“These Arabs, few as they are, are stronger and more powerful than we with all our numbers.  One man of them is equal to a hundred of us, for they rush on death and love it better than life.  Each of them presses to the front in battle, and they have no longing to return home and to their families.  For every Christian they kill they look for a great reward in Heaven, and they say that the gates of Paradise open at once for those who fall in the fight.  They have not a wish in this world beyond the satisfaction of their barest need of food and clothing.  We, on the contrary, love life and dread death;—­how can we stand against them?  I tell you that I will not break the peace I have concluded with the Arabs. . . .”

“And what is the upshot of all this reply?” interrupted the patriarch shrugging his shoulders.

“That my father found himself compelled to conclude a peace, and that—­but read on.—­That as a wise man he was forced to ally himself with the foe.”

“The foe to whom he yielded more readily and paid much greater honor than became him as a Christian!—­Does not this discourse convey the idea that the joys of Paradise solely and exclusively await our damned and blood-thirsty oppressors?—­And the Moslem Paradise!  What is it but a gulf of iniquity, in which they are to wallow in sensual delight?  The false prophet invented it to tempt his followers to force his lying creed, by might of arms and in mad contempt of death, on nation after nation.  Our Lord, the Word made flesh, came down on earth to win hearts and souls by the persuasive power of the living truth, one and eternal, which emanates from Him as light proceeds from the sun; this Mohammed, on the contrary, is a sword made flesh!  For me, then, there is no choice but to submit to superior strength; but I can still hate and loathe their accursed and soul-destroying superstition.—­And so I do, and so I shall, to the last throb of this old heart, which only longs for rest, the sooner the better. . . .

“But you?  And your father?  Verily, verily, the man who, even for an instant, ceases to hate unbelief or false doctrine has sinned for his whole life on this side of the grave and beyond it; sinned against the only true and saving faith and its divine Founder.  Blasphemous and flattering praise of the piety and moderation of our foes, the very antichrist incarnate, who kill both body and soul.—­With these your father fouled his heart and tongue. . .”

“Fouled?” cried Orion and the blood tingled in his cheeks.  “He kept his heart and tongue alike pure and honorable; never did a false word pass his lips.  Justice, justice to all, even to his enemies, was the ruling principle, the guiding clue of his blameless life; and the noblest of the heathen Greeks admired the man who could so far triumph over himself as to recognize what was fine and good in a foe.”