OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# No Name/Between the Scenes 5/I

BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe.
"Park Terrace, St. John's Wood, November 5th.
"DEAR SIR—I came to London yesterday for the purpose of seeing a relative, leaving Mr. Vanstone at Baliol Cottage, and proposing to return to him in the course of the week. I reached London late last night, and drove to these lodgings, having written to secure accommodation beforehand.
"This morning's post has brought me a letter from my own maid, whom I left at Baliol Cottage, with instructions to write to me if anything extraordinary took place in my absence. You will find the girl's letter inclosed in this. I have had some experience of her; and I believe she is to be strictly depended on to tell the truth.
"I purposely abstain from troubling you by any useless allusions to myself. When you have read my maid's letter, you will understand the shock which the news contained in it has caused me. I can only repeat that I place implicit belief in her statement. I am firmly persuaded that my husband's former housekeeper has found him out, has practiced on his weakness in my absence, and has prevailed on him to make another Will. From what I know of this woman, I feel no doubt that she has used her influence over Mr. Vanstone to deprive me, if possible, of all future interests in my husband's fortune.
"Under such circumstances as these, it is in the last degree important—for more reasons than I need mention here—that I should see Mr. Vanstone, and come to an explanation with him, at the earliest possible opportunity. You will find that my maid thoughtfully kept her letter open until the last moment before post-time—without, however, having any later news to give me than that Mrs. Lecount was to sleep at the cottage last night and that she and Mr. Vanstone were to leave together this morning. But for that last piece of intelligence, I should have been on my way back to Scotland before now. As it is, I cannot decide for myself what I ought to do next. My going back to Dumfries, after Mr. Vanstone has left it, seems like taking a journey for nothing —and my staying in London appears to be almost equally useless.
"Will you kindly advise me in this difficulty? I will come to you at Lincoln's Inn at any time this afternoon or to-morrow which you may appoint. My next few hours are engaged. As soon as this letter is dispatched, I am going to Kensington, with the object of ascertaining whether certain doubts I feel about the means by which Mrs. Lecount may have accomplished her discovery are well founded or not. If you will let me have your answer by return of post, I will not fail to get back to St. John's Wood in time to receive it. Believe me, dear sir, yours sincerely,
"MAGDALEN VANSTONE."
# No Name/Between the Scenes 5/IV

IV.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn, November 6th.
"DEAR MADAM—This morning's post has doubtless brought you the same shocking news which it has brought to me. You must know by this time that a terrible affliction has befallen you—the affliction of your husband's sudden death.
"I am on the point of starting for the North, to make all needful inquiries, and to perform whatever duties I may with propriety undertake, as solicitor to the deceased gentleman. Let me earnestly recommend you not to follow me to Baliol Cottage, until I have had time to write to you first, and to give you such advice as I cannot, through ignorance of all the circumstances, pretend to offer now. You may rely on my writing, after my arrival in Scot-land, by the first post. I remain, dear madam, faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
# No Name/Between the Scenes 5/II

II.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn, November 5th.
"DEAR MADAM—Your letter and its inclosure have caused me great concern and surprise. Pressure of business allows me no hope of being able to see you either to-day or to-morrow morning. But if three o'clock to-morrow afternoon will suit you, at that hour you will find me at your service.
"I cannot pretend to offer a positive opinion until I know more of the particulars connected with this extraordinary business than I find communicated either in your letter or in your maid's. But with this reserve, I venture to suggest that your remaining in London until to-morrow may possibly lead to other results besides your consultation at my chambers. There is at least a chance that you or I may hear something further in this strange matter by the morning's post. I remain, dear madam, faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE."
# No Name/Between the Scenes 4/XIII

XIII.
From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount.
"Dark's Buildings. November 1st.
"DEAR MADAM—I have the pleasure of informing you that the discovery has been made with far less trouble than I had anticipated.
"Mr. and Mrs. Noel Vanstone have been traced across the Solway Firth to Dumfries, and thence to a cottage a few miles from the town, on the banks of the Nith. The exact address is Baliol Cottage, near Dumfries.
"This information, though easily hunted up, has nevertheless been obtained under rather singular circumstances.
"Before leaving Allonby, the persons in my employ discovered, to their surprise, that a stranger was in the place pursuing the same inquiry as themselves. In the absence of any instructions preparing them for such an occurrence as this, they took their own view of the circumstance. Considering the man as an intruder on their business, whose success might deprive them of the credit and reward of making the discovery, they took advantage of their superiority in numbers, and of their being first in the field, and carefully misled the stranger before they ventured any further with their own investigations. I am in possession of the details of their proceedings, with which I need not trouble you. The end is, that this person, whoever he may be, was cleverly turned back southward on a false scent before the men in my employment crossed the Firth.
"I mention the circumstance, as you may be better able than I am to find a clew to it, and as it may possibly be of a nature to induce you to hasten your journey.
"Your faithful servant,
"ALFRED DE BLERIOT."
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 228

Letter CCXXVIII.
To the magistrates of Colonia.
I have received your lordships’ letter, and offered thanks to God most holy, that you, occupied as you are with affairs of state, should not put those of the Church in the second place. I am grateful to think that every one of you has shewn anxiety as though he were acting in his own private interest, nay, in defence of his own life, and that you have written to me in your distress at the removal of your very God-beloved bishop Euphronius. Nicopolis has not really stolen him from you; were she pleading her cause before a judge she might say that she was recovering what is her own. If honourably treated she will tell you, as becomes an affectionate mother, that she will share with you the Father who will give a portion of his grace to each of you: he will not suffer the one to be in any way harmed by the invasion of their adversaries, and at the same time will not deprive you, the other, of the care to which you have been accustomed. Bethink you then of the emergency of the time; apply your best intelligence to understand how good government necessitates a certain course of action; and then pardon the bishops who have adopted this course for the establishment of the Churches of our Lord Jesus Christ. Suggest to yourselves what is becoming you. Your own intelligence needs no instruction. You know how to adopt the counsels of those who love you. It is only natural that you should be unaware of many of the questions that are being agitated, because of our being situated far away in Armenia; but we who are in the midst of affairs and have our ears dinned every day on all sides with news of Churches that are being overthrown, are in deep anxiety lest the common enemy, in envy at the protracted peace of our life, should be able to sow his tares in your ground too, and Armenia, as well as other places, be given over to our adversaries to devour. For the present be still, as not refusing to allow your neighbours to share with you the use of a goodly vessel. Ere long, if the Lord allow me to come to you, you shall, if it seem necessary to you, receive yet greater consolation for what has come to pass.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Of the same date as the preceding.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 220

Letter CCXX.
To the Beræans.
The Lord has given great consolation to all who are deprived of personal intercourse in allowing them to communicate by letter. By this means, it is true, we cannot learn the express image of the body, but we can learn the disposition of the very soul. Thus on the present occasion, when I had received the letter of your reverences, I at the same moment recognised you, and took your love towards me into my heart, and needed no long time to create intimacy with you. The disposition shewn in your letter was quite enough to enkindle in me affection for the beauty of your soul. And, besides your letter, excellent as it was, I had a yet plainer proof of how things are with you from the amiability of the brethren who have been the means of communication between us. The well-beloved and reverend presbyter Acacius, has told me much in addition to what you have written, and has brought before my eyes the conflict you have to keep up day by day, and the stoutness of the stand you are making for the true religion. He has thus so moved my admiration, and roused in me so earnest a desire of enjoying the good qualities in you, that I do pray the Lord that a time may come when I may know you and yours by personal experience. He has told me of the exactitude of those of you who are entrusted with the ministry of the altar, and moreover of the harmonious agreement of all the people, and the generous character and genuine love towards God of the magistrates and chief men of your city. I consequently congratulate the Church on consisting of such members, and pray that spiritual peace may be given to you in yet greater abundance, to the end that in quieter times you may derive enjoyment from your labours in the day of affliction. For sufferings that are painful while they are being experienced are naturally often remembered with pleasure. For the present I beseech you not to faint. Do not despair because your troubles follow so closely one upon another. Your crowns are near: the help of the Lord is near. Do not let all you have hitherto undergone go for nothing; do not nullify a struggle which has been famous over all the world. Human life is but of brief duration. “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.…The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” Let us hold fast to the commandment that abideth, and despise the unreality that passeth away. Many Churches have been cheered by your example. In calling new champions into the field you have won for yourselves a great reward, though you knew it not. The Giver of the prize is rich, and is able to reward you not unworthily for your brave deeds.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Placed in 375.
* ↑ The Syrian Beræa, Aleppo, or Haleb. cf. Letter clxxxv. p. 222.
* ↑ Is. xl. 6, 8.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume VIII/The Letters/Letter 221

Letter CCXXI.
To the Beræans.
You were previously known to me, my dear friends, by your far-famed piety, and by the crown won by your confession in Christ. Peradventure one of you may ask in reply who can have carried these tidings of us so far? The Lord Himself; for He puts His worshippers like a lamp on a lamp-stand, and makes them shine throughout the whole world. Are not winners in the games wont to be made famous by the prize of victory, and craftsmen by the skilful design of their work? Shall the memory of these and others like them abide for ever unforgotten, and shall not Christ’s worshippers concerning whom the Lord says Himself, Them that honour me I will honour, be made famous and glorious by Him before all? Shall He not display the brightness of their radiant splendour as He does the beams of the sun? But I have been moved to greater longing for you by the letter which you have been good enough to send me, a letter in which, above and beyond your former efforts on behalf of the truth, you have been yet more lavish of your abounding and vigorous zeal for the true faith. In all this I rejoice with you, and I pray with you that the God of the universe, Whose is the struggle and the arena, and Who gives the crown, may fill you with enthusiasm, may make your souls strong, and make your work such as to meet with His divine approval.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Placed in 375.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XI/John Cassian/Conferences of John Cassian, Part II/Conference XVI/Chapter 19

Chapter XIX.
Of those who fast out of rage.
There is too another evil sort of vexation which would not be worth mentioning were it not that we know it is allowed by some of the brethren who, when they have been vexed or enraged actually abstain persistently from food, so that (a thing which we cannot mention without shame) those who when they are calm declare that they cannot possibly put off their refreshment to the sixth or at most the ninth hour, when they are filled with vexation and rage do not feel fasts even for two days, and support themselves, when exhausted by such abstinence, by a surfeit of anger. Wherein they are plainly guilty of the sin of sacrilege, as out of the devil’s own rage they endure fasts which ought specially to be offered to God alone out of desire for humiliation of heart and purification from sin: which is much the same as if they were to offer prayers and sacrifices not to God but to devils, and so be worthy of hearing this rebuke of Moses: “They sacrificed to devils and not to God; to gods whom they knew not.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ Deut. xxxii. 17.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XI/John Cassian/Conferences of John Cassian, Part II/Conference XVI/Chapter 14

Chapter XIV.
On the different grades of love.
It is possible then for all to show that love which is called ἀγάπη, of which the blessed Apostle says: “While therefore we have time, let us do good unto all men, but specially to them that are of the household of faith.” And this should be shown to all men in general to such an extent that we are actually commanded by our Lord to yield it to our enemies, for He says: “Love your enemies.” But διάθεσις, i.e., affection is shown to but a few and those who are united to us by kindred dispositions or by a tie of goodness; though indeed affection seems to have many degrees of difference. For in one way we love our parents, in another our wives, in another our brothers, in another our children, and there is a wide difference in regard to the claims of these feelings of affection, nor is the love of parents towards their children always equal. As is shown by the case of the patriarch Jacob, who, though he was the father of twelve sons and loved them all with a father’s love, yet loved Joseph with deeper affection, as Scripture clearly shows: “But his brethren envied him, because his father loved him;” evidently not that that good man his father failed in greatly loving the rest of his children, but that in his affection he clung to this one, because he was a type of the Lord, more tenderly and indulgently. This also, we read, was very clearly shown in the case of John the Evangelist, where these words are used of him: “that disciple whom Jesus loved,” though certainly He embraced all the other eleven, whom He had chosen in the same way, with His special love, as this He shows also by the witness of the gospel, where He says: “As I have loved you, so do ye also love one another;” of whom elsewhere also it is said: “Loving His own who were in the world, He loved them even to the end.” But this love of one in particular did not indicate any coldness in love for the rest of the disciples, but only a fuller and more abundant love towards the one, which his prerogative of virginity and the purity of his flesh bestowed upon him. And therefore it is marked by exceptional treatment, as being something more sublime, because no hateful comparison with others, but a richer grace of superabundant love singled it out. Something of this sort too we have in the character of the bride in the Song of Songs, where she says: “Set in order love in me.” For this
is true love set in order, which, while it hates no one, yet loves some still more by reason of their deserving it, and which, while it loves all in general, singles out for itself some from those, whom it may embrace with a special affection, and again among those, who are the special and chief objects of its love, singles out some who are preferred to others in affection.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Gal. vi. 10.
* ↑ S. Matt. v. 44.
* ↑ Gen. xxxvii. 4.
* ↑ S. John xiii. 23.
* ↑ Ib. ver. 34, 1.
* ↑ Cant. ii. 4.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XI/John Cassian/Conferences of John Cassian, Part II/Conference XVI/Chapter 17

Chapter XVII.
Of those who hold that patience should be shown to worldly people rather than to the brethren.
This too should be bitterly lamented; namely, that some of the brethren, when angered by some reproachful words, if they are besieged by the prayers of some one else who wants to smooth them down, when they hear that vexation ought not to be admitted or retained against a brother, according to what is written: “Whoever is angry with his brother is in danger of the judgment;” and: “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” instantly assert that if a heathen or one living in the world had said or done this, it rightly ought to be endured. But who could stand a brother who was accessory to so great a fault, or gave utterance to so insolent a reproach with his lips! As if patience were to be shown only to unbelievers and blasphemers, and not to all in general, or as if anger should be reckoned as bad when it is against
a heathen, but good when it is against a brother; whereas certainly the obstinate rage of an angry soul brings about the same injury to one’s self whoever may be the subject against whom it is aroused. But how terribly obstinate, aye and senseless is it for them, owing to the stupidity of their dull mind, not to be able to discern the meaning of these words, for it is not said: “Every one who is angry with a stranger shall be in danger of the judgment,” which might perhaps according to their interpretation except those who are partners of our faith and life, but the word of the Gospel most significantly expresses it by saying: “Every one who is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment.” And so though we ought according to the rule of truth to regard every man as a brother, yet in this passage one of the faithful and a partaker of our mode of life is denoted by the title of brother rather than a heathen.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Eph. iv. 26.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XI/John Cassian/Conferences of John Cassian, Part II/Conference XVI/Chapter 2

Chapter II.
Discourse of the same elder on the untrustworthy sort of friendship.
There are many kinds of friendship and companionship which unite men in very different ways in the bonds of love. For some a previous recommendation makes to enter upon an intercourse first of acquaintance and afterwards even of friendship. In the case of others some bargain or an agreement to give and take something has joined them in the bonds of love. Others a similarity and union of business or science or art or study has united in the chain of friendship, by which even fierce souls become kindly disposed to each other, so that those, who in forests and mountains delight in robbery and revel in human bloodshed, embrace and cherish the partners of their crimes. But there is another kind of love, where the union is from the instincts of nature and the laws of consanguinity, whereby those of the same tribe, wives and parents, and brothers and children are naturally preferred to others, a thing which we find is the case not only with mankind but with all birds and beasts. For at the prompting of a natural instinct they protect and defend their offspring and their young ones so that often they are not afraid to expose themselves to danger and death for their sakes. Indeed those kinds of beasts and serpents and birds, which are cut off and separated from all others by their intolerable ferocity or deadly poison, as basilisks, unicorns and vultures, though by their very look they are said to be dangerous to every one, yet among themselves they remain peaceful and harmless owing to community of origin and fellow-feeling. But we see that all these kinds of love of which we have spoken, as they are common both to the good and bad, and to beasts and serpents, certainly cannot last for ever. For often separation of place interrupts and breaks them off, as well as forgetfulness from lapse of time, and the transaction of affairs and business and words. For as they are generally due to different kinds of connexions either of gain, or desires, or kinship, or business, so when any occasion for separation intervenes they are broken off.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XI/John Cassian/Conferences of John Cassian, Part II/Conference XVI/Chapter 16

Chapter XVI.
How it is that, if our brother has any grudge against us, the gifts of our prayers are rejected by the Lord.
So far therefore is our Lord anxious that we should not disregard the vexation of another that He does not accept our offerings if our brother has anything against us, i.e., He does not allow prayers to be offered by us to Him until by speedy amends we remove from his (our brother’s) mind the vexation which he whether rightly or wrongly feels. For He does not say: “if thy brother hath a true ground for complaint against thee leave thy gift at the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to him;” but He says: “if thou remember that thy brother hath aught against thee,” i.e., if there be anything however trivial or small, owing to which your brother’s anger is roused against you, and this comes back to your recollection by a sudden remembrance, you must know that you ought not to offer the spiritual gift of your prayers until by kindly amends you have removed from your brother’s heart the vexation arising from whatever cause. If then the words of the Gospel bid us make satisfaction to those who are angry for past and utterly trivial grounds of quarrel, and those which have arisen from the slightest causes, what will become of us wretches who with obstinate hypocrisy disregard more recent grounds of offence, and those of the utmost importance, and due to our own faults; and being puffed up with the devil’s own pride, as we are ashamed to humble ourselves, deny that we are the cause of our brother’s vexation and in a spirit of rebellion disdaining to be subject to the Lord’s commands, contend that they never ought to be observed and never can be fulfilled? And so it comes to pass that as we make up our minds that He has commanded things which are impossible and unsuitable, we become, to use the Apostle’s expression, “not doers but judges of the law.”

## Footnotes

* ↑ S. James iv. 11.