It was much thus to learn those unrivalled old human stories, those unique old Divine messages, not packed up in a lesson-book, nor crumbled down into texts, nor beaten thin into allegories, but real and fresh as the stories of Patrick or of Leo,—whilst always shining through and through with the Divine light, which those who most frankly recognize the human medium feel most vividly. Delightful also it was to her beyond words, to see the light of the fulfilment of the New Testament of God, of the Christ, slowly penetrating into the soul of Eleazar, as it had into the heart of Miriam long before. The New Testament, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, epistolary treatises, familiar letters, came to Ethne’s children from the lips of Damaris in the language of Paul and John, in living speech as familiar to Damaris as the words of Shakespeare and the great Elizabethans to us. “Thy Jerome’s Vulgate is as good and grand as our Claudian aqueduct,” Ethne would say to Damaris; “but thy Greek is as the Fons Ceruleus, the Aqua Claudia, the fountains bursting fresh from the depths of these hills.” It was the last lingering sound of living Greek (the first language of the early Church) in the Western world. For centuries afterwards the living waters flowed to Western Christendom through Jerome’s aqueduct. The great Leo did not write or speak Greek. Many a time also Ethne found the old Greek hermit in his cave, near Monte Cassino, and laid her little Paul in his arms for his blessing. Once she told him of her dream after the birth of the child—of the church crowning the mountains in place of the temple of the old gods; of the company of mountain-folk, instead of leading the lambs garlanded for sacrifice, bringing their children for baptism; of the white-robed band pouring forth thence hither and thither throughout the mountains, throughout the world, like streams making the land fair and green wherever their footsteps came, like angels bringing to men the glad tidings of great joy. And the old man as he embraced the child said— “And may this thy babe, lady, be one of those thy white-robed angels and messengers of peace.” One bright Sunday it happened that, as long before Lucia had discovered Ethne diving deep into the old Hebrew poem of Job, Marius found her greatly absorbed in a fresh manuscript. She was in ecstasies of delight.