said to them: What would you that I should do for you? Grant to us, they said, that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left (4), in thy glory." Another evangelist relates the transaction in a different way. "Then," says he, that is to say, immediately after the prophecy of the passion, "came to him the mother of the sons of Zebedee, with her sons, adoring, and asking something of him who said to her: What wilt thou? She said to him: Say that these, my two sons, may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom."

The request is precisely the same; and the two recitals, although different, do not contradict each other: the mother may have repeated what her children had said, or the children what the mother had said; or else, what appears most likely, the mother alone may have spoken, but in her children's name, for whom, as it were, she pleaded; and one evangelist may have attributed to them a request which had them alone for its object, and which their mother had only made at their suggestion, or at least with their connivance. In the same way the centurion is made to utter the prayer which his deputies made in his name, praying for the cure of his servant. However it was, inasmuch as the request regarded the two brothers, it was to them that Jesus addressed the reply: (a) “You know not, he said to (a) St. Matthew, xx. 22-28; St. Mark, x. 38–41.

(4) Jesus Christ had promised them all that they should be seated upon thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. What an elevation for poor fishermen, who could not have ventured to hope that they should be the first even in their own town! Nevertheless these poor fishermen were not yet content. Being promised the enjoyment of thrones, each of them wished to have the first, and their pride was humbled by the very thought of seeing one take precedency of the other. Ambition has no limits; we must say this in reference to all men without exception. It always ascends, according to the expression of the Psalmist. When it seems to confine its pretensions to a middle rank, the reason is because this rank happens to be the only one within reach. When ambition finds itself placed in this rank, this will merely be a step to rise to another. No sooner is it raised to this, than it turns its thoughts to the rank above. In mediocrity, we sigh after the pageantry and magnificence of the rich; the rich regard with an eye of envy the titles and the prerogatives of grandeur; the great man would fain become a prince; the prince aspires after sovereignty, and the sovereign to universal monarchy. The objects are different according to the different positions: ambition is ever the same, as strong in a villager who wishes to become the chief man in his village, as in Cæsar desiring to rule the Roman Empire.