Æmilius did not, could not answer.
“Then,” said Castor, “is it not antecedently probable that the God who made man, and put into his nature this desire after truth, virtue, holiness, justice, aye, and this hunger after immortality, should reveal to man that without which man is unable to direct his life aright, attain to the perfection of his being, and look beyond death with confidence?”
“If there were but such a revelation!”
“I say—is it conceivable that the Creator should not make it?”
“Thou givest me much food for thought,” said the lawyer.
“Digest it—looking at the reflection of the stars in the water—aye! and recall what is told by Aristotle of Xenophanes, how that casting his eyes upward at the immensity of heaven, he declared The One is God. That conviction, at which the philosopher arrived at the summit of his research, is the starting point of the Christian child. Farewell. We shall meet again. I commend thee to Him who set the stars in heaven above, and the lights in thine own dim soul.”
Then the bishop sought a boat, and was rowed in the direction of the town.
Æmilius remained by the lagoon.
Words such as these he had heard were novel. The thoughts given him to meditate on were so deep and strange that he could not receive them at once.
The night was now quite dark, and the stars shone with a brilliancy to which we are unaccustomed in the North, save on frosty winter nights.