The vision lasted only a moment, but was so unutterably sweet that Apostol’s heart stopped beating and his eyes filled with a strange, ecstatic light. He was so filled with happiness that he would have been glad to die there and then in the presence of the divine miracle. When he went back to his seat his face seemed changed and the blue eyes framed in the pale face were like two pools of light.

“Mummy, I have seen God!” murmured the child fervently, while Doamna Bologa vainly tried to stay her tears with her sopping handkerchief.

Apostol’s vision gave rise to countless discussions in the Bologa household. The Protopop and Doamna Bologa were firmly convinced that God, as a special act of grace, had shown them by this means what path of life the boy was to follow. The lawyer, on the other hand, tried to prove to them that the whole “miracle” was merely the result of the child’s religious exaltation. Finally, unable to convince them, Bologa lost his temper and accused them of endangering the well-being of his son by filling his impressionable mind with popish fantasies, and as he, the father, was responsible for Apostol’s spiritual welfare, he forbade, once for all, such exhibitions in future.

Apostol did his elementary school work at home with his mother for teacher. Bologa cross-examined them both every Saturday with a severity that grew more and more rigorous, treating them as if they had been accomplices bent on deceiving him. Although Apostol was industrious, his father decreed that he was to go to the College at Nasaud, explaining that it was necessary for the child to come into contact with people and with the outside world. The truth was, however, that Bologa, displeased with the ultra-religious education which the child was receiving at home in spite of his instructions, wished to curb the evil while there was yet time.

They boarded him with the professor of mathematics, a good friend of Bologa’s, in order that he might be well cared for and supervised as at home. After his parents had gone and he remained alone, Apostol was filled with a painful dread. He felt abandoned and exiled, strange and helpless. And he couldn’t even weep for fear the children of the house should make fun of him. But at the very moment when he felt almost hopeless, he caught sight of a picture of Jesus Christ crucified, which hung on the wall, and his loneliness disappeared as if by magic. He was no longer alone. God had soothed his pain.

As Parva was not far from Nasaud, Doamna Bologa used to come over every month to see him and pet him. But now Apostol seemed cheerful and contented. He loved learning. At the end of the school year, when he came home for his holidays, he gleefully presented to his father a brilliant report.

“I congratulate you!” Bologa said to him after reading it carefully, shaking hands with him as with a friend of his own age.

That handshake made a curious impression on the boy. For the first time he felt that his father loved him. Until then he had thought that affection must needs be associated with tears and petting. Now he began to understand that affection could also be restrained and manly. So he also became more discreet in displaying his feelings. He liked to be considered a man. His best friends, Alexandru Palagiesu and Constantin Boteanu, were three or four years older than he.

When he had got through his fourth form and again brought his report home, his father thought it a fit opportunity to say a few serious words to him in the presence of his mother. After an introduction, peppered with Latin quotations, he reminded him of their heroic ancestor of Alba-Julia, and then went on speaking impressively :

“Henceforth, my son, you are a man. If it were necessary you are now in a position to earn your own living. In the upper school your outlook will become wider. You will learn to understand many things as yet unknown to you, for life and the world are full of strange enigmas. You must ever try to win the respect of men, and more especially your own self-respect. Therefore spirit, thought, word, and deed in you should always be at one, for by this means only will you be able to obtain a stable equilibrium between your world and the outside world.