“I would have expected that thy father and mother and thy close kindred should be like thee, princely and simple, royally regarding the wants and claims of all, and with sympathetic discrimination measuring the differences in place and character of each. But this charm goes through all your people; there is not one clown, one obtrusive, awkward person amongst them. Every one is as respectful to you as if you were their queen, and as much at home with you as if you were their sister. How is it?” “I know not,” said Ethne, blushing at the tender compliment, “unless it is that I _am_ as a princess and a sister to them, and that we all belong to each other, as the stem to the flower and the flower to the fruit; each content with its own place, and not wanting or deeming it possible to take the place of any one else.” “But that would be like the Kingdom of Heaven, my sister,” said Lucia. “I suppose the Kingdom of Heaven _is_ the one Family of the Heavenly Father and the Divine King,” said Ethne meditatively; “and I suppose that is the ideal and the pattern of the clan. And you will find it a help in striving to make it what it should be, to comprehend the highest it can mean. But, my sister,” she added, sighing, “alas! I fear all chiefs and all clans are not what they should be, either to each other or among themselves.” For only that morning she had heard how one chieftain among Patrick’s converts, King Leoghaire, had commanded his sons to bury him with his face turned towards his foes, on the ramparts of the hill of Tara—“with his face turned southwards towards the men of Leinster, as fighting with them, for he was the enemy of the men of Leinster all his life.” Baithene had told Ethne and Marius this, on which Marius had mournfully observed— “Is this then also a land of divisions and crumblings? Do the men of Leinster and the men of Ulster hate each other as the Huns hate the Romans and the Saxons the Britons?” And Ethne had replied— “Beloved, I am afraid the whole world is a land of divisions and dissolvings. What Patrick has brought us is the one universal Church of the One Living God, as he told the princesses of our race at the well—‘_Our God is the God of all men_.’ If our Ireland, if your Italy, can live in His life, we shall be _one_ and at peace, and strong. And this is what we in our little way, what Patrick and Leo in their great way, are labouring for night and day, heart and soul, every day and for ever.” It became indeed clear to them all, that in Ireland and elsewhere the world is a battle-field, because the heart of every one in it is a battle-field. Not long after that, it is said, one of the greatest of the Irish saints was baptized with the double name of Wolf and Dove.[7] “If only,” Marius said, “we could keep the _Church_ from becoming a battle-field! As yet, Ireland seems to have no heretics—Manicheans, Arians, or Eutychians.”