now it is all over. I wish you had already broken that to him; but love
stories are women's affairs, and you know how good the boy is to me. A
mother's word sometimes has more effect than a father's blow, and it is
in life as it is in war; the light forces of archers go first into the
field, and the heavily armed division stays in the background to support
them; then, if the enemy will not yield, it comes forward and decides the
battle. First let me speak to the lad. It may be that he threw the rose
into Sirona's window only in sport, for she plays with his brothers and
sisters as if she herself were one of them. I will question him; for if
it is so, it would be neither just nor prudent to blame him. Some
caution is needed even in giving a warning; for many a one, who would
never have thought of stealing, has become a thief through false
suspicion. A young heart that is beginning to love, is like a wild boy
who always would rather take the road he is warned to avoid, and when I
was a girl, I myself first discovered how much I liked you, when the
Senator Aman's wife--who wanted you for her own daughter--advised me to
be on my guard with you. A man who has made such good use of his time,
among all the temptations of the Greek Sodom, as Polykarp, and who has
won such high praise from all his teachers and masters, cannot have been
much injured by the light manners of the Alexandrians. It is in a man's
early years that he takes the bent which he follows throughout his later
life, and that he had done before he left our house. Nay--even if I did
not know what a good fellow Polykarp is--I need only look at you to say,
'A child that was brought up by this father, could never turn out a bad
man.'"

Petrus sadly shrugged his shoulders, as though he regarded his wife's
flattering words as mere idle folly, and yet he smiled, as he asked,
"Whose school of rhetoric did you go to? So be it then; speak to the lad
when he returns from Raithu. How high the moon is already; come to rest