While this joy was in their hearts, the road passed into
a mighty forest. And suddenly among the shadows of the trees a
miserable spectacle crossed their path. It was a crowd of peasants of
the very poorest class. A plague had fallen on their homes, and they
were fleeing from their village, which lay among the trees a mile or
two to the right.
Yestergold was the first to meet them. He was filled with anguish.
His sensitive nature could not bear to see suffering in others. He
shrank from the very sight of misery. Turning to his companions, he
said, "If the Lord of Life had been traveling on this road as He was on
that other, long ago, when the widow of Nain met Him with her dead son,
He would have destroyed the plague by a word." "Oh, holy and beautiful
Age!" exclaimed the poet, "why dost thou lie in thy soft swathings of
light, and power to do mighty deeds, so far behind us in the past?"
"But let us use it as a golden background," said the painter. "That is
the beautiful Age on which Art is called to portray the Divine form of
the Great Physician!" Saying these fine words, the party rode swiftly
past.
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