enjoined on them to renounce excess and luxury, to love poverty, purity
of life, and truth, to endure wrongs and persecutions patiently, to obey
the government and those placed above them, to guard against treason,
deceit, and calumny; finally, to give an example in their own society to
each other, and even to pagans.

Vinicius, for whom good was only that which could bring back to him
Lygia, and evil everything which stood as a barrier between them, was
touched and angered by certain of those counsels. It seemed to him that
by enjoining purity and a struggle with desires the old man dared, not
only to condemn his love, but to rouse Lygia against him and confirm her
in opposition. He understood that if she were in the assembly listening
to those words, and if she took them to heart, she must think of him as
an enemy of that teaching and an outcast.

Anger seized him at this thought. "What have I heard that is new?"
thought he. "Is this the new religion? Every one knows this, every one
has heard it. The Cynics enjoined poverty and a restriction of
necessities; Socrates enjoined virtue as an old thing and a good one;
the first Stoic one meets, even such a one as Seneca, who has five
hundred tables of lemon-wood, praises moderation, enjoins truth,
patience in adversity, endurance in misfortune,--and all that is like
stale, mouse-eaten grain; but people do not wish to eat it because it
smells of age."

And besides anger, he had a feeling of disappointment, for he expected
the discovery of unknown, magic secrets of some kind, and thought that
at least he would hear a rhetor astonishing by his eloquence; meanwhile
he heard only words which were immensely simple, devoid of every
ornament. He was astonished only by the mute attention with which the