recluses, but you forget"--and a sinister fire glowed in his eyes--"that
the slave, too, has a soul, in which the same feelings stir as in your
own. You never think how a proud man may feel whose arm you brand, and
whose very breath of life is indignity; or what a slave thinks who is
spurned by his master's foot, though noble blood may run in his veins.
All living things, even the plants in the garden, have a right to
happiness, and only develop fully in freedom, and under loving care; and
yet one half of mankind robs the other half of this right. The sum total
of suffering and sorrow to which Fate had doomed the race is recklessly
multiplied and increased by the guilt of men themselves. But the cry of
the poor and wretched has gone up to heaven, and now that the fullness of
time is come, 'Thus far, and no farther,' is the word. No wild
revolutionary has been endowed with a giant's strength to burst the bonds
of the victims asunder. No, the Creator and Preserver of the world sent
his Son to redeem the poor in spirit, and, above all, the brethren and
the sisters who are weary and heavy laden. The magical word which shall
break the bars of the prisons where the chains of the slaves are heard is
Love. . . . But you, Melissa, can but half comprehend all this,"
he added, interrupting the ardent flow of his enthusiastic speech.
"You can not understand it all. For you, too, child, the fullness of
time is coming; for you, too, freeborn though you are, are, I know, one
of the heavy laden who patiently suffer the burden laid upon you. You
too--But keep close to me; we shall find it difficult to get through this
throng."

It was, in fact, no easy matter to get across the crowd which was pouring
noisily down the street of Hermes, into which this narrow way led. How
ever, they achieved it, and when Melissa had recovered her breath in a
quiet lane in Rhakotis, she turned to her companion again with the
question, "And when do you suppose that your predictions will be