rent opinion of the final causes of events; you
see the fixed action of a law in the deeds of human beings, as well as
in storms and sunshine. This may be magnificent, heroic, but it is
terrible. I have a narrow mind, and am precisely the opposite of a
hero; I cannot endure it. I waver skeptically to and fro. Sometimes I
see only the whimsical ruling of a blind chance, which delights in
alternately lifting up and casting down; sometimes I think an
inscrutable God directs everything to mysterious ends. I have renounced
all philosophizing, and enjoy the motley current of events, not without
scorn and derision for the follies of other people, but no less for
those of Procopius.

And yet I do not wish to break off entirely all relations with the
Christian's God. We do not know whether, after all, the Son of Man may
not yet return in the clouds of heaven. In that case, I would far
rather be with the sheep than with the goats.

The people, the liberated Romans, the Catholics, in their delight over
their rescue, see signs and wonders everywhere. They regard our Huns as
angels of the Lord. They will yet learn to know these angels,
especially if they have pretty wives or daughters, or even only full
money-chests. The comical part of it is that (except Belisarius's
body-guard), our soldiers, with all due respect to the Emperor, are
principally a miserable lot of rascals from all the provinces of the
empire, and all the Barbarian peoples in the neighborhood; they are
always as ready to steal, pillage, and murder as they are to fight. Yet
we ourselves, in consequence of the amazing good fortune which has
accompanied us throughout this whole enterprise, are beginning to
consider ourselves the chosen favorites of the Lord, His sacred
instrument--thieves and cut-throats though we are! So the entire army,
pagans as well as Christians, believe that that spring gushed out for
us in the desert only by a miracle of God. So both the army and the
Carthaginians believe in a lantern miracle in the following singular
incident.

The Carthaginians' principal saint is Saint Cyprian, who has more than
a dozen basilicas and chapels, in which all his festivals, "the great
Cypriani," are magnificently celebrated. But the Vandals took nearly
all the churches from the Catholics, and dedicated them to the Arian
worship. This was the case with the great basilica of Saint Cyprian
down by the harbor, from which they drove the Catholic priests. The
loss