Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

FATHER DAMIEN
will suppose your story to be true. I will suppose
— and God forgive me for supposing it — that Damien
faltered and stumbled in his narrow path of duty ; I
will suppose that, in the horror of his isolation,
perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who
was doing so much more than he had sworn, failed
in the letter of his priestly oath — he, who was so
much a better man than either you or me, who did
what we have never dreamed of daring — he too
tasted of our common frailty. ' O, lago, the pity of
it ! ' The least tender should be moved to tears ;
the most incredulous to prayer. And all that you
could do was to pen your letter to the Reverend
H. B. Gage !
Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture
you have drawn of your own heart ? I will try yet
once again to make it clearer. You had a father :
suppose this tale were about him, and some informant
brought it to you, proof in hand : I am not making
too high an estimate of your emotional nature when
I suppose you would regret the circumstance ? that
you would feel the tale of frailty the more keenly
since it shamed the author of your days ? and that
the last thing you would do would be to publish it
in the religious press ? Well, the man who tried to
do what Damien did is my father, and the father of
the man in the Apia bar, and the father of all who
love goodness ; and he was your father too, if God
had given you grace to see it.
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