiery were still in high dudgeon with the populace
of Sicca, displeased with the magistrates, and full of sympathy for
Callista. Jucundus opened his mind fully to the tribune, and persuaded him
to take him to Septimius, his military superior, and in the presence of
the latter many good words were uttered both by Calphurnius and Jucundus.
Jucundus gave it as his opinion that it was a very great mistake to strike
at any but the leaders of the Christian sect; he quoted the story of King
Tarquin and the poppies, and assured the great man that it was what he had
always said and always prophesied, and that, depend upon it, it was a
great mistake not to catch Cyprianus.
“The strong arm of the law,” he said, “should not, on the other hand, be
put forth against such butterflies as this Callista, a girl who, he knew
from her brother, had not yet seen eighteen summers. What harm could such
a poor helpless thing possibly do? She could not even defend herself, much
less attack anybody else. No,” he continued, “your proper policy with
these absurd people is a smiling face and an open hand. Recollect the
fable of the sun and the wind; which made the traveller lay aside his
cloak? Do you fall in with some sour-visaged, stiff-backed worshipper of
the Furies? fill his cup for him, crown his head with flowers, bring in
the flute-women. Observe him—he relaxes; a smile spreads on his
countenance; he laughs at a jest; ‘captus est; habet:’ he pours a
libation. Great Jove has conquered! he is loyal to Rome; what can you
desire more? But beat him, kick him, starve him, turn him out of doors;
and you have a natural enemy to do you a mischief whenever he can.”
Calphurnius took his own line, and a simple one. “If it was some vile
slave or scoundrel African,” he said, “no harm would have been done; but,
by Jupiter Tonans, it’s a Greek girl, who sings like a Muse, dances like a
Grace, and spouts verses like Minerva. ’Twould be sacrilege to touch a
hair of her head; and we forsooth are to let these cowardly dogs of
magistrates entrap Fortunianus at Carthage into this solecism.”
Septimius said nothing, as became a man in office; but he came to an
understanding with his visitors. It was plain that the Duumvirs of Sicca
had no legal custody of Callista; in a criminal matter she might seem to
fall under the jurisdiction of the military; and Calphurnius gained leave
to claim his right at the proper moment. The rest of his plan the tribune
kept to himself, nor did Septimius wish to know it. He intended to march a
guard into the prison shortly before Callista was brought out for
execution, and then to make it believed that she had died under the
horrors of the Barathrum. The corpse of another woman could without
difficulty be found to be her representative, and she herself would be
carried off to the camp.
Meanwhile, to return to the prisoner herself, what was the consolation,
what the occupation of Callista in this waiting time, ere the Proconsul
had sent his answer? Strange to say, and, we suppose, from a sinful
waywardness in her, she had, up to this moment, neglected to avail herself
of a treasure, which by a rare favour had been put into her possession. A
small parchment, carefully written, elaborately adorned, lay in her bosom,
which might already have been the remedy of many a perplexity, many a woe.
It is difficult to say under what feelings she had been reluctant to open
the Holy Gospel, which Cæcilius had intrusted to her care. Whether she was
so low and despondent that she could not make the effort, or whether she
feared to convince herself further, or whether she professed to be waiting
for some calmer time, as if that were possible, or whether her
unwillingness was that which makes sick people so averse to eating, or to
remedies which they know would be useful to them, cannot well be
determined; but there are many of us who may be able, from parallel
instances of infirmity, to enter into that state of mind, which led her at
least to procrastinate what she might do any minute. However, now left
absolutely to herself, Aristo gone, and the answer of the government to
the magistracy not having yet come, she recurred to the parchment, and to
the Bishop’s words, which ran, “Here you will see who it is we love,” or
language to that effect. It was tightly lodged under her girdle, and so
had escaped in the confusion of that terrible evening. She opened it at
length and read.
It was the writing of a provincial Greek; elegant, however, and marked
with that simplicity which was to her taste the elementary idea of a
classic author. It was addressed to one Theophilus, and professed to be a
carefully digested and verified account of events which had been already
attempted by others. She read a few paragraphs, and became interested, and
in no long time she was absorbed in the volume. When she had once taken it
up, she did not lay it down. Even at other times she would have prized it,
but now, when she was so desolate and lonely, it was simply a gift from an
unseen world. It opened a view of a new state and community of beings,
which only seemed too beautiful to be possible. But not into a new state
of things alone, but into the presence of One who was simply distinct and
removed from anything that she had, in her most imaginative moments, ever
depicted to her mind as ideal perfection. Here was that to which her
intellect tended, though that intellect could not frame it. It could
approve and acknowledge, when set before it, what it could not originate.
Here was He who spoke to her in her conscience; whose Voice she heard,
whose Person she was seeking for. Here was He who kindled a warmth on the
cheek of both Chione and Agellius. That image sank deep into her; she felt
it to be a reality. She said to herself, “This is no poet’s dream; it is
the delineation of a real individual. There is too much truth and nature,
and life and exactness about it, to be anything else.” Yet she shrank from
it; it made her feel her own difference from it, and a feeling of
humiliation came upon her mind, such as she never had had before. She
began to despise herself more thoroughly day by day; yet she recollected
various passages in the history which reassured her amid her
self-abasement, especially that of His tenderness and love for the poor
girl at the feast, who would anoint His feet; and the full tears stood in
her eyes, and she fancied she was that sinful child, and that He did not
repel her.
O what a new world of thought she had entered! it occupied her mind from
its very novelty. Everything looked dull and dim by the side of it; her
brother had ever been dinning into her ears that maxim of the heathen,
“Enjoy the present, trust nothing to the future.” She indeed could not
enjoy the present with that relish which he wished, and she had not any
trust in the future either; but this volume spoke a different doctrine.
There she learned the very opposite to what Aristo taught—viz., that the
present must be sacrificed for the future; that what is seen must give way
to what is believed. Nay, more, she drank in the teaching which at first
seemed so paradoxical, that even present happiness and present greatness
lie in relinquishing what at first sight seems to promise them; that the
way to true pleasure is, not through self-indulgence, but through
mortification; that the way to power is weakness, the way to success
failure, the way to wisdom foolishness, the way to glory dishonour. She
saw that there was a higher beauty than that which the order and harmony
of the natural world revealed, and a deeper peace and calm than that which
the exercise, whether of the intellect or of the purest human affection,
can supply. She now began to understand that strange, unearthly composure,
which had struck her in Chione, Agellius, and Cæcilius; she understood
that they were detached from the world, not because they had not the
possession, nor the natural love of its gifts, but because they possessed
a higher blessing already, which they loved above everything else. Thus,
by degrees, Callista came to walk by a new philosophy; and had ideas, and
principles, and a sense of relations and aims, and a susceptibility of
arguments, to which before she was an utter stranger. Life and death,
action and suffering, fortunes and abilities, all had now a new meaning
and application. As the skies speak differently to the philosopher and the
peasant, as a book of poems to the imaginative and to the cold and narrow
intellect, so now she saw her being, her history, her present condition,
her future, in a new light, which no one else could share with her. But
the ruling sovereign thought of the whole was He, who exemplified all this
wonderful philosophy in Himself.