There was one man in Rome who might have succeeded in rousing their
languid energies to apostasy; but where and how employed was he?
Now, when the opportunity for which he had laboured resolutely, though
in vain, through a long existence of suffering, degradation, and crime,
had gratuitously presented itself more tempting and more favourable than
even he in his wildest visions of success had ever dared to hope--where
was Ulpius? Hidden from men's eyes, like a foul reptile, in his
lurking-place in the deserted temple--now raving round his idols in the
fury of madness, now prostrate before them in idiot adoration--weaker
for the interests of his worship, at the crisis of its fate, than the
weakest child crawling famished through the streets--the victim of his
own evil machinations at the very moment when they might have led him to
triumph--the object of that worst earthly retribution, by which the
wicked are at once thwarted, doomed, and punished, here as hereafter,
through the agency of their own sins.
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