evil, and consider it. You remember the sad tale concerning the Christian
Probus, which Piso, in recounting the incidents of his journey from Rome
to Palmyra, related to us while seated at the tables?'

'Indeed, I did not hear it,' said Zenobia; 'so that Piso must, if he will,
repeat it.'

'We shall willingly hear it again,' said Julia and Fausta.

And I then related it again.

'Now do you wonder,' resumed Longinus, when I had finished, 'that Probus,
when, one after another, four children were ravished from his arms by
death, and then, as if to crown his lot with evil, his wife followed them,
and he was left alone in the world, bereaved of every object to which his
heart was most fondly attached, do you wonder, I say, that he turned to
the heavens and cursed the gods? And can you justify the gods so that they
shall not be chargeable with blackest malignity, if there be no future and
immortal state? What is it to bind so the heart of a parent to a child, to
give that affection a force and a tenderness which belong to no other tie,
so that anxieties for its life and welfare, and cares and sacrifices for
its good, constitute the very existence of the parent, what is it to
foster by so many contrivances this love, and then forever disappoint and
blast it, but malignity? Yet this work is done every hour, and in almost
every heart; if for children we lament not, yet we do for others as dear.'

Tears to the memory of Odenatus fell fast from the eyes of Zenobia.

'Are we not then,'--continued Longinus, without pausing--'are we not then
presented with this alternative, either the Supreme God is a malignant