“ ‘Sursum corda!’ ” answered he; “I know those words. They are old friends; where have I heard them? I can’t recollect; but they are in my earliest memories. Ah! but, my father, my heart is below, not above. I want to tell you all. I want to tell you about one who has enthralled my heart; who has divided it with my True Love. But I daren’t speak of her, as I have said; I dare not speak, lest I be carried away. O, I blush to say it; she is a heathen! May God save her soul! Will He come to me, and not to her? ‘Investigabiles viæ ejus.’ ”

He remained silent for some time; then he said, “Father, I mean to dedicate myself to God, simply, absolutely, with His grace. I will be His, and He shall be mine. No one shall come between us. But O this weak heart!”

“Keep your good resolves till you are stronger,” said the priest. “It is easy to make them on a sick-bed. You must first reckon the charges.”

Agellius smiled. “I know the passage, father,” he said, and he repeated the sacred words: “If any man come to Me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”

Another time Agellius said: “The Martyrs; surely the old bishop used to say something about the Martyrs. He spoke of a second baptism, and called it a baptism of blood; and said, ‘Might his soul be with the Martyrs!’ Father, would not this wash out every thing, as the first?”

It was now Cæcilius who smiled, and his eyes shone like the sapphires of the Holy City; and he seemed the ideal of him who, when

“Called upon to face

Some awful moment to which heaven has joined

Great issues, good or bad for humankind,

Is happy as a lover, and attired

With sudden brightness, like a man inspired.”

However, he soon controlled himself, and said, “Quo ego vado, non potes me modo sequi; sequeris autem postea.”

CHAPTER XIV.
A SMALL CLOUD.