"Well, well, I pardon you from indulgence, to use the expression of the Apostle, but, on condition that you will be more courageous for the future, and that you will shut up tightly in the casket of silence all like favours which God sends to you, so as not to let their perfume escape, and that you will render thanks in your heart to our Father in Heaven, Who deigns to bestow upon you a tiny splinter from the Cross of His Son. What! you delight in wearing a heavy cross of gold upon your breast, and you cannot bear the weight of one light as is your own upon your heart, but must needs try to rid yourself of it by complaining! Then, again, even when it is gone, you must needs talk about what you have put up with, and would like me to consider you patient merely because you do not openly resent the wrong done you. As if the great virtue of patience consisted only in the not revenging yourself, and not much more, as it really does, in uttering no word of complaint. "Moreover, it appears to me that you are quite wrong in so much as talking about being _patient_ under injuries such as you have suffered. Patience is too distinguished a virtue to be needed for so trivial an act--the lesser good qualities of moderation, forbearance, and silence would amply suffice. _In silence and In hope shall your strength be_."[7] So he dismissed me, ashamed of myself, it is true, but, like the giant of fable, strengthened by having fallen. On leaving him I felt as if all the insults in the world would henceforth fail to make me utter one single word of complaint. I was much consoled afterwards by coming across, in one of his letters, the same remark about moderation and forbearance as he had then addressed to me. He writes: "Nothing can have a more tranquillizing effect upon us in this world than the frequent consideration of the afflictions, necessities, contempts, calumnies, insults, and humiliations which our Lord suffered from His birth to His most painful death. When we contemplate such a weight of bitterness as this, are we not wrong in giving to the trifling misfortunes which befall us, even the names of adversities and injuries? Are we not ashamed to ask a share of His divine patience to help us to bear such trifles as these, seeing that the smallest modicum of moderation and humility would suffice to make us bear calmly the insults offered to us?" [Footnote 1: 2 Tim. iv. 2] [Footnote 2: Psalm xxxviii. 10.] [Footnote 3: Job i. 21.] [Footnote 4: Psalm xxii. 4.] [Footnote 5: Psalm lxxxvii. 5, 6.] [Footnote 6: Psalm xxxvii. 15.] [Footnote 7: Isaiah xxx. 15.] HOW TO PROFIT BY BEARING WITH INSULTS. He used to say that a harvest of virtues could be gathered in from a crop of affronts and injuries, because they offer us in abundance opportunities of making such acts as the following: