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