“It is humility, pious and submissive faith, that I find you lack, my friend. Who, indeed, am I? But as the Vicar, the representative of Him before whom we all are as worms in the dust, I must insist that every man who calls himself a Christian, a Jacobite, shall submit to my will and orders, without hesitation or doubt, as obediently and unresistingly as though salvation or woe had fallen on him from above. What would become of us, if individuals were to take upon themselves to defy me and walk in their own way? In one miserable generation, and with the death of the elders who had grown up as true Christians, the doctrine of the Saviour would be extinct on the shores of the Nile, the crescent would rise in the place of the Cross, and our cry would go up to Heaven for so many lost souls. Learn, haughty youth, to bow humbly and submissively to the will of the Most High and of His vicar on earth, and let me show you, from your demeanor to myself especially, how far your own judgment is to be relied on. You regard me as your father’s enemy?” “Yes,” said Orion firmly. “And I loved him as a brother!” replied the patriarch in a softer voice. “How gladly would I have heaped his bier with palm branches of peace, such as the Church alone can grow, wet with my own tears!” “And yet,” cried Orion, “you denied to him, whom you call your friend, what the Church does not refuse to thieves and murderers, if only they desire forgiveness and have received absolution from a priest; and that....” “And that your father did!” interrupted the old man. “Peace be to him! He is now, no doubt, gazing on the glory of the Lord. And nevertheless I could forbid the priesthood here showing him honor at the grave.--Why? For what urgent reason was such a prohibition spoken by a friend against a friend?” “Because you wished to brand him, in the eyes of the world, as the man who lent his support to the unbelievers and helped them to victory,” said Orion gloomily. “How well the boy can read the thoughts of men!” exclaimed the prelate, looking at the young man with approbation in which, however, there was some irony and annoyance. “Very good. We will assume that my object was to show the Christians of Memphis what fate awaits the man, who surrenders his country to the enemy and walks hand-in-hand with unbelievers? And may I not possibly have been right?” “Do you suppose my father invited the Arabs?” interrupted the young man. “No, Child,” replied the patriarch, “the enemy came of his own free will.” “And you,” Orion went on, “after the Greeks had driven you into exile, prophesied from the desert that they would come and overthrow the Melchites, the Greek enemies of our faith, drive them out of the country.”