sion for the occasion to
implore God to avert all ill. Rufinus declared that it was blasphemy
against the Almighty to interpret events happening in the course of
eternal law and calculable beforehand, as a threatening sign from Him; as
though man's deserts had any connection with the courses of the sun and
moon. The Bishop and all the priests of the province were to head the
procession, and thus a simple natural phenomenon was forced in the minds
of the people into a significance it did not possess.

"And if the little comet which my old foster father discovered last week
continues to increase," added the physician, "so that its tail spreads
over a portion of the sky, the panic will reach its highest pitch; I can
see already that they will behave like mad creatures."

"But a comet really does portend war, drought, plague, and famine," said
Pulcheria, with full conviction; and Paula added:

"So I have always believed."

"But very wrongly," replied the leech. "There are a thousand reasons to
the contrary; and it is a crime to confirm the mob in such a
superstition. It fills them with grief and alarms; and, would you believe
it--such anguish of mind, especially when the Nile is so low and there is
more sickness than usual, gives rise to numberless forms of disease? We
shall have our hands full, Rufinus."

"I am yours to command," replied the old man. "But at the same time, if
the tailed wanderer must do some mischief, I would rather it should break
folks' arms and legs than turn their brains."

"What a wish!" exclaimed Paula. "But you often say things--and I see
things about you too--which seem to me extraordinary. Yesterday you
promised. . . ."

"To explain to you why I gather about me so many of God's creatures who
have to struggle under the burden of life as cripples, or with injured
limbs."

"Just so," replied Paula. "Nothing can be more truly merciful than to
render life bearable to such hapless beings. . . ."

"But still, you think," interrupted the eager old man, "that this noble
motive alone would hardly account for the old oddity's riding his hobby
so hard.--Well, you are right. From my earliest youth the structure of
the bones in man and beast has captivated me exceedingly; and just as
collectors of horns, when once they have a complete series of every
variety of stag, roe, and gazelle, set to work with fresh zeal to find
deformed or monstrous growths, so I have found pleasure in studying every
kind of