Damaris expressed a wish to see the Irish treasures again, and whilst the others went into an inner chamber to look at them, Marius remained alone with Ethne in the portico, the soft perfume of lilies and roses coming to them from the gardens. Whilst he was hesitating what to say, she began—
“Tell me,” she said, “about Lupus, the good old Bishop of Troyes. Is he back in his own city again?”
Marius hesitated a moment, and then he replied—
“Thy judgment of Attila was just: he did not fail. Bishop Lupus came back unharmed. But his own people failed, incredible as it seems. His own flock, the city he had saved at risk of his life, when he returned from his perilous sojourn among the Huns, received him coldly, indeed would scarcely receive him at all. Mean slanderers had been there poisoning the minds of the citizens during his absence. They said he must have treacherously flattered and fawned upon the barbarians, and be in league with Attila; and they gave him but a cold welcome.”
“What did the Bishop do?” she asked indignantly.
“He quietly retired to a mountain not far off,” Marius replied, “and there to this day he is living in exile, poor and solitary and neglected.”
“Yet surely praying and hoping still for his misguided flock!” Ethne said; and with her victorious smile she added, “He is sure to win in the end. But why, oh, why is it we, we Christ’s Christians, seem so often most to fail Him and His?”
“All do not fail,” he said, seeking to comfort her. “My friend Sidonius Apollinaris writes to Bishop Lupus as ‘father of fathers, as old well-nigh as Moses, but also as great.’”
“But ah,” she said mournfully, “what a world this might be if only all the Church were one, and true!”
“You are weary,” he said sadly, “of this decrepit, decaying old world of ours. You are longing to go home to your own young world of hope—to your Patrick, and your own people, who understand and honour their saint so well!”