Dear and Glorious Physician Read Online Free PDF Page B

filled the courtyard with a stream of shifting light, and the shadows of the palms fell sharply on the white stones and the white walls of the house, and crept into the colonnades, which had begun to gleam as if made of yellow marble. The scent of jasmine rose in waves about the man and the boy, and crickets shrilled in the grass and among the colorless flowers. Somewhere, out of sight, a carapaced animal scraped over the stones.
     
    Diodorus remembered a name he heard from a Jewish princeling: Adonoi. He said to Lucanus, “Is His name Adonoi?”
     
    “He has no name, Master, that men know,” replied the boy.
     
    “Anyway, I seem to remember that it just means ‘Lord’,” said Diodorus abstractedly. “He is the God of the Jews.”
     
    “But the Unknown God is the God of all men,” said Lucanus, earnestly. “He is the God not only of the Jews, but of the Romans and the Greeks and the pagans and of slaves and Caesars, and of wild men in the forests and in lands yet unknown.”
     
    “How do you know this, child?” asked Diodorus, with a slight smile.
     
    “I know. I know it in my heart. No one has told me,” said Lucanus, with simplicity.
     
    Diodorus was strangely moved. He remembered that the gods often preferred to give their wisdom to children, whose minds were not distorted and crippled by life.
     
    “Someday,” said Lucanus, “I shall find Him.”
     
    “Where?” asked Diodorus, trying for indulgence.
     
    But Lucanus had lifted his face to the sky, and his profile was flooded with the golden light of the moon. “I do not know where, but I shall find Him. I shall hear His voice, and I shall know Him. He is everywhere, but I shall know Him in particular, and He shall speak to me, not only in the moon and the sun, the flowers and the stones, the birds and the winds, and the dawns and the sunsets. I shall serve Him, and give my heart and my life to Him.”
     
    There was joy in the boy’s voice, and again Diodorus felt a quiver of superstition.
     
    “And you prayed to Him for Rubria?” he said.
     
    Lucanus turned his face to him, and smiled. “Yes, Master.”
     
    “But what do you call Him, child, when you pray?”
     
    Lucanus hesitated. He gazed at Diodorus as if pleading with him. “I call Him Father,” he said, in a low tone.
     
    Diodorus was amazed, and taken aback. No one ever called any of the gods Father. It was ridiculous. It would affront the gods to be addressed so familiarly by insignificant man. If this boy spoke so to the Unknown God, who knew but what, in His godly anger, He might not strike furiously at the object of the prayers? Rubria!
     
    Diodorus said sternly, “No man, not even the sons of the gods, ever dared call a god ‘Father’. It is outrageous. It is true that many of the gods have sons and daughters by mortal men and women, but even so — ”
     
    “Master, you speak angrily,” said Lucanus, not in the voice of fear and servility, but in the remorseful voice of one who has unwittingly offended and begs forgiveness. “The Unknown God is not inflamed when one of His children calls Him Father. He is pleased.”
     
    “But how do you know, boy?”
     
    “I know in my heart. And so, when I call Him Father, and ask Him to cure Rubria, I know He listens gently, and will cure her, for He loves her.”
     
    A gentle god. That was absurd. The gods were not gentle. They were jealous of their honor, and they were vengeful and remote and powerful. Diodorus stared at Lucanus. His first thought was to reprove the boy, and to make a mental note to request Aeneas to punish his presumptuous son. The words of cold rebuke were already on the lips of Diodorus when the moon struck fully on the face of Lucanus, and it became supernaturally radiant.
     
    Then he remembered what this boy had said: “He loves her.” The gods did not ‘love’ men. They demanded worship and sacrifice from them, but man, as man, was a worthless thing to the gods.
     
    “He loves her.”