arted Plotinus has been placed in my hands.
I would fain bear it with gentleness and mercy; but, if I must, I
will wield it as a sword and a scourge till your wounds bleed and your
bruises ache.

"Behold in my right hand the image of your Redeemer! I hold it up as a
wall between you and the heathen abomination which you hail with joy in
your blindness.

"Ye are accursed and apostate. Lift up your hearts, and look at Him who
died on the cross to save you. Verily He will not let him perish who
believeth in Him; but you! where is your faith? Because it is night ye
lament and cry: The Light is dead!' Because ye are sick ye say: 'The
physician cannot heal!'

"What are these blasphemies that I hear: 'The Lord and His Church
are powerless! Magic, enchantments, and heathen abominations may save
us.'--But, inasmuch as ye trust not in the true Saviour and Redeemer,
but in heathen wickedness, magic, and enchantments, punishment shall be
heaped on punishment; and so it will be,--I see it coming--till ye are
choked in the mud and seek with groans the only Hand that is able to
save.

"That whereby the blinded sons of men hope to escape from the evil,
that, and that only, is the source of their sufferings and I stand here
to stay that spring and dig a channel for its overflow.

"Children of Moloch ye try to be and I hope to make you Christians
again. But the maiden whom your fury would cast into the abyss of the
river is under the merciful protection of the supreme Church, for the
death of her body will bring death to your souls. Saint Orion turns from
you with horror! Away from the hapless victim! Away, I say, with your
accursed desires and sacrilegious hands!"

"And sit with them in our laps and wring them in prayer till they ache,
while want and the plague snatch away those that are left!" interrupted
the old man's voice, thin and feeble, but audible at a considerable
distance, and from the market-place thousands proclaimed their approval
by loud shouts.

The president of the senate had listened with a penitent mien and
bowed head, but now he recovered his presence of mind and exclaimed
indignantly:

"The people die, the town and country are going to ruin, plague and
horrors rise up from the river. Show us some other way of escape, or let
us trust to our forefathers and try this last means."

But the little man drew himself up more stiffly, pointed with his left
hand to the crucifix, and cried with unmoved composure: