Then the lad stood up as he had been accustomed to do at home: the fine but peculiar head involuntarily erected itself upon his long and shapely neck, and drooped a little forward, a strange, scintillant light gleamed in his sweet, dark eyes; his elevated and extended right hand waved gently from side to side like the _bâton_ of a music-master, and his musical, penetrating voice rang out clearly and incisively as he said: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the holy common Church, in the forgiveness of sin, in the resurrection of the dead, and in the life everlasting. Amen!" "So thou believest!" said the ancient. "But why dost thou say ’only-begotten’ son? Are not all men the sons of God, even as the Greek poet saith, ’For we also are his offspring?’" "Yea!" answered Arius, "all men are his sons by creation, and some of them by adoption--Jesus alone by generation; he was ’begotten,’ not made." "True! true!" said the ancient; "so teach the gospels, which I have here with me. So thou believest! When didst thou learn this faith, thou whole Egyptian; and dost thou never doubt it?" "I know not when I learned it," answered Arius; "I was learning it from my mother when I lay helplessly upon her breast; I was learning it from my father when he dandled me upon his knees; every day and hour of my life I have learned it more and more;" and then, involuntarily rising upon his tiptoes, like a python standing upon its tail, with his head erect and bending slightly forward, and sparkling eyes agleam, he exclaimed, "and I was never such an idiot as to doubt it at all." Then, as if modestly conscious of some impropriety in such demonstrative utterances in the presence of one so aged and venerable, he sank lower upon his chair with an ingenuous blush.