Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 4. Chapter IV (continued)

'Son, on earth we shall meet no more. Forget not this hour,--what are the pleasures and the pomps of life? As the lamp shines, so life glitters for an hour; but the soul's light is the star that burns for ever, in the heart of inimitable space.'

It was then that their conversation fell upon the general and sublime doctrines of immortality; it soothed and elevated the young mind of the convert, which yet clung to many of the damps and shadows of that cell of faith which he had so lately left--it was the air of heaven breathing on the prisoner released at last. There was a strong and marked distinction between the Christianity of the old man and that of Olinthus; that of the first was more soft, more gentle, more divine. The heroism of Olinthus had something in it fierce and intolerant--it was necessary to the part he was destined to play--it had in it more of the courage of the martyr than the charity of the saint. It aroused, it excited, it nerved, rather than subdued and softened. But the whole heart of that divine old man was bathed in love; the smile of the Deity had burned away from it the leaven of earthlier and coarser passions, and left to the energy of the hero all the meekness of the child.

'And now,' said he, rising at length, as the sun's last ray died in the west; 'now, in the cool of twilight, I pursue my way towards the Imperial Rome. There yet dwell some holy men, who like me have beheld the face of Christ; and them would I see before I die.'

'But the night is chill for thine age, my father, and the way is long, and the robber haunts it; rest thee till to-morrow.'

'Kind son, what is there in this scrip to tempt the robber? And the Night and the Solitude!--these make the ladder round which angels cluster, and beneath which my spirit can dream of God. Oh! none can know what the pilgrim feels as he walks on his holy course; nursing no fear, and dreading no danger--for God is with him! He hears the winds murmur glad tidings; the woods sleep in the shadow of Almighty wings--the stars are the Scriptures of Heaven, the tokens of love, and the witnesses of immortality. Night is the Pilgrim's day.' With these words the old man pressed Apaecides to his breast, and taking up his staff and scrip, the dog bounded cheerily before him, and with slow steps and downcast eyes he went his way.