Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/313

Rh guest of a day—a traveller hastily journeying to a distant land? He is a slave, because he is subject to the bonds of the tomb; death fetters him, sweeps off from the scene, even the memorials of his name, and causes his days to drop away, like the leaves in autumn. But according to his desert, will he be rewarded or punished. Again, man is the 'guest of a day,' for he lingers a few short hours, and then oblivion covers him as with a garment. He is also a 'traveller journeying to a distant land.' He passes on, sleepless and watchful, with scarce a moment given him to snatch the means of subsistence, and discharge the relative duties of his station. Death hurries him away. How much, therefore, are we called upon to provide every requisite for the journey—that is, the virtues which beseem and support the Christian. To your second question, 'What man is like?' I answer, that he resembles a sheet of ice, which the heat of noon certainly and rapidly dissolves. Thus man, mixed up of gross and elementary particles, by the fervor of his own infirmities, quickly falls into corruption.