"To complain of the gods!" said David, turning and looking into the face of his friend.
"It does seem to me they set a bad example and are too childish for the work they have to do, but still—still I bow before them."
"I do not understand you," said David.
"They are given to spite, anger, vanity, lust, revenge, and idleness. Caesar is greater than they. He has learned self-control. And this new king of your faith, who, you tell me, is to conquer the world—he is no better."
"And why think you so?"
"He is to conquer the world. Good sir, it has been conquered—how many times! He shall make the mighty afraid—have they not often trembled with fear and perished by the sword? He shall fling arrows of just revenge, as if our old earth were not already soaked in the blood of the wicked. Ah, my David, I wonder not you long for a king of the sword and the arrow. Revenge is ever the dream of the oppressed. But I have dreamed of a greater king."
"Tell me who?"
"He would be like this love in me," said Vergilius. "If it were to go abroad—if it were only to find the hearts of the mighty—what, think you, would happen?"
"Ay, if it were to go from friend to friend and from neighbor to neighbor," said the young Jew, "it would indeed conquer the world."
"And there would be neither war nor injustice."