orders, without hesitation or doubt, as obediently and unresistingly as
though salvation or woe had fallen on him from above. What would become
of us, if individuals were to take upon themselves to defy me and walk in
their own way? In one miserable generation, and with the death of the
elders who had grown up as true Christians, the doctrine of the Saviour
would be extinct on the shores of the Nile, the crescent would rise in
the place of the Cross, and our cry would go up to Heaven for so many
lost souls. Learn, haughty youth, to bow humbly and submissively to the
will of the Most High and of His vicar on earth, and let me show you,
from your demeanor to myself especially, how far your own judgment is to
be relied on. You regard me as your father's enemy?"

"Yes," said Orion firmly.

"And I loved him as a brother!" replied the patriarch in a softer voice.
"How gladly would I have heaped his bier with palm branches of peace,
such as the Church alone can grow, wet with my own tears!"

"And yet," cried Orion, "you denied to him, whom you call your friend,
what the Church does not refuse to thieves and murderers, if only they
desire forgiveness and have received absolution from a priest;
and that. . . ."

"And that your father did!" interrupted the old man. "Peace be to him!
He is now, no doubt, gazing on the glory of the Lord. And nevertheless
I could forbid the priesthood here showing him honor at the grave.--Why?
For what urgent reason was such a prohibition spoken by a friend against
a friend?"

"Because you wished to brand him, in the eyes of the world, as the man