eep the flocks of Admetus?"

"Ay, the goat to Apollo!"

The goodness of the reader is again besought in favor of an
explanation. A certain facility of accommodation in the matter
of religion comes to us after much intercourse with people of a
different faith; gradually we attain the truth that every creed is
illustrated by good men who are entitled to our respect, but whom
we cannot respect without courtesy to their creed. To this point
Ben-Hur had arrived. Neither the years in Rome nor those in the
galley had made any impression upon his religious faith; he was
yet a Jew. In his view, nevertheless, it was not an impiety to
look for the beautiful in the Grove of Daphne.

The remark does not interdict the further saying, if his scruples
had been ever so extreme, not improbably he would at this time have
smothered them. He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of
a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells
of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the
wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden
annihilation of a hope--dream, if you will--in which the choicest
happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. In such case
nothing intermediate will carry off the passion--the quarrel is
with Fate.

Let us follow the philosophy a little further, and say to ourselves,
it were well in such quarrels if Fate were something tangible, to be
despatched with a look or a blow, or a speaking personage with whom
high words were possible; then the unhappy mortal would not always
end the affair by punishing himself.

In ordinary mood, Ben-Hur would not have come to the Grove alone,
or, coming alone, he would have availed himself of his position in
the consul's family, and made provision against wandering idly
about, unknowing and unknown; he would have had all the points
of interest in mind, and gone to them under guidance, as in the
despatch of business; or, wishing to squander days of leisure in
the beautiful place, he would have had in hand a letter to the
master of it all, whoever he might be. This would have made him
a sightseer, like the shouting herd he was accompanying; whereas he
had no reverence for the deities of the Grove, nor curiosity; a man
in the blindness of bitter disappointment, he was adrift, not waiting
for Fate, but seeking it as a desperate challenger.

Every one has known this condition of mind, though perhaps not all
in the same degree