I looked round, and saw that Frank and Mary were listening.
Frank said: “I believe Jane is quite right; and she has so well described the effect which the aspects of nature produce on the mind of man that I am convinced her words embody and express the riddle of the sphinx. The laws of nature, taken without the doctrine of the Incarnation, which alone is the keystone to the whole creation, [pg 627] form the enigma which is put before us to understand and answer; failing which, we perish.”
“But all paganism was a falsified adumbration of the Incarnation; the gods for ever assuming a human form, and the men becoming gods,” said Mary. “It had that germ of truth in it which every system must have to be built at all, no matter in what monstrous form. But it required revelation to tell us that the ‘Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst men.’ And that alone explains nature. She is the herald, the servant, or rather the slave, of Him by whom and for whom all things were created. She speeds on her way in the full vigor of those laws which were impressed upon her as she first sprang from the hand of her Creator. She does not stop to share our griefs or our joys, for she has a higher mission. But she has ceased to be terrible to us, for faith has unveiled her face, and her harmonious forces no longer scare us by their inexorable relentlessness. Her one mission is to sing of God, and repeat to Time the refrain of Eternity.”
“Why, then, do we sometimes pine for her sympathy?” said I.
“Ah! Miss Jane,” exclaimed Don Emidio, “that is because we are for ever looking for sympathy in the wrong place and from the wrong people.”
“Not always,” I replied. What made me say so? And why did Don Emidio change color and look at me so fixedly? I was still wondering when we reached home.
Mary and I were, as usual in the evening, sitting in the loggia. But Frank was not with us, and I missed his genial talk and the odor of his cigar.
“What has become of Frank this evening, Mary?”
“He has gone down to see the Vernons, and said he should persuade them to come to us.”
“I hope he will succeed, for I do not like his spending his evenings away from us. This is not the first nor the fourth time he has gone to Casinelli as soon as he got up from dinner.”