Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/380

344 God for being lifted a few steps nearer heaven, while the others, as he said, crawled about on the flat earth.

A miracle must have happened to the resolute old man. If you had heard, as I did, the shrieks from the prison, that day in the summer when Hilarion and the others were tortured! They were like no other shrieks—agonised, rasping, mixed with hissing sounds every time the white-hot iron buried itself in the raw flesh.

Oh, Cyrillus, have you forgotten how the shrieks passed over into song? Did not Hilarion sing even in death? Did not that heroic Cappadocian boy sing until he gave up the ghost under the hands of the torturers? Did not Agathon, that boy's brother, sing until he swooned away, and then woke up in madness?

Verily I say unto you, so long as song rings out above our sorrows, Satan shall never conquer!

Be of good cheer. Love one another and suffer one for another, as Serapion in Doristora lately suffered for his brothers, for love of whom he let himself be scourged, and cast alive into the furnace!

See, see,—has not the Lord's avenging hand already been raised against the ungodly? Have you not heard the tidings from Heliopolis under Lebanon?