"Where is the girl flown to? Where does she live?"
"I cannot tell you, noble sir," said the slave, turning away.
"For cannot, say will not," said Magas, arresting him. "I insist on knowing where Chione lives."
"You cannot know it from me, sir," said Merion, breaking away, while fortunately some persons appearing in sight, forbade the noble Magas from renewing a contest with another person's servant; and thus the faithful guardian of Chione effected his escape.
It was, however, to the house of Dionysius he betook himself to consult with him concerning the measures to be taken to insure the safety of his wayward niece.
It was a difficult matter for the learned but simple-hearted bishop, known in the city as Dionysius the Areopagite, to interfere in. The conversion of this noble-hearted prelate had, in his own case, been so sincere, so entire, it was difficult for him to comprehend an adhesion given partly to the intellectual, partly to the moral bearings of the religion of Christ, an adhesion which more resembled a philosophical adoption of tenets, than the surrender of the whole being into the keeping of his divine Lord, such as he understood to be the requirement demanded of himself when, under the tuition of the great apostle, he had learned to put on Christ. The gospel had come to him, not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance. [Footnote 60] It filled his soul, not only with its intellectual delights, with its wondrous solutions of the dread mysteries of existence, with its harmonious developments and sublime manifestations, but with interior light. "Faith" was to him as, alas! it is to so few, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." [Footnote 61] It animated him wholly; it was a part of himself; he could say with the great apostle in very truth, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me." [Footnote 62]
[Footnote 60: Thes. i. 5.]
[Footnote 61: Heb. xi. 1.]
[Footnote 62: Gal. ii. 20.]