It was a brilliant summer evening when he came upon the hermit’s cell again. The old man was sitting making his meditation before the door. Occupied with grief and care, as he had been during his absence, the bereaved son had forgotten all about the fig-trees; but, on looking around, he saw that something was changed, and soon had a clear demonstration of what the hermit had told him. One noble tree was laden with the ripe green and purple fruit; the soft, downy skins seeming ready to burst with the rich and luscious burden within, while the broad leaves spread out their hands and shaded them from the too great heat, and fanned them gently when the day was sultry.
The second tree was covered with luxuriant leaves as before, but not a single ripe fig was on it—there were a few young green beginnings, but too small and sickly to have a chance of ripening that season.
The third tree was in lamentable plight; its attenuated climbers clung by habit to the rock, but the sap and life and energy were gone, and it seemed only fit to be cut down.
“Well, father, I see you were right as to the figs,” said the young man, candidly. “There is only one of them that is a good tree after all—but it is wonderful how well favoured they looked last year!”
“Learn, my son, the counsel of the aged and the words of the wise,” replied the hermit; “for as it is with trees, even so it is with men. There are many who seem to you alike honest and worthy to be esteemed, while their inner life is as different as was the fruit-bearing principle of these trees.”
“But, father, will not the good be known by their good deeds and maxims, and the bad by their evil lives and counsels?”
“Even so, my son, but the difficulty is to discern which are good and which evil. This is not so easy as you seem to think; for instance, you see two men both apparently pious and charitable, while the one who appears most so, very possibly only gives his money to the poor that he may stand well with the world, that the poor may look up to him, and say, ‘There goes one who is like a king among us;’ the other, whose liberality you noticed less, drops his hardly-spared coin noiselessly into the capillo[4], and sallies forth perhaps in dead of night to carry his alms to those who would blush to receive such assistance by day. One man appears to you calm and placid because he is of a phlegmatic nature, and has no effort to make in order to appear equable and ever patient; while another, whom you judge to be hasty and passionate, may be all the while struggling to conquer a hot and violent temperament which requires the courage of a hero to keep it within bounds.”
“I see your moral, father,” replied the young man; “and I have no doubt I often judge of men as I judged your fig-trees.”
“That one,” continued the hermit, pointing to the one whose fruit was even then affording a delicious meal to the birds, for the hermit called nothing his own, and the birds of heaven were welcome to share his stock, “that one was always a good and fruitful tree, and its praise is among its people, for you will find many a village about here which boasts a graft from the hermit’s fig. The second one, which presented so fair a show, has something amiss which it hitherto has passed my skill to find out—though I have one remedy more to try, which may recover it. And the third had a worm at the root which destroyed its vital power.”
The young man passed on his way next day, and, as he journeyed, the figs of which the good hermit had given him ample provision put him in mind of his parable, and set him musing on its application. These musings weaving themselves in with his anticipations of the condition of his affairs at home, he began to consider whether the three clerks, to whom he had entrusted his property, were in any way like the fig-trees, and whether Providence had not sent him this lesson to be his guide in his future conduct.