After this conversation Fabiola retired; and during the rest of the day her mind was alternately agitated and calm. When she looked steadily on the grand view of moral life which her mind had grasped, she found an unusual tranquillity in its contemplation; she felt as if she had made discovery of a great phenomenon, the knowledge of which guided her into a new and lofty region, whence she could smile on the errors and follies of mankind. But when she considered the responsibility which this light imposed, the watchfulness which it demanded, the unseen and unrequited struggles which it required, the desolateness, almost, of a virtue without admiration or even sympathy, she again shrunk from the life that was before her, as about to be passed without any stay or help, from the only sources of it which she knew. Unconscious of the real cause, she saw that she possessed not instruments or means, to carry out the beautiful theory. This seemed to stand like a brilliant lamp in the midst of a huge, bare, unfurnished hall, lighting up only a wilderness. What was the use of so much wasted splendor? The next morning had been fixed for one of those visits which used to be annually paid in the country,--that to the now ex-prefect of the city, Chromatius. Our reader will remember, that after his conversion and resignation of office, this magistrate had retired to his villa in Campania, taking with him a number of the converts made by Sebastian, with the holy priest Polycarp, to complete their instruction. Of these circumstances, of course, Fabiola had never been informed; but she heard all sorts of curious reports about Chromatius’s villa. It was said that he had a number of visitors never before seen at his house; that he gave no entertainments; that he had freed all his country slaves, but that many of them had preferred remaining with him; that if numerous, the whole establishment seemed very happy, though no boisterous sports or frolicsome meetings seemed to be indulged in. All this stimulated Fabiola’s curiosity, in addition to her wish to discharge a pleasing duty of courtesy to a most kind friend of hers from childhood; and she longed to see, with her own eyes, what appeared to her to be a very Platonic, or, as we should say, Utopian, experiment.