At last she laid her hand on her son's shoulder, and spoke his name.

Polykarp stepped back, and looked at his mother in bewilderment, like a man roused from sleep; but she interrupted the stammering speech with which he tried to greet her, by saying, gravely and not without severity, as she pointed to the statue, "What does this mean ?" "What should it mean, mother ?" answered Polykarp in a low tone, and shaking his head sadly.

"Ask me no more at present, for if you gave me no rest, and even if I tried to explain to you how to-day--this very day--I have felt impelled and driven to make this woman's image, still you could not understand me--no, nor any one else." "God forbid that I should ever understand it!" cried Dorothea.

"'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,' was the commandment of the Lord on this mountain.

And you?
You think I could not understand you?
Who should understand you then, if not your mother?
This I certainly do not comprehend, that a son of Petrus and of mine should have thrown all the teaching and the example of his parents so utterly to the wind.