le
at this confusion of the meditative recluses, but you forget"--and a
sinister fire glowed in his eyes--"that the slave, too, has a soul, in
which the same feelings stir as in your own. You never think how a
proud man may feel whose arm you brand, and whose very breath of life is
indignity; or what a slave thinks who is spurned by his master's foot,
though noble blood may run in his veins. All living things, even the
plants in the garden, have a right to happiness, and only develop fully
in freedom, and under loving care; and yet one half of mankind robs the
other half of this right. The sum total of suffering and sorrow to which
Fate had doomed the race is recklessly multiplied and increased by the
guilt of men themselves. But the cry of the poor and wretched has gone
up to heaven, and now that the fullness of time is come, 'Thus far, and
no farther,' is the word. No wild revolutionary has been endowed with
a giant's strength to burst the bonds of the victims asunder. No, the
Creator and Preserver of the world sent his Son to redeem the poor in
spirit, and, above all, the brethren and the sisters who are weary and
heavy laden. The magical word which shall break the bars of the prisons
where the chains of the slaves are heard is Love.... But you, Melissa,
can but half comprehend all this," he added, interrupting the ardent
flow of his enthusiastic speech. "You can not understand it all. For
you, too, child, the fullness of time is coming; for you, too, freeborn
though you are, are, I know, one of the heavy laden who patiently suffer
the burden laid upon you. You too--But keep close to me; we shall find
it difficult to get through this throng."

It was, in fact, no easy matter to get across the crowd which was
pouring noisily down the street of Hermes, into which this narrow way
led. How ever, they achieved it, and when Melissa had recovered her
breath in a quiet lane in Rhakotis, she turned to her companion again
with the question, "And when do you suppose that your predictions will
be fulfilled?"

"As soon as the breeze blows which shall shake the overripe fruit
from the tree. It may be tomorrow, or not yet, according to the
long-suffering of the Most High. But the entire collapse of the world in
which we have been living is as certain to come as that you are walking
here with me!"

Melissa walked on with a quaking heart, as she heard her friend's tone
of conviction; he, however, was aware that the inmost meaning