BOOK XII.
PAUL AND KRISHNA.
Felix and Drusilla on the one hand and Krishna on the other disclose the contrasted feelings severally excited in them by what they had just witnessed in the lot of Shimei. Krishna seeks from his friend Sergius Paulus explanation of the relations that subsisted between those ministering Christians and the sufferer. He at length requests and obtains an interview with Paul, and the two have a conversation, one result of which is that Krishna asks to hear a full account of the life and character of Jesus Christ. Paul proposes that Mary Magdalené give this account, but Krishna courteously declines to receive it from the lips of a woman. The ship meantime puts in at The Fair Havens, whence, after a short stay in that anchorage, it sets sail, against the advice of Paul.
PAUL AND KRISHNA.
As one transported to a different sphere,
Some sinless planet fairer far than ours,
Amid new scenes and aspects there beheld,
Would watch and wonder and not understand,
So had the most of that ship's company,
Not understanding, but much wondering, watched
What passed between the wretched Shimei
And those his ministers of grace and love.
Felix, discoursing with Drusilla, said
(For he, by virtue of his being himself,
Perforced divined accordingly—amiss)
"Much painful cultivation, for no fruit!
Paul, turn and turn about, that time did seem
His enemy at advantage to have had,
And prospect was that Shimei, won to him
With all those unexpected services
(Sore needed, in such sorry case, no doubt!)
Would, could he first make shift to clear himself,
Right face about at Rome and, far from being
An adversary witness against Paul,
Swear him snow-white with turncoat testimony.
How easily king Jupiter, with that pass
Of playful lightning, brought it all to naught!"
Said Felix; then, with change abrupt from sneer,
Grim added this, in sullen afterthought:
"That lightning was a neat dispatch for him!
I wish that it had fallen on me instead."
"Ill-omened from thy lips such words as those,"
Drusilla answered. "And what love to me
Speak they, thy wife and queen—not with her lord
Joined in thine imprecation dire of doom?
Perhaps indeed we shall be separate
In death—with death, despite the difference,
But differently horrible to both!
For I have my forebodings, bred of thine,
And dread to be somehow hereafter caught
In some form of calamity unknown
But unescapable and horrible
And final and fatal as that Shimei's.
And what if he, our son (thine image—form,
And face, and character, and all) dear pledge
To me of love that once his father bore
His mother, happy she as worthy judged,
Once!—what if he, our little Felix too
Be in that dread catastrophe involved!"