anger, without
sarcasm; speak to him affectionately. Besides, what do you know of his
wrong-doing? Are all his thoughts familiar to you? May there not be
something that justifies him? And you, are you entirely free from
reproach? Have you never done wrong? And if not, was it fear that
restrained you? Was it pride, or what?"

In the synoptic gospels similar recommendations appear. Charity is the
New Testament told in a word. Christians read and forget it. But
Christians are not philosophers. The latter are charitable because they
regard evil as a part of the universal order of things, one which it is
idle to blame, yet permissible to rectify.

From whatever source such a tenet springs, whether from materialism,
stoicism, pyrrhonism, epicureanism, atheism even, is of small matter;
it is a tenet which is honorable to the holder. This sceptred
misanthrope possessed it, and it was in that his wife was blessed.
Years later he died, forgiving her in silence, praising her aloud.
Claud, referring to Messalina, shouted through the Forum that the fate
which destined him to marry impure women destined him to punish them.
Marcus Aurelius said nothing. He did not know what fate destined him to
do, but he did know that philosophy taught him to forgive.

It was this philosophy that first perplexed Faustine. She was restless,
frivolous, perhaps also a trifle depraved. Frivolous because all women
were, depraved because her mother was, and restless because of the
curiosity that inflammable imaginations share--in brief, a Roman
princess. Her husband differed from the Roman prince. His youth had not
been entirely circumspect; he, too, had his curiosities, but they were
satisfied, he had found that they stained. When he married he was
already the thinker; doubtless, he was tiresome; he could have had
little small-talk, and his hours of love-making must have been rare.
Presently the affairs of state engrossed him. Faustine was left to
herself; save a friend of her own sex, a woman can have no worse
companion. She, too, discovered she had curiosities. A gladiator passed
that way--then Rome; then Lesbos; then the Lampsacene. "You are my
husband's mistress," her daughter cried at her. "And you," the mother
answered, "are your brother's." Even in the aridity of a chronicle the
accusation and rejoinder are dramatic. Fancy what they must have been
when mother and daughter hissed them in each other's teeth. Whether the
argument continued is imma