The figure was dragged into the muddy market-place. There a monk was declaiming a passage from the celebrated edict of Constantine II, the brother of Constantius--
"'Let there be an end of superstition, and let sacrifices be abolished' (_Cesset superstitio sacrificiorum, aboleatur insania!_).
"Fear nothing; break, sack, plunder everything in that temple of demons!" Another was reading by torchlight from a parchment scroll the following words from the book _De errore profanarum religionum_, by Firmicus Maternus--
"Divine Emperors! Come! succour the unfortunate heathen. Let us snatch them by force from hell rather than leave them to perish. Seize the temple-ornaments and let their riches feed your treasury. Let him who sacrifices to idols be torn from the earth, root and branch (_Sacrificans diis eradicabitur_). Thou shalt deliver him to death; thou shalt stone him with stones, were that offender thy son, thy brother, or the wife that sleeps upon thy heart!"
And over the crowd swept the exultant shout--
An Arian monk of gigantic stature, his lank black hair plastered to his sweaty face, heaved an axe above the goddess, seeking where to strike.
The great silver body rolled over mutilated; the blows rang pitiless, leaving gaps bitten in the metal.
An old pagan stood by and veiled his face from the sacrilege. He was secretly weeping at the thought that now the end of the world, the end of everything, was come, for the earth would no longer bring forth a blade of corn.
A hermit from the deserts of Mesopotamia, clothed in sheepskin, wearing coarse sandals and an empty gourd slung from his shoulder, stood over the statue, sheep-crook in hand--
"This forty years I have never washed, that I might not see my nakedness, nor fall into temptation. And yet coming into cities, straight one perceives these accursed gods without a rag upon them. How long must we endure these devilish temptations! At the hearth, in the street, on the roof, in the baths, these idols everywhere above one's head?... Faugh! Faugh! Faugh! How can I spit enough disgust on things like these?"
The old man spurned the prostrate woman's form with his sandal in energetic horror; stamped on the bare breast as if it were alive, and kept scoring it with the sharp nails of his sandals, stuttering with rage--