“Call me Lucifer; another epithet!”
“There are no black gulfs into which thou canst flee from the memories which conscience points to when duty is contemned.”
“Is it the priest’s purpose to harass my soul?”
“No; but rather to lead it back to its peace that thou didst leave long ago. There is only one way of return, that a very Via Dolorosa. Mary along it walked with her son, her God and Savior, to the cross and the resurrection! By the cross God gives, we go to our glory.”
“I’ve tried my best to be a loyal, Christian knight. Give me, at least, that award.”
“I can not praise justly; I dare not flatter; I must in all faithfulness say thou hast yet to learn the alphabet of loyalty, as interpreted by that glorious pair, Mary and the Christ—the triumphant Eve, the triumphant Adam. Thou hast been following afar off, nearer the flickering of Judas’ illusive lantern than to Him who pleaded amid His griefs, all self-forgetting, with His Roman guards to let His little band of followers depart unharmed. The woman whom thou exaltest as the queen of hearts is, after all, not thy pattern. Judas and Mary are in lasting contrast; he all treason, she fidelity’s choicest fruit. It is well to see to it to which one is the nearer. Oh, Gethsemane, garden of touching contrasts! There love was most grossly interpreted by the shrines of Baaltis; there most grandly interpreted by love’s sublimest offering that night the Saviour agonized. There twice the enemy of man did his almost worst; once by the rites of the groves, once in the wracking temptations of the Man of Sorrows. The arch-fiend was baffled, and then the ingenuity of hell was taxed to one last, most terrific and dastardly assault. What thinkest thou was the climax? The last effort to blot out the hope of man was made through betrayal by a kiss; the finest sign of affection befouled by treason! When the wedded betray each other, alas, for the world!”
Sir Charleroy surrendered now, exclaiming:
“Oh, Father Adolphus; again I see there is a mist on my knightly cross! I’m unworthy to wear the sign. It has been an emblem of death; I see it now an emblem of life and love.”
“Will the knight look on the dead faces of his sons?”