Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/396

382 me. I will even postpone my business in the market so as to talk with you and be of service to you. Let us go home together. Whose child is this?"

"It is my son."

"Really, I need not have asked. I recognize your features in him. I recognize also those blue eyes, and I should not have to ask who your wife is: she is the beautiful woman whom I saw with you some years ago."

"You have surmised correctly," replied Pamphilius. "Shortly after we met, she became my wife."

The friends went to Julius' home. Julius summoned his wife and gave the boy to her, and brought Pamphilius to his luxurious private room.

"Here you can say anything; no one will hear us," said Julius.

"I am not afraid of being heard," replied Pamphilius; "since my request is not that the Christians, who have been arrested, may not be sentenced and executed, but only that they may be permitted publicly to confess their faith."

And Pamphilius told how the Christians arrested by the authorities had sent word to the community from the dungeons where they were confined. The elder Cyril, knowing of Pamphilius' relations with Julius, commissioned him to go and plead for the Christians. The Christians did not ask for mercy. They considered it their mission to bear witness to the truth of Christ's teaching. They could bear witness to this in the course of a long life of eighty years, and they could bear witness to the same by enduring tortures. Either way was immaterial to them; and physical death, unavoidable as it was, for them was alike free from terror and full of joy, whether it came immediately or at the end of half a century: but they wished their lives to be useful to men, and therefore they had sent Pamphilius to labor in their behalf, that their trial and punishment might be public.

Julius was dumfounded at Pamphilius' request, but he promised to do all in his power.

"I have promised you my intercession," said Julius,