“God grant that your life may be spared, until all doubt and bitterness is removed from your heart, and that when you go down into the grave it may be as bright with the blessed faith of a Christian as that which now contains my sister Janet. Do not allow the gloom of earthly disappointment to cloud your trust, but bear always in mind those cheering words of Saadi,—

‘Says God, “Who comes towards me an inch through doubtings dim,
In blazing light I do approach a yard towards him.”’”

“If I am to be kept in this world until all the bitterness is scourged out of me, I might as well resign myself to a career 314 as endless as that of Ahasuerus. I tell you, sir, I have been forced to drink out of quassia-cups until my whole being has imbibed the bitter; and I am like that tree to which Firdousi compared Mahmoud, ‘Whose nature is so bitter, that were you to plant it in the garden of Eden, and water it with the ambrosial stream of Paradise, and were you to enrich its roots with virgin honey, it would, after all, discover its innate disposition, and only yield the acrid fruit it had ever borne.’”

“What right have you to expect that existence should prove one continued gala-season? When Christ went down meekly into Gethsemane, that such as you and I might win a place in the Eternal City, how dare you demand exemption from grief and pain, that Jesus, your God, did not spare Himself? Are you purer than Christ, and wiser than the Almighty, that you impiously deride and question their code for the government of the Universe, in which individual lives seem trivial as the sands of the desert, or the leaves of the forest? Oh! it is pitiable, indeed, to see some worm writhing in the dust, and blasphemously dictating laws to Him who swung suns and asterisms in space, and breathed into its own feeble fragment of clay the spark that enabled it to insult its God. Put away such unwomanly scoffing,—such irreverent puerilities; sweep your soul clean of all such wretched rubbish, and when you feel tempted to repine at your lot, recollect the noble admonition of Dschelaleddin, ‘If this world were our abiding-place, we might complain that it makes our bed so hard; but it is only our night-quarters on a journey, and who can expect home comforts?’”

“I can not feel resigned to my lot. It is too hard,—too unjust.”

“Mrs. Gerome, are you more just and prescient than Jehovah?”

She passed her thin hand across her face, and was silent, for his voice and manner awed her. After a little while, she sat erect in her chair, and tried to rise.

“Doctor, if you could look down into the gray ruins of my heart, you would not reprove me so harshly. My whole being seems in some cold eclipse, and my soul is like the Sistine 315 Chapel in Passion-week, where all is shrouded in shadow, and no sounds are heard but Misereres and Tenebræ.”

“Promise me that in future you will try to keep it like that Christian temple, pure and inviolate from all imprecations and rebellious words. If gloom there must be, see to it that resignation seals your lips. What are you trying to do? You are not strong enough to walk alone.”

“I want to go into the parlor,—I want my piano. Yesterday I attempted to cross the room, and only Katie’s presence saved me from a severe fall.”