The Blood of the Martyrs Read Online Free PDF Page A

you?’
    â€˜I didn’t have to—this afternoon, Flavia—you knew about this, then!’
    â€˜Of course I did. It was no business of yours. It’s no business of yours now! You’ve got a lot to learn, Beric.’
    â€˜I see. And you ’ve been learning on me, just because I happened to be there.’
    â€˜Well, if you hadn’t happened to be there, it wouldn’t have been you I learnt on!’
    She giggled, and suddenly, instead of being hurt and ashamed, he was wildly angry. He said, ‘I think I am going to tell your father—everything.’
    Flavia answered lightly, but with anger answering his: ‘But, you see, he wouldn’t believe you, because naturally I wouldn’t dream of admitting it, and he’d have the skin taken off your back for saying such a thing!’
    Could she really have said that? Flavia? He tried to struggle back. ‘I am the son of a king, Flavia!’
    â€˜Very possibly,’ she said, and tucked in a curl that was beginning to slip, ‘but no one remembers that any longer except you. Actually you wouldn’t be here at all if the Divine Claudius hadn’t happened to be rather sloppy. All the Emperors get like that. Gaius wanted to make his horse aConsul.’ He gasped at that and she went on, still lightly. ‘And the thing about horses is that there’s always a groom to keep them in their places—with a whip. Natives have to be kept in order in much the same way. You heard what Gallio said. And felt it!’
    â€˜Flavia!’ he said. ‘Flavia! You don’t mean it!’
    â€˜Oh yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I waited here to tell you, because I’ve made up my mind to have nothing more to do with creatures like you. No, don’t try to touch me. I mean what I say.’
    He half shouted, ‘I won’t stand this! I won’t have you treating me like dirt!’
    â€˜You are dirt,’ said Flavia, ‘and you’d better get used to it,’ and she turned her back and left him.
    The three old men in the dining-room were still talking. For a time they discussed these Christians, a little nervously. It was odd to find oneself at a party, even after absorbing the drink and sobering down, talking about such an unpleasant subject; but they had been upset by Tigellinus. They were wondering now about the whole structure of the State which these Christians, alone among the foreigners and atheists, definitely wished to destroy or at any rate did not support. ‘They believe in nothing, I understand,’ said Balbus; ‘they have no temples, no priests, and they say they are going to destroy the world!’
    â€˜They always talk in terms of destruction: flames and judgment and violence,’ Crispus said. ‘They seem unable to understand what the State is.’
    â€˜That’s because they are State-less, slaves and worse. When the police hear of a Christian meeting, depend on it, it’s in one of the tenements in the Aventine. They swarm in there; it ought to be cleared.’
    â€˜Nothing but a fire’s going to clear that. You know, Balbus, these tenements are a disgrace, and I don’t care who the landlords are! Full of thieves and poisoners and Christians and cheap astrologers and the gods alone know what else!’
    â€˜The common Jews aren’t so bad; they’re fine fighters and they make good citizens so long as they don’t quarrel with their neighbours; and at any rate they don’tobtrude their superstitions; I’ve met some very decent Jews.’
    â€˜Of course. You must have had plenty to do with Jews in your time, Gallio.’
    â€˜Eh?’ said Gallio, starting awake. ‘Jews. Yes, yes. Much more honest than the Greeks. Often won’t take a bribe. But excitable. Dear me, yes.’
    â€˜You never came across any Christians, did you?’
    â€˜Oh, sometimes. The strict Jews can’t stand them. Seems