hion! By Saint Peter, Heaven will soon be out of the fashion too,
and Messer Satanas will rake in the just and the unjust alike, so that
he need no longer fast on Fridays, having a more savoury larder! And
no doubt some of you will say that hell is really so antiquated that
it should be put in the museum at the University of Rome, for a
curious old piece of theological furniture. Truth! it is a wonder it
is not worn out with digesting the tough morsels it gets, when people
like you are finally gotten rid of from this world! But it is made of
good material, and it will last, never fear! This is not the gospel of
peace, but it is the gospel of truth.

Loving hearts and gentle souls shall rule the world some day, for all
your pestiferous fashions; and old as I am,--I do not mean aged, but
well on in years,--I believe in love still, and I always will. It is
true that it was not given to me to love as Nino loves Hedwig, for
Nino is even now a stronger, sterner man than I. His is the nature
that can never do enough; his the hands that never tire for her;
his the art that would surpass, for her, the stubborn bounds of
possibility. He is never weary of striving to increase her joy of him.
His philosophy is but that. No quibbles of "being" and "not being," or
wretched speculations concerning the object of existence; he has found
the true unity of unities, and he holds it fast.

Meanwhile, you object that I am not proceeding with my task, and
telling you more facts, recounting more conversations, and painting
more descriptions. Believe me, this one fact, that to love well is to
be all man can be, is greater than all the things men have ever
learned and classified in dictionaries. It is, moreover, the only fact
that has consistently withstood the ravages of time and social
revolution; it is the wisdom that has opened, as if by magic, the
treasures of genius, of goodness, and of all greatness, for everyone
to see; it is the vital elixir that has made men of striplings, and
giants of cripples, and heroes of the poor in heart though great in
spirit. Nino is an example; for he was but a boy, yet he acted like a
man; a gifted artist in a great city, courted by the noblest, yet he
kept his faith.

But when I have taken breath I will tell you what he and Hedwig said
to each other at the gate, and whether at the last she went with him,
or stayed in dismal Fillettino for her father's sake.

CHAPTER XXI

"Let us sit upon the s