“No, no,” exclaimed Fabiola, with enthusiasm; “do not try to make me mean and vile to my own heart, by teaching me to undervalue what I cannot but prize as an unrivalled act of virtue. I have been reflecting on it, night and day, since I witnessed it; and my heart has been yearning to speak to you of it, and even yet I dare not, or I should oppress your weakness with my overcharged feelings. It was noble, it was grand, it was beyond all reach of praise; though I know you do not want it. I cannot see any way in which the sublimeness of the act could have been enhanced, or human virtue rise one step higher.” Miriam, who was now raised to a reclining position, took Fabiola’s hand between both hers; and turning round towards her, in a soft and mild, but most earnest tone, thus addressed her: “Good and gentle lady, for one moment listen to me. Not to depreciate what you are good enough to value, since it pains you to hear it, but to teach you how far we still are from what might have been done, let me trace for you a parallel scene, but where all shall be reversed. Let it be a slave--pardon me, dear Fabiola, for another pang--I see it in your face, but it shall be the last--yes, a slave brutish, ungrateful, rebellious to the most benign and generous of masters. And let the stroke, not of an assassin, but of the minister of justice, impend over his head. What would you call the act, how would you characterize the virtue, of that master, if out of pure love, and that he might reclaim that wretched man, he should rush beneath the axe’s blow, ay, and its preceding ignominious stripes, and leave written in his will, that he made that slave heir to his titles and his wealth, and desired him to be considered as his brother?” “O Miriam, Miriam, you have drawn a picture too sublime to be believed of man. You have not eclipsed your own deed, for I spoke of _human_ virtue. To act as you have now described would require, if possible, that of a God!” Miriam pressed the folded hand to her bosom, fixed on Fabiola’s wondering eyes a look of heavenly inspiration, as she sweetly and solemnly replied: “AND JESUS CHRIST, WHO DID ALL THIS FOR MAN, WAS TRULY GOD.” Fabiola covered her face with both her hands, and for a long time was silent. Miriam prayed earnestly in her own tranquil heart. “Miriam, I thank you from my soul,” at length Fabiola said; “you have fulfilled your promise of guiding me. For some time I have only been fearing that you might not be a Christian; but it could not be. “Now tell me, are those awful, but sweet words, which you just now uttered, which have sunk into my heart as deeply, as silently, and as irrevocably as a piece of gold dropped upon the surface of the still ocean goes down into its depths,--are those words a mere part of the Christian system, or are they its essential principle?”