And the hapless victims in the arena!  Might not the promised bliss await them too?  Oh, how gladly would she have bestowed on them the fairest reward!  And if this should indeed be their lot after death, where was the revenge of their bloodthirsty murderer?

Oh, that her mother were still alive—­that she, Melissa, had been permitted to share this great consolation with her!  In a brief aspiration she uplifted her soul to the beloved dead, and as she further unrolled the manuscript her eye fell on the words:  “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you.”  No, she could not do this; this seemed to her to be too much to ask; even Andreas had not attained to this; and yet it must be good and lovely, if only because it helped to cement the peace for which she longed more fervently than for any other blessing.

Next she read:  “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged,” and she shuddered as she thought of the future fate of the man who had by treachery brought murder and death on an industrious and flourishing city as a punishment for the light words and jests of a few mockers, and the disappointment he had suffered from an insignificant girl.

But then, again, she breathed more freely, for she read:  “Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened.”  Could there be a more precious promise?  And to her, she felt, it was already fulfilled; for her trembling finger had, as it were, but just touched the door, and, to! it stood open before her, and that which she had so long sought she had now found.  But it was quite natural that it should be so, for the God of the Christians loved those who turned to him as His own children.  Here it was written why those who asked should receive, and those who sought should find:  “For what man is there of you whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?”

If it were only as a peacemaker, she was already a child of Him who had asked this, and she might look for none but good gifts from Him.  And what was commanded immediately after seemed to her so simple, so easy to obey, and yet so wise.  She thought it over a little, and saw that in this precept—­of which it was said that it was all the law and the prophets—­there was in fact a rule which, if it were obeyed, must keep all mankind guiltless, and make every one happy.  These words, she thought, should be written over every door and on every heart, as the winged sun was placed over every Egyptian temple gate, so that no one should ever forget them for an instant.  She herself would bear them in mind, and she repeated them to herself in an undertone, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them.”  Her eye wandered to the window and out to the stadium.  How happy might the world be under a sovereign who should obey that law!  And Caracalla?—­No, she would not allow the contentment which filled her to be troubled by a thought of him.