Ch. 25 - The Temple and the Church

It was Ulpius. The Pagan was changed in bearing and countenance as well
as in apparel. He stood more firm and upright; a dull, tawny hue
overspread his face; his eyes, so sunken and lustreless in other days,
were now distended and bright with the glare of insanity. It seemed as
if his bodily powers had renewed their vigour, while his mental
faculties had declined towards their ruin.

No human eye had ever beheld by what foul and secret means he had
survived through the famine, on what unnatural sustenance he had
satisfied the cravings of inexorable hunger; but there, in his gloomy
shelter, the madman and the outcast had lived and moved, and suddenly
and strangely strengthened, after the people of the city had exhausted
all their united responses, lavished in vain all their united wealth,
and drooped and died by thousands around him!

His grasp still lay heavy on the father and daughter, and still both
confronted him--silent, as if death-struck by his gaze; motionless, as
if frozen at his touch. His presence was exerting over them a fatal
fascination. The power of action, suspended in Antonina as she entered
their ill-chosen refuge, was now arrested in Numerian also; but with him
no thought of the enemy in the street had any part, at this moment, in
the resistless influence which held him helpless before the enemy in the
temple.

It was a feeling of deeper awe and darker horror. For now, as he looked
upon the hideous features of Ulpius, as he saw the forbidden robe of
priesthood in which the Pagan was arrayed, he beheld not only the
traitor who had successfully plotted against the prosperity of his
household, but the madman as well,--the moral leper of the whole human
family--the living Body and the dead Soul--the disinherited of that
Divine Light of Life which it is the awful privilege of mortal man to
share with the angels of God.

He still clasped Antonina to his side, but it was unconsciously. To all
outward appearance he was helpless as his helpless child, when Ulpius
slowly removed his grasp from their shoulders, separated them, and
locking the hand of each in his cold, bony fingers, began to speak.

His voice was deep and solemn, but his accents, in their hard, unvarying
tone, seemed to express no human emotion. His eyes, far from
brightening as he spoke, relapsed into a dull, vacant insensibility. The
connection between the action of speech and the accompanying and
explaining action of look which is observable in all men, seemed lost in
him. It was fearful to behold the death-like face, and to listen at the
same moment to the living voice.

'Lo! the votaries come to the temple!' murmured the Pagan. 'The good
servants of the mighty worship gather at the voice of the priest!