find
sanctuary there, as malefactors find it?"

The chaplain shook his head. "It is as I feared," he said, "and Satan
has spread his subtlest snare for you; for if he tempts some in the
guise of sensual pleasure, or of dark fears and spiritual abandonment,
it is said that to those he most thirsts to destroy he appears in the
likeness of their Saviour. You tell me it is to right the wrongs of the
poor and the humble that your new friends, the philosophers, have
assailed the authority of Christ. I have only one answer to make:
Christ, as you said just now, died for the poor--how many of your
philosophers would do as much? Because men hunger and thirst, is that a
sign that He has forsaken them? And since when have earthly privileges
been the token of His favour? May He not rather have designed that, by
continual sufferings and privations, they shall lay up for themselves
treasures in Heaven such as your eyes and mine shall never see or our
ears hear? And how dare you assume that any temporal advantages could
atone for that of which your teachings must deprive them--the heavenly
consolations of the love of Christ?"

Odo listened with a sense of deepening discouragement. "But is it
necessary," he urged, "to confound Christ with His ministers, the law
with its exponents? May not men preserve their hope of heaven and yet
lead more endurable lives on earth?"

"Ah, my child, beware, for this is the heresy of private judgment, which
has already drawn down thousands into the pit. It is one of the most
insidious errors in which the spirit of evil has ever masqueraded; for
it is based on the fallacy that we, blind creatures of a day, and
ourselves in the meshes of sin, can penetrate the counsels of the
Eternal, and test the balances of the heavenly Justice. I tremble to
think into what an abyss your noblest impulses may fling you, if you
abandon yourself to such illusions; and more especially if it pleases
God to place in your hands a small measure of that authority of which He
is the supreme repository.--When I took leave of you here nine years
since," Don Gervaso continued in a gentler tone, "we prayed together in
the chapel; and I ask you, before setting out on your new life, to
return there with me and lay your doubts and difficulties before Him who
alone is able to still the stormy waves of the soul."

Odo, touched by the appeal, accompanied him to the chapel, and knelt on
the steps whence his young spirit had once soared u