Christ blessing a Child, from a picture in the Cemetery of the Latin Way.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CRITICAL DAY: ITS FIRST PART.
And so with Fabiola, has not all been working up towards a crisis? Emperor and slave, father and guest, the good and the wicked, Christian and heathen, rich and poor; then life and death, joy and sorrow, learning and simplicity, silence and conversation, have they not all come as agents, pulling at her mind in opposite ways, yet all directing her noble and generous, though haughty and impetuous, soul one way, as the breeze and the rudder struggle against one another, only to determine the ship’s single path? By what shall the resolution of these contending forces be determined? That rests not with man; wisdom, not philosophy, can decide. We have been engaged with events commemorated on the 20th of January; let the reader look, and see what comes on the following day in his calendar, and he will agree it must be an important day in our little narrative.
From the audience Fabiola retired to the apartments of Irene, where she found nothing but desolation and sorrow. She sympathized fully with the grief around her, but she saw and felt that there was a difference between her affliction and theirs. There was a buoyancy about them; there was almost an exultation breaking out through their distress; their clouds were sun-lit and brightened at times. Hers was a dead and sullen, a dull and heavy gloom, as if she had sustained a hopeless loss. Her search after Christianity, as associated with anything amiable or intelligent, seemed at an end. Her desired teacher, or informant, was gone. When the crowd had moved away from the palace, she took affectionate leave of the widow and her daughters; but, some way or other, she could not like the heathen one as she loved her sister.
She sat alone at home, and tried to read; she took up volume after volume of favorite works on Death, on Fortitude, on Friendship, on Virtue; and every one of them seemed insipid, unsound, and insincere. She plunged into a deeper and a deeper melancholy, which lasted till towards evening, when she was disturbed by a letter being put into her hand. The Greek slave, Graja, who brought it in, retired to the other end of the room, alarmed and perplexed by what she witnessed. For her mistress had scarcely glanced over the note, than she leaped up wildly from her seat, threw her hair into disorder with her hands, which she pressed, as in agony, on her temples, stood thus for a moment, looking up with an unnatural stare in her eyes, and then sank heavily down again on her chair with a deep groan. Thus she remained for some minutes, holding the letter in both her hands, with her arms relaxed, apparently unconscious.
“Who brought this letter?” she then asked, quite collected.
“A soldier, madam,” answered the maid.