“If you are sure that these people are not familiar at the house, try your plan. I have met the lady before, and will venture by the front door. Thus we shall have a double chance.” “Do you know what I am thinking, Fulvius?” “Something very bright, no doubt.” “That when you and I join in any enterprise, we shall _always_ have two chances.” “What are they?” “The fox’s and the wolf’s, when they conspire to rob a fold.” Fulvius cast on him a look of disdain, which Corvinus returned by a hideous leer; and they separated for their respective posts. [Illustration: A Lamp, with the Monogram of Christ.] CHAPTER XIII. CHARITY. As we do not choose to enter the house of Agnes, either with the wolf or with the fox, we will take a more spiritual mode of doing so, and find ourselves at once inside. The parents of Agnes represented noble lines of ancestry, and her family was not one of recent conversion, but had for several generations professed the faith. As in heathen families was cherished the memory of ancestors who had won a triumph, or held high offices in the state, so in this, and other Christian houses, was preserved with pious reverence and affectionate pride, the remembrance of those relations who had, in the last hundred and fifty years or more, borne the palm of martyrdom, or occupied the sublimer dignities of the Church. But, though ennobled thus, and with a constant stream of blood poured forth for Christ, accompanying the waving branches of the family-tree, the stem had never been hewn down, but had survived repeated storms. This may appear surprising; but when we reflect how many a soldier goes through a whole campaign of frequent actions and does not receive a wound; or how many a family remains untainted through a plague, we cannot be surprised if Providence watched over the well-being of the Church, by preserving in it, through old family successions, long unbroken chains of tradition, and so enabling the faithful to say: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us seed, we had been as Sodom, and we should have been like to Gomorrha.”[53]