For what then? Because,--yet, no, that cannot be,--because
I bear a stubborn heart? because I will not bend my soul as He has bent
my body? Partly,--but you are witless! What else? Because I toss off a
shield and buckler, you say. Because I will not lean upon a tower of
strength. Because I will not throw myself on the tide of divine love,
and trust myself to its course. It was that divine love, then, that
tower of strength, that shield and buckler, that made me this thing you
see. Tarpeia was enough. Away with your generalities! Go, go, you slave
of the past!
Yet no,--you have not gone? You believe what you say,--I know with those
eyes you cannot deceive. Ah, but I trusted her eyes once! Yet it gives
you rest;--your sorrows are not like mine,--there is no rest for me. I
cannot go and gather that balm of Gilead,--I have no legs. I have as
good as none. This wheel-chair and that dog of a turnkey are not the
equipage for such a journey.--Ah, do not turn from me now! My railing is
worse than my cursing, you feel indeed. Well, stay with me at least, and
if it is twelve years since you shrived me at first, perhaps you shall
shrive me at last,--for I doubt if I am ever brought out to this
sunshine again, if I do not die in the prison-damps to-night,--and you,
with all your change, are Father Anshmo, I think.
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