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As for Arsenius's tears, it is easy to call his grief exaggerated or superstitious: but those who look on them with human eyes will pardon them, and watch with sacred pity the grief of a good man, who felt that his life had been an utter failure.
Augustine himself tells us of the horrible joy which he, in his youth, had seen come over the vast ring of flushed faces at these horrid sights; and in Arsenius's own time, his miserable pupil, the weak Honorius, bethought himself of celebrating once more the heathen festival of the Secular Games, and formally to allow therein an exhibition of gladiators.
THE little porter, after having carried Arsenius's message to Miriam, had run back in search of Philammon and his foster-father; and not finding them, had spent the evening in such frantic rushings to and fro, as produced great doubts of his sanity among the people of the quarter.
But the two lads had neither their father's strength nor their father's nobleness. Weak and profligate, they fretted Arsenius's soul day by day; and, at last, so goes the story, provoked him so far that, according to the fashion of a Roman pedagogue, he took the ferula and administered to one of the princes a caning, which he no doubt deserved.
'Ah! my father, said Philammon, glad in his heart of any excuse to turn the conversation, and yet half uneasy and suspicious at Arsenius's evident determination to avoid the very object of his visit. 'It must have been you, then, whom I saw stop and speak to Pelagia at the farther end of the street. What words could you possibly have had wherewith to honour such a creature? 'God knows.
If there is reason in it, I will bear your message myself. Of what is she to be warned? 'Of a plot I know that there is a plot against her among the monks and Parabolani. As I lay in bed this morning in Arsenius's room they thought I was asleep 'Arsenius? Has that venerable fanatic, then, gone the way of all monastic flesh, and turned persecutor? 'God forbid!
'And are these your friends? 'Heaven forbid! I have nothing in common with such animals but flesh and blood, and a seat in the lecture-room! 'Of the heathen woman? Philammon, after the fashion of young men in fear, rushed desperately into the subject himself, just because he dreaded Arsenius's entering on it quietly. 'Yes, of the heathen woman.
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