n as this, thy son, who has squandered his living with
harlots, is returned, thou hast had the fatted calf killed for him."'

'Oh! how wicked is the eldest son!' said the child; 'he is jealous of
his poor brother, who returns, however, very unhappy to the house. God
will not love this jealous son; will he, my good Jesus?'

Mary's son shook his head, as if to reply to the child that the Lord did
not indeed love the jealous: he then continued,--

'But the father said to the son: "My son, thou art always with me, and
all that I have is thine; it was fit that we should make merry and be
glad; for this, thy brother, was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and
is found."'

All who were present seemed moved to tears at this recital. Mary's son
having stopped to drink a glass of wine, which Judas, his disciple,
poured out for him, Banaias, who had listened to him with profound
attention, exclaimed: 'Friend, do you know that this is very much my own
history, and that of many others. For if, after my own first folly of
youth, my father had imitated the father in your parable, and had
tendered me his hand as a sign of pardon, instead of driving me from the
house with his stick, I should be at this hour, perhaps, seated at my
honest fireside, in the midst of my family; whereas, now my home is in
the highway, misery my wife, and my children evil projects, sons of
misery, that mother with the ferocious eye. Ah! why had I not for a
father the man in the parable?'

'This indulgent father pardoned,' replied Oliba the courtezan, 'because
he knew that God, having given youth to his creatures, sometimes abuse
it; but those who, reviled, miserable and repentant, return humbly to
demand the smallest place in the paternal mansion, these, far from being
repulsed, ought they not to be received with pity?'

'I,' said another, 'would not give a grapestone for this elder brother,
this man of wealth, so harsh, so coarse, and so jealous, to whom virtue
costs nothing.'

Genevieve heard one of the two emissaries of the Pharisees say to his
companion, 'The Nazarene pretty well flatters the bad passions of these
vagabonds. Henceforth, every debauched idler who may quit the paternal
mansion will think himself entitled to send his father to Beelzebub, if
the father, wrongly advised, instead of killing the fatted calf, drives
from him, as he ought, this villainous son, whom hunger alone brings
back to the fold.'

'Yes; and all the honest and prude