t.

"Brother Marbodius," he replied, "I am certain that on all occasions
Virgil gives expression to wise maxims and profound thoughts. But the
songs that he modulates on his Syracusan flute hold such a lofty meaning
and such exalted doctrine that I am continually puzzled by them."

"Take care, father," cried Brother Jacinth, in an agitated voice.
"Virgil was a magician who wrought marvels by the help of demons. It is
thus he pierced through a mountain near Naples and fashioned a bronze
horse that had power to heal all the diseases of horses. He was a
necromancer, and there is still shown, in a certain town in Italy, the
mirror in which he made the dead appear. And yet a woman deceived this
great sorcerer. A Neapolitan courtesan invited him to hoist himself up
to her window in the basket that was used to bring the provisions, and
she left him all night suspended between two storeys."

Brother Hilary did not appear to hear these observations.

"Virgil is a prophet," he replied, "and a prophet who leaves far behind
him the sibyls with their sacred verses as well as the daughter of King
Priam, and that great diviner of future things, Plato of Athens. You
will find in the fourth of his Syracusan cantos the birth of our Lord
foretold in a lancune that seems of heaven rather than of earth.* In the
time of my early studies, when I read for the first time JAM REDIT ET
VIRGO, I felt myself bathed in an infinite delight, but I immediately
experienced intense grief at the thought that, for ever deprived of the
presence of God, the author of this prophetic verse, the noblest that
has come from human lips, was pining among the heathen in eternal
darkness. This cruel thought did not leave me. It pursued me even in
my studies, my prayers, my meditations, and my ascetic labours. Thinkin
that Virgil was deprived of the sight of God and that possibly he might
even be suffering the fate of the reprobate in hell, I could neither
enjoy peace nor rest, and I went so far as to exclaim several times a
day with my arms outstretched to heaven:

"'Reveal to me, O Lord, the lot thou hast assigned to him who sang on
earth as the angels sing in heaven!'

*Three centuries before the epoch in which our Marbodius
lived the words--

'Maro, vates gentilium
Da Christo testimonium.'

Were sung in the churches on Christmas Day.

"After some years my anguish ceased when I read in an old book that
the great apostle St. P