“I say to you, love your enemies; do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise on the good and the bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.”[68]
We may imagine the perplexity of an Indian peasant who has picked up in a torrent’s bed a white pellucid pebble, rough and dull outside, but where chipped emitting sparks of light; unable to decide whether he have become possessed of a splendid diamond, or of a worthless stone, a thing to be placed on a royal crown, or trodden under a beggar’s feet. Shall he put an end to his embarrassment by at once flinging it away, or shall he take it to a lapidary, ask its value, and perhaps be laughed at to his face? Such were the alternating feelings of Fabiola on her way home. “Whose can these sentences be? No Greek or Roman philosopher’s. They are either very false or very true, either sublime morality or base degradation. Does any one practise this doctrine, or is it a splendid paradox? I will trouble myself no more on the subject. Or rather I will ask Syra about it; it sounds very like one of her beautiful, but impracticable, theories. No; it is better not. She overpowers me by her sublime views, so impossible for me, though they seem easy to her. My mind wants rest. The shortest way is to get rid of the cause of my perplexity, and forget such harassing words. So here it goes to the winds, or to puzzle some one else, who may find it on the road-side. Ho! Phormio, stop the chariot, and pick up that piece of parchment which I have dropped.”
The outrider obeyed, though he had thought the sheet deliberately flung out. It was replaced in Fabiola’s bosom: it was like a seal upon her heart, for that heart was calm and silent till she reached home.
Christ in the midst of His Apostles, from a painting in the Catacombs.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TEMPTATION.
At length all was ready; the last farewell was spoken, the last good wish expressed; and Torquatus, mounted on his mule, with his guide at its bridle, proceeded slowly along the straight avenue which led to the gate. Long after every one else had re-entered the house, Chromatius was standing at the door, looking wistfully, with a moist eye, after him. It was just such a look as the Prodigal’s father kept fixed on his departing son.
As the villa was not on the high road, this modest quadrupedal conveyance had been hired to take him across the country to Fundi (now Fondi), as the nearest point where he could reach it. There he was to find what means he could for prosecuting his journey. Fabiola’s purse, however, had set him very much at ease on that score.