name of Roman; and, inasmuch as you wronged the earthly Rome, even so did you sin against that Eternal State of the Supreme Lord whereof by baptism you were made a citizen.  By such as you, O Basil, is the anger of our God prolonged, and lest you should think that, amid a long and bloody war, amid the trampling of armies, the fall of cities, one death more is of no account, I say to you that, in the eyes of the All-seeing, this deed of yours may be of heavier moment than the slaughter of a battlefield.  From your own lips it is manifest that you had not even sound assurance of the guilt you professed to punish.  It may be that the man had not wronged you as you supposed.  A little patience, a little of the calm which becomes a reasoning soul, and you might not only have saved yourself from crime, but have resolved what must now ever be a doubt to your harassed thoughts.’

‘Such words did Veranilda herself speak,’ exclaimed Basil.  ’And I, in my frenzy, thought them only a lamentation for the death of her lover.’

’Call it frenzy; but remember, O my son, that no less a frenzy was every act of your life, and every thought, which led you on the path to that ultimate sin.  Frenzy it is to live only for the flesh; frenzy, to imagine that any good can come of aught you purpose without beseeching the divine guidance.’

Much else did the abbot utter in this vein of holy admonition.  And Basil would have listened with the acquiescence of a perfect faith, but that there stirred within. him the memory of what he had read in Augustine’s pages, darkening his spirit.  At length he found courage to speak of this, and asked in trembling tones: 

’Am I one of those born to sin and to condemnation?  Am I of those unhappy beings who strive in vain against a doom predetermined by the Almighty?’

Benedict’s countenance fell; not as if in admission of a dread possibility, but rather as in painful surprise.

‘You ask me,’ he answered solemnly, after a pause, ’what no man should ask even when he communes with his own soul in the stillness of night.  The Gospel is preached to all; nowhere in the word of God are any forbidden to hear it, or, hearing, to accept its solace.  Think not upon that dark mystery, which even to the understandings God has most enlightened shows but as a formless dread.  The sinner shall not brood upon his sin, save to abhor it.  Shall he who repents darken repentance with a questioning of God’s mercy?  Then indeed were there no such thing as turning from wrong to righteousness.’

‘When I sent you that book,’ he resumed, after observing the relief that came to Basil’s face, ’I had in mind only its salutary teaching for such as live too much in man’s world, and especially for those who, priding themselves upon the name of Roman, are little given to reflection upon all the evil Rome has wrought.  Had I known what lay upon your conscience, I should have withheld from you everything but Holy Writ.’