In the evening I sent the letter. I had not slept during the preceding night; I was completely exhausted, and I soon fell into a profound sleep, from which I awoke on the ensuing morning, refreshed and comparatively happy. I was in hourly expectation of receiving my new friend’s answer, and I felt at once anxious and pleased at the idea.
THE answer was brought with my coffee. I welcomed Tremerello, and, embracing him, exclaimed, “May God reward you for this goodness!” My suspicions had fled, because they were hateful to me; and because, making a point of never speaking imprudently upon politics, they appeared equally useless; and because, with all my admiration for the genius of Tacitus, I had never much faith in the justice of _tacitising_ as he does, and of looking upon every object on the dark side. Giuliano (as the writer signed himself), began his letter with the usual compliments, and informed me that he felt not the least anxiety in entering upon the correspondence. He rallied me upon my hesitation; occasionally assumed a tone of irony; and then more seriously declared that it had given him no little pain to observe in me “a certain scrupulous wavering, and a subtilty of conscience, which, however Christian-like, was little in accordance with true philosophy.” “I shall continue to esteem you,” he added, “though we should not agree upon that point; for I am bound, in all sincerity, to inform you, that I have no religion, that I abhor all creeds, and that I assume from a feeling of modesty the name of Julian, from the circumstance of that good emperor having been so decided an enemy of the Christians, though, in fact, I go much further than he ever did. The sceptred Julian believed in God, and had his own little superstitions. I have none; I believe not in a God, but refer all virtue to the love of truth, and the hatred of such as do not please me.” There was no reasoning in what he said. He inveighed bitterly against Christianity, made an idol of worldly honour and virtue; and in a half serious and jocular vein took on himself to pronounce the Emperor Julian’s eulogium for his apostasy, and his philanthropic efforts to eradicate all traces of the gospel from the face of the earth.