“I thought to have endowed thee and thy children richly,” he said, “as becomes our ancient house. But between the Vandals and the Huns, and our own tax-gatherers, the beggary of the citizens, and the robberies of the slaves, there will, I fear, be little left for thee and thine to inherit.”
“We inherit you,” Marius said; “thee and all thou art, our mother and all she is. And what inheritance can be worth that to us? What do rich men often leave to their heirs, but the inheritance not of their gold but of their avarice, the inheritance of a paralyzed hand unable to use or to give, but only to close on what it has; the curse of an insatiable hunger for more; the spell of a heap of gold which they have to toil to heap up higher, enchanted into beasts of burden or mere blind earthworms?”
“And yet,” said Fabricius, “they say the earthworms help to build and shape the world. But, however that may be, it is a good thing to see the spell reversed, as in Eleazar the Jew, transformed back from an earthworm into a man; the gold gone, the enchantment broken, and the man himself again. God keep us from all such enchantments.”
“It seems,” said Marius, “that in these days of sieges and sacks there is a good chance of the spells being broken. Perhaps if days of prosperity and peace ever come again, they may bring back baser idols and more unconquerable spells.”
When they returned to the Sabine hills they found all in full festival: the corridors of the villa festooned and garlanded with flowers and fruits, the labourers on the estate and the children of the mountain farm gathered for the joy of harvest; Eleazar, like one of the patriarchs of his race, with the “heritage and gift” of Rachel and her children clustered round him, Miriam with the last babe on her knee, Damaris guiding the first baby-steps of little Paul, Rachel in her stately Oriental beauty, Ethne fair and radiant as morning serving every one.
While the children pelted or garlanded each other with the lavish wealth of roses, and filled the place with the music of their laughter, Fabricius drew near Eleazar, and the old men sat down together.
“The world is sad enough,” Fabricius said, “for thy people and for mine; but the children are glad!”
And a soft voice near murmured—
“Their angels always behold the face of God.”
“The God of our fathers gave us homes before He gave us a Temple and a priesthood,” Eleazar said meditatively. “Perhaps He is leading us back to these earliest temples, where the father is the priest and the children are the singers.”