Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 16. Chapter XVI (continued)

'It must have been so!' cried Glaucus, joyfully. 'I am happy.'

'Yet what, O unfortunate! avails to thee now the discovery? Thou art condemned and fated; and in thine innocence thou wilt perish.'

'But I shall know myself guiltless; and in my mysterious madness I had fearful, though momentary, doubts. Yet tell me, man of a strange creed, thinkest thou that for small errors, or for ancestral faults, we are for ever abandoned and accursed by the powers above, whatever name thou allottest to them?'

'God is just, and abandons not His creatures for their mere human frailty. God is merciful, and curses none but the wicked who repent not.'

'Yet it seemeth to me as if, in the divine anger, I had been smitten by a sudden madness, a supernatural and solemn frenzy, wrought not by human means.'

'There are demons on earth,' answered the Nazarene, fearfully, 'as well as there are God and His Son in heaven; and since thou acknowledgest not the last, the first may have had power over thee.'

Glaucus did not reply, and there was a silence for some minutes. At length the Athenian said, in a changed, and soft, and half-hesitating voice. 'Christian, believest thou, among the doctrines of thy creed, that the dead live again--that they who have loved here are united hereafter--that beyond the grave our good name shines pure from the mortal mists that unjustly dim it in the gross-eyed world--and that the streams which are divided by the desert and the rock meet in the solemn Hades, and flow once more into one?'

'Believe I that, O Athenian No, I do not believe--I know! and it is that beautiful and blessed assurance which supports me now. O Cyllene!' continued Olinthus, passionately, 'bride of my heart! torn from me in the first month of our nuptials,' shall I not see thee yet, and ere many days be past? Welcome, welcome death, that will bring me to heaven and thee!'