And if I ever arrived at such a one, believe me, it would be by some such practical demonstration as this very tent has given me.' 'This tent ?' 'Yes, sir, this tent; within which I have seen you and your children lead a life of deeds as new to me the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia the Gentile.

I have watched you for many a day, and not in vain.

When I saw you, an experienced officer, encumber your flight with wounded men, I was only surprised.

But since I have seen you and your daughter, and, strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades of a son, starving yourselves to feed those poor ruffians--performing for them, day and night, the offices of menial slaves--comforting them, as no man ever comforted me--blaming no one but yourselves, caring for every one but yourselves, sacrificing nothing but yourselves; and all this without hope of fame or reward, or dream of appeasing the wrath of any god or goddess, but simply because you thought it right....

When I saw that, sir, and more which I have seen; and when, reading in this book here, I found most unexpectedly those very grand moral rules which you were practising, seeming to spring unconsciously, as natural results, from the great thoughts, true or false, which had preceded them; then, sir, I began to suspect that the creed which could produce such deeds as I have watched within the last few days, might have on its side not merely a slight preponderance of probabilities, but what the Jews used once to call, when we believed in it--or in anything--the mighty power of God.' And as he spoke, he looked into the Prefect's face with the look of a man wrestling in some deadly struggle; so intense and terrible was the earnestness of his eye, that even the old soldier shrank before it.
'And therefore,' he went on, 'therefore, sir, beware of your own actions, and of your children's.