Читать книгу Fabiola; Or, The Church of the Catacombs онлайн

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Fabiola had measured his character; had caught, with her penetrating eye, the affectation of his manner, and the cunning of his looks; and could not help contrasting him with the frank and generous Sebastian. “What a noble fellow that Sebastian is!” she said to herself. “How different from all the other youths that come here. Never a foolish word escapes his lips, never an unkind look darts from his bright and cheerful eye. How abstemious, as becomes a soldier, at the table; how modest, as befits a hero, about his own strength and bold actions in war, which others speak so much about. Oh, if he only felt towards me as others pretend to do—” She did not finish the sentence, but a deep melancholy seemed to steal over her whole soul.

Then Syra’s conversation, and all that had resulted from it, passed again through her mind; it was painful to her, yet she could not help dwelling on it; and she felt as if that day were a crisis in her life. Her pride had been humbled by a slave, and her mind softened, she knew not how. Had her eyes been opened in that hour; and had she been able to look up above this world, she would have seen a soft cloud like incense, but tinged with a rich carnation, rising from the bed-side of a kneeling slave (prayer and willing sacrifice of life breathed upwards together), which, when it struck the crystal footstool of a mercy-seat in heaven, fell down again as a dew of gentlest grace upon her arid heart.