“Luxima,” said the Missionary, sternly, “there is no medium; either thou art a Pagan or a Christian; either I give thee up to thy idols, and behold thee no more, or thou wilt believe and follow me.”
“Then I will believe and follow thee,” she replied quickly, yet trembling as she spoke.
“O Luxima! would I could confide in that promise! for, through thee alone, I count upon the redemption of thy nation.”
“Father,” she returned, “a miracle like that, can only be performed by thee. Look as I have seen thee look—speak as I have heard thee speak;—give to others that new sense of truth, which thou hast given to me:—and then——”
“Luxima,” interrupted the Missionary, in great emotion; “you are misled, my daughter; misled by the ardour of your gratitude, by an exaggerated sense of powers which belong not to man, but to Heaven, whose agent he is. The power of conversion rests not exclusively with me; in you it might effect more miracles than I have ever manifested.”
Luxima waved her head incredulously. “Never,” said she, “shall I become the partner of thy pious labours! and should I even appear as thy proselyte, if I were not looked on with horror, I should at least be considered with indifference.”
“With indifference!” he repeated, throwing his eyes over the perfect loveliness of her form and countenance: “Luxima, is there on earth a being so divested of all human feeling, as to behold, to hear thee with indifference?”
“Art thou not such a one?” demanded Luxima, with a timid and trembling anxiety of look and voice.
“I, Luxima!—I—” he faltered, and changed colour; then, after a momentary pause, casting down his eyes, he resumed, “To be divested of all faculty of sense, were it possible, would be a state of organization so fatal and so imperfect, as to leave the being thus formed equally without the wish and without the power of becoming virtuous; for virtue, the purest, the most severe, and, O Luxima! by much the most difficult to attain, is that virtue which consists in the conquest over the impulses of a frail and perverse nature, by religion and by reason. Thinkest thou then, dearest daughter, that it belongs to my nature, being man, to live divested of all human feeling, of all human passion; to behold, with perfect insensibility, forms created to delight; to listen with perfect indifference to sounds breathed to enchant; and that when, upon thy cheek, the crimson hues of modesty and pleasure mantle and mix their soft suffusion; when in thy eyes, rays of languid light—— Luxima! Luxima!” he continued vehemently, and in confusion, “I repeat to thee, that there can be no virtue where there is no temptation; no merit, but in resistance; but in an entire subjection, through religion, of those feelings which, by a sweet but dread compulsion, drag us towards perdition. And, oh! if trial be indeed the test of virtue, I at least may hope to find some favour in the sight of Heaven, for my trials have not been few.” As he spoke, his whole frame trembled with uncontrollable emotion, and the paleness of death over-spread his face.
Luxima, moved by an agitation in one, who had hitherto appeared to her eyes superior to human feeling, and to human weakness, was touched by an emotion so accordant to the tender softness and ardent sensibility of her own character; and timidly taking his hand, and looking with an half-repressed fondness in his eyes, she said, “Art thou then also human? Art thou not all-perfect by thy nature? I thought thee one absorbed in views of heaven, resembling the pure spirit of some holy Saneasse, when, having passed the troubled ocean of mortal existence, it reaches the Paradise of Kylausum, and reposes in eternal beatitude, at the foot of Him who is clothed with the fourteen worlds[5].”