'
'It is the right feeling' said Tancred. 'I am persuaded we ought all to
go.'
'But we remain here,' said the lady, in a tone of suppressed and elegant
anguish; 'here, where we all complain of our hopeless lives; with not
a thought beyond the passing hour, yet all bewailing its wearisome and
insipid moments.'
'Our lot is cast in a material age,' said Tancred.
'The spiritual can alone satisfy me,' said Lady Bertie and Bellair.
'Because you have a soul,' continued Tancred, with animation, 'still
of a celestial hue. They are rare in the nineteenth century. Nobody now
thinks about heaven. They never dream of angels. All their existence is
concentrated in steamboats and railways.'
'You are right,' said the lady, earnestly; 'and you fly from it.'
'I go for other purposes; I would say even higher ones,' said Tancred.
'I can understand you; your feelings are my own. Jerusalem has been
the dream of my life. I have always been endeavouring to reach it, but
somehow or other I never got further than Paris.'
'And yet it is very easy now to get to Jerusalem,' said Tancred; 'the
great difficulty, as a very remarkable man said to me this morning, is
to know what to do when you are there.'
'Who said that to you?' inquired Lady Bertie and Bellair, bending her
head.
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