A city of marble was Cesarea--wharves of marble, houses of marble, temples of marble. This being the ordinary architecture of the place, you may well imagine something of the splendor of Governor Felix’s residence.
In a room of that palace--floor tesselated, windows curtained, ceiling fretted, the whole scene affluent with Tyrian purple, and statues, and pictures, and carvings--sat a very dark-complexioned man by the name of Felix, and beside him sat a woman of extraordinary beauty, whom he had stolen by breaking up another’s domestic circle.
She was only eighteen years of age, a princess by birth, and unwittingly waiting for her doom--that of being buried alive in the ashes and scoria of Mount Vesuvius, which in sudden eruption, one day, put an end to her abominations.
Well, one afternoon Drusilla, seated in the palace, weary with the magnificent stupidities of the place, says to Felix:
“You have a very distinguished prisoner, I believe, by the name of Paul. Do you know he is one of my countrymen? I should very much like to see him, and I should very much like to hear him speak, for I have heard so much about his eloquence.
“Besides that, the other day, when he was being tried in another room of this palace, and the windows were open, I heard the applause that greeted the speech of Lawyer Tertullus, as he denounced Paul. Now, I very much wish I could hear Paul speak. Won’t you let me hear him speak?”
“Yes,” said Felix, “I will. I will order him up now from the guard room.”
The clank of a chain is heard coming up the marble stairway, there is a shuffle at the door, and in comes Paul--a little old man, prematurely old through exposure--only sixty years of age, but looking as though he were eighty.
Paul bows very courteously before Governor Felix and the beautiful woman by his side. They say:
“Paul, we have heard a great deal about your speaking. Give us, now, a specimen of your eloquence.”
Oh, if there ever was a chance for a man to show off, Paul had a chance there!
He might have harangued them about Grecian art, about the wonderful water-works which he had seen at Corinth, about the Acropolis by moonlight, about prison life in Philippi, about “What I Saw in Thessalonica,” or about the old mythologies.
