How this great column affected him with the secrets of the past! It was only by that made so much mightier than the bars of his cot in Carlington Road, which had once seemed to hold passions, intrigues, rumors, ambitions, and revenges. All that he had once dimly perceived as shadowed forth by them was here set forth absolutely. What was this column called? He looked round vaguely for an indication of the name. What did the name matter? There would be time to find a name in the morning. There would be time in the morning to begin again the conduct of his life. The old world held the secret; and he would accept this solitary and perdurable column as the symbol of that secret.
“All that I have done and experienced so far,” Michael thought, “would not scratch this stone. I have been concerned for the happiness of other people without gratitude for the privilege of service. I have been given knowledge and I fancied I was given disillusion. If now I offer myself to God very humbly, I give myself to the service of man. Man for man standing in his own might is a blind and arrogant leader. The reason why the modern world is so critical of the fruits of Christianity after nineteen hundred years is because they have expected it from the beginning to be a social panacea. God has only offered to the individual the chance to perfect himself, but the individual is much more anxious about his neighbor. How in a moment our little herds are destroyed, whether in ships on the sea or in towns by earthquake, or by the great illusions of political experiment! Soon will come a great war, and everybody will discover it has come either because people are Christians or because they are not Christians. Nobody will think it is because each man wants to interfere with the conduct of his neighbor. That woman in Leppard Street who died in the peace of God, how much more was she a Christian than me, who, without perceiving the beam in my own eye, have trotted round operating on the motes of other people. And once I had to make an effort to kiss her in fellowship. Rome! Rome! How parochial you make my youth!”
The last exclamation was uttered aloud.
“Meditating upon the decline and fall of the Roman Empire?” said a voice.
A man in a black cloak was speaking.
“No; I was thinking of the pettiness of youthful tragedies,” said Michael.
“There is only one tragedy for youth.”
“And that is?”
“Age,” said the stranger.
“And what is the tragedy of age?”