Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 16. Chapter XVI (continued)

There was something in this sudden burst of human affection which struck a kindred chord in the soul of the Greek. He felt, for the first time, a sympathy greater than mere affliction between him and his companion. He crept nearer towards Olinthus; for the Italians, fierce in some points, were not unnecessarily cruel in others; they spared the separate cell and the superfluous chain, and allowed the victims of the arena the sad comfort of such freedom and such companionship as the prison would afford.

'Yes,' continued the Christian, with holy fervor, 'the immortality of the soul--the resurrection--the reunion of the dead--is the great principle of our creed--the great truth a God suffered death itself to attest and proclaim. No fabled Elysium--no poetic Orcus--but a pure and radiant heritage of heaven itself, is the portion of the good.'

'Tell me, then, thy doctrines, and expound to me thy hopes,' said Glaucus, earnestly.

Olinthus was not slow to obey that prayer; and there--as oftentimes in the early ages of the Christian creed--it was in the darkness of the dungeon, and over the approach of death, that the dawning Gospel shed its soft and consecrating rays.