 The greater the gift the better founded his hope of grace and favor from the recipient!  And he had grounds for being uneasy and for asking himself whether he had acted rightly. Revenge was no Christian virtue, but to let the evil done to him by the Melchites go unpunished when the opportunity offered for crushing them was more than he could bring himself to.  Nay, what father whose two bright young sons had been murdered, but would have done as he did?  That fearful blow had struck him in a vital spot.  Since that day he had felt himself slowly dying; and that sense of weakness, those desperate tremors, the discomforts and suffering which blighted every hour of his life, were also to be set down to the account of the Melchite tyrants.