You look at me enquiringly, and I can see in your eyes that I seem to you a severe judge.

Of what are you accused?
You have suffered an institution of the past to be set aside.

It does not matter--so the short-sighted and heedless think; but I say to you, you have doubly transgressed, because the wrong-doer was the king's daughter, whom all look up to, great and small, and whose actions may serve as an example to the people.

On whom then must a breach of the ancient institutions lie with the darkest stain if not on the highest in rank?
In a few days it will be said the paraschites are men even as we are, and the old law to avoid them as unclean is folly.

And will the reflections of the people, think you, end there, when it is so easy for them to say that he who errs in one point may as well fail in all?
In questions of faith, my son, nothing is insignificant.