do not deny that their condition is not far less enviable than ours. The
slave who may be lashed, and tormented, and killed at his master's
pleasure, drinks from a cup of which we never so much as taste. But over
the whole of life, and throughout every condition of it, there are
scattered evils and sorrows which pierce every heart with pain. I look
upon all conditions as in part evil. It is only by selecting
circumstances, and excluding ills which are the lot of all, that I could
ask to live forever, even in the gardens of Zenobia.'

'I do not think we differ much then,' said Fausta, 'in what we think of
human life. I hold the highest lot to be unsatisfying. You admit all are
so, but have shown me that there is a nearer approach to an equality of
happiness than I had supposed, though evil weighs upon all. How the mind
longs and struggles to penetrate the mysteries of its being! How imperfect
and without aim does life seem! Every thing beside man seems to reach its
utmost perfection. Man alone appears a thing incomplete and faulty.'

'And what,' said I, 'would make him appear to you a thing perfect and
complete' What change should you suggest?'

'That which rather may be called an addition,' replied Fausta, 'and which,
if I err not, all wise and good men desire, the assurance of immortality.
Nothing is sweet; every cup is bitter; that which we are this moment
drinking from, bitterest of all, without this. Of this I incessantly think
and dream, and am still tossed in a sea of doubt.'

'You have read Plato?' said I.

'Yes, truly,' she replied; 'but I found little there to satisfy me, I have
enjoyed too the frequent conversation of Longinus, and yet it is the same.