“I am dazzled good father, indeed; but oh, I can not remember all these things! I’m like a child in my love for stories, and I can re-tell such to my mother, as I can not these deeper things you utter.”
“I forgot, child. But we priests preach by habit everywhere!”
“Tell me more of Mary and Joseph and Jesus. Were the Egyptians kind to them?”
“As kind as the followers of the Pharaohs to the descendants of Joseph! No more. There was no more room in Egypt for Jesus at His coming than there was among His own people. But the God of Moses, ever the living God, though opposed, may never be thwarted nor killed!”
“Oh, now do not tell me these things, too deep for me; just tell me the simple story of the sojourn in that strange land.”
“So be it, girl. If I digress, recall me. They say that the Holy Family found in that land a few to accept them kindly. One such was a robber, who, happening upon them, was at first about to do them violence; but he was restrained by the demeanor of the saintly mother, and his heart was all changed toward compassion of the little company. Instead of robbing, he gave them a temporary home in his mountain retreat. It is said that he was the one to whom the child of Mary, long after, while dying on the cross, companion in death with that same robber, gave repentance, with the promise of Paradise.”
“How good and natural!”
“Then there’s another legend. It is that Mary and her loved ones were met in that strange country by one of the world’s pilgrims of pilgrims—a gipsy, who was a sorceress. There’s a charming little dialogue, part in prose and part in verse, all about that meeting, which I have here. I’ll read it. The sorceress begins chanting: