“And they were right,” replied the patriarch, “for they were not yet acquainted with truth.  In a worldly sense, even now, each of us may aim at such magnanimity; but the man who forgives those who tamper with the sacred truth, which is the bread, meat, and wine of the Christian’s soul, sins against that truth; and, if he is a leader of men, he draws on those who look up to him, and who are only too ready to follow his example, into everlasting fire.  Where your father ought to have been a recalcitrant though conquered enemy, he became an ally; nay, so far as the leader of the infidels was concerned, a friend—­how many tears it cost me!  And our hapless people were forced to see this attitude of their chief, and imitated it.—­Forgive their seducer, Merciful God!—­forming their conduct on his.  Thousands fell away from our saving faith and went over to those, who in their eyes could not be reprobate, could not be damned, since they saw them dwelling and working hand-in-hand with their wise and righteous leader; and it was simply and solely to warn his misguided people that I did not hesitate to wound my own heart, to raise the voice of reproof at the grave of a dear friend, and to refuse the honor and blessing of which his just and virtuous life rendered him more worthy than thousands of others.  I have spoken, and now your foolish anger must be appeased; now you will grasp the hand held out to you by the shepherd of the souls entrusted to him with an easy and willing heart.”

And again he offered his hand to Orion, who, however, again took it doubtfully, and instead of looking the prelate in the face, cast down his eyes in gloomy bewilderment.  The patriarch appeared not to observe the young man’s repulsion and clasped his hand warmly.  Then he changed the subject, speaking of the grieving widow, of the decadence of Memphis, of Orion’s plans for the future, and finally of the gems dedicated to the Church by the deceased Mukaukas.  The dialogue had taken a calm, conversational tone; the patriarch was sitting in the dead man’s arm-chair, and there was nothing forced or unnatural in his asking, in the course of discussing the jewels, what had become of the great emerald.

Orion replied, in the same tone, that this stone was not, strictly speaking, any part of his father’s gift; but Benjamin expressed an opposite opinion.

All the tortures Orion had endured since that luckless deed in the tablinum revived in his soul during this discussion; however, it was some small relief to him to perceive, that neither his mother nor Dame Susannah seemed to have told the patriarch the guilt he had incurred by reason of that gem.  Susannah, of course, had said nothing of the incident in order to avoid speaking of her daughter’s false evidence; still, this miserable business might easily have come to the ears of the stern old man, and to the guilty youth no sacrifice seemed too great to smother any enquiry for the ill-fated jewel.  He unhesitatingly explained that the emerald had disappeared, but that he was quite ready to make good its value.  Benjamin might fix his own estimate, and name any sum he wished for some benevolent purpose, and he, Orion, was ready to pay it to him on the spot.