Melissa gave him many messages for her father and brothers, and when the lady Berenike begged him to take care that the portrait of her daughter was safely carried to the Serapeum, where it was to contribute to mollify Caesar in the painter’s favor, he praised her determination, and modestly added:  “For how long may we call our own any of these perishable joys?  A day, perhaps a year, at most a lustrum.  But eternity is long, and those who, for its sake, forget time and set all their hopes on eternity —­which is indeed time to the soul—­soon cease to bewail the loss of any transitory treasure, were it the noblest and dearest.  Oh, would that I could lead you to place your hopes on eternity, best of women and most true-hearted mother!  Eternity, which not the wisest brain can conceive of!—­I tell you, lady, for you are a philosopher—­that is the hardest and therefore the grandest idea for human thought to compass.  Fix your eye on that, and in its infinite realm, which must be your future home, you will meet her again whom you have lost—­not her image returned to you, but herself.”

“Cease,” interrupted the matron, with impatient sharpness.  “I know what you are aiming at.  But to conceive of eternity is the prerogative of the immortals; our intellect is wrecked in the attempt.  Our wings melt like those of Ikarus, and we fall into the ocean—­the ocean of madness, to which I have often been near enough.  You Christians fancy you know all about eternity, and if you are right in that—­But I will not reopen that old discussion.  Give me back my child for a year, a month, a day even, as she was before murderous disease laid hands on her, and I will make you a free gift of your cuckoo-cloud-land of eternity, and of the remainder of my own life on earth into the bargain.”

The vehement woman trembled with renewed sorrow, as if shivering with ague; but as soon as she had recovered her self-command enough to speak calmly, she exclaimed to the lawyer: 

“I do not really wish to vex you, Johannes.  I esteem you, and you are dear to me.  But if you wish our friendship to continue, give up these foolish attempts to teach tortoises to fly.  Do all you can for the poor prisoners; and if you—­”

“By daybreak to-morrow I will be with them,” Johannes said, and he hastily took leave.

As soon as they were alone Berenike observed “There he goes, quite offended, as if I had done him a wrong.  That is the way with all these Christians.  They think it their duty to force on others what they themselves think right, and any one who turns a deaf ear to their questionable truths they at once set down as narrow-minded, or as hostile to what is good.  Agatha, of whom you were just now speaking, and Zeno her father, my husband’s brother, are Christians.  I had hoped that Korinna’s death would have brought the child back to us; I have longed to see her, and have heard much that is sweet about her:  but a common sorrow, which so often brings divided