fingers, though
in the execution, no doubt, of what I deemed the highest duties. Would
you believe it, Paula?--Forgive an old man for such fatherly familiarity
with the daughter of Thomas;--hardly five years after my marriage with
this good wife, not long after we had lost our only son, I left her and
our little daughter, Pul there, for more than two years, to follow the
Emperor Heraclius of my own free will to the war against the Persians who
had done me no harm--not, indeed, as a soldier, but as a surgeon eager
for experience. To confess the truth I was quite as eager to see and
treat fractures and wounds and injuries in great numbers, as I was to
exercise benevolence. I came home with a broken hip-bone, tolerably
patched up, and again, a few years later, I could not keep still in one
place. The bird of passage must need drag wife and child from the peace
of hearth and homestead, and take them to where he could go to the high
school. A husband, a father, and already grey-headed, I was a singular
exception among the youths who sat listening to the lectures and
explanations of their teachers; but as sure as man is the standard of all
things, they none of them outdid me in diligence and zeal, though many a
one was greatly my superior in gifts and intellect, and among them the
foremost was our friend Philippus. Thus it came about, noble Paula, that
the old man and the youth in his prime were fellow-students; but to this
day the senior gladly bows down to his young brother in learning and
feeling. To straighten, to comfort, and to heal: this is the aim of his
life too. And even I, an old man, who started long before Philippus on
the same career, often long to call myself his disciple."

Here Rufinus paused and rose; Paula, too, got up, grasped his hand
warmly, and said:

"If I were a man, I would join you! But Philippus has told me that even a
woman may be allowed to work with the same purpose.--And now let me beg
of you never to call me anything but Paula--you will not refuse me this
favor. I never thought I could be so happy again as I am with you; here
my heart is free and whole. Dame Joanna, do you be my mother! I have lost
the best of fathers, and till I find him again, you, Rufinus, must fill
his place!"

"Gladly, gladly!" cried the old man; he clasped both her hands and went
on vivaciously: "And in return I ask you to be an elder sister to Pul.
Make that timid little thing such a maiden as you are yourself.--But