and Probus Christians, then
ought you not to complain, but acquiesce; and, more than that, revere
the Providence that has done it, and love those none the less whom it
has directed into the path in which it would have them go. True piety,
is the mother of charity.'

'Princess,' rejoined Isaac, 'you are right. The true love of God cannot
exist, without making us true lovers of man; and Piso I do love, and
think none the worse of him for his Christian name. But, touching
Probus, and others, I experience some difficulty. Yet may I perhaps,
escape thus--I may love them as men, yet hate them as Christians; just
as I would bind up the wounds of a thief or an assassin, whom I found by
the wayside, and yet the next hour bear witness against him, and without
compunction behold him swinging upon the gibbet! It is hard, lady, for
the Jew to love a Christian and a Roman.--But how have I been led away
from what I wished chiefly to say before departing! When I spake just
now of the darkness of Providence, I was thinking, Piso, of my journey
across the desert for thy Persian brother, Calpurnius. That, as I then
said to thee, was dark to me. I could not comprehend how it should come
to pass that I, a Jew, of no less zeal than Simon Ben Gorah himself,
should tempt such dangers in the service of thee, a Roman, and half a
Christian.'

'And is the enigma solved at length?' asked Julia.

'I could have interpreted it by saying that the merit of doing a
benevolent action was its solution.'

'That was little or nothing, princess. But I confess to thee, that the
two gold talents of Jerusalem were much. Still, neither they, nor what
profit I made in the streets of Ecbatana, and even out of that new
Solomon the hospitable Levi, clearly explained the riddle. I have been
in darkness till of late. And how, think you, the darkness has been
dispersed?'

'We cannot tell.'

'I believe not. Piso! princess! I am the happiest man in Rome.'

'Not happier, Isaac, than Civilis the perfumer.'

'Name him not, Piso. Of all the men--he is no man--of all the living
things in Rome I hold him meanest. Him, Piso, I hate. Why, I will not
tell thee, but thou mayest guess. Nay, not now. I would have thee first
know why I am the happiest man in Rome. Remember you the woman and the
child, whom, in the midst of that burning desert, we found sitting, more
dead than alive, at the roots of a cedar--the wife, as we afterwards
found, of Hassan the camel-driver--and h