“The ant remained for a moment motionless, as if paralyzed with astonishment, then ran away as fast as he could run, leaving the stick where I had placed it; and I saw him no more.
“Can you not understand that I was grieved and disappointed? The labor, the loss, and the fear of that little insect were as great to him as ours are to us. I was so sorry for him that if I had had the power to change my shape, as fairy stories tell, and take it safely back again, I would have run after him as one of his own sort, yet with a tale marvelous to him, would have reassured him of my good-will, promised him a thousand timbers for his dwelling, and a store of food and downy lining for his nest, when I should have resumed my proper form and power.
“Oh! would the ants have caught and crucified me in the shape I took from love, and only to serve them!
“Children, it is at this very point that the world will fight with you its most demoniac battle.
“There have been, and there are, men and women whose lives shine like those pure flames in the long, dim corridors of our cemetery, making a circle of holy light about them, some tranquil and hidden, some in constant combat. But for the majority of the race, all the primal Christian truths have become as worn pebbles on the shores of time. It is not long since there was yet enough of public sanity and faith to compel a decent reverence; but now they utter their blasphemies, not only with toleration, but with applause. They have an infernal foolishness that sounds like wisdom to the ignorant unthinking mind. This spirit puts on the doctor’s cap and robe and reasons with you. It twists up a woman’s long hair, and breathes out brazen profanities and shameless mockeries.
“Or some being, half saint and half siren, will praise the beauties of our faith as you would praise a picture or a song, and smooth away its more austere commands, so covering all with glozes and with garlands that there would seem to be no other duty but to praise and poetize; and you might believe yourself floating painlessly toward the gates of Paradise when you are close to the gates of hell.
“I will tell you some of the arguments of these people.
“They say that Christ taught nothing new, that his moral lessons had been taught before, and even in heathen lands.
“He did not pretend to teach a new morality. He fulfilled the law already given by making Charity the consort of Justice.
“Is it to be believed that the Father of mankind left his children, all but a favored few, in total darkness during the ages that preceded Christ? ‘Teste David cum Sibylla,’ sings the ‘Dies Iræ.’