"I am quite ashamed of this snivelling, Father. I shouldn't have attempted to read this. It always upsets me."
"Never mind, my poor boy," I said. "It is good for men sometimes to weep." I thought in my own mind, My little child will be in safe hands.
"Now, put it aside," I said gently, "and let us talk."
"One sentence more, Father, just to get over this weakness."
"'Ah, Carlson (Carlson stands for myself), upon what a beautiful world do you throw your immeasurable gravestone, that no time can lift. Your difficulties, which are founded on the necessary uncertainties of men, if solved, would only have the effect to destroy our faith; which is the solution of a thousand other difficulties; without which our existence is without aim, our pains without solution, and the Godlike Trinity within our breasts three avenging angels. From the formless earthworm up to the beaming human countenance; from the chaos of the first day up to the present age of the world; from the first faint motion of the heart to its full, bold throbbing in the breast of manhood, the invisible hand of God leads, protects, and nourishes the inward being; the nursling of the outward educates and polishes and makes it beautiful—and wherefore? That when it stands as a demigod in the midst of the ruins of the temple of the body, the blow of death may prostrate it forever, that nothing shall remain from the corpse-veiled, the mourning and mantled immeasurable universe, but the eternally sowing, never harvesting, solitary spirit of the world! One eternity looking despairingly at the other; and in the whole spiritual universe no end, no aim! And all these contradictions and riddles, whereby not merely the harmony, but the very strings of creation are tangled, must we take, merely on account of the difficulties, that, indeed, our annihilation cannot solve? Beloved Carlson! into this harmony of the spheres, that is not over, but ever around us, will you bring your shrieking discord? See how gently and touchingly the day departs, and how holily the night comes! Oh, can you not believe that even thus our spirits shall arise from the dust, as you once saw the full moon arise over the crater of Vesuvius?'
"Gione took his hand and said:—
"'Amongst us all, will you alone be tormented with this despairing faith?'
"Two hot drops fell from his blinded eyes; he looked at the mountains, and said:—
"'I can bear no annihilation but my own. My heart is of your opinion; my head will slowly follow.'"
"And that, sir," said Ormsby, closing the book and putting it into his side pocket, "is just where I am. My heart is with you; if only my head would follow. Put Bittra for Gione, and you will understand my emotion."