“I am as good as you any day,” said Juba.
“I don’t set myself up,” answered Agellius, “but it’s impossible to confound Christian and unbeliever as you do.”
“Christian and unbeliever!” said Juba, slowly. “I suppose, when they are a-courting each other, they are confounded.” He looked hard at Agellius, as if he thought he had hit a blot. Then he continued, “If I were a Christian, I’d be so in earnest: else I’d be an honest heathen.”
Agellius coloured somewhat, and sat down, as if under embarrassment.
“I despise you,” said Juba; “you have not the pluck to be a Christian. Be consistent, and fizz upon a stake; but you’re not made of that stuff. You’re even afraid of uncle. Nay, you can be caught by those painted wares, about which, when it suits your purpose, you can be so grave. I despise you,” he continued, “I despise you, and the whole kit of you. What’s the difference between you and another? Your people say, ‘Earth’s a vanity, life’s a dream, riches a deceit, pleasure a snare. Fratres charissimi, the time is short;’ but who love earth and life and riches and pleasure better than they? You are all of you as fond of the world, as set upon gain, as chary of reputation, as ambitious of power, as the jolly old heathen, who, you say, is going the way of the pit.”
“It is one thing to have a conscience,” answered Agellius; “another thing to act upon it. The conscience of these poor people is darkened. You had a conscience once.”
“Conscience, conscience,” said Juba. “Yes, certainly, once I had a conscience. Yes, and once I had a bad chill, and went about chattering and shivering; and once I had a game leg, and then I went limping; and so, you see, I once on a time had a conscience. O yes, I have had many consciences before now—white, black, yellow, and green; they were all bad; but they are all gone, and now I have none.”
Agellius said nothing; his one wish, as may be supposed, was to get rid of so unwelcome a visitor.
“The truth is,” continued Juba, with the air of a teacher—“the truth is, that religion was a fashion with me, which is now gone by. It was the complexion of a particular stage of my life. I was neither the better nor the worse for it. It was an accident, like the bloom on my face, which soon,” he said, spreading his fingers over his dirty-coloured cheeks, and stroking them, “which soon will disappear. I acted according to the feeling, while it lasted; but I can no more recall it than my first teeth, or the down on my chin. It’s among the things that were.”
Agellius still keeping silence from weariness and disgust, he looked at him in a significant way, and said, slowly, “I see how it is; I have penetration enough to perceive that you don’t believe a bit more about religion than I do.”
“You must not say that under my roof,” cried Agellius, feeling he must not let his brother’s charge pass without a protest. “Many are my sins, but unbelief is not one of them.”
Juba tossed his head. “I think I can see through a stone slab as well as any one,” he said. “It is as I have said; but you’re too proud to confess it. It’s part of your hypocrisy.”
“Well,” said Agellius coldly, “let’s have done. It’s getting late, Juba; you’ll be missed at home. Jucundus will be inquiring for you, and some of those revelling friends of yours may do you a mischief by the way. Why, my good fellow,” he continued, in surprise, “you have no leggings. The scorpions will catch hold of you to a certainty in the dark. Come, let me tie some straw wisps about you.”
“No fear of scorpions for me,” answered Juba; “I have some real good amulets for the occasion, which even boola-kog and uffah will respect.”
Saying this, he passed out of the room as unceremoniously as he had entered it, and took the direction of the city, talking to himself, and singing snatches of wild airs as he went along, throwing back and shaking his head, and now and then uttering a sharp internal laugh. Disdaining to follow the ordinary path, he dived down into the thick and wet grass, and scrambled through the ravine, which the public road crossed before it ascended the hill. Meanwhile he accompanied his quickened pace with a louder strain, and it ran as follows:—
“The little black Moor is the mate for me,
When the night is dark, and the earth is free,
Under the limbs of the broad yew-tree.
“’Twas Father Cham that planted that yew,
And he fed it fat with the bloody dew
Of a score of brats, as his lineage grew.
“Footing and flaunting it, all in the night,
Each lock flings fire, each heel strikes light;
No lamps need they, whose breath is bright.”
Here he was interrupted by a sudden growl, which sounded almost under his feet, and some wild animal was seen to slink away. Juba showed no surprise; he had taken out a small metal idol, and whispering some words to it, had presented it to the animal. He clambered up the bank, gained the city gate, and made his way for his uncle’s dwelling, which was near the temple of Astarte.
CHAPTER V.
JUCUNDUS AT SUPPER.
The house of Jucundus was closed for the night when Juba reached it, or you would see, were you his companion, that it was one of the most showy shops in Sicca. It was the image-store of the place, and set out for sale, not articles of statuary alone, but of metal, of mosaic work, and of jewellery, as far as they were dedicated to the service of paganism. It was bright with the many colours adopted in the embellishment of images, and the many lights which silver and gold, brass and ivory, alabaster, gypsum, talc, and glass reflected. Shelves and cabinets were laden with wares; both the precious material, and the elaborated trinket. All tastes were suited, the popular and the refined, the fashion of the day and the love of the antique, the classical and the barbarian devotion. There you might see the rude symbols of invisible powers, which, originating in deficiency of art, had been perpetuated by reverence for the past: the mysterious cube of marble sacred among the Arabs, the pillar which was the emblem of Mercury or Bacchus, the broad-based cone of Heliogabalus, the pyramid of Paphos, and the tile or brick of Juno.
There, too, were the unmeaning blocks of stone with human heads, which were to be dressed out in rich robes, and to simulate the human form. There were other articles besides, as portable as these were unmanageable: little Junos, Mercuries, Dianas, and Fortunas, for the bosom or the girdle. Household gods were there, and the objects of personal devotion: Minerva or Vesta, with handsome niches or shrines in which they might reside. There, too, were the brass crowns, or nimbi which were intended to protect the heads of the gods from bats and birds. There you might buy, were you a heathen, rings with heads on them of Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Serapis, and above all Astarte. You would find there the rings and signets of the Basilidians; amulets too of wood or ivory: figures of demons, preternaturally ugly; little skeletons, and other superstitious devices. It would be hard, indeed, if you could not be pleased, whatever your religious denomination—unless indeed you were determined to reject all the appliances and objects of idolatry indiscriminately—and in that case you would rejoice that it was night when you arrived there, and, in particular, that darkness swallowed up other appliances and objects of pagan worship, which to darkness were due by a particular title, and by darkness were best shrouded, till the coming of that day when all things, good and evil, shall be made light.
The shop, as we have said, was closed, concealed from view by large lumbering shutters, and made secure by heavy bars of wood. So we must enter by the passage or vestibule on the right side, and that will conduct us into a modest atrium, with an impluvium on one side, and on the other the triclinium or supper-room,