"Let your will be done, Cæsar. We are the children, you are the father; but there is no power above the power of God."
"Oh, you hypocrites, I know your obedience and your humility! Your humility is the serpent's fang! Why not struggle against me at least like men?"
Julian turned round to depart, when a little old man and woman issued from the crowd and prostrated themselves at his feet. They were poorly but cleanly dressed, and bore a surprising resemblance to each other, reminding him of Philemon and Baucis.
"Protect us, just Cæsar," whispered the old man. "We have a little house near Antioch at the foot of the Stavrinus. We've lived there twenty years, and now the town-senators, the decurions, are come...." The old man clasped his hands despairingly, and the old woman, imitating him, did the same.
"The decurions come and say, 'This house does not belong to you!'--'What--the Lord be with you--we've been here twenty years!'--'Yes; but you had no right. The land belongs to the temple of the god Æsculapius, and your house is built with the temple-stones. It must return to Æsculapius.' What does this mean?... Have mercy, all-powerful Augustus!"
The two old people, with their clear and childlike faces, were kneeling before him, and weeping, kissed his feet.
Julian perceived an amber cross on the woman's neck.
"Are you Christians?" he asked, his brow growing sombre.
"I should like to grant your prayer ... but how is it to be done? The land belongs to the god.... Nevertheless, your property shall be paid for."
"No, no," cried out the old people, "we're rooted there by all our habits. We don't ask for money. But there everything is ours; we know every blade of grass...."
"There everything is ours," repeated the old woman like an echo. "The vine, the chickens, the cow, the olives, the pigs--everything is ours. And there's the step too, on which in the evening we have warmed our old bones in the sun, side by side, for these twenty years."
The Emperor, without listening, turned toward the startled crowd--
"Latterly the Galileans have overwhelmed me with demands for the return of lands belonging to the churches, and the Valentinians accuse the Arians of having robbed them of their properties. To cut short dispute I have given half of those lands to the Gallic warriors and the other half to the Imperial Treasury; and I am decided to act similarly in future. By what right, you ask? But is it not more easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? You glorify poverty, Galileans? Why murmur against me? In taking property which you yourselves have taken from your brother-heretics, or from Olympian temples, I am only restoring you to wholesome poverty and the narrow way into the heavenly kingdom."