s, who forthwith speaks and writes to no other end than to vex and
put down Cneius, and give him pain. Each for his part strives his
utmost to find out faults in his neighbor and to put him in the pillory,
particularly if his antagonist is held the greater man, or is likely
to overtop him. Listen to the girls at the well, to the women at the
spindle; no one is sure of applause who cannot tell some evil of the
other men or women. Who cares to listen to his neighbor's praises? The
man who hears that his brother is happy at once envies him! Hatred,
hatred everywhere! Everywhere the will, the desire, the passion for
bringing grief and ruin on others rather than to help them, raise them
and heal them!

"That is the spirit of my time; and everything within me revolted
against it with sacred wrath. I vowed in my heart that I would live and
act differently; that my sole aim should be to succor the unfortunate,
to help the wretched, to open my arms to those who had fallen into
unmerited contumely, to set the crooked straight for my neighbor, to
mend what was broken, to pour in balm, to heal and to save!

"And, thank God! it has been vouchsafed to me in some degree to keep
this vow; and though, later, some whims and a passionate curiosity got
mixed up with my zeal, still, never have I lost sight of the great task
of which I have spoken, since my father's death and since my uncle also
left me his large fortune. Then I had done with the Rhetor's art, and
travelled east and west to seek the land where love unites men's hearts
and where hatred is only a disease; but as sure as man is the standard
of all things, to this day all my endeavors to find it have been in
vain. Meanwhile I have kept my own house on such a footing that it has
become a stronghold of love; in its atmosphere hatred cannot grow, but
is nipped in the germ.

"In spite of this I am no saint. I have committed many a folly, many an
injustice; and much of my goods and gold, which I should perhaps have
done better to save for my family, has slipped through my fingers,
though in the execution, no doubt, of what I deemed the highest duties.
Would you believe it, Paula?--Forgive an old man for such fatherly
familiarity with the daughter of Thomas;--hardly five years after my
marriage with this good wife, not long after we had lost our only son, I
left her and our little daughter, Pul there, for more than two years, to
follow the Emperor Heraclius of my own free will to th