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Homo Sum — Complete

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Title: Homo Sum — Complete

Author: Georg Ebers

Translator: Clara Bell


        
Release date: November 15, 2004 [eBook #5499]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMO SUM — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





HOMO SUM, Complete

By Georg Ebers


Translated by Clara Bell




PREFACE.

In the course of my labors preparatory to writing a history of the
Sinaitic peninsula, the study of the first centuries of Christianity
for a long time claimed my attention; and in the mass of martyrology,
of ascetic writings, and of histories of saints and monks, which it was
necessary to work through and sift for my strictly limited object, I
came upon a narrative (in Cotelerius Ecclesiae Grecae Monumenta) which
seemed to me peculiar and touching notwithstanding its improbability.
Sinai and the oasis of Pharan which lies at its foot were the scene of
action.

When, in my journey through Arabia Petraea, I saw the caves of the
anchorites of Sinai with my own eyes and trod their soil with my own
feet, that story recurred to my mind and did not cease to haunt me while
I travelled on farther in the desert.

A soul’s problem of the most exceptional type seemed to me to be offered
by the simple course of this little history.

An anchorite, falsely accused instead of another, takes his punishment
of expulsion on himself without exculpating himself, and his innocence
becomes known only through the confession of the real culprit.

There was a peculiar fascination in imagining what the emotions of a
soul might be which could lead to such apathy, to such an annihilation
of all sensibility; and while the very deeds and thoughts of the strange
cave-dweller grew more and more vivid in my mind the figure of Paulus
took form, as it were as an example, and soon a crowd of ideas gathered
round it, growing at last to a distinct entity, which excited and urged
me on till I ventured to give it artistic expression in the form of a
narrative. I was prompted to elaborate this subject--which had long been
shaping itself to perfect conception in my mind as ripe material for a
romance--by my readings in Coptic monkish annals, to which I was led by
Abel’s Coptic studies; and I afterwards received a further stimulus
from the small but weighty essay by H. Weingarten on the origin of
monasticism, in which I still study the early centuries of Christianity,
especially in Egypt.

This is not the place in which to indicate the points on which I feel
myself obliged to differ from Weingarten. My acute fellow-laborer at
Breslau clears away much which does not deserve to remain, but in many
parts of his book he seems to me to sweep with too hard a broom.

Easy as it would have been to lay the date of my story in the beginning
of the fortieth year of the fourth century instead of the thirtieth, I
have forborne from doing so because I feel able to prove with certainty
that at the time which I have chosen there were not only heathen
recluses in the temples of Serapis but also Christian anchorites;
I fully agree with him that the beginnings of organized Christian
monasticism can in no case be dated earlier than the year 350.

The Paulus of my story must not be confounded with the “first hermit,”
 Paulus of Thebes, whom Weingarten has with good reason struck out of
the category of historical personages. He, with all the figures in
this narrative is a purely fictitious person, the vehicle for an idea,
neither more nor less. I selected no particular model for my hero, and
I claim for him no attribute but that of his having been possible at the
period; least of all did I think of Saint Anthony, who is now deprived
even of his distinguished biographer Athanasius, and who is represented
as a man of very sound judgment but of so scant an education that he was
master only of Egyptian.

The dogmatic controversies which were already kindled at the time of my
story I have, on careful consideration, avoided mentioning. The dwellers
on Sinai and in the oasis took an eager part in them at a later date.

That Mount Sinai to which I desire to transport the reader must not be
confounded with the mountain which lies at a long day’s journey to the
south of it. It is this that has borne the name, at any rate since the
time of Justinian; the celebrated convent of the Transfiguration lies at
its foot, and it has been commonly accepted as the Sinai of Scripture.
In the description of my journey through Arabia Petraea I have
endeavored to bring fresh proof of the view, first introduced by
Lepsius, that the giant-mountain, now called Serbal, must be regarded as
the mount on which the law was given--and was indeed so regarded before
the time of Justinian--and not the Sinai of the monks.

As regards the stone house of the Senator Petrus, with its windows
opening on the street--contrary to eastern custom--I may remark, in
anticipation of well founded doubts, that to this day wonderfully
well-preserved fire-proof walls stand in the oasis of Pharan, the
remains of a pretty large number of similar buildings.

But these and such external details hold a quite secondary place in this
study of a soul. While in my earlier romances the scholar was compelled
to make concessions to the poet and the poet to the scholar, in this one
I have not attempted to instruct, nor sought to clothe the outcome of my
studies in forms of flesh and blood; I have aimed at absolutely nothing
but to give artistic expression to the vivid realization of an idea that
had deeply stirred my soul. The simple figures whose inmost being I have
endeavored to reveal to the reader fill the canvas of a picture where,
in the dark background, rolls the flowing ocean of the world’s history.

The Latin title was suggested to me by an often used motto which
exactly agrees with the fundamental view to which I have been led by
my meditations on the mind and being of man; even of those men who deem
that they have climbed the very highest steps of that stair which leads
into the Heavens.

In the Heautontimorumenos of Terence, Chremes answers his neighbor
Menedemus (Act I, SC. I, v. 25) “Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum
puto,” which Donner translates literally:

“I am human, nothing that is human can I regard as alien to me.”

But Cicero and Seneca already used this line as a proverb, and in a
sense which far transcends that which it would seem to convey in context
with the passage whence it is taken; and as I coincide with them, I have
transferred it to the title-page of this book with this meaning:

“I am a man; and I feel that I am above all else a man.”

   Leipzig, November 11, 1877.

                    GEORG EBERS.




HOMO SUM




CHAPTER I.

Rocks-naked, hard, red-brown rocks all round; not a bush, not a blade,
not a clinging moss such as elsewhere nature has lightly flung on the
rocky surface of the heights, as if a breath of her creative life had
softly touched the barren stone. Nothing but smooth granite, and above
it a sky as bare of cloud as the rocks are of shrubs and herbs.

And yet in every cave of the mountain wall there moves a human life; two
small grey birds too float softly in the pure, light air of the desert
that glows in the noonday sun, and then they vanish behind a range of
cliffs, which shuts in the deep gorge as though it were a wall built by
man.

There it is pleasant enough, for a spring bedews the stony soil and
there, as wherever any moisture touches the desert, aromatic plants
thrive, and umbrageous bushes grow. When Osiris embraced the goddess of
the desert--so runs the Egyptian myth--he left his green wreath on her
couch.

But at the time and in the sphere where our history moves the old
legends are no longer known or are ignored. We must carry the reader
back to the beginning of the thirtieth year of the fourth century after
the birth of the Saviour, and away to the mountains of Sinai on
whose sacred ground solitary anchorites have for some few years been
dwelling--men weary of the world, and vowed to penitence, but as yet
without connection or rule among themselves.

Near the spring in the little ravine of which we have spoken grows
a many-branched feathery palm, but it does not shelter it from the
piercing rays of the sun of those latitudes; it seems only to protect
the roots of the tree itself; still the feathered boughs are strong
enough to support a small thread-bare blue cloth, which projects like a
penthouse, screening the face of a girl who lies dreaming, stretched at
full-length on the glowing stones, while a few yellowish mountain-goats
spring from stone to stone in search of pasture as gaily as though they
found the midday heat pleasant and exhilarating. From time to time the
girl seizes the herdsman’s crook that lies beside her, and calls the
goats with a hissing cry that is audible at a considerable distance.
A young kid comes dancing up to her. Few beasts can give expression to
their feelings of delight; but young goats can.

The girl puts out her bare slim foot, and playfully pushes back the
little kid who attacks her in fun, pushes it again and again each time
it skips forward, and in so doing the shepherdess bends her toes as
gracefully as if she wished some looker-on to admire their slender form.
Once more the kid springs forward, and this time with its bead down. Its
brow touches the sole of her foot, but as it rubs its little hooked nose
tenderly against the girl’s foot, she pushes it back so violently that
the little beast starts away, and ceases its game with loud bleating.

It was just as if the girl had been waiting for the right moment to hit
the kid sharply; for the kick was a hard one-almost a cruel one. The
blue cloth hid the face of the maiden, but her eyes must surely have
sparkled brightly when she so roughly stopped the game. For a minute she
remained motionless; but the cloth, which had fallen low over her
face, waved gently to and fro, moved by her fluttering breath. She
was listening with eager attention, with passionate expectation; her
convulsively clenched toes betrayed her.

Then a noise became audible; it came from the direction of the rough
stair of unhewn blocks, which led from the steep wall of the ravine down
to the spring. A shudder of terror passed through the tender, and not
yet fully developed limbs of the shepherdess; still she did not move;
the grey birds which were now sitting on a thorn-bush near her flew up,
but they had merely heard a noise, and could not distinguish who it was
that it announced.

The shepherdess’s ear was sharper than theirs. She heard that a man was
approaching, and well knew that one only trod with such a step. She put
out her hand for a stone that lay near her, and flung it into the spring
so that the waters immediately became troubled; then she turned on her
side, and lay as if asleep with her head on her arm. The heavy steps
became more and more distinctly audible.

A tall youth was descending the rocky stair; by his dress he was seen
to be one of the anchorites of Sinai, for he wore nothing but a
shirt-shaped garment of coarse linen, which he seemed to have outgrown,
and raw leather sandals, which were tied on to his feet with fibrous
palm-bast.

No slave could be more poorly clothed by his owner and yet no one would
have taken him for a bondman, for he walked erect and self-possessed.
He could not be more than twenty years of age; that was evident in the
young soft hair on his upper lip, chin, and cheeks; but in his large
blue eyes there shone no light of youth, only discontent, and his lips
were firmly closed as if in defiance.

He now stood still, and pushed back from his forehead the superabundant
and unkempt brown hair that flowed round his head like a lion’s mane;
then he approached the well, and as he stooped to draw the water in the
large dried gourd-shell which he held, he observed first that the spring
was muddy, and then perceived the goats, and at last their sleeping
mistress.

He impatiently set down the vessel and called the girl loudly, but she
did not move till he touched her somewhat roughly with his foot. Then
she sprang up as if stung by an asp, and two eyes as black as night
flashed at him out of her dark young face; the delicate nostrils of her
aquiline nose quivered, and her white teeth gleamed as she cried:

“Am I a dog that you wake me in this fashion?” He colored, pointed
sullenly to the well and said sharply: “Your cattle have troubled the
water again; I shall have to wait here till it is clear and I can draw
some.”

“The day is long,” answered the shepherdess, and while she rose she
pushed, as if by chance, another stone into the water.

Her triumphant, flashing glance as she looked down into the troubled
spring did not escape the young man, and he exclaimed angrily:

“He is right! You are a venomous snake--a demon of hell.”

She raised herself and made a face at him, as if she wished to show him
that she really was some horrible fiend; the unusual sharpness of her
mobile and youthful features gave her a particular facility for doing
so. And she fully attained her end, for he drew back with a look of
horror, stretched out his arms to repel her, and exclaimed as he saw her
uncontrollable laughter,

“Back, demon, back! In the name of the Lord! I ask thee, who art thou?”

“I am Miriam--who else should I be?” she answered haughtily.

He had expected a different reply, her vivacity annoyed him, and he said
angrily, “Whatever your name is you are a fiend, and I will ask Paulus
to forbid you to water your beasts at our well.”

“You might run to your nurse, and complain of me to her if you had one,”
 she answered, pouting her lips contemptuously at him.

He colored; she went on boldly, and with eager play of gesture.

“You ought to be a man, for you are strong and big, but you let yourself
be kept like a child or a miserable girl; your only business is to hunt
for roots and berries, and fetch water in that wretched thing there.
I have learned to do that ever since I was as big as that!” and she
indicated a contemptibly little measure, with the outstretched pointed
fingers of her two hands, which were not less expressively mobile than
her features. “Phoh! you are stronger and taller than all the Amalekite
lads down there, but you never try to measure yourself with them in
shooting with a bow and arrows or in throwing a spear!”

“If I only dared as much as I wish!” he interrupted, and flaming scarlet
mounted to his face, “I would be a match for ten of those lean rascals.”

“I believe you,” replied the girl, and her eager glance measured the
youth’s broad breast and muscular arms with an expression of pride. “I
believe you, but why do you not dare? Are you the slave of that man up
there?”

“He is my father and besides--”

“What besides?” she cried, waving her hand as if to wave away a bat. “If
no bird ever flew away from the nest there would be a pretty swarm in
it. Look at my kids there--as long as they need their mother they run
about after her, but as soon as they can find their food alone they seek
it wherever they can find it, and I can tell you the yearlings there
have quite forgotten whether they sucked the yellow dam or the brown
one. And what great things does your father do for you?”

“Silence!” interrupted the youth with excited indignation. “The evil one
speaks through thee. Get thee from me, for I dare not hear that which I
dare not utter.”

“Dare, dare, dare!” she sneered. “What do you dare then? not even to
listen!”

“At any rate not to what you have to say, you goblin!” he exclaimed
vehemently. “Your voice is hateful to me, and if I meet you again by the
well I will drive you away with stones.”

While he spoke thus she stared speechless at him, the blood had left
her lips, and she clenched her small hands. He was about to pass her
to fetch some water, but she stepped into his path, and held him
spell-bound with the fixed gaze of her eyes. A cold chill ran through
him when she asked him with trembling lips and a smothered voice, “What
harm have I done you?”

“Leave me!” said he, and he raised his hand to push her away from the
water.

“You shall not touch me,” she cried beside herself. “What harm have I
done you?”

“You know nothing of God,” he answered, “and he who is not of God is of
the Devil.”

“You do not say that of yourself,” answered she, and her voice recovered
its tone of light mockery. “What they let you believe pulls the wires of
your tongue just as a hand pulls the strings of a puppet. Who told you
that I was of the Devil?”

“Why should I conceal it from you?” he answered proudly. “Our pious
Paulus, warned me against you and I will thank him for it. ‘The evil
one,’ he says, ‘looks out of your eyes,’ and he is right, a thousand
times right. When you look at me I feel as if I could tread every thing
that is holy under foot; only last night again I dreamed I was whirling
in a dance with you--”

At these words all gravity and spite vanished from Miriam’s eyes; she
clapped her hands and cried, “If it had only been the fact and not a
dream! Only do not be frightened again, you fool! Do you know then what
it is when the pipes sound, and the lutes tinkle, and our feet fly round
in circles as if they had wings?”

“The wings of Satan,” Hermas interrupted sternly. “You are a demon, a
hardened heathen.”

“So says our pious Paulus,” laughed the girl.

“So say I too,” cried the young man. “Who ever saw you in the assemblies
of the just? Do you pray? Do you ever praise the Lord and our Saviour?”

“And what should I praise them for?” asked Miriam. “Because I am
regarded as a foul fiend by the most pious among you perhaps?”

“But it is because you are a sinner that Heaven denies you its
blessing.”

“No--no, a thousand times no!” cried Miriam. “No god has ever troubled
himself about me. And if I am not good, why should I be when nothing but
evil ever has fallen to my share? Do you know who I am and how I became
so? I was wicked, perhaps, when both my parents were slain in their
pilgrimage hither? Why, I was then no more than six years old, and what
is a child of that age? But still I very well remember that there were
many camels grazing near our house, and horses too that belonged to us,
and that on a hand that often caressed me--it was my mother’s hand--a
large jewel shone. I had a black slave too that obeyed me; when she and
I did not agree I used to hang on to her grey woolly hair and beat her.
Who knows what may have become of her? I did not love her, but if I had
her now, how kind I would be to her. And now for twelve years I myself
have eaten the bread of servitude, and have kept Senator Petrus’s goats,
and if I ventured to show myself at a festival among the free maidens,
they would turn me out and pull the wreath out of my hair. And am I to
be thankful? What for, I wonder? And pious? What god has taken any care
of me? Call me an evil demon--call me so! But if Petrus and your Paulus
there say that He who is up above us and who let me grow up to such a
lot is good, they tell a lie. God is cruel, and it is just like Him
to put it into your heart to throw stones and scare me away from your
well.”

With these words she burst out into bitter sobs, and her features worked
with various and passionate distortion.

Hermas felt compassion for the weeping Miriam. He had met her a hundred
times and she had shown herself now haughty, now discontented, now
exacting and now wrathful, but never before soft or sad. To-day, for the
first time, she had opened her heart to him; the tears which disfigured
her countenance gave her character a value which it had never before had
in his eyes, and when he saw her weak and unhappy he felt ashamed of his
hardness. He went up to her kindly and said: “You need not cry; come to
the well again always, I will not prevent you.”

His deep voice sounded soft and kind as he spoke, but she sobbed more
passionately than before, almost convulsively, and she tried to speak
but she could not. Trembling in every slender limb, shaken with grief,
and overwhelmed with sorrow, the slight shepherdess stood before him,
and he felt as if he must help her. His passionate pity cut him to the
heart and fettered his by no means ready tongue.

As he could find no word of comfort, he took the water-gourd in his left
hand and laid his right, in which he had hitherto held it, gently on her
shoulder. She started, but she let him do it; he felt her warm breath;
he would have drawn back, but he felt as if he could not; he hardly knew
whether she was crying or laughing while she let his hand rest on her
black waving hair.

She did not move. At last she raised her head, her eyes flashed into
his, and at the same instant he felt two slender arms clasped round his
neck. He felt as if a sea were roaring in his ears, and fire blazing in
his eyes. A nameless anguish seized him; he tore himself violently free,
and with a loud cry as if all the spirits of hell were after him he fled
up the steps that led from the well, and heeded not that his water-jar
was shattered into a thousand pieces against the rocky wall.

She stood looking after him as if spell-bound. Then she struck her
slender hand against her forehead, threw herself down by the spring
again and stared into space; there she lay motionless, only her mouth
continued to twitch.

When the shadow of the palm-tree grew longer she sprang up, called
her goats, and looked up, listening, to the rock-steps by which he had
vanished; the twilight is short in the neighborhood of the tropics, and
she knew that she would be overtaken by the darkness on the stony and
fissured road down the valley if she lingered any longer. She feared
the terrors of the night, the spirits and demons, and a thousand vague
dangers whose nature she could not have explained even to herself; and
yet she did not stir from the spot nor cease listening and waiting for
his return till the sun had disappeared behind the sacred mountain, and
the glow in the west had paled.

All around was as still as death, she could hear herself breathe, and as
the evening chill fell she shuddered with cold.

She now heard a loud noise above her head. A flock of wild mountain
goats, accustomed to come at this hour to quench their thirst at the
spring, came nearer and nearer, but drew back as they detected the
presence of a human being. Only the leader of the herd remained standing
on the brink of the ravine, and she knew that he was only awaiting her
departure to lead the others down to drink. Following a kindly impulse,
she was on the point of leaving to make way for the animals, when she
suddenly recollected Hermas’s threat to drive her from the well, and she
angrily picked up a stone and flung it at the buck, which started and
hastily fled. The whole herd followed him. Miriam listened to them as
they scampered away, and then, with her head sunk, she led her flock
home, feeling her way in the darkness with her bare feet.




CHAPTER II.

High above the ravine where the spring was lay a level plateau of
moderate extent, and behind it rose a fissured cliff of bare, red-brown
porphyry. A vein of diorite of iron-hardness lay at its foot like a
green ribbon, and below this there opened a small round cavern, hollowed
and arched by the cunning hand of nature. In former times wild beasts,
panthers or wolves, had made it their home; it now served as a dwelling
for young Hermas and his father.

Many similar caves were to be found in the holy Fountain, and other
anchorites had taken possession of the larger ones among them.

That of Stephanus was exceptionally high and deep, and yet the space was
but small which divided the two beds of dried mountain herbs where, on
one, slept the father, and on the other, the son.

It was long past midnight, but neither the younger nor the elder
cave-dweller seemed to be sleeping. Hermas groaned aloud and threw
himself vehemently from one side to the other without any consideration
for the old man who, tormented with pain and weakness, sorely needed
sleep. Stephanus meanwhile denied himself the relief of turning over or
of sighing, when he thought he perceived that his more vigorous son had
found rest.

“What could have robbed him of his rest, the boy who usually slept so
soundly, and was so hard to waken?”

“Whence comes it,” thought Stephanus, “that the young and strong sleep
so soundly and so much, and the old, who need rest, and even the sick,
sleep so lightly and so little. Is it that wakefulness may prolong the
little term of life, of which they dread the end? How is it that man
clings so fondly to this miserable existence, and would fain slink away,
and hide himself when the angel calls and the golden gates open before
him! We are like Saul, the Hebrew, who hid himself when they came to
him with the crown! My wound burns painfully; if only I had a drink of
water. If the poor child were not so sound asleep I might ask him for
the jar.”

Stephanus listened to his son and would not wake him, when he heard his
heavy and regular breathing. He curled himself up shivering under the
sheep-skin which covered only half his body, for the icy night wind
now blew through the opening of the cave, which by day was as hot as an
oven.

Some long minutes wore away; at last he thought he perceived that Hermas
had raised himself. Yes, the sleeper must have wakened, for he began to
speak, and to call on the name of God.

The old man turned to his son and began softly, “Do you hear me, my
boy?”

“I cannot sleep,” answered the youth.

“Then give me something to drink,” asked Stephanus, “my wound burns
intolerably.”

Hermas rose at once, and reached the water-jar to the sufferer.

“Thanks, thanks, my child,” said the old man, feeling for the neck of
the jar. But he could not find it, and exclaimed with surprise: “How
damp and cold it is--this is clay, and our jar was a gourd.”

“I have broken it,” interrupted Hermas, “and Paulus lent me his.”

“Well, well,” said Stephanus anxious for drink; he gave the jar back to
his son, and waited till he had stretched himself again on his couch.
Then he asked anxiously: “You were out a long time this evening, the
gourd is broken, and you groaned in your sleep. Whom did you meet?”

“A demon of hell,” answered Hermas. “And now the fiend pursues me into
our cave, and torments me in a variety of shapes.”

“Drive it out then and pray,” said the old man gravely. “Unclean spirits
flee at the name of God.”

“I have called upon Him,” sighed Hermas, “but in vain; I see women with
ruddy lips and flowing Hair, and white marble figures with rounded limbs
and flashing eyes beckon to me again and again.”

“Then take the scourge,” ordered the father, “and so win peace.”

Hermas once more obediently rose, and went out into the air with the
scourge; the narrow limits of the cave did not admit of his swinging it
with all the strength of his arms.

Very soon Stephanus heard the whistle of the leathern thongs through the
stillness of the night, their hard blows on the springy muscles of the
man and his son’s painful groaning.

At each blow the old man shrank as if it had fallen on himself. At last
he cried as loud as he was able “Enough--that is enough.”

Hermas came back into the cave, his father called him to his couch, and
desired him to join with him in prayer.

After the ‘Amen’ he stroked the lad’s abundant hair and said, “Since
you went to Alexandria, you have been quite another being. I would I had
withstood bishop Agapitus, and forbidden you the journey. Soon, I know,
my Saviour will call me to himself, and no one will keep you here; then
the tempter will come to you, and all the splendors of the great city,
which after all only shine like rotten wood, like shining snakes and
poisonous purple-berries--”

“I do not care for them,” interrupted Hermas, “the noisy place
bewildered and frightened me. Never, never will I tread the spot again.”

“So you have always said,” replied Stephanus, “and yet the journey quite
altered you. How often before that I used to think when I heard you
laugh that the sound must surely please our Father in Heaven. And now?
You used to be like a singing bird, and now you go about silent, you
look sour and morose, and evil thoughts trouble your sleep.”

“That is my loss,” answered Hermas. “Pray let go of my hand; the night
will soon be past, and you have the whole live-long day to lecture me
in.” Stephanus sighed, and Hermas returned to his couch.

Sleep avoided them both, and each knew that the other was awake, and
would willingly have spoken to him, but dissatisfaction and defiance
closed the son’s lips, and the father was silent because he could not
find exactly the heart-searching words that he was seeking.

At last it was morning, a twilight glimmer struck through the opening of
the cave, and it grew lighter and lighter in the gloomy vault; the boy
awoke and rose yawning. When he saw his father lying with his eyes open,
he asked indifferently, “Shall I stay here or go to morning worship?”

“Let us pray here together,” begged the father. “Who knows how long it
may yet be granted to us to do so? I am not far from the day that no
evening ever closes. Kneel down here, and let me kiss the image of the
Crucified.”

Hermas did as his father desired him, and as they were ending their song
of praise, a third voice joined in the ‘Amen.’

“Paulus!” cried the old man. “The Lord be praised! pray look to my
wound then. The arrow head seeks to work some way out, and it burns
fearfully.”

“The new comer, an anchorite, who for all clothing wore a shirt-shaped
coat of brown undressed linen, and a sheep-skin, examined the wound
carefully, and laid some herbs on it, murmuring meanwhile some pious
texts.

“That is much easier,” sighed the old man. “The Lord has mercy on me for
your goodness’ sake.”

“My goodness? I am a vessel of wrath,” replied Paulus, with a deep,
rich; sonorous voice, and his peculiarly kind blue eyes were raised to
heaven as if to attest how greatly men were deceived in him. Then he
pushed the bushy grizzled hair, which hung in disorder over his neck and
face, out of his eyes, and said cheerfully: “No man is more than man,
and many men are less. In the ark there were many beasts, but only one
Noah.”

“You are the Noah of our little ark,” replied Stephanus.

“Then this great lout here is the elephant,” laughed Paulus.

“You are no smaller than he,” replied Stephanus.

“It is a pity this stone roof is so low, else we might have measured
ourselves,” said Paulus. “Aye! if Hermas and I were as pious and pure as
we are tall and strong, we should both have the key of paradise in our
pockets. You were scourging yourself this night, boy; I heard the blows.
It is well; if the sinful flesh revolts, thus we may subdue it.”

“He groaned heavily and could not sleep,” said Stephanus.

“Aye, did he indeed!” cried Paulus to the youth, and held his powerful
arms out towards him with clenched fists; but the threatening voice was
loud rather than terrible, and wild as the exceptionally big man looked
in his sheepskin, there was such irresistible kindliness in his gaze
and in his voice, that no one could have believed that his wrath was in
earnest.

“Fiends of hell had met him,” said Stephanus in excuse for his son, “and
I should not have closed an eye even without his groaning; it is the
fifth night.”

“But in the sixth,” said Paulus, “sleep is absolutely necessary. Put on
your sheep-skin, Hermas; you must go down to the oasis to the Senator
Petrus, and fetch a good sleeping-draught for our sick man from him or
from Dame Dorothea, the deaconess. Just look! the youngster has really
thought of his father’s breakfast--one’s own stomach is a good reminder.
Only put the bread and the water down here by the couch; while you are
gone I will fetch some fresh--now, come with me.”

“Wait a minute, wait,” cried Stephanus. “Bring a new jar with you from
the town, my son. You lent us yours yesterday, Paulus, and I must--”

“I should soon have forgotten it,” interrupted the other. “I have to
thank the careless fellow, for I have now for the first time discovered
the right way to drink, as long as one is well and able. I would not
have the jar back for a measure of gold; water has no relish unless you
drink it out of the hollow of your hand! The shard is yours. I should be
warring against my own welfare, if I required it back. God be praised!
the craftiest thief can now rob me of nothing save my sheepskin.”

Stephanus would have thanked him, but he took Hermas by the hand, and
led him out into the open air. For some time the two men walked in
silence over the clefts and boulders up the mountain side. When they had
reached a plateau, which lay on the road that led from the sea over the
mountain into the oasis, he turned to the youth, and said:

“If we always considered all the results of our actions there would be
no sins committed.”

Hermas looked at him enquiringly, and Paulus went on, “If it had
occurred to you to think how sorely your poor father needed sleep, you
would have lain still this night.”

“I could not,” said the youth sullenly. “And you know very well that I
scourged myself hard enough.”

“That was quite right, for you deserved a flogging for a misconducted
boy.”

Hermas looked defiantly at his reproving friend, the flaming color
mounted to his cheek: for he remembered the shepherdess’s words that he
might go and complain to his nurse, and he cried out angrily:

“I will not let any one speak to me so; I am no longer a child.”

“Not even your father’s?” asked Paulus, and he looked at the boy with
such an astonished and enquiring air, that Hermas turned away his eyes
in confusion.

“It is not right at any rate to trouble the last remnant of life of that
very man who longs to live for your sake only.”

“I should have been very willing to be still, for I love my father as
well as any one else.”

“You do not beat him,” replied Paulus, “you carry him bread and water,
and do not drink up the wine yourself, which the Bishop sends him home
from the Lord’s supper; that is something certainly, but not enough by a
long way.”

“I am no saint!”

“Nor I neither,” exclaimed Paulus, “I am full of sin and weakness. But
I know what the love is which was taught us by the Saviour, and that you
too may know. He suffered on the cross for you, and for me, and for all
the poor and vile. Love is at once the easiest and the most difficult
of attainments. It requires sacrifice. And you? How long is it now since
you last showed your father a cheerful countenance?”

“I cannot be a hypocrite.”

“Nor need you, but you must love. Certainly it is not by what his hand
does but by what his heart cheerfully offers, and by what he forces
himself to give up that a man proves his love.”

“And is it no sacrifice that I waste all my youth here?” asked the boy.

Paulus stepped back from him a little way, shook his matted head, and
said, “Is that it? You are thinking of Alexandria! Ay! no doubt life
runs away much quicker there than on our solitary mountain. You do not
fancy the tawny shepherd girl, but perhaps some pretty pink and white
Greek maiden down there has looked into your eyes?”

“Let me alone about the women,” answered Hermas, with genuine annoyance.
“There are other things to look at there.”

The youth’s eyes sparkled as he spoke, and Paulus asked, not without
interest, “Indeed?”

“You know Alexandria better than I,” answered Hermas evasively. “You
were born there, and they say you had been a rich young man.”

“Do they say so?” said Paulus. “Perhaps they are right; but you must
know that I am glad that nothing any longer belongs to me of all the
vanities that I possessed, and I thank my Saviour that I can now turn
my back on the turmoil of men. What was it that seemed to you so
particularly tempting in all that whirl?”

Hermas hesitated. He feared to speak, and yet something urged and drove
him to say out all that was stirring his soul. If any one of all those
grave men who despised the world and among whom he had grown up, could
ever understand him, he knew well that it would be Paulus; Paulus whose
rough beard he had pulled when he was little, on whose shoulders he had
often sat, and who had proved to him a thousand times how truly he loved
him. It is true the Alexandrian was the severest of them all, but he was
harsh only to himself. Hermas must once for all unburden his heart, and
with sudden decision he asked the anchorite:

“Did you often visit the baths?”

“Often? I only wonder that I did not melt away and fall to pieces in the
warm water like a wheaten loaf.”

“Why do you laugh at that which makes men beautiful?” cried Hermas
hastily. “Why may Christians even visit the baths in Alexandria, while
we up here, you and my father and all anchorites, only use water to
quench our thirst? You compel me to live like one of you, and I do not
like being a dirty beast.”

“None can see us but the Most High,” answered Paulus, “and for him we
cleanse and beautify our souls.”

“But the Lord gave us our body too,” interrupted Hermas. “It is written
that man is the image of God. And we! I appeared to myself as repulsive
as a hideous ape when at the great baths by the Gate of the Sun I saw
the youths and men with beautifully arranged and scented hair and smooth
limbs that shone with cleanliness and purification. And as they went
past, and I looked at my mangy sheepfell, and thought of my wild mane
and my arms and feet, which are no worse formed or weaker than theirs
were, I turned hot and cold, and I felt as if some bitter drink were
choking me. I should have liked to howl out with shame and envy and
vexation. I will not be like a monster!”

Hermas ground his teeth as he spoke the last words, and Paulus looked
uneasily at him as he went on: “My body is God’s as much as my soul is,
and what is allowed to the Christians in the city--”

“That we nevertheless may not do,” Paulus interrupted gravely. “He who
has once devoted himself to Heaven must detach himself wholly from the
charm of life, and break one tie after another that binds him to the
dust. I too once upon a time have anointed this body, and smoothed this
rough hair, and rejoiced sincerely over my mirror; but I say to you,
Hermas--and, by my dear Saviour, I say it only because I feel it, deep
in my heart I feel it--to pray is better than to bathe, and I, a poor
wretch, have been favored with hours in which my spirit has struggled
free, and has been permitted to share as an honored guest in the festal
joys of Heaven!”

While he spoke, his wide open eyes had turned towards Heaven and had
acquired a wondrous brightness. For a short time the two stood opposite
each other silent and motionless; at last the anchorite pushed the hair
from off his brow, which was now for the first time visible. It was
well-formed, though somewhat narrow, and its clear fairness formed a
sharp contrast to his sunburnt face.

“Boy,” he said with a deep breath, “you know not what joys you would
sacrifice for the sake of worthless things. Long ere the Lord, calls
the pious man to Heaven, the pious has brought Heaven down to earth in
himself.”

Hermas well understood what the anchorite meant, for his father often
for hours at a time gazed up into Heaven in prayer, neither seeing nor
hearing what was going on around him, and was wont to relate to his son,
when he awoke from his ecstatic vision, that he had seen the Lord or
heard the angel-choir.

He himself had never succeeded in bringing himself into such a state,
although Stephanus had often compelled him to remain on his knees
praying with him for many interminable hours. It often happened that
the old man’s feeble flame of life had threatened to become altogether
extinct after these deeply soul-stirring exercises, and Hermas would
gladly have forbidden him giving himself up to such hurtful emotions,
for he loved his father; but they were looked upon as special
manifestations of grace, and how should a son dare to express his
aversion to such peculiarly sacred acts? But to Paulus and in his
present mood he found courage to speak out.

“I have sure hope of Paradise,” he said, “but it will be first opened
to us after death. The Christian should be patient; why can you not wait
for Heaven till the Saviour calls you, instead of desiring to enjoy its
pleasures here on earth? This first and that after! Why Should God
have bestowed on us the gifts of the flesh if not that we may use them?
Beauty and strength are not empty trifles, and none but a fool gives
noble gifts to another, only in order to throw them away.”

Paulus gazed in astonishment at the youth, who up to this moment had
always unresistingly obeyed his father and him, and he shook his head as
he answered,

“So think the children of this world who stand far from the Most High.
In the image of God are we made no doubt, but what child would kiss the
image of his father, when the father offers him his own living lips?”

Paulus had meant to say ‘mother’ instead of ‘father,’ but he remembered
in time that Hermas had early lost the happiness of caressing a mother,
and he had hastily amended the phrase. He was one of those to whom it is
so painful to hurt another, that they never touch a wounded soul unless
to heal it, divining the seat of even the most hidden pain.

He was accustomed to speak but little, but now he went on eagerly:

“By so much as God is far above our miserable selves, by so much is
the contemplation of Him worthier of the Christian than that of his own
person. Oh! who is indeed so happy as to have wholly lost that self and
to be perfectly absorbed in God! But it pursues us, and when the soul
fondly thinks itself already blended in union with the Most High it
cries out ‘Here am I!’ and drags our nobler part down again into the
dust. It is bad enough that we must hinder the flight of the soul, and
are forced to nourish and strengthen the perishable part of our being
with bread and water and slothful sleep to the injury of the immortal
part, however much we may fast and watch. And shall we indulge the
flesh, to the detriment of the spirit, by granting it any of its demands
that can easily be denied? Only he who despises and sacrifices his
wretched self can, when he has lost his baser self by the Redeemer’s
grace, find himself again in God.”

Hermas had listened patiently to the anchorite, but he now shook his
head, and said: “I cannot under stand either you or my father. So long
as I walk on this earth, I am I and no other. After death, no doubt, but
not till then, will a new and eternal life begin.”

“Not so,” cried Paulus hastily, interrupting him. “That other and higher
life of which you speak, does not begin only after death for him who
while still living does not cease from dying, from mortifying the flesh,
and from subduing its lusts, from casting from him the world and his
baser self, and from seeking the Lord. It has been vouchsafed to many
even in the midst of life to be born again to a higher existence. Look
at me, the basest of the base. I am not two but one, and yet am I in the
sight of the Lord as certainly another man than I was before grace found
me, as this young shoot, which has grown from the roots of an overthrown
palmtree is another tree than the rotten trunk. I was a heathen and
enjoyed every pleasure of the earth to the utmost; then I became a
Christian; the grace of the Lord fell upon me, and I was born again, and
became a child again; but this time--the Redeemer be praised!--the child
of the Lord. In the midst of life I died, I rose again, I found the joys
of Heaven. I had been Menander, and like unto Saul, I became Paulus. All
that Menander loved--baths, feasts, theatres, horses and chariots, games
in the arena, anointed limbs, roses and garlands, purple-garments, wine
and the love of women--lie behind me like some foul bog out of which
a traveller has struggled with difficulty. Not a vein of the old man
survives in the new, and a new life has begun for me, mid-way to the
grave; nor for me only, but for all pious men. For you too the hour will
sound, in which you will die to--”

“If only I, like you, had been a Menander,” cried Hermas, sharply
interrupting the speaker: “How is it possible to cast away that which I
never possessed? In order to die one first must live. This wretched life
seems to me contemptible, and I am weary of running after you like a
calf after a cow. I am free-born, and of noble race, my father himself
has told me so, and I am certainly no feebler in body than the
citizens’ sons in the town with whom I went from the baths to the
wrestling-school.”

“Did you go to the Palaestra?” asked Paulus in surprise.

“To the wrestling-school of Timagetus,” cried Hermas, coloring. “From
outside the gate I watched the games of the youths as they wrestled, and
threw heavy disks at a mark. My eyes almost sprang out of my head at
the sight, and I could have cried out aloud with envy and vexation,
at having to stand there in my ragged sheep-skin excluded from all
competition. If Pachomius had not just then come up, by the Lord I must
have sprung into the arena, and have challenged the strongest of them
all to wrestle with me, and I could have thrown the disk much farther
than the scented puppy who won the victory and was crowned.”

“You may thank, Pachomius,” said Paulus laughing, “for having hindered
you, for you would have earned nothing in the arena but mockery
and disgrace. You are strong enough, certainly, but the art of the
discobolus must be learned like any other. Hercules himself would be
beaten at that game without practice, and if he did not know the right
way to handle the disk.”

“It would not have been the first time I had thrown one,” cried the boy.
“See, what I can do!” With these words he stooped and raised one of the
flat stones, which lay piled up to secure the pathway; extending his arm
with all his strength, he flung the granite disk over the precipice away
into the abyss.

“There, you see,” cried Paulus, who had watched the throw carefully and
not without some anxious excitement. “However strong your arm may be,
any novice could throw farther than you if only he knew the art of
holding the discus. It is not so--not so; it must cut through the air
like a knife with its sharp edge. Look how you hold your hand, you throw
like a woman! The wrist straight, and now your left foot behind, and
your knee bent! see, how clumsy you are! Here, give me the stone. You
take the discus so, then you bend your body, and press down your knees
like the arc of a bow, so that every sinew in your body helps to speed
the shot when you let go. Aye--that is better, but it is not quite right
yet. First heave the discus with your arm stretched out, then fix your
eye on the mark; now swing it out high behind you--stop! once more! your
arm must be more strongly strained before you throw. That might pass,
but you ought to be able to hit the palm-tree yonder. Give me
your discus, and that stone. There; the unequal corners hinder its
flight--now pay attention!” Paulus spoke with growing eagerness, and now
he grasped the flat stone, as he might have done many years since when
no youth in Alexandria had been his match in throwing the discus.

He bent his knees, stretched out his body, gave play to his wrist,
extended his arm to the utmost and hurled the stone into space, while
the clenched toes of his right foot deeply dinted the soil.

But it fell to the ground before reaching which Paulus had indicated as
the mark.

“Wait!” cried Hermas. “Let me try now to hit the tree.”

His stone whistled through the air, but it did not even reach the mound,
into which the palm-tree had struck root.

Paulus shook his head disapprovingly, and in his, turn seized a flat
stone; and now an eager contest began. At every throw Hermas’ stone flew
farther, for he copied his teacher’s action and grasp with increasing
skill, while the older man’s arm began to tire. At last Hermas for the
second time hit the palm-tree, while Paulus had failed to reach even the
mound with his last fling.

The pleasure of the contest took stronger possession of the anchorite;
he flung his raiment from him, and seizing another stone he cried
out--as though he were standing once more in the wrestling school among
his old companions; all shining with their anointment.

“By the silver-bowed Apollo, and the arrow-speeding Artemis, I will hit
the palm-tree.”

The missile sang through the air, his body sprang back, and he stretched
out his left arm to save his tottering balance; there was a crash, the
tree quivered under the blow, and Hermas shouted joyfully: “Wonderful!
wonderful! that was indeed a throw. The old Menander is not dead!
Farewell--to-morrow we will try again.”

With these words Hermas quitted the anchorite, and hastened with wide
leaps down the hill in the oasis. Paulus started at the words like a
sleep-walker who is suddenly wakened by hearing his name called. He
looked about him in bewilderment, as if he had to find his way in some
strange world. Drops of sweat stood on his brow, and with sudden shame
he snatched up his garments that were lying on the ground, and covered
his naked limbs.

For some time he stood gazing after Hermas, then he clasped his brow in
deep anguish and large tears ran down upon his beard.

“What have I said?” he muttered to himself; “That every vein of the old
man in me was extirpated? Fool! vain madman that I am. They named me
Paulus, and I am in truth Saul, aye, and worse than Saul!”

With these words he threw himself on his knees, pressing his forehead
against the hard rock, and began to pray. He felt as if he had been
flung from a height on to spears and lances, as if his heart and soul
were bleeding, and while he remained there, dissolved in grief and
prayer, accusing and condemning himself, he felt not the burning of the
sun as it mounted in the sky, heeded not the flight of time, nor heard
the approach of a party of pilgrims, who, under the guidance of bishop
Agapitus, were visiting the Holy Places. The palmers saw him at prayer,
heard his sobs, and, marvelling at his piety, at a sign from their
pastor they knelt down behind him.

When Paulus at last arose, he perceived with surprise and alarm the
witnesses of his devotions, and approached Agapitus to kiss his robe.
But the bishop said: “Not so; he that is most pious is the greatest
among us. My friends, let us bow down before this saintly man!”

The pilgrims obeyed his command. Paulus hid his face in his hands and
sobbed out: “Wretch, wretch that I am!”

And the pilgrims lauded his humility, and followed their leader who left
the spot.




CHAPTER III.

Hermas had hastened onwards without delay. He had already reached the
last bend of the path he had followed down the ravine, and he saw at his
feet the long narrow valley and the gleaming waters of the stream, which
here fertilized the soil of the desert. He looked down on lofty palms
and tamarisk shrubs innumerable, among which rose the houses of
the inhabitants, surrounded by their little gardens and small
carefully-irrigated fields; already he could hear the crowing of a cock
and the hospitable barking of a dog, sounds which came to him like a
welcome from the midst of that life for which he yearned, accustomed as
he was to be surrounded day and night by the deep and lonely stillness
of the rocky heights.

He stayed his steps, and his eyes followed the thin columns of smoke,
which floated tremulously up in the clear light of the ever mounting sun
from the numerous hearths that lay below him.

“They are cooking breakfast now,” thought he, “the wives for their
husbands, the mothers for their children, and there, where that dark
smoke rises, very likely a splendid feast is being prepared for guests;
but I am nowhere at home, and no one will invite me in.” The contest
with Paulus had excited and cheered him, but the sight of the city
filled his young heart with renewed bitterness, and his lips trembled
as he looked down on his sheepskin and his unwashed limbs. With hasty
resolve he turned his back on the oasis and hurried up the mountain.
By the side of the brooklet that he knew of he threw off his coarse
garment, let the cool water flow over his body, washed himself carefully
and with much enjoyment, stroked clown his thick hair with his fingers,
and then hurried down again into the valley.

The gorge through which he had descended debouched by a hillock that
rose from the valley-plain; a small newly-built church leaned against
its eastern declivity, and it was fortified on all sides by walls and
dikes, behind which the citizens found shelter when they were threatened
by the Saracen robbers of the oasis. This hill passed for a particularly
sacred spot. Moses was supposed to have prayed on its summit during the
battle with the Amalekites while his arms were held up by Aaron and Hur.

But there were other notable spots in the neighborhood of the oasis.
There farther to the north was the rock whence Moses had struck the
water; there higher up, and more to the south-east, was the hill, where
the Lord had spoken to the law-giver face to face, and where he had
seen the burning bush; there again was the spring where he had met the
daughters of Jethro, Zippora and Ledja, so called in the legend. Pious
pilgrims came to these holy places in great numbers, and among them many
natives of the peninsula, particularly Nabateans, who had previously
visited the holy mountain in order to sacrifice on its summit to their
gods, the sun, moon, and planets. At the outlet, towards the north,
stood a castle, which ever since the Syrian Prefect, Cornelius Palma,
had subdued Arabia Petraea in the time of Trajan, had been held by a
Roman garrison for the protection of the blooming city of the desert
against the incursions of the marauding Saracens and Blemmyes.

But the citizens of Pharan themselves had taken measures for the
security of their property. On the topmost cliffs of the jagged crown
of the giant mountain--the most favorable spots for a look-out far and
wide--they placed sentinels, who day and night scanned the distance, so
as to give a warning-signal in case of approaching clanger. Each house
resembled a citadel, for it was built of strong masonry, and the younger
men were all well exercised bowmen. The more distinguished families
dwelt near the church-hill, and there too stood the houses of the Bishop
Agapitus, and of the city councillors of Pharan.

Among these the Senator Petrus enjoyed the greatest respect, partly
by reason of his solid abilities, and of his possessions in quarries,
garden-ground, date palms, and cattle; partly in consequence of the rare
qualities of his wife, the deaconess Dorothea, the granddaughter of the
long-deceased and venerable Bishop Chaeremon, who had fled hither with
his wife during the persecution of the Christians under Decius, and who
had converted many of the Pharanites to the knowledge of the Redeemer.

The house of Petrus was of strong and well-joined stone, and the palm
garden adjoining was carefully tended. Twenty slaves, many camels, and
even two horses belonged to him, and the centurion in command of the
Imperial garrison, the Gaul Phoebicius, and his wife Sirona, lived as
lodgers under his roof; not quite to the satisfaction of the councillor,
for the centurion was no Christian, but a worshipper of Mithras, in
whose mysteries the wild Gaul had risen to the grade of a ‘Lion,’ whence
his people, and with them the Pharanites in general, were wont to speak
of him as “the Lion.”

His predecessor had been an officer of much lower rank but a believing
Christian, whom Petrus had himself requested to live in his house, and
when, about a year since, the Lion Phoebicius had taken the place of the
pious Pankratius, the senator could not refuse him the quarters, which
had become a right.

Hermas went shyly and timidly towards the court of Petrus’ house, and
his embarrassment increased when he found himself in the hall of the
stately stone-house, which he had entered without let or hindrance, and
did not know which way to turn. There was no one there to direct him,
and he dared not go up the stairs which led to the upper story, although
it seemed that Petrus must be there. Yes, there was no doubt, for he
heard talking overhead and clearly distinguished the senator’s deep
voice. Hermas advanced, and set his foot on the first step of the
stairs; but he had scarcely begun to go up with some decision, and
feeling ashamed of his bashfulness, when he heard a door fly open just
above him, and from it there poured a flood of fresh laughing children’s
voices, like a pent up stream when the miller opens the sluice gate.

He glanced upwards in surprise, but there was no time for consideration,
for the shouting troop of released little ones had already reached the
stairs. In front of all hastened a beautiful young woman with golden
hair; she was laughing gaily, and held a gaudily-dressed doll high above
her head. She came backwards towards the steps, turning her fair face
beaming with fun and delight towards the children, who, full of their
longing, half demanding, half begging, half laughing, half crying,
shouted in confusion, “Let us be, Sirona,” “Do not take it away again,
Sirona,” “Do stay here, Sirona,” again and again, “Sirona--Sirona.”

A lovely six year old maiden stretched up as far as she could to reach
the round white arm that held the play-thing; with her left hand, which
was free, she gaily pushed away three smaller children, who tried to
cling to her knees and exclaimed, still stepping backwards, “No, no; you
shall not have it till it has a new gown; it shall be as long and as gay
as the Emperors’s robe. Let me go, Caecilia, or you will fall down as
naughty Nikon did the other day.”

By this time she had reached the steps; she turned suddenly, and with
outstretched arms she stopped the way of the narrow stair on which
Hermas was standing, gazing open-mouthed at the merry scene above his
head. Just as Sirona was preparing to run down, she perceived him and
started; but when she saw that the anchorite from pure embarrassment
could find no words in which to answer her question as to what he
wanted, she laughed heartily again and called out: “Come up, we shall
not hurt you--shall we children?”

Meanwhile Hermas had found courage enough to give utterance to his
wish to speak with the senator, and the young woman, who looked with
complacency on his strong and youthful frame, offered to conduct him to
him.

Petrus had been talking to his grown up elder sons; they were tall men,
but their father was even taller than they, and of unusual breadth of
shoulder.

While the young men were speaking, he stroked his short grey beard and
looked down at the ground in sombre gravity, as it might have seemed
to the careless observer; but any one who looked closer might quickly
perceive that not seldom a pleased smile, though not less often a
somewhat bitter one, played upon the lips of the prudent and judicious
man. He was one of those who can play with their children like a young
mother, take the sorrows of another as much to heart as if they were
their own, and yet who look so gloomy, and allow themselves to make such
sharp speeches, that only those who are on terms of perfect confidence
with them, cease to misunderstand them and fear them. There was
something fretting the soul of this man, who nevertheless possessed all
that could contribute to human happiness. His was a thankful nature,
and yet he was conscious that he might have been destined to something
greater than fate had permitted him to achieve or to be. He had remained
a stone-cutter, but his sons had both completed their education in good
schools in Alexandria. The elder, Antonius, who already had a house of
his own and a wife and children, was an architect and artist-mechanic;
the younger, Polykarp, was a gifted young sculptor. The noble church
of the oasis-city had been built under the direction of the elder;
Polykarp, who had only come home a month since, was preparing to
establish and carry on works of great extent in his father’s quarries,
for he had received a commission to decorate the new court of
the Sebasteion or Caesareum, as it was called--a grand pile in
Alexandria--with twenty granite lions. More than thirty artists had
competed with him for this work, but the prize was unanimously adjudged
to his models by qualified judges. The architect whose function it was
to construct the colonnades and pavement of the court was his friend,
and had agreed to procure the blocks of granite, the flags and the
columns which he required from Petrus’ quarries, and not, as had
formerly been the custom, from those of Syene by the first Cataract.

Antonius and Polykarp were now standing with their father before a large
table, explaining to him a plan which they had worked out together and
traced on the thin wax surface of a wooden tablet. The young architect’s
proposal was to bridge over a deep but narrow gorge, which the beasts of
burden were obliged to avoid by making a wide circuit, and so to make a
new way from the quarries to the sea, which should be shorter by a third
than the old one. The cost of this structure would soon be recouped
by the saving in labor, and with perfect certainty, if only the
transport-ships were laden at Clysma with a profitable return freight
of Alexandrian manufactures, instead of returning empty as they
had hitherto done. Petrus, who could shine as a speaker in the
council-meetings, in private life spoke but little. At each of his son’s
new projects he raised his eyes to the speaker’s face, as if to see
whether the young man had not lost his wits, while his mouth, only half
hidden by his grey beard, smiled approvingly.

When Antonius began to unfold his plan for remedying the inconvenience
of the ravine that impeded the way, the senator muttered, “Only get
feathers to grow on the slaves, and turn the black ones into ravens and
the white ones into gulls, and then they might fly across. What do not
people learn in the metropolis!”

When he heard the word ‘bridge’ he stared at the young artist. “The only
question,” said he, “is whether Heaven will lend us a rainbow.” But when
Polykarp proposed to get some cedar trunks from Syria through his friend
in Alexandria, and when his elder son explained his drawings of the arch
with which he promised to span the gorge and make it strong and safe,
he followed their words with attention; at the same time he knit his
eyebrows as gloomily and looked as stern as if he were listening to some
narrative of crime. Still, he let them speak on to the end, and though
at first he only muttered that it was mere “fancy-work” or “Aye, indeed,
if I were the emperor;” he afterwards asked clear and precise questions,
to which he received positive and well considered answers. Antonius
proved by figures that the profit on the delivery of material for the
Caesareum only would cover more than three quarters of the outlay.
Then Polykarp began to speak and declared that the granite of the Holy
Mountain was finer in color and in larger blocks than that from Syene.

“We work cheaper here than at the Cataract,” interrupted Antonius. “And
the transport of the blocks will not come too dear when we have the
bridge and command the road to the sea, and avail ourselves of the
canal of Trajan, which joins the Nile to the Red Sea, and which in a few
months will again be navigable.”

“And if my lions are a success,” added Polykarp, “and if Zenodotus is
satisfied with our stone and our work, it may easily happen that we
outstrip Syene in competition, and that some of the enormous orders that
now flow from Constantine’s new residence to the quarries at Syene, may
find their way to us.”

“Polykarp is not over sanguine,” continued Antonius, “for the emperor is
beautifying and adding to Byzantium with eager haste. Whoever erects a
new house has a yearly allowance of corn, and in order to attract folks
of our stamp--of whom he cannot get enough--he promises entire exemption
from taxation to all sculptors, architects, and even to skilled
laborers. If we finish the blocks and pillars here exactly to the
designs, they will take up no superfluous room in the ships, and no one
will be able to deliver them so cheaply as we.”

“No, nor so good,” cried Polykarp, “for you yourself are an artist,
father, and understand stone-work as well as any man. I never saw a
finer or more equally colored granite than the block you picked out for
my first lion. I am finishing it here on the spot, and I fancy it will
make a show. Certainly it will be difficult to take a foremost place
among the noble works of the most splendid period of art, which already
fill the Caesareum, but I will do my best.”

“The Lions will be admirable,” cried Antonius with a glance of pride
at his brother. “Nothing like them has been done by any one these ten
years, and I know the Alexandrians. If the master’s work is praised that
is made out of granite from the Holy Mountain, all the world will have
granite from thence and from no where else. It all depends on whether
the transport of the stone to the sea can be made less difficult and
costly.”

“Let us try it then,” said Petrus, who during his son’s talk had walked
up and down before them in silence. “Let us try the building of the
bridge in the name of the Lord. We will work out the road if the
municipality will declare themselves ready to bear half the cost; not
otherwise, and I tell you frankly, you have both grown most able men.”

The younger son grasped his father’s hand and pressed it with warm
affection to his lips. Petrus hastily stroked his brown locks, then
he offered his strong right hand to his eldest-born and said: “We must
increase the number of our slaves. Call your mother, Polykarp.” The
youth obeyed with cheerful alacrity, and when Dame Dorothea--who was
sitting at the loom with her daughter Marthana and some of her female
slaves--saw him rush into the women’s room with a glowing face, she rose
with youthful briskness in spite of her stout and dignified figure, and
called out to her son:

“He has approved of your plans?”

“Bridge and all, mother, everything,” cried the young man. “Finer
granite for my lions, than my father has picked out for me is nowhere
to be found, and how glad I am for Antonius! only we must have patience
about the roadway. He wants to speak to you at once.”

Dorothea signed to her son to moderate his ecstasy, for he had seized
her hand, and was pulling her away with him, but the tears that stood
in her kind eyes testified how deeply she sympathized in her favorite’s
excitement.

“Patience, patience, I am coming directly,” cried she, drawing away her
hand in order to arrange her dress and her grey hair, which was abundant
and carefully dressed, and formed a meet setting for her still pleasing
and unwrinkled face.

“I knew it would be so; when you have a reasonable thing to propose to
your father, he will always listen to you and agree with you without my
intervention; women should not mix themselves up with men’s work. Youth
draws a strong bow and often shoots beyond the mark. It would be a
pretty thing if out of foolish affection for you I were to try to
play the siren that should ensnare the steersman of the house--your
father--with flattering words. You laugh at the grey-haired siren? But
love overlooks the ravages of years and has a good memory for all that
was once pleasing. Besides, men have not always wax in their ears when
they should have. Come now to your father.”

Dorothea went out past Polykarp and her daughter. The former held his
sister back by the hand and asked--“Was not Sirona with you?”

The sculptor tried to appear quite indifferent, but he blushed as he
spoke; Marthana observed this and replied not without a roguish glance:
“She did show us her pretty face; but important business called her
away.”

“Sirona?” asked Polykarp incredulously.

“Certainly, why not!” answered Marthana laughing. “She had to sew a new
gown for the children’s doll.”

“Why do you mock at her kindness?” said Polykarp reproachfully.

“How sensitive you are!” said Marthana softly. “Sirona is as kind and
sweet as an angel; but you had better look at her rather less, for she
is not one of us, and repulsive as the choleric centurion is to me--”

She said no more, for Dame Dorothea, having reached the door of the
sitting-room, looked around for her children.

Petrus received his wife with no less gravity than was usual with him,
but there was an arch sparkle in his half closed eyes as he asked: “You
scarcely know what is going on, I suppose?”

“You are madmen, who would fain take Heaven by storm,” she answered
gaily.

“If the undertaking fails,” said Petrus, pointing to his sons, “those
young ones will feel the loss longer than we shall.”

“But it will succeed,” cried Dorothea. “An old commander and young
soldiers can win any battle.” She held out her small plump hand with
frank briskness to her husband, he clasped it cheerily and said: “I
think I can carry the project for the road through the Senate. To build
our bridge we must also procure helping hands, and for that we need your
aid, Dorothea. Our slaves will not suffice.”

“Wait,” cried the lady eagerly; she went to the window and called,
“Jethro, Jethro!”

The person thus addressed, the old house-steward, appeared, and Dorothea
began to discuss with him as to which of the inhabitants of the oasis
might be disposed to let them have some able-bodied men, and whether it
might not be possible to employ one or another of the house-slaves at
the building.

All that she said was judicious and precise, and showed that she herself
superintended her household in every detail, and was accustomed to
command with complete freedom.

“That tall Anubis then is really indispensable in the stable?” she asked
in conclusion. The steward, who up to this moment had spoken shortly
and intelligently, hesitated to answer; at the same time he looked up at
Petrus, who, sunk in the contemplation of the plan, had his back to him;
his glance, and a deprecating movement, expressed very clearly that
he had something to tell, but feared to speak in the presence of
his master. Dame Dorothea was quick of comprehension, and she quite
understood Jethro’s meaning; it was for that very reason that she said
with more of surprise than displeasure: “What does the man mean with his
winks? What I may hear, Petrus may hear too.”

The senator turned, and looked at the steward from head to foot with so
dark a glance, that he drew back, and began to speak quickly. But he was
interrupted by the children’s clamors on the stairs and by Sirona, who
brought Hermas to the senator, and said laughing: “I found this great
fellow on the stairs, he was seeking you.”

Petrus looked at the youth, not very kindly, and asked: “Who are
you? what is your business?” Hermas struggled in vain for speech; the
presence of so many human beings, of whom three were women, filled him
with the utmost confusion. His fingers twisted the woolly curls on his
sheep-skin, and his lips moved but gave no sound; at last he succeeded
in stammering out, “I am the son of old Stephanus, who was wounded in
the last raid of the Saracens. My father has hardly slept these
five nights, and now Paulus has sent me to you--the pious Paulus of
Alexandria--but you know--and so I--”

“I see, I see,” said Petrus with encouraging kindness. “You want some
medicine for the old man. See Dorothea, what a fine young fellow he is
grown, this is the little man that the Antiochian took with him up the
mountain.”

Hermas colored, and drew himself up; then he observed with great
satisfaction that he was taller than the senator’s sons, who were of
about the same age as he, and for whom he had a stronger feeling,
allied to aversion and fear, than even for their stern father. Polykarp
measured him with a glance, and said aloud to Sirona, with whom he had
exchanged a greeting, are off whom he had never once taken his eyes
since she had come in: “If we could get twenty slaves with such
shoulders as those, we should get on well. There is work to be done
here, you big fellow--”

“My name is not ‘fellow,’ but Hermas,” said the anchorite, and the veins
of his forehead began to swell. Polykarp felt that his father’s visitor
was something more than his poor clothing would seem to indicate
and that he had hurt his feelings. He had certainly seen some old
anchorites, who led a contemplative and penitential life up on the
sacred mountain, but it had never occurred to him that a strong youth
could be long to the brotherhood of hermits. So he said to him kindly:
“Hermas--is that your name? We all use our hands here and labor is no
disgrace; what is your handicraft?”

This question roused the young anchorite to the highest excitement, and
Dame Dorothea, who perceives what was passing in his mind, said with
quick decision: “He nurses his sick father. That is what you do, my son
is it not? Petrus will not refuse you his help.”

“Certainly not,” the senator added, “I will accompany you by-and-bye to
see him. You must know my children, that this youth’s father was a great
Lord, who gave up rich possessions in order to forget the world, where
he had gone through bitter experiences, and to serve God in his own way,
which we ought to respect though it is not our own. Sit down there, my
son. First we must finish some important business, and then I will go
with you.”

“We live high up on the mountain,” stammered Hermas.

“Then the air will be all the purer,” replied the senator. “But
stay--perhaps the old man is alone no? The good Paulus, you say, is with
him? Then he is in good hands, and you may wait.”

For a moment Petrus stood considering, then he beckoned to his sons, and
said, “Antonius, go at once and see about some slaves--you, Polykarp,
find some strong beasts of burden. You are generally rather easy with
your money, and in this case it is worth while to buy the dearest. The
sooner you return well supplied the better. Action must not halt behind
decision, but follow it quickly and sharply, as the sound follows the
blow. You, Marthana, mix some of the brown fever-potion, and prepare
some bandages; you have the key.”

“I will help her,” cried Sirona, who was glad to prove herself useful,
and who was sincerely sorry for the sick old hermit; besides, Hermas
seemed to her like a discovery of her own, for whom she involuntarily
felt more consideration since she had learned that he was the son of a
man of rank.

While the young women were busy at the medicine-cupboard, Antonius and
Polykarp left the room.

The latter had already crossed the threshold, when he turned once more,
and cast a long look at Sirona. Then, with a hasty movement, he went on,
closed the door, and with a heavy sigh descended the stairs.

As soon as his sons were gone, Petrus turned to the steward again.

“What is wrong with the slave Anubis?” he asked.

“He is--wounded, hurt,” answered Jethro, “and for the next few days will
be useless. The goat-girl Miriam--the wild cat--cut his forehead with
her reaping hook.”

“Why did I not hear of this sooner?” cried Dorothea reprovingly. “What
have you done to the girl?”

“We have shut her up in the hay loft,” answered Jethro, “and there she
is raging and storming.”

The mistress shook her head disapprovingly. “The girl will not be
improved by that treatment,” she said. “Go and bring her to me.”

As soon as the intendant had left the room, she exclaimed, turning to
her husband, “One may well be perplexed about these poor creatures, when
one sees how they behave to each other. I have seen it a thousand times!
No judgment is so hard as that dealt by a slave to slaves!”

Jethro and a woman now led Miriam into the room. The girl’s hands were
bound with thick cords, and dry grass clung to her dress and rough black
hair. A dark fire glowed in her eyes, and the muscles of her face moved
incessantly, as if she had St. Vitus’ dance. When Dorothea looked at
her she drew herself up defiantly, and looked around the room, as if to
estimate the strength of her enemies.

She then perceived Hermas; the blood left her lips, with a violent
effort she tore her slender hands out of the loops that confined them,
covering her face with them, and fled to the door. But Jethro put
himself in her way, and seized her shoulder with a strong grasp.
Miriam shrieked aloud, and the senator’s daughter, who had set down the
medicines she had had in her hand, and had watched the girl’s movements
with much sympathy, hastened towards her. She pushed away the old man’s
hand, and said, “Do not be frightened, Miriam. Whatever you may have
done, my father can forgive you.”

Her voice had a tone of sisterly affection, and the shepherdess followed
Marthana unresistingly to the table, on which the plans for the bridge
were lying, and stood there by her side.

For a minute all were silent; at last Dame Dorothea went up to Miriam,
and asked, “What did they do to you, my poor child, that you could so
forget yourself?”

Miriam could not understand what was happening to her; she had been
prepared for scoldings and blows, nay for bonds and imprisonment, and
now these gentle words and kind looks! Her defiant spirit was quelled,
her eyes met the friendly eyes of her mistress, and she said in a low
voice: “he had followed me for such a long time, and wanted to ask you
for me as his wife; but I cannot bear him--I hate him as I do all your
slaves.” At these words her eyes sparkled wildly again, and with her old
fire she went on, “I wish I had only hit him with a stick instead of a
sickle; but I took what first came to hand to defend myself. When a man
touches me--I cannot bear it, it is horrible, dreadful! Yesterday I came
home later than usual with the beasts, and by the time I had milked the
goats, and was going to bed, every one in the house was asleep. Then
Anubis met me, and began chattering about love; I repelled him, but he
seized me, and held me with his hand here on my head and wanted to kiss
me; then my blood rose, I caught hold of my reaping hook, that hung by
my side, and it was not till I saw him roaring on the ground, that I saw
I had done wrong. How it happened I really cannot tell--something seemed
to rise up in me--something--I don’t know what to call it. It drives me
on as the wind drives the leaves that lie on the road, and I cannot help
it. The best thing you can do is to let me die, for then you would be
safe once for all from my wickedness, and all would be over and done
with.”

“How can you speak so?” interrupted Marthana. “You are wild and
ungovernable, but not wicked.”

“Only ask him!” cried the girl, pointing with flashing eyes to Hermas,
who, on his part, looked down a the floor in confusion. The senator
exchanged a hasty glance with his wife, they were accustomed to under
stand each other without speech, and Dorothea said: “He who feels that
he is not what he ought to be is already on the high-road to amendment.
We let you keep the goats because you were always running after the
flocks, and never can rest in the house. You are up on the mountain
before morning-prayer, and never come home till after supper is over,
and no one takes any thought for the better part of you. Half of your
guilt recoils upon us, and we have no right to punish you. You need
not be so astonished; every one some times does wrong. Petrus and I are
human beings like you, neither more nor less; but we are Christians, and
it is our duty to look after the souls which God has entrusted to our
care, be they our children or our slaves. You must go no more up the
mountain, but shall stay with us in the house. I shall willingly forgive
your hasty deed if Petrus does not think it necessary to punish you.”

The senator gravely shook his head in sign of agreement, and Dorothea
turned to enquire of Jethro: “Is Anubis badly wounded and does he need
any care?’

“He is lying in a fever and wanders in his talk,” was the answer. “Old
Praxinoa is cooling his wound with water.”

“Then Miriam can take her place and try to remedy the mischief which
she was the cause of,” said Dorothea. “Half of your guilt will be atoned
for, girl, if Anubis recovers under your care. I will come presently
with Marthana, and show you how to make a bandage.” The shepherdess
cast down her eyes, and passively allowed herself to be conducted to the
wounded man.

Meanwhile Marthana had prepared the brown mixture. Petrus had his staff
and felt-hat brought to him, gave Hermas the medicine and desired him to
follow him.

Sirona looked after the couple as they went. “What a pity for such a
fine lad!” she exclaimed. “A purple coat would suit him better than that
wretched sheepskin.”

The mistress shrugged her shoulders, and signing to her daughter said:
“Come to work, Marthana, the sun is already high. How the days fly! the
older one grows the quicker the hours hurry away.”

“I must be very young then,” said the centurion’s wife, “for in this
wilderness time seems to me to creep along frightfully slow. One day is
the same as another, and I often feel as if life were standing perfectly
still, and my heart pulses with it. What should I be without your house
and the children?--always the same mountain, the same palm-trees, the
same faces!--”

“But the mountain is glorious, the trees are beautiful!” answered
Dorothea. “And if we love the people with whom we are in daily
intercourse, even here we may be contented and happy. At least we
ourselves are, so far as the difficulties of life allow. I have often
told you, what you want is work.”

“Work! but for whom?” asked Sirona. “If indeed I had children like you!
Even in Rome I was not happy, far from it; and yet there was plenty to
do and to think about. Here a procession, there a theatre; but here! And
for whom should I dress even? My jewels grow dull in my chest, and the
moths eat my best clothes. I am making doll’s clothes now of my colored
cloak for your little ones. If some demon were to transform me into a
hedge-hog or a grey owl, it would be all the same to me.”

“Do not be so sinful,” said Dorothea gravely, but looking with kindly
admiration at the golden hair and lovely sweet face of the young woman.
“It ought to be a pleasure to you to dress yourself for your husband.”

“For him?” said Sirona. “He never looks at me, or if he does it is only
to abuse me. The only wonder to me is that I can still be merry at all;
nor am I, except in your house, and not there even but when I forget him
altogether.”

“I will not hear such things said--not another word,” interrupted
Dorothea severely. “Take the linen and cooling lotion, Marthana, we will
go and bind up Anubis’ wound.”




CHAPTER IV.

Petrus went up the mountain side with Hermas. The old man followed the
youth, who showed him the way, and as he raised his eyes from time to
time, he glanced with admiration at his guide’s broad shoulders and
elastic limbs. The road grew broader when it reached a little mountain
plateau, and from thence the two men walked on side by side, but for
some time without speaking till the senator asked: “How long now has
your father lived up on the mountain?”

“Many years,” answered Hermas. “But I do not know how many--and it is
all one. No one enquires about time up here among us.”

The senator stood still a moment and measured his companion with a
glance.

“You have been with your father ever since he came?” he asked.

“He never lets me out of his sight;” replied Hermas. “I have been only
twice into the oasis, even to go to the church.”

“Then you have been to no school?”

“To what school should I go! My father has taught me to read the Gospels
and I could write, but I have nearly forgotten how. Of what use would it
be to me? We live like praying beasts.”

Deep bitterness sounded in the last words, and Petrus could see into
the troubled spirit of his companion, overflowing as it was with weary
disgust, and he perceived how the active powers of youth revolted in
aversion against the slothful waste of life, to which he was condemned.
He was grieved for the boy, and he was not one of those who pass by
those in peril without helping them. Then he thought of his own sons,
who had grown up in the exercise and fulfilment of serious duties, and
he owned to himself that the fine young fellow by his side was in no
way their inferior, and needed nothing but to be guided aright. He
thoughtfully looked first at the youth and then on the ground, and
muttered unintelligible words into his grey beard as they walked on.
Suddenly he drew himself up and nodded decisively; he would make an
attempt to save Hermas, and faithful to his own nature, action trod on
the heels of resolve. Where the little level ended the road divided,
one path continued to lead upwards, the other deviated to the valley
and ended at the quarries. Petrus was for taking the latter, but Hermas
cried out, “That is not the way to our cave; you must follow me.”

“Follow thou me!” replied the senator, and the words were spoken with a
tone and expression, that left no doubt in the youth’s mind as to their
double meaning. “The day is yet before us, and we will see what my
laborers are doing. Do you know the spot where they quarry the stone?”

“How should I not know it?” said Hermas, passing the senator to lead the
way. “I know every path from our mountain to the oasis, and to the sea.
A panther had its lair in the ravine behind your quarries.”

“So we have learnt,” said Petrus. “The thievish beasts have slaughtered
two young camels, and the people can neither catch them in their toils
nor run them down with dogs.”

“They will leave you in peace now,” said the boy laughing. “I brought
down the male from the rock up there with an arrow, and I found the
mother in a hollow with her young ones. I had a harder job with her;
my knife is so bad, and the copper blade bent with the blow; I had to
strangle the gaudy devil with my hands, and she tore my shoulder and bit
my arm. Look! there are the scars. But thank God, my wounds heal quicker
than my father’s. Paulus says, I am like an earth-worm; when it is cut
in two the two halves say good-bye to each other, and crawl off sound
and gay, one way, and the other another way. The young panthers were
so funny and helpless, I would not kill them, but I did them up in
my sheepskin, and brought them to my father. He laughed at the little
beggars, and then a Nabataean took them to be sold at Clysma to a
merchant from Rome. There and at Byzantium, there is a demand for all
kinds of living beasts of prey. I got some money for them, and for the
skins of the old ones, and kept it to pay for my journey, when I went
with the others to Alexandria to ask the blessing of the new Patriarch.”

“You went to the metropolis?” asked Petrus. “You saw the great
structures, that secure the coast from the inroads of the sea, the tall
Pharos with the far-shining fire, the strong bridges, the churches, the
palaces and temples with their obelisks, pillars, and beautiful paved
courts? Did it never enter your mind to think that it would be a proud
thing to construct such buildings?”

Hermas shook his head. “Certainly I would rather live in an airy house
with colonnades than in our dingy cavern, but building would never be in
my way. What a long time it takes to put one stone on another! I am not
patient, and when I leave my father I will do something that shall win
me fame. But there are the quarries--” Petrus did not let his companion
finish his sentence, but interrupted him with all the warmth of youth,
exclaiming: “And do you mean to say that fame cannot be won by the arts
of building? Look there at the blocks and flags, here at the pillars of
hard stone. These are all to be sent to Aila, and there my son Antonius,
the elder of the two that you saw just now, is going to build a House of
God, with strong walls and pillars, much larger and handsomer than our
church in the oasis, and that is his work too. He is not much older than
you are, and already he is famous among the people far and wide. Out
of those red blocks down there my younger son Polykarp will hew noble
lions, which are destined to decorate the finest building in the capital
itself. When you and I, and all that are now living, shall have been
long since forgotten, still it will be said these are the work of the
Master Polykarp, the son of Petrus, the Pharanite. What he can do is
certainly a thing peculiar to himself, no one who is not one of the
chosen and gifted ones can say, ‘I will learn to do that.’ But you have
a sound understanding, strong hands and open eyes, and who can tell what
else there is hidden in you. If you could begin to learn soon, it would
not yet be too late to make a worthy master of you, but of course he
who would rise so high must not be afraid of work. Is your mind set upon
fame? That is quite right, and I am very glad of it; but you must know
that he who would gather that rare fruit must water it, as a noble
heathen once said, with the sweat of his brow. Without trouble and labor
and struggles there can be no victory, and men rarely earn fame without
fighting for victory.”

The old man’s vehemence was contagious; the lad’s spirit was roused, and
he exclaimed warmly: “What do you say? that I am afraid of struggles and
trouble? I am ready to stake everything, even my life, only to win fame.
But to measure stone, to batter defenceless blocks with a mallet and
chisel, or to join the squares with accurate pains--that does not tempt
me. I should like to win the wreath in the Palaestra by flinging the
strongest to the ground, or surpass all others as a warrior in battle;
my father was a soldier too, and he may talk as much as he will of
‘peace,’ and nothing but ‘peace,’ all the same in his dreams he speaks
of bloody strife and burning wounds. If you only cure him I will stay no
longer on this lonely mountain, even if I must steal away in secret. For
what did God give me these arms, if not to use them?”

Petrus made no answer to these words, which came is a stormy flood from
Hermas’ lips, but he stroked his grey beard, and thought to himself,
“The young of the eagle does not catch flies. I shall never win over
this soldier’s son to our peaceful handicraft, but he shall not remain
on the mountain among these queer sluggards, for there he is being
ruined, and yet he is not of a common sort.”

When he had given a few orders to the overseer of his workmen, he
followed the young man to see his suffering father.

It was now some hours since Hermas and Paulus had left the wounded
anchorite, and he still lay alone in his cave. The sun, as it rose
higher and higher, blazed down upon the rocks, which began to radiate
their heat, and the hermit’s dwelling was suffocatingly hot. The pain of
the poor man’s wound increased, his fever was greater, and he was very
thirsty. There stood the jug, which Paulus had given him, but it was
long since empty, and neither Paulus nor Hermas had come back. He
listened anxiously to the sounds in the distance, and fancied at first
that he heard the Alexandrian’s footstep, and then that he heard loud
words and suppressed groans coming from his cave. Stephanus tried to
call out, but he himself could hardly hear the feeble sound, which, with
his wounded breast and parched mouth, he succeeded in uttering. Then
he fain would have prayed, but fearful mental anguish disturbed his
devotion. All the horrors of desertion came upon him, and he who had
lived a life overflowing with action and enjoyment, with disenchantment
and satiety, who now in solitude carried on an incessant spiritual
struggle for the highest goal--this man felt himself as disconsolate and
lonely as a bewildered child that has lost its mother.

He lay on his bed of pain softly crying, and when he observed by
the shadow of the rock that the sun had passed its noonday height,
indignation and bitter feeling were added to pain, thirst and weariness.
He doubled his fists and muttered words which sounded like soldier’s
oaths, and with them the name now of Paulus, now of his son. At last
anguish gained the upperhand of his anger, and it seemed to him, as
though he were living over again the most miserable hour of his life, an
hour now long since past and gone.

He thought he was returning from a noisy banquet in the palace of the
Caesars. His slaves had taken the garlands of roses and poplar leaves
from his brow and breast, and robed him in his night-dress; now, with a
silver lamp in his hand, he was approaching his bedroom, and he smiled,
for his young wife was awaiting him, the mother of his Hermas. She was
fair and he loved her well, and he had brought home witty sayings to
repeat to her from the table of the emperor. He, if any one, had a right
to smile. Now he was in the ante-room, in which two slave-women were
accustomed to keep watch; he found only one, and she was sleeping
and breathing deeply; he still smiled as he threw the light upon her
face--how stupid she looked with her mouth open! An alabaster lamp shed
a dim light in the bed-room, softly and still smiling he went up to
Glycera’s ivory couch, and held up his lamp, and stared at the empty and
undisturbed bed--and the smile faded from his lips. The smile of that
evening came back to him no more through all the long years, for Glycera
had betrayed him, and left him--him and her child. All this had happened
twenty years since, and to-day all that he had then felt had returned to
him, and he saw his wife’s empty couch with his “mind’s eye,” as plainly
as he had then seen it, and he felt as lonely and as miserable as in
that night. But now a shadow appeared before the opening of the cave,
and he breathed a deep sigh as he felt himself released from the hideous
vision, for he had recognized Paulus, who came up and knelt down beside
him.

“Water, water!” Stephanus implored in a low voice, and Paulus, who was
cut to the heart by the moaning of the old man, which he had not heard
till he entered the cave, seized the pitcher. He looked into it, and,
finding it quite dry, he rushed down to the spring as if he were running
for a wager, filled it to the brim and brought it to the lips of the
sick man, who gulped the grateful drink down with deep draughts, and at
last exclaimed with a sigh of relief; “That is better; why were you so
long away? I was so thirsty!” Paulus who had fallen again on his knees
by the old man, pressed his brow against the couch, and made no reply.
Stephanus gazed in astonishment at his companion, but perceiving that
he was weeping passionately he asked no further questions. Perfect
stillness reigned in the cave for about an hour; at last Paulus raised
his face, and said, “Forgive me Stephanus. I forgot your necessity
in prayer and scourging, in order to recover the peace of mind I had
trifled away--no heathen would have done such a thing!” The sick man
stroked his friend’s arm affectionately; but Paulus murmured, “Egoism,
miserable egoism guides and governs us. Which of us ever thinks of the
needs of others? And we--we who profess to walk in the way of the Lamb!”

He sighed deeply, and leaned his head on the sick man’s breast, who
lovingly stroked his rough hair, and it was thus that the senator found
him, when he entered the cave with Hermas.

The idle way of life of the anchorites was wholly repulsive to his views
of the task for men and for Christians, but he succored those whom he
could, and made no enquiries about the condition of the sufferer. The
pathetic union in which he found the two men touched his heart, and,
turning to Paulus, he said kindly: “I can leave you in perfect comfort,
for you seem to me to have a faithful nurse.”

The Alexandrian reddened; he shook his head, and replied: “I? I thought
of no one but myself, and left him to suffer and thirst in neglect, but
now I will not quit him--no, indeed, I will not, and by God’s help and
yours, he shall recover.”

Petrus gave him a friendly nod, for he did not believe in the
anchorite’s self-accusation, though he did in his good-will; and
before he left the cave, he desired Hermas to come to him early on the
following day to give him news of his father’s state. He wished not only
to cure Stephanus, but to continue his relations with the youth, who had
excited his interest in the highest degree, and he had resolved to help
him to escape from the inactive life which was weighing upon him.

Paulus declined to share the simple supper that the father and son were
eating, but expressed his intention of remaining with the sick man. He
desired Hermas to pass the night in his dwelling, as the scanty limits
of the cave left but narrow room for the lad.

A new life had this day dawned upon the young man; all the grievances
and desires which had filled his soul ever since his journey to
Alexandria, crowding together in dull confusion, had taken form and
color, and he knew now that he could not remain an anchorite, but must
try his over abundant strength in real life.

“My father,” thought he, “was a warrior, and lived in a palace, before
he retired into our dingy cave; Paulus was Menander, and to this day has
not forgotten how to throw the discus; I am young, strong, and free-born
as they were, and Petrus says, I might have been a fine man. I will
not hew and chisel stones like his sons, but Caesar needs soldiers, and
among all the Amalekites, nay among the Romans in the oasis, I saw none
with whom I might not match myself.”

While thus he thought he stretched his limbs, and struck his hands on
his broad breast, and when he was asleep, he dreamed of the wrestling
school, and of a purple robe that Paulus held out to him, of a wreath
of poplar leaves that rested on his scented curls, and of the beautiful
woman who had met him on the stairs of the senator’s house.




CHAPTER V.

Thanks to the senator’s potion Stephanus soon fell asleep. Paulus sat
near him and did not stir; he held his breath, and painfully suppressed
even an impulse to cough, so as not to disturb the sick man’s light
slumbers.

An hour after midnight the old man awoke, and after he had lain
meditating for some time with his eyes open, he said thoughtfully: “You
called yourself and us all egotistic, and I certainly am so. I have
often said so to myself; not for the first time to day, but for
weeks past, since Hermas came back from Alexandria, and seems to have
forgotten how to laugh. He is not happy, and when I ask myself what is
to become of him when I am dead, and if he turns from the Lord and seeks
the pleasures of the world, my heart sickens. I meant it for the best
when I brought him with me up to the Holy Mountain, but that was not the
only motive--it seemed to me too hard to part altogether from the child.
My God! the young of brutes are secure of their mother’s faithful
love, and his never asked for him when she fled from my house with her
seducer. I thought he should at least not lose his father, and that if
he grew up far away from the world he would be spared all the sorrow
that it had so profusely heaped upon me, I would have brought him up
fit for Heaven, and yet through a life devoid of suffering. And now--and
now? If he is miserable it will be through me, and added to all my other
troubles comes this grief.”

“You have sought out the way for him,” interrupted Paulus, “and the rest
will be sure to come; he loves you and will certainly not leave you so
long as you are suffering.”

“Certainly not?” asked the sick man sadly. “And what weapons has he to
fight through life with?”

“You gave him the Saviour for a guide; that is enough,” said Paulus
soothingly. “There is no smooth road from earth to Heaven, and none can
win salvation for another.”

Stephanus was silent for a long time, then he said: “It is not even
allowed to a father to earn the wretched experience of life for his son,
or to a teacher for his pupil. We may point out the goal, but the way
thither is by a different road for each of us.”

“And we may thank God for that,” cried Paulus. “For Hermas has been
started on the road which you and I had first to find for ourselves.”

“You and I,” repeated the sick man thoughtfully. “Yes, each of us has
sought his own way, but has enquired only which was his own way, and has
never concerned himself about that of the other. Self! self!--How many
years we have dwelt close together, and I have never felt impelled to
ask you what you could recall to mind about your youth, and how you were
led to grace. I learnt by accident that you were an Alexandrian, and had
been a heathen, and had suffered much for the faith, and with that I was
satisfied. Indeed you do not seem very ready to speak of those long
past days. Our neighbor should be as dear to us as our self, and who is
nearer to me than you? Aye, self and selfishness! There are many gulfs
on the road towards God.”

“I have not much to tell,” said Paulus. “But a man never forgets what
he once has been. We may cast the old man from us, and believe we have
shaken ourselves free, when lo! it is there again and greets us as an
old acquaintance. If a frog only once comes down from his tree he hops
back into the pond again.”

“It is true, memory can never die!” cried the sick man. “I can not sleep
any more; tell me about your early life and how you became a Christian.
When two men have journeyed by the same road, and the moment of parting
is at hand, they are fain to ask each other’s name and where they came
from.”

Paulus gazed for some time into space, and then he began: “The
companions of my youth called me Menander, the son of Herophilus.
Besides that, I know for certain very little of my youth, for as I have
already told you, I have long since ceased to allow myself to think of
the world. He who abandons a thing, but clings to the idea of the thing,
continues--”

“That sounds like Plato,” said Stephanus with a smile.

“All that heathen farrago comes back to me today,” cried Paulus. “I
used to know it well, and I have often thought that his face must have
resembled that of the Saviour.”

“But only as a beautiful song might resemble the voice of an angel,”
 said Stephanus somewhat drily. “He who plunges into the depths of
philosophic systems--”

“That never was quite my case,” said Paulus. “I did indeed go through
the whole educational course; Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic and Music--”

“And Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy,” added Stephanus.

“Those were left to the learned many years since,” continued Paulus,
“and I was never very eager for learning. In the school of Rhetoric I
remained far behind my fellows, and if Plato was dear to me I owe it to
Paedonomus of Athens, a worthy man whom my father engaged to teach us.”

“They say he had been a great merchant,” interrupted Stephanus. “Can
it be that you were the son of that rich Herophilus, whose business in
Antioch was conducted by the worthy Jew Urbib?”

“Yes indeed,” replied Paulus, looking down at the ground in some
confusion. “Our mode of life was almost royal, and the multitude of our
slaves quite sinful. When I look back on all the vain trifles that my
father had to care for, I feel quite giddy. Twenty sea-going ships in
the harbor of Eunostus, and eighty Nile-boats on Lake Mareotis belonged
to him. His profits on the manufacture of papyrus might have maintained
a cityfull of poor. But we needed our revenues for other things. Our
Cyraenian horses stood in marble stalls, and the great hall, in which my
father’s friends were wont to meet, was like a temple. But you see
how the world takes possession of us, when we begin to think about it!
Rather let us leave the past in peace. You want me to tell you more of
myself? Well; my childhood passed like that of a thousand other rich
citizens’ sons, only my mother, indeed, was exceptionally beautiful and
sweet, and of angelic goodness.”

“Every child thinks his own mother the best of mothers,” murmured the
sick man.

“Mine certainly was the best to me,” cried Paulus. “And yet she was a
heathen. When my father hurt me with severe words of blame, she always
had a kind word and loving glance for me. There was little enough,
indeed, to praise in me. Learning was utterly distasteful to me, and
even if I had done better at school, it would hardy have counted for
much to my credit, for my brother Apollonius, who was about a year
younger than I, learned all the most difficult things as if they
were mere child’s play, and in dialectic exercises there soon was no
rhetorician in Alexandria who could compete with him. No system was
unknown to him, and though no one ever knew of his troubling himself
particularly to study, he nevertheless was master of many departments of
learning. There were but two things in which I could beat him--in music,
and in all athletic exercises; while he was studying and disputing I was
winning garlands in the palaestra. But at that time the best master of
rhetoric and argument was the best man, and my father, who himself could
shine in the senate as an ardent and elegant orator, looked upon me as a
half idiotic ne’er-do-weel, until one clay a learned client of our
house presented him with a pebble on which was carved an epigram to this
effect: ‘He who would see the noblest gifts of the Greek race, should
visit the house of Herophilus, for there he might admire strength
and vigor of body in Menander, and the same qualities of mind in
Apollonius.’ These lines, which were written in the form of a lute,
passed from mouth to mouth, and gratified my father’s ambition; from
that time he had words of praise for me when my quadriga won the race in
the Hippodrome, or when I came home crowned from the wrestling-ring,
or the singing match. My whole life was spent in the baths and the
palaestra, or in gay feasting.”

“I know it all,” exclaimed Stephanus interrupting him, “and the memory
of it all often disturbs me. Did you find it easy to banish these images
from your mind?”

“At first I had a hard fight,” sighed Paulus. “But for some time now,
since I have passed my fortieth year, the temptations of the world
torment me less often. Only I must keep out of the way of the carriers
who bring fish from the fishing towns on the sea, and from Raithu to the
oasis.”

Stephanus looked enquiringly at the speaker, and Paulus went on: “Yes,
it is very strange. I may see men or women--the sea yonder or the
mountain here, without ever thinking of Alexandria, but only of sacred
things; but when the savor of fish rises up to my nostrils I see the
market and fish stalls and the oysters--”

“Those of Kanopus are famous,” interrupted Steplianus, “they make little
pasties there--” Paulus passed the back of his hand over his bearded
lips, exclaiming, “At the shop of the fat cook--Philemon--in the street
of Herakleotis.” But he broke off, and cried with an impulse of shame,
“It were better that I should cease telling of my past life. The day
does not dawn yet, and you must try to sleep.”

“I cannot sleep,” sighed Stephanus; “if you love me go on with your
story.”

“But do not interrupt me again then,” said Paulus, and he went on:
“With all this gay life I was not happy--by no means. When I was alone
sometimes, and no longer sitting in the crowd of merry boon-companions
and complaisant wenches, emptying the wine cup and crowned with poplar,
I often felt as if I were walking on the brink of a dark abyss as if
every thing in myself and around me were utterly hollow and empty. I
could stand gazing for hours at the sea, and as the waves rose only to
sink again and vanish, I often reflected that I was like them, and that
the future of my frivolous present must be a mere empty nothing. Our
gods were of little account with us. My mother sacrificed now in one
temple, and now in another, according to the needs of the moment; my
father took part in the high festivals, but he laughed at the belief of
the multitude, and my brother talked of the ‘Primaeval Unity,’ and dealt
with all sorts of demons, and magic formulas. He accepted the doctrine
of Iamblichus, Ablavius, and the other Neoplatonic philosophers, which
to my poor understanding seemed either superhumanly profound or else
debasingly foolish; nevertheless my memory retains many of his sayings,
which I have learned to understand here in my loneliness. It is vain to
seek reason outside ourselves; the highest to which we can attain is
for reason to behold itself in us! As often as the world sinks into
nothingness in my soul, and I live in God only, and have Him, and
comprehend Him, and feel Him only--then that doctrine recurs to me. How
all these fools sought and listened everywhere for the truth which was
being proclaimed in their very ears! There were Christians everywhere
about me, and at that time they had no need to conceal themselves, but
I had nothing to do with them. Twice only did they cross my path; once
I was not a little annoyed when, on the Hippodrome, a Christian’s horses
which had been blessed by a Nazarite, beat mine; and on another occasion
it seemed strange to me when I myself received the blessing of an old
Christian dock-laborer, having pulled his son out of the water.

“Years went on; my parents died. My mother’s last glance was directed at
me, for I had always been her favorite child. They said too that I was
like her, I and my sister Arsinoe, who, soon after my father’s death,
married the Prefect Pompey. At the division of the property I gave up
to my brother the manufactories and the management of the business, nay
even the house in the city, though, as the elder brother, I had a right
to it, and I took in exchange the land near the Kanopic gate, and filled
the stables there with splendid horses, and the lofts with not less
noble wine. This I needed, because I gave up the days to baths and
contests in the arena, and the nights to feasting, sometimes at my own
house, sometimes at a friend’s, and sometimes in the taverns of Kanopus,
where the fairest Greek girls seasoned the feasts with singing and
dancing.

“What have these details of the vainest worldly pleasure to do with my
conversion, you will ask. But listen a while. When Saul went forth to
seek his father’s asses he found a crown.

“One day we had gone out in our gilded boats, and the Lesbian girl
Archidike had made ready a feast for us in her house, a feast such as
could scarcely be offered even in Rome.

“Since the taking of our city by Diocletian, after the insurrection of
Achilleus, the Imperial troops who came to Alexandria behaved insolently
enough. Between some of my friends, and certain of the young officers of
Roman patrician families, there had been a good deal of rough banter
for some months past, as to their horses, women--I know not what; and it
happened that we met these very gentry at the house of Archidike.

“Sharp speeches were made, which the soldiers replied to after their
fashion, and at last they came to insulting words, and as the wine
heated us and them, to loud threats.

“The Romans left the house of entertainment before we did. Crowned with
garlands, singing, and utterly careless, we followed soon after them,
and had almost reached the quay, when a noisy troop rushed out of a side
street, and fell upon us with naked weapons. The moon was high in the
heavens, and I could recognize some of our adversaries. I threw myself
on a tall tribune, throttled him, and, as he fell, I fell with him in
the dust. I am but dimly conscious of what followed, for sword-strokes
were showered upon me, and all grew black before my eyes. I only know
what I thought then, face to face with death.”

“Well--?” asked Stephanus.

“I thought,” said Paulus reddening, “of my fighting-quails at
Alexandria, and whether they had had any water. Then my dull heavy
unconsciousness increased; for weeks I lay in that state, for I was
hacked like sausage-meat; I had twelve wounds, not counting the slighter
ones, and any one else would have died of any one of them. You have
often wondered at my scars.”

“And whom did the Lord choose then to be the means of your salvation?”

“When I recovered my senses,” continued Paulus, “I was lying in a large,
clean room behind a curtain of light material; I could not raise myself,
but just as if I had been sleeping so many minutes instead of days, I
thought again directly of my quails. In their last fight my best cock
had severely handled handsome Nikander’s, and yet he wanted to dispute
the stakes with me, but I would assert my rights! At least the quails
should fight again, and if Nikander should refuse I would force him to
fight me with his fists in the Palaestra, and give him a blue reminder
of his debt on the eye. My hands were still weak, and yet I clenched
them as I thought of the vexatious affair. ‘I will punish him,’ I
muttered to myself.

“Then I heard the door of the room open, and I saw three men
respectfully approaching a fourth. He greeted them with dignity, but yet
with friendliness, and rolled up a scroll which he had been reading, I
would have called out, but I could not open my parched lips, and yet I
saw and heard all that was going on around me in the room.

“It all seemed strange enough to me then; even the man’s mode of
greeting was unusual. I soon perceived that he who sat in the chair was
a judge, and that the others had come as complainants; they were all
three old and poor, but some good men had left them the use and interest
of a piece of land. During seed-time one of them, a fine old man with
long white hair, had been ill, and he had not been able to help in the
harvest either; ‘and now they want to withhold his portion of the corn,’
thought I; but it was quite otherwise. The two men who were in health
had taken a third part of the produce to the house of the sick man, and
he obstinately refused to accept the corn because he had helped neither
to sow nor to reap it, and he demanded of the judge that he should
signify to the other two that he had no right to receive goods which he
had not earned.

“The judge had so far kept silence. But he now raised his sagacious and
kindly face and asked the old man, ‘Did you pray for your companions and
for the increase of their labors?’

“‘I did,’ replied the other.

“‘Then by your intercession you helped them,’ the judge decided, ‘and
the third part of the produce is yours and you must keep it.’

“The old man bowed, the three men shook hands, and in a few minutes the
judge was alone in the room again.

“I did not know what had come over me; the complaint of the men and the
decision of the judge seemed to me senseless, and yet both the one and
the other touched my heart. I went to sleep again, and when I awoke
refreshed the next morning the judge came up to me and gave me medicine,
not only for my body but also for my soul, which certainly was not less
in need of it than my poor wounded limbs.”

“Who was the judge?” asked Stephanus.

“Eusebius, the Presbyter of Kanopus. Some Christians had found me half
dead on the road, and had carried me into his house, for the widow
Theodora, his sister, was the deaconess of the town. The two had nursed
me as if I were their dearest brother. It was not till I grew stronger
that they showed me the cross and the crown of thorns of Him who for my
sake also had taken upon Him such far more cruel suffering than
mine, and they taught me to love His wounds, and to bear my own with
submission. In the dry wood of despair soon budded green shoots of
hope, and instead of annihilation at the end of this life they showed me
Heaven and all its joys.

“I became a new man, and before me there lay in the future an eternal
and blessed existence; after this life I now learned to look forward
to eternity. The gates of Heaven were wide open before me, and I was
baptized at Kanopus.

“In Alexandria they had mourned for me as dead, and my sister Arsinoe,
as heiress to my property, had already moved into my country-house with
her husband, the prefect. I willingly left her there, and now lived
again in the city, in order to support the brethren, as the persecutions
had begun again.

“This was easy for me, as through my brother-in-law I could visit all
the prisons; at last I was obliged to confess the faith, and I suffered
much on the rack and in the porphyry quarries; but every pain was dear
to me, for it seemed to bring me nearer to the goal of my longings, and
if I find ought to complain of up here on the Holy Mountain, it is
only that the Lord deems me unworthy to suffer harder things, when his
beloved and only Son took such bitter torments on himself for me and for
every wretched sinner.”

“Ah! saintly man!” murmured Stephanus, devoutly kissing Paulus’
sheep-skin; but Paulus pulled it from him, exclaiming hastily:

“Cease, pray cease--he who approaches me with honors now in this life
throws a rock in my way to the life of the blessed. Now I will go to the
spring and fetch you some fresh water.”

When Paulus returned with the water-jar he found Hermas, who had come to
wish his father good-morning before he went down to the oasis to fetch
some new medicine from the senator.




CHAPTER VI.

Sirona was sitting at the open window of her bedroom, having her hair
arranged by a black woman that her husband had bought in Rome. She
sighed, while the slave lightly touched the shining tresses here and
there with perfumed oil which she had poured into the palm of her hand;
then she firmly grasped the long thick waving mass of golden hair and
was parting it to make a plait, when Sirona stopped her, saying, “Give
me the mirror.”

For some minutes she looked with a melancholy gaze at the image in
the polished metal, then she sighed again; she picked up the little
greyhound that lay at her feet, and placing it in her lap, showed the
animal its image in the mirror.

“There, poor Iambe,” she said, “if we two, inside these four walls, want
to see anything like a pleasing sight we must look at ourselves.”

Then she went on, turning to the slave. “How the poor little beast
trembles! I believe it longs to be back again at Arelas, and is afraid
we shall linger too long under this burning sky. Give me my sandals.”

The black woman reached her mistress two little slippers with gilt
ornaments on the slight straps, but Sirona flung her hair off her face
with the back of her hand, exclaiming, “The old ones, not these. Wooden
shoes even would do here.”

And with these words she pointed to the court-yard under the window,
which was in fact as ill contrived, as though gilt sandals had never yet
trodden it. It was surrounded by buildings; on one side was a wall
with a gateway, and on the others buildings which formed a sharply bent
horseshoe.

Opposite the wing in which Sirona and her husband had found a home stood
the much higher house of Petrus, and both had attached to them, in the
background of the court-yard, sheds constructed of rough reddish
brown stones, and covered with a thatch of palm-branches; in these the
agricultural implements were stored, and the senator’s slaves lived.
In front lay a heap of black charcoal, which was made on the spot by
burning the wood of the thorny sajala species of acacia; and there too
lay a goodly row of well smoothed mill-stones, which were shaped in the
quarry, and exported to Egypt. At this early hour the whole unlovely
domain lay in deep shadow, and was crowded with fowls and pigeons.
Sirona’s window alone was touched by the morning sun. If she could have
known what a charm the golden light shed over her figure, on her rose
and white face, and her shining hair, she would have welcomed the
day-star, instead of complaining that it had too early waked her from
sleep--her best comfort in her solitude.

Besides a few adjoining rooms she was mistress of a larger room, the
dwelling room, which look out upon the street.

She shaded her eyes with her hand, exclaiming, “Oh! the wearisome sun.
It looks at us the first thing in the morning through the window; as if
the day were not long enough. The beds must be put in the front room; I
insist upon it.”

The slave shook her head, and stammered an answer, “Phoebicius will not
have it so.”

Sirona’s eyes flashed angrily, and her voice, which was particularly
sweet, trembled slightly as she asked, “What is wrong with him again?”

“He says,” replied the slave, “that the senator’s son, Polykarp, goes
oftener past your window than altogether pleases him, and it seems to
him, that you occupy yourself more than is necessary with his little
brothers and sisters, and the other children up there.”

“Is he still in there?” asked Sirona with glowing cheeks, and she
pointed threateningly to the dwelling-room.

“The master is out,” stuttered the old woman. “He went out before
sunrise. You are not to wait for breakfast, he will not return till
late.”

The Gaulish lady made no answer, but her head fell, and the deepest
melancholy overspread her features. The greyhound seemed to feel for the
troubles of his mistress, for he fawned upon her, as if to kiss her. The
solitary woman pressed the little creature, which had come with her from
her home, closely to her bosom; for an unwonted sense of wretchedness
weighed upon her heart, and she felt as lonely, friendless, and
abandoned, as if she were driving alone--alone--over a wide and
shoreless sea. She shuddered, as if she were cold--for she thought of
her husband, the man who here in the desert should have been all in all
to her, but whose presence filled her with aversion, whose indifference
had ceased to wound her, and whose tenderness she feared far more than
his wild irritability--she had never loved him.

She had grown up free from care among a number of brothers and sisters.
Her father had been the chief accountant of the decurions’ college in
his native town, and he had lived opposite the circus, where, being of
a stern temper, he had never permitted his daughters to look on at the
games; but he could not prevent their seeing the crowd streaming into
the amphitheatre, or hearing their shouts of delight, and their eager
cries of approbation.

Sirona thus grew up in the presence of other people’s pleasure, and in
a constantly revived and never satisfied longing to share it; she had,
indeed, no time for unnecessary occupations, for her mother died before
she was fully grown up, and she was compelled to take charge of the
eight younger children. This she did in all fidelity, but in her hours
of leisure she loved to listen to the stories told her by the wives of
officials, who had seen, and could praise, the splendors of Rome the
golden.

She knew that she was fair, for she need only go outside the house to
hear it said; but though she longed to see the capital, it was not for
the sake of being admired, but because there was there so much that was
splendid to see and to admire. So, when the Centurion Phoebicius, the
commandant of the garrison of her native town, was transferred to Rome,
and when he desired to take the seventeen-years-old girl with him to the
imperial city, as his wife--she was more than forty years younger than
he--she followed him full of hope and eager anticipation.

Not long after their marriage she started for Rome by sea from Massilia,
accompanied by an old relative; and he went by land at the head of his
cohorts.

She reached their destination long before her husband, and without
waiting for him, but constantly in the society of her old duenna, she
gave herself up with the freedom and eagerness of her fresh youth to the
delights of seeing and admiring.

It did not escape her, while she did so, that she attracted all eyes
wherever she went, and however much this flattered and pleased her at
first, it spoilt many of her pleasures, when the Romans, young and old,
began to follow and court her. At last Phoebicius arrived, and when he
found his house crowded with his wife’s admirers he behaved to Sirona as
though she had long since betrayed his honor.

Nevertheless he dragged her from pleasure to pleasure, and from one
spectacle to another, for it gratified him to show himself in public
with his beautiful young wife. She certainly was not free from
frivolity, but she had learnt early from her strict father, as being the
guide of her younger sisters, to distinguish clearly right from wrong,
and the pure from the unclean; and she soon discovered that the joys
of the capital, which had seemed at first to be gay flowers with bright
colors, and redolent with intoxicating perfume, bloomed on the surface
of a foul bog.

She at first had contemplated all that was beautiful, pleasant, and
characteristic with delight; but her husband took pleasure only in
things which revolted her as being common and abominable. He watched
her every glance, and yet he pointed nothing out to her, but what was
hurtful to the feelings of a pure woman. Pleasure became her torment,
for the sweetest wine is repulsive when it has been tasted by impure
lips. After every feast and spectacle he loaded her with outrageous
reproaches, and when at last, weary of such treatment, she refused to
quit the house, he obliged her nevertheless to accompany him as often as
the Legate Quintillus desired it. The legate was his superior-officer,
and he sent her every day some present or flowers.

Up to this time she had borne with him, and had tried to excuse him,
and to think herself answerable for much of what she endured. But at
last--about ten months after her marriage--something occurred between
her and Phoebicius--something which stood like a wall of brass between
him and her; and as this something had led to his banishment to the
remote oasis, and to his degradation to the rank of captain of a
miserable maniple, instead of his obtaining his hoped for promotion, he
began to torment her systematically while she tried to protect herself
by icy coldness, so that at last it came to this, that the husband, for
whom she felt nothing but contempt, had no more influence on her life,
than some physical pain which a sick man is doomed to endure all through
his existence.

In his presence she was silent, defiant, and repellent, but as soon
as he quitted her, her innate, warm-hearted kindliness and child-like
merriment woke up to new life, and their fairest blossoms opened out
in the senator’s house among the little troop who amply repaid her love
with theirs.

Phoebicius belonged to the worshippers of Mithras, and he often fasted
in his honor to the point of exhaustion, while on the other hand he
frequently drank with his boon companions, at the feasts of the god,
till he was in a state of insensibility.

Here even, in Mount Sinai, he had prepared a grotto for the feast of
Mithras, had gathered together a few companions in his faith, and when
it happened that he remained out all day and all night, and came home
paler even than usual, she well knew where he had been. Just now she
vividly pictured to herself the person of this man with his eyes, that
now were dull with sleep and now glowed with rage, and she asked herself
whether it were indeed possible that of her own free will she had chosen
to become his wife. Her bosom heaved with quicker breathing as she
remembered the ignominy he had subjected her to in Rome, and she
clenched her small hands. At this instant the little dog sprang from her
lap and flew barking to the window-sill; she was easily startled,
and she drew on her morning-gown, which had slipped from her white
shoulders; then she fastened the straps of her sandals, and went to look
down into the court-yard.

A smile played upon her lips as she perceived young Hermas, who had
already been for some time leaning motionless against the wall of the
house opposite, and devouring with his gaze the figure of the beautiful
young woman. She had a facile and volatile nature. Like the eye which
retains no impression of the disabling darkness so soon as the rays of
light have fallen on it, no gloom of suffering touched her so deeply
that the lightest breath of a new pleasure could not blow her troubles
to the winds. Many rivers are quite different in color at their source
and at their mouth, and so it was often with her tears; she began to
weep for sorrow, and then found it difficult to dry her eyes for sheer
overflow of mirth. It would have been so easy for Phoebicius to make her
lot a fair one! for she had a most susceptible heart, and was grateful
for the smallest proofs of love, but between him and her every bond was
broken.

The form and face of Hermas took her fancy; she thought he looked of
noble birth in spite of his poor clothing, and when she observed that
his checks were glowing, and that the hand in which he held the medicine
phial trembled, she understood that he was watching her, and that the
sight of her had stirred his youthful blood. A woman--still more a woman
who is pleased to please--forgives any sin that is committed for her
beauty’s sake, and Sirona’s voice had a friendly ring in it as she bid
Hermas good-morning and asked him how his father was, and whether the
senator’s medicine had been of service. The youth’s answers were short
and confused, but his looks betrayed that he would fain have said
quite other things than those which his indocile tongue allowed him to
reiterate timidly.

“Dame Dorothea was telling me last evening,” she said kindly, “that
Petrus had every hope of your father’s recovery, but that he is still
very weak. Perhaps some good wine would be of service to him--not
to-day, but to-morrow or the day after. Only come to me if you need it;
we have some old Falerman in the loft, and white Mareotis wine, which is
particularly good and wholesome.”

Hermas thanked her, and as she still urged him to apply to her in all
confidence, he took courage and succeeded in stammering rather than
saying,--“You are as good as you are beautiful.”

The words were hardly spoken when the topmost stone of an elaborately
constructed pile near the slaves’ house fell down with a loud clatter.
Sirona started and drew back from the window, the grey-hound set up a
loud barking, and Hermas struck his forehead with his hand as if he were
roused from a dream.

In a few instants he had knocked at the senator’s door; hardly had he
entered the house when Miriam’s slight form passed across behind the
pile of stones, and vanished swiftly and silently into the slaves’
quarters. These were by this time deserted by their inhabitants, who
were busy in the field, the house, or the quarries; they consisted of a
few ill-lighted rooms with bare, unfinished walls.

The shepherdess went into the smallest, where, on a bed of palm-sticks,
lay the slave that she had wounded, and who turned over as with a hasty
hand she promptly laid a fresh, but ill-folded bandage, all askew on the
deep wound in his bend. As soon as this task was fulfilled she left the
room again, placed herself behind the half open door which led into the
court-yard, and, pressing, her brow against the stone door-post, looked
first at the senator’s house, and then at Sirona’s window, while her
breath came faster and faster.

A new and violent emotion was stirring her young soul; not many minutes
since she had squatted peacefully on the ground by the side of the
wounded man, with her head resting on her hand, and thinking of her
goats on the mountain. Then she had heard a slight sound in the court,
which any one else would not have noticed; but she not only perceived
it, but knew with perfect certainty with whom it originated. She could
never fail to recognize Hermas’ foot-step, and it had an irresistible
effect upon her. She raised her head quickly from her hand, and her
elbow from the knee on which it was resting, sprang to her feet, and
went out into the yard. She was hidden by the mill-stones, but she could
see Hermas lost in admiration. She followed the direction of his eyes
and saw the same image which had fascinated his gaze--Sirona’s lovely
form, flooded with sunlight. She looked as if formed out of snow, and
roses, and gold, like the angel at the sepulchre in the new picture in
the church. Yes, just like the angel, and the thought flew through her
mind how brown and black she was herself, and that he had called her
a she-devil. A sense of deep pain came over her, she felt as though
paralyzed in body and soul; but soon she shook off the spell, and her
heart began to beat violently; she had to bite her lip hard with her
white teeth to keep herself from crying out with rage and anguish.

How she wished that she could swing herself up to the window on which
Hermas’ gaze was fixed, and clutch Sirona’s golden hair and tear her
down to the ground, and suck the very blood from her red lips like a
vampire, till she lay at her feet as pale as the corpse of a man dead of
thirst in the desert. Then she saw the light mantle slip from Sirona’s
shoulders, and observed Hermas start and press his hand to his heart.

Then another impulse seized her. It was to call to her and warn her of
his presence; for even women who hate each other hold out the hand
of fellowship in the spirit, when the sanctity of woman’s modesty is
threatened with danger. She blushed for Sirona, and had actually opened
her lips to call, when the greyhound barked and the dialogue began. Not
a word escaped her sharp ears, and when he told Sirona that she was
as good as she was beautiful she felt seized with giddiness; then
the topmost stone, by which she had tried to steady herself, lost its
balance, its fall interrupted their conversation, and Miriam returned to
the sick man.

Now she was standing at the door, waiting for Hermas. Long, long did
she wait; at last he appeared with Dorothea, and she could see that he
glanced up again at Sirona; but a spiteful smile passed over her lips,
for the window was empty and the fair form that he had hoped to see
again had vanished.

Sirona was now sitting at her loom in the front room, whither she had
been tempted by the sound of approaching hoofs. Polykarp had ridden
by on his father’s fine horse, had greeted her as he passed, and had
dropped a rose on the roadway. Half an hour later the old black slave
came to Sirona, who was throwing the shuttle through the warp with a
skilful hand.

“Mistress,” cried the negress with a hideous grin; the lonely woman
paused in her work, and as she looked up enquiringly the old woman gave
her a rose. Sirona took the flower, blew away the road-side dust
that had clung to it, rearranged the tumbled delicate petals with her
finger-tips, and said, while she seemed to give the best part of her
attention to this occupation, “For the future let roses be when you find
them. You know Phoebicius, and if any one sees it, it will be talked
about.”

The black woman turned away, shrugging her shoulders; but Sirona
thought, “Polykarp is a handsome and charming man, and has finer and
more expressive eyes than any other here, if he were not always talking
of his plans, and drawings, and figures, and mere stupid grave things
that I do not care for!”




CHAPTER VII.

The next day, after the sun had passed the meridian and it was beginning
to grow cool, Hermas and Paulus yielded to Stephanus’ wish, as he began
to feel stronger, and carried him out into the air. The anchorites sat
near each other on a low block of stone, which Hermas had made into a
soft couch for his father by heaping up a high pile of fresh herbs. They
looked after the youth, who had taken his bow and arrows, as he went
up the mountain to hunt a wild goat; for Petrus had prescribed a
strengthening diet for the sick man. Not a word was spoken by either of
them till the hunter had disappeared. Then Stephanus said, “How much he
has altered since I have been ill. It is not so very long since I last
saw him by the broad light of day, and he seems meantime to have grown
from a boy into a man. How self-possessed his gait is.”

Paulus, looking down at the ground, muttered some words of assent. He
remembered the discus-throwing and thought to himself, “The Palaestra
certainly sticks in his mind, and he has been bathing too; and
yesterday, when he came up from the oasis, he strode in like a young
athlete.”

That friendship only is indeed genuine when two friends, without
speaking a word to each other, can nevertheless find happiness in being
together. Stephanus and Paulus were silent, and yet a tacit intercourse
subsisted between them as they sat gazing towards the west, where the
sun was near its setting.

Far below them gleamed the narrow, dark blue-green streak of the Red
Sea, bounded by the bare mountains of the coast, which shone in a
shimmer of golden light. Close beside them rose the toothed crown of
the great mountain which, so soon as the day-star had sunk behind it,
appeared edged with a riband of glowing rubies. The flaming glow flooded
the western horizon, filmy veils of mist floated across the hilly
coast-line, the silver clouds against the pure sky changed their hue
to the tender blush of a newly opened rose, and the undulating shore
floated in the translucent violet of the amethyst. There not a breath of
air was stirring, not a sound broke the solemn stillness of the evening.
Not till the sea was taking a darker and still darker hue, till the glow
on the mountain peaks and in the west had begun to die away, and the
night to spread its shades over the heights and hollows, did Stephanus
unclasp his folded hands and softly speak his companion’s name. Paulus
started and said, speaking like a man who is aroused from a dream and
who is suddenly conscious of having heard some one speak, “You are
right; it is growing dark and cool and you must go back into the cave.”

Stephanus offered no opposition and let himself be led back to his bed;
while Paulus was spreading the sheepskin over the sick man he sighed
deeply.

“What disturbs your soul?” asked the older man. “It is--it was--what
good can it do me!” cried Paulus in strong excitement. “There we sat,
witnesses of the most glorious marvels of the Most High, and I, in
shameless idolatry, seemed to see before me the chariot of Helios with
its glorious winged-horses, snorting fire as they went, and Helios
himself in the guise of Hermas, with gleaming golden hair, and the
dancing Hours, and the golden gates of the night. Accursed rabble of
demons!--”

At this point the anchorite was interrupted, for Hermas entered the
cave, and laying a young steinbock, that he had killed, before the two
men, exclaimed, “fine fellow, and he cost me no more than one arrow. I
will light a fire at once and roast the best pieces. There are plenty of
bucks still on our mountain, and I know where to find them.”

In about an hour, father and son were eating the pieces of meat, which
had been cooked on a spit. Paulus declined to sup with them, for after
he had scourged himself in despair and remorse for the throwing of the
discus, he had vowed a strict fast.

“And now,” cried Hermas, when his father declared himself satisfied,
after seeming to relish greatly the strong meat from which he had so
long abstained, “and now the best is to come! In this flask I have some
strengthening wine, and when it is empty it will be filled afresh.”
 Stephanus took the wooden beaker that his son offered him, drank
a little, and then said, while he smacked his tongue to relish the
after-taste of the noble juice, “That is something choice!--Syrian wine!
only taste it, Paulus.”

Paulus took the beaker in his hand, inhaled the fragrance of the golden
fluid, and then murmured, but without putting it to his lips, “That
is not Syrian; it is Egyptian, I know it well. I should take it to be
Mareotic.”

“So Sirona called it,” cried Hermas, “and you know it by the mere smell!
She said it was particularly good for the sick.”

“That it is,” Paulus agreed; but Stephanus asked in surprise, “Sirona?
who is she?”

The cave was but dimly lighted by the fire that had been made at the
opening, so that the two anchorites could not perceive that Hermas
reddened all over as he replied, “Sirona? The Gaulish woman Sirona? Do
you not know her? She is the wife of the centurion down in the oasis.”

“How do you come to know her?” asked his father.

“She lives in Petrus’ house,” replied the lad, “and as she had heard of
your wound--”

“Take her my thanks when you go there to-morrow morning,” said
Stephanus. “To her and to her husband too. Is he a Gaul?”

“I believe so--nay, certainly,” answered Hermas, “they call him the
lion, and he is no doubt a Gaul?”

When the lad had left the cave the old man laid himself down to rest,
and Paulus kept watch by him on his son’s bed. But Stephanus could not
sleep, and when his friend approached him to give him some medicine, he
said, “The wife of a Gaul has done me a kindness, and yet the wine would
have pleased me better if it had not come from a Gaul.”

Paulus looked at him enquiringly, and though total darkness reigned in
the cave, Stephanus felt his gaze and said, “I owe no man a grudge and
I love my neighbor. Great injuries have been done me, but I have for
given--from the bottom of my heart forgiven. Only one man lives to whom
I wish evil, and he is a Gaul.”

“Forgive him too,” said Paulus, “and do not let evil thoughts disturb
your sleep.”

“I am not tired,” said the sick man, “and if you had gone through such
things as I have, it would trouble your rest at night too.”

“I know, I know,” said Paulus soothingly. “It was a Gaul that persuaded
your wretched wife into quitting your house and her child.”

“And I loved, oh! how I loved Glycera!” groaned the old man. “She lived
like a princess and I fulfilled her every wish before it was uttered.
She herself has said a hundred times that I was too kind and too
yielding, and that there was nothing left for her to wish. Then the Gaul
came to our house, a man as acrid as sour wine, but with a fluent tongue
and sparkling eyes. How he entangled Glycera I know not, nor do I want
to know; he shall atone for it in hell. For the poor lost woman I pray
day and night. A spell was on her, and she left her heart behind in my
house, for her child was there and she loved Hermas so fondly; indeed
she was deeply devoted to me. Think what the spell must be that can
annihilate a mother’s love! Wretch, hapless wretch that I am! Did you
ever love a woman, Paulus?”

“You ought to be asleep,” said Paulus in a warning tone. “Who ever lived
nearly half a century without feeling love! Now I will not speak another
word, and you must take this drink that Petrus has sent for you.” The
senator’s medicine was potent, for the sick man fell asleep and did not
wake till broad day lighted up the cave.

Paulus was still sitting on his bed, and after they had prayed together,
he gave him the jar which Hermas had filled with fresh water before
going down to the oasis.

“I feel quite strong,” said the old man. “The medicine is good; I have
slept well and dreamed sweetly; but you look pale and as if you had not
slept.”

“I,” said Paulus, “I lay down there on the bed. Now let me go out in the
air for a moment.” With these words he went out of the cave.

As soon as he was out of sight of Stephanus he drew a deep breath,
stretched his limbs, and rubbed his burning eyes; he felt as if there
was sand gathered under their lids, for he had forbidden them to close
for three days and nights. At the same time he was consumed by a violent
thirst, for neither food nor drink had touched his lips for the same
length of time. His hands were beginning to tremble, but the weakness
and pain that he experienced filled him with silent joy, and he would
willingly have retired into his cave and have indulged, not for the
first time, in the ecstatic pain of hanging on the cross, and bleeding
from five wounds, in imitation of the Saviour.

But Stephanus was calling him, and without hesitation he returned to him
and replied to his questions; indeed it was easier to him to speak than
to listen, for in his ears there was a roaring, moaning, singing, and
piping, and he felt as if drunk with strong wine.

“If only Hermas does not forget to thank the Gaul!” exclaimed Stephanus.

“Thank--aye, we should always be thankful!” replied his companion,
closing his eyes.

“I dreamed of Glycera,” the old man began again. “You said yesterday
that love had stirred your heart too, and yet you never were married.
You are silent? Answer me something.”

“I--who called me?” murmured Paulus, staring at the questioner with a
fixed gaze.

Stephanus was startled to see that his companion trembled in every limb,
he raised himself and held out to him the flask with Sirona’s wine,
which the other, incapable of controlling himself, snatched eagerly from
his hand, and emptied with frantic thirst. The fiery liquor revived his
failing strength, brought the color to his cheeks, and lent a strange
lustre to his eyes. “How much good that has done me!” he cried with a
deep sigh and pressing his hands on his breast.

Stephanus was perfectly reassured and repeated his question, but he
almost repented of his curiosity, for his friend’s voice had an utterly
strange ring in it, as he answered:

“No, I was never married--never, but I have loved for all that, and
I will tell you the story from beginning to end; but you must not
interrupt me, no not once. I am in a strange mood--perhaps it is the
wine. I had not drunk any for so long; I had fasted since--since but it
does not matter. Be silent, quite silent, and let me tell my story.”

Paulus sat down on Hermas’ bed; he threw himself far back, leaned the
back of his head against the rocky wall of the cavern, through whose
doorway the daylight poured, and began thus, while he gazed fixedly into
vacancy, “What she was like?--who can, describe her? She was tall and
large like Hera, and yet not proud, and her noble Greek face was lovely
rather than handsome.

“She could no longer have been very young, but she had eyes like those
of a gentle child. I never knew her other than very pale; her narrow
forehead shone like ivory under her soft brown hair; her beautiful hands
were as white as her forehead-hands that moved as if they themselves
were living and inspired creatures with a soul and language of their
own. When she folded them devoutly together it seemed as if they were
putting up a mute prayer. She was pliant in form as a young palm-tree
when it bends, and withal she had a noble dignity, even on the occasion
when I first saw her.

“It was a hideous spot, the revolting prison-hall of Rhyakotis. She wore
only a threadbare robe that had once been costly, and a foul old woman
followed her about--as a greedy rat might pursue an imprisoned dove--and
loaded her with abusive language. She answered not a word, but large
heavy tears flowed slowly over her pale cheeks and down on to her hands,
which she kept crossed on her bosom. Grief and anguish spoke from her
eyes, but no vehement passion deformed the regularity of her features.
She knew how to endure even ignominy with grace, and what words the
raging old woman poured out upon her!

“I had long since been baptized, and all the prisons were open to me,
the rich Menander, the brother-in-law of the prefect--those prisons in
which under Maximin so many Christians were destined to be turned from
the true faith.

“But she did not belong to us. Her eye met mine, and I signed my
forehead with the cross, but she did not respond to the sacred sign. The
guards led away the old woman, and she drew back into a dark corner, sat
down, and covered her face with her hands. A wondrous sympathy for the
hapless woman had taken possession of my soul; I felt as if she belonged
to me, and I to her, and I believed in her, even when the turnkey had
told me in coarse language that she had lived with a Roman at the old
woman’s, and had defrauded her of a large sum of money. The next day
I went again to the prison, for her sake and my own; there I found her
again in the same corner that she had shrunk into the day before; by her
stood her prison fare untouched, a jar of water and a piece of bread.

“As I went up to her, I saw how she broke a small bit off the thin cake
for herself, and then called a little Christian boy who had come into
the prison with his mother, and gave him the remainder. The child
thanked her prettily, and she drew him to her, and kissed him with
passionate tenderness, though he was sickly and ugly.

“‘No one who can love children so well is wholly lost,’ said I to
myself, and I offered to help her as far as lay in my power.

“She looked at me not without distrust, and said that nothing had
happened to her, but what she deserved, and she would bear it. Before I
could enquire of her any further, we were interrupted by the Christian
prisoners, who crowded around the worthy Ammonius, who was exhorting and
comforting them with edifying discourse. She listened attentively to the
old man, and on the following day I found her in conversation with the
mother of the boy to whom she had given her bread.

“One morning, I had gone there with some fruit to offer as a treat to
the prisoners, and particularly to her. She took an apple, and said,
rising as she spoke, ‘I would now ask another favor of you. You are
a Christian, send me a priest, that he may baptize me, if he does not
think me unworthy, for I am burdened with sins so heavily as no other
woman can be.’ Her large, sweet, childlike eyes filled again with big
silent tears, and I spoke to her from my heart, and showed her as well
as I could the grace of the Redeemer. Shortly after, Ammonius secretly
baptized her, and she begged to be given the name of Magdalen, and so it
was, and after that she took me wholly into her confidence.

“She had left her husband and her child for the sake of a diabolical
seducer, whom she had followed to Alexandria, and who there had
abandoned her. Alone and friendless, in want and guilt, she remained
behind with a hard-hearted and covetous hostess, who had brought her
before the judge, and so into prison. What an abyss of the deepest
anguish of soul I could discover in this woman, who was worthy of a
better lot! What is highest and best in a woman? Her love, her mother’s
heart, her honor; and Magdalen had squandered and ruined all these by
her own guilt. The blow of overwhelming fate may be easily borne, but
woe to him, whose life is ruined by his own sin! She was a sinner, she
felt it with anguish of repentance, and she steadily refused my offers
to purchase her freedom.

“She was greedy of punishment, as a man in a fever is greedy of the
bitter potion, which cools his blood. And, by the crucified Lord! I
have found more noble humanity among sinners, than in many just men in
priestly garb. Through the presence of Magdalen, the prison recovered
its sanctity in my eyes. Before this I had frequently quitted it full of
deep contempt, for among the imprisoned Christians, there were too often
lazy vagabond’s, who had loudly confessed the Saviour only to be fed
by the gifts of the brethren; there I had seen accursed criminals,
who hoped by a martyr’s death to win back the redemption that they had
forfeited; there I had heard the woeful cries of the faint-hearted, who
feared death as much as they feared treason to the most High. There were
things to be seen there that might harrow the soul, but also examples of
the sublimest greatness. Men have I seen there, aye, and women, who
went to their death in calm and silent bliss, and whose end was, indeed,
noble--more noble than that of the much-lauded Codrus or Decius Mus.

“Among all the prisoners there was neither man nor woman who was more
calmly self-possessed, more devoutly resigned, than Magdalen. The words,
‘There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over
ninety and nine that need no repentance,’ strengthened her greatly,
and she repented--yea and verily, she did. And for my part, God is my
witness that not an impulse as from man to woman drew me to her, and yet
I could not leave her, and I passed the day by her side, and at night
she haunted my soul, and it would have seemed to me fairer than all in
life besides to have been allowed to die with her.

“It was at the time of the fourth decree of persecution, a few months
before the promulgation of the first edict of toleration.

“He that sacrifices, it is said, shall go unpunished, and he that
refuses, shall by some means or other be brought to it, but those
who continue stiff-necked shall suffer death. For a long time much
consideration had been shown to the prisoners, but now they were alarmed
by having the edict read to them anew. Many hid themselves groaning and
lamenting, others prayed aloud, and most awaited what might happen with
pale lips and painful breathing.

“Magdalen remained perfectly calm. The names of the Christian prisoners
were called out, and the imperial soldiers led them all together to one
spot. Neither my name nor hers was called, for I did not belong to the
prisoners, and she had not been apprehended for the faith’s sake. The
officer was rolling up his list, when Magdalen rose and stepped modestly
forward, saying with quiet dignity, ‘I too am a Christian.’

“If there be an angel who wears the form and features of man, his face
must resemble hers, as she looked in that hour. The Roman, a worthy man,
looked at her with a benevolent, but searching gaze. I do not find your
name here,’ he said aloud, shaking his head and pointing to the roll;
and he added in a lower voice, ‘Nor do I intend to find it.’

“She went closer up to him, and said out loud, Grant me my place among
the believers, and write down, that Magdalen, the Christian, refuses to
sacrifice.’

“My soul was deeply moved, and with joyful eagerness I cried out, ‘Put
down my name too, and write, that Menander, the son of Herophilus, also
refuses.’ The Roman did his duty.

“Time has not blotted out from my memory a single moment of that day.
There stood the altar, and near it the heathen priest on one side,
and on the other the emperor’s officer. We were taken up two by two;
Magdalen and I were the last. One word now--one little word--would give
us life and freedom, another the rack and death. Out of thirty of us
only four had found courage to refuse to sacrifice, but the feeble
hearted broke out into lamentations, and beat their foreheads, and
prayed that the Lord might strengthen the courage of the others. An
unutterably pure and lofty joy filled my soul, and I felt, as if we were
out of the body floating on ambient clouds. Softly and calmly we refused
to sacrifice, thanked the imperial official, who warned us kindly, and
in the same hour and place we fell into the hands of the torturers. She
gazed only up to heaven, and I only at her, but in the midst of the
most frightful torments I saw before me the Saviour beckoning to me,
surrounded by angels that soared on soft airs, whose presence filled my
eyes with the purest light, and my ears with heavenly music. She bore
the utmost torture without flinching, only once she called out the name
of her son Hermas; then I turned to look at her, and saw her gazing up
to Heaven with wide open eyes and trembling lips-living, but already
with the Lord--on the rack, and yet in bliss. My stronger body clung to
the earth; she found deliverance at the first blow of the torturer.

“I myself closed her eyes, the sweetest eyes in which Heaven was ever
mirrored, I drew a ring from her dear, white, blood-stained hand, and
here under the rough sheepskin I have it yet; and I pray, I pray, I
pray--oh! my heart! My God if it might be--if this is the end--!”

Paulus put his hand to his head, and sank exhausted on the bed, in
a deep swoon. The sick man had followed his story with breathless
interest. Some time since he had risen from his bed, and, unobserved by
his companion, had sunk on his knees; he now dragged himself, all hot
and trembling, to the side of the senseless man, tore the sheep’s fell
from his breast, and with hasty movement sought the ring; he found it,
and fixing on it passionate eyes, as though he would melt it with their
fire, he pressed it again and again to his lips, to his heart, to his
lips again; buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly.

It was not till Hermas returned from the oasis that Stephanus thought
of his exhausted and fainting friend, and with his son’s assistance
restored him to conscious ness. Paulus did not refuse to take some food
and drink, and in the cool of the evening, when he was refreshed and
invigorated, he sat again by the side of Stephanus, and understood from
the old man that Magdalen was certainly his wife.

“Now I know,” said Paulus, pointing to Hermas, “how it is that from the
first I felt such a love for the lad there.”

The old man softly pressed his hand, for he felt himself tied to his
friend by a new and tender bond, and it was with silent ecstasy that he
received the assurance that the wife he had always loved, the mother of
his child, had died a Christian and a martyr, and had found before him
the road to Heaven.

The old man slept as peacefully as a child the following night, and
when, next morning, messengers came from Raithu to propose to Paulus
that he should leave the Holy Mountain, and go with them to become
their elder and ruler, Stephanus said, “Follow this high call with all
confidence, for you deserve it. I really no longer have need of you, for
I shall get well now without any further nursing.”

But Paulus, far more disturbed than rejoiced, begged of the messengers a
delay of seven days for reflection, and after wandering restlessly from
one holy spot to another, at last went down into the oasis, there to
pray in the church.




CHAPTER VIII.

It was a delicious refreshing evening; the full moon rose calmly in the
dark blue vault of the night-sky, and poured a flood of light down
on the cool earth. But its rays did not give a strong enough light
to pierce the misty veil that hung over the giant mass of the Holy
Mountain; the city of the oasis on the contrary was fully illuminated;
the broad roadway of the high-street looked to the wanderer who
descended from the height above like a shining path of white marble, and
the freshly plastered walls of the new church gleamed as white as in
the light of day. The shadows of the houses and palm-trees lay like dark
strips of carpet across the road, which was nearly empty in spite of the
evening coolness, which usually tempted the citizens out into the air.

The voices of men and women sounded out through the open windows of the
church; then the door opened and the Pharanite Christians, who had
been partaking of the Supper--the bread and the cup passed from hand to
hand--came out into the moonlight. The elders and deacons, the readers
and singers, the acolytes and the assembled priesthood of the place
followed the Bishop Agapitus, and the laymen came behind Obedianus,
the head-man of the oasis, and the Senator Petrus; with Petrus came his
wife, his grown up children and numerous slaves.

The church was empty when the door-keeper, who was extinguishing the
lights, observed a man in a dark corner of an antechamber through which
a spring of water softly plashed and trickled, and which was intended
for penitents. The man was prostrate on the ground and absorbed in
prayer, and he did not raise himself till the porter called him, and
threw the light of his little lamp full in his face.

He began to address him with hard words, but when he recognized in the
belated worshipper the anchorite Paulus of Alexandria he changed his
key, and said, in a soft and almost submissive tone of entreaty, “You
have surely prayed enough, pious man. The congregation have left the
church, and I must close it on account of our beautiful new vessels and
the heathen robbers. I know that the brethren of Raithu have chosen you
to be their elder, and that his high honor was announced to you by their
messengers, for they came to see our church too and greatly admired
it. Are you going at once to settle with them or shall you keep the
high-feast with us?”

“That you shall hear to-morrow,” answered Paulus, who had risen from his
knees, and was leaning against a pillar of the narrow, bare, penitential
chamber. “In this house dwells One of whom I would fain take counsel,
and I beg of you to leave me here alone. If you will, you can lock the
door, and fetch me out later, before you go to rest for the night.”

“That cannot be,” said the man considering, “for my wife is ill, and my
house is a long way from here at the end of the town by the little gate,
and I must take the key this very evening to the Senator Petrus, because
his son, the architect Antonius, wants to begin the building of the new
altar the first thing to-morrow morning. The workmen are to be here by
sunrise, and if--”

“Show me the key,” interrupted Paulus. “To what untold blessing may this
little instrument close or open the issues! Do you know, man, that I
think there is a way for us both out of the difficulty! You go to your
sick wife, and I will take the key to the senator as soon as I have
finished my devotions.”

The door-keeper considered for a few minutes, and then acceded to the
request of the future presbyter of Raithu, while at the same time he
begged him not to linger too late.

As he went by the senator’s house he smelt the savor of roast meat; he
was a poor man and thought to himself, “They fast in there just when it
pleases them, but as for us, we fast when it pleases us least.”

The good smell, which provoked this lament, rose from a roast sheep,
which was being prepared as a feast-supper for the senator and the
assembled members of his household; even the slaves shared in the late
evening meal.

Petrus and Dame Dorothea sat in the Greek fashion, side by side in a
half reclining position on a simple couch, and before them stood a table
which no one shared with them, but close to which was the seat for the
grown up children of the house. The slaves squatted on the ground nearer
to the door, and crowded into two circles, each surrounding a steaming
dish, out of which they helped themselves to the brown stew of lentils
with the palm of the hand. A round, grey-looking cake of bread lay
near each, and was not to be broken till the steward Jethro had cut and
apportioned the sheep. The juicy pieces of the back and thighs of the
animal were offered to Petrus and his family to choose from, but the
carver laid a slice for each slave on his cake--a larger for the men
and a smaller for the women. Many looked with envy on the more succulent
piece that had fallen to a neighbor’s share, but not even those that
had fared worst dared to complain, for a slave was allowed to speak only
when his master addressed him, and Petrus forbid even his children to
discuss their food whether to praise it or to find fault.

In the midst of the underlings sat Miriam; she never ate much, and all
meat was repulsive to her, so she pushed the cut from the ribs that was
given to her over to an old garden-woman, who sat opposite, and who
had often given her a fruit or a little honey, for Miriam loved sweet
things. Petrus spoke not a word to-day to his slaves, and very little
even to his family; Dorothea marked the deep lines between his grave
eyes, not without anxiety, and noted how he pinched his lips, when,
forgetful of the food before him, he sat lost in meditation.

The meal was ended, but still he did not move, nor did he observe the
enquiring glances which were turned on him by many eyes; no one dared to
rise before the master gave the signal.

Miriam followed all his movements with more impatience than any of the
others who were present; she rocked restlessly backwards and forwards,
crumbled the bread that she had left with her slender fingers, and her
breath now came fast and faster, and now seemed to stop entirely. She
had heard the court-yard gate open, and had recognized Hermas’ step.

“He wants to speak to the master, in a moment he will come in, and find
me among these--” thought she, and she involuntarily stroked her hand
over her rough hair to smooth it, and threw a glance at the other
slaves, in which hatred and contempt were equally marked.

But Hermas came not. Not for an instant did she think that her ear had
deceived her--was he waiting now at the door for the conclusion of the
meal? Was his late visit intended for the Gaulish lady, to whom she had
seen him go yesterday again with the wine jar?

Sirona’s husband, Phoebicius, as Miriam well knew, was upon the
mountain, and offering sacrifice by moonlight to Mithras with his fellow
heathen in a cave which she had long known. She had seen the Gaul quit
the court during the time of evening-prayer with a few soldiers, two of
whom carried after him a huge coffer, out of which rose the handle of a
mighty cauldron, and a skin full of water, and various vessels. She knew
that these men would pass the whole night in the grotto of Mithras, and
there greet “the young god”--the rising sun--with strange ceremonies;
for the inquisitive shepherdess had more than once listened, when she
had led her goats up the mountain before the break of day, and her
ear had detected that the worshippers of Mithras were performing their
nocturnal solemnities. Now it flashed across her mind, that Sirona was
alone, and that the late visit of Hermas probably concerned her, and not
the senator.

She started, there was quite a pain in her heart, and, as usual, when
any violent emotion agitated her mind, she involuntarily sprang to her
feet prompted by the force of her passion, and had almost reached the
door, when the senator’s voice brought her to a pause, and recalled her
to the consciousness of the impropriety of her behavior.

The sick man still lay with his inflamed wound and fever down in the
court, and she knew that she should escape blame if in answer to her
master’s stern questioning she said that the patient needed her, but
she had never told a lie, and her pride forbade her even now to speak an
untruth. The other slaves stared with astonishment, as she replied, “I
wanted to get out; the supper is so long.”

Petrus glanced at the window, and perceiving how high the moon stood, he
shook his head as if in wonder at his own conduct, then without blaming
her he offered a thanksgiving, gave the slaves the signal to leave
the room, and after receiving a kiss of “good-night” from each of his
children--from among whom Polykarp, the sculptor, alone was missing--he
withdrew to his own room. But he did not remain alone there for long:
so soon as Dorothea had discussed the requirements of the house for
the next day with Marthana and the steward, and had been through the
sleeping-room of her younger children, casting a loving glance on the
peaceful sleepers, arranging here a coverlet, and there a pillow--she
entered her husband’s room and called his name.

Petrus stood still and looked round, and his grave eyes were full of
grateful tenderness as they met those of his wife. Dorothea knew the
soft and loving heart within the stern exterior, and nodded to him with
sympathetic understanding: but before she could speak, he said, “Come
in, come nearer to me; there is a heavy matter in hand, and you cannot
escape your share of the burden.”

“Give me my share!” cried she eagerly. “The slim girl of former years
has grown a broad-shouldered old woman, so that it may be easier to her
to help her lord to bear the many burdens of life. But I am seriously
anxious--even before we went to church something unsatisfactory had
happened to you, and not merely in the council-meeting. There must be
something not right with one of the children.”

“What eyes you have!” exclaimed Petrus.

“Dim, grey eyes,” said Dorothea, “and not even particularly keen. But
when anything concerns you and the children I could see it in the dark.
You are dissatisfied with Polykarp; yesterday, before he set out for
Raithu, you looked at him so--so--what shall I say? I can quite imagine
what it is all about, but I believe you are giving yourself groundless
anxiety. He is young, and so lovely a woman as Sirona--”

Up to this point Petrus had listened to his wife in silence. Now he
clasped his hands, and interrupted her, “Things certainly are not going
on quite right--but I ought to be used to it. What I meant to have
confided to you in a quiet hour, you tell me as if you knew all about
it!”

“And why not?” asked Dorothea. “When you graft a scion on to a tree, and
they have grown well together, the grafted branch feels the bite of the
saw that divides the stock, or the blessing of the spring that feeds
the roots, just as if the pain or the boon were its own. And you are
the tree and I am the graft, and the magic power of marriage has made us
one. Your pulses are my pulses, your thoughts have become mine, and so I
always know before you tell me what it is that stirs your soul.”

Dorothea’s kind eyes moistened as she spoke, and Petrus warmly clasped
her hands in his as he said, “And if the gnarled old trunk bears from
time to time some sweet fruit, he may thank the graft for it. I cannot
believe that the anchorites up yonder are peculiarly pleasing to the
Lord because they live in solitude. Man comes to his perfect humanity
only through his wife and child, and he who has them not, can never
learn the most glorious heights and the darkest depths of life and
feeling. If a man may stake his whole existence and powers for anything,
surely it is for his own house.”

“And you have honestly done so for ours!” cried Dorothea.

“For ours,” repeated Petrus, giving the words the strongest accent of
his deep voice. “Two are stronger than one, and it is long since we
ceased to say ‘I’ in discussing any question concerning the house or the
children; and both have been touched by to-day’s events.”

“The senate will not support you in constructing the road?”

“No, the bishop gave the casting-vote. I need not tell you how we stand
towards each other, and I will not blame him; for he is a just man, but
in many things we can never meet half-way. You know that he was in
his youth a soldier, and his very piety is rough--I might almost say
warlike. If we had yielded to his views, and if our head man Obedianus
had not supported me, we should not have had a single picture in the
church, and it would have looked like a barn rather than a house of
prayer. We never have understood each other, and since I opposed his
wish of making Polykarp a priest, and sent the boy to learn of the
sculptor Thalassius--for even as a child he drew better than many
masters in these wretched days that produce no great artists--since
then, I say, he speaks of me as if I were a heathen--”

“And yet he esteems you highly, that I know,” interrupted Dame Dorothea.

“I fully return his good opinion,” replied Petrus, “and it is no
ordinary matter that estranges. He thinks that he only holds the true
faith, and ought to fight for it; he calls all artistic work a heathen
abomination; he never felt the purifying influence of the beautiful, and
regards all pictures and statues as tending to idolatry. Still he allows
himself to admire Polykarp’s figures of angels and the Good Shepherd,
but the lions put the old warrior in a rage. ‘Accursed idols and works
of the devil,’ are what he calls them.”

“But there were lions even in the temple of Solomon,” cried Dorothea.

“I urged that, and also that in the schools of the catechists, and in
the educational history of animals which we possess and teach from, the
Saviour himself is compared to a lion, and that Mark, the evangelist,
who brought the doctrine of the gospel to Alexandria, is represented
with a lion. But he withstood me more and more violently, saying that
Polykarp’s works were to adorn no sacred place, but the Caesareum, and
that to him is nothing but a heathen edifice, and the noble works of the
Greeks that are preserved there he calls revolting images by which Satan
ensnares the souls of Christian men. The other senators can understand
his hard words, but they cannot follow mine; and so they vote with him,
and my motion to construct the roadway was thrown over, because it did
not become a Christian assembly to promote idolatry, and to smooth a way
for the devil.”

“I can see that you must have answered them sharply!”

“Indeed I believe so,” answered Petrus, looking down. “Many painful
things were no doubt said, and it was I that suffered for them.
Agapitus, who was looking at the deacons’ reports, was especially
dissatisfied with the account that I laid before them; they blamed us
severely because you gave away as much bread to heathen households as to
Christians. It is no doubt true, but--”

“But,” cried Dorothea eagerly, “hunger is just as painful to the
unbaptized, and their Christian neighbors do not help them, and yet they
too are our flesh and blood. I should ill fulfil my office if I were to
let them starve, because the highest comfort is lacking to them.”

“And yet,” said Petrus, “the council decided that, for the future, you
must apply at the most a fourth part of the grain allotted to their use.
You need not fear for them; for the future some of our own produce may
go to them out of what we have hitherto sold. You need not withdraw even
a loaf from any one of your proteges, but certainly may now be laid by
the plans for the road. Indeed there is no hurry for its completion, for
Polykarp will now hardly be able to go on with his lions here among
us. Poor fellow! with what delight he formed the clay models, and
how wonderfully he succeeded in reproducing the air and aspect of the
majestic beasts. It is as if he were inspired by the spirit of the old
Athenian masters. We must now consider whether in Alexandria--”

“Rather let us endeavor,” interrupted Dorothea, “to induce him at once
to put aside his models, and to execute other more pious works. Agapitus
has keen eyes, and the heathen work is only too dear to the lad’s
heart.”

The senator’s brow grew dark at the last words, and he said, not without
some excitement, “Everything that the heathen do is not to be condemned.
Polykarp must be kept busy, constantly and earnestly occupied, for he
has set his eyes where they should not be set. Sirona is the wife of
another, and even in sport no man should try to win his neighbor’s wife.
Do you think, the Gaulish woman is capable of forgetting her duty?”

Dorothea hesitated, and after some reflection answered, “She is a
beautiful and vain child--a perfect child; I mean in nature, and not
in years, although she certainly might be the grandchild of her strange
husband, for whom she feels neither love nor respect, nor, indeed,
anything but utter aversion. I know not what, but something frightful
must have come between them even in Rome, and I have given up all
attempts to guide her heart back to him. In everything else she is soft
and yielding, and often, when she is playing with the children, I
cannot imagine where she finds her reckless gaiety. I wish she were
a Christian, for she is very dear to me, why should I deny it? It is
impossible to be sad when she is by, and she is devoted to me, and
dreads my blame, and is always striving to win my approbation. Certainly
she tries to please every one, even the children; but, so far as I can
see, not more Polykarp than any one else, although he is such a fine
young man. No, certainly not.”

“And yet the boy gazes at her,” said Petrus, “and Phoebicius has noticed
it; he met me yesterday when I came home, and, in his sour, polite
manner, requested me to advise my son, when he wished to offer a rose,
not to throw it into his window, as he was not fond of flowers, and
preferred to gather them himself for his wife.”

The senator’s wife turned pale, and then exclaimed shortly and
positively, “We do not need a lodger, and much as I should miss his
wife, the best plan will be for you to request him to find another
dwelling.”

“Say no more, wife,” Petrus said, sternly, and interrupting her with a
wave of his hand. “Shall we make Sirona pay, for it because our son has
committed a folly for her sake? You yourself said, that her intercourse
with the children, and her respect for you, preserve her from evil, and
now shall we show her the door? By no means. The Gauls may remain in my
house so long as nothing occurs that compels me to send them out of it.
My father was a Greek, but through my mother I have Amalekite blood in
my veins, and I should dishonor myself, if I drove from my threshold
any, with whom I had once broken bread under my roof. Polykarp shall be
warned, and shall learn what he owes to us, to himself, and to the laws
of God. I know how to value his noble gifts, and I am his friend, but
I am also his master, and I will find means of preventing my son from
introducing the light conduct of the capital beneath his father’s roof.”

The last words were spoken with weight and decision, like the blows of a
hammer, and stern resolve sparkled in the senator’s eyes. Nevertheless,
his wife went fearlessly up to him, and said, laying her hand on his
arm, “It is, indeed, well that a man can keep his eyes set on what is
just, when we women should follow the hasty impulse of our heart. Even
in wrestling, men only fight with lawful and recognized means, while
fighting women use their teeth and nails. You men understand better how
to prevent injustice than we do, and that you have once more proved to
me, but, in carrying justice out, you are not our superiors. The Gauls
may remain in our house, and do you take Polykarp severely to task, but
in the first instance as his friend. Or would it not be better if you
left it to me? He was so happy in thinking of the competition of his
lions, and in having to work for the great building in the capital, and
now it is all over. I wish you had already broken that to him; but love
stories are women’s affairs, and you know how good the boy is to me. A
mother’s word sometimes has more effect than a father’s blow, and it is
in life as it is in war; the light forces of archers go first into the
field, and the heavily armed division stays in the background to support
them; then, if the enemy will not yield, it comes forward and decides
the battle. First let me speak to the lad. It may be that he threw the
rose into Sirona’s window only in sport, for she plays with his brothers
and sisters as if she herself were one of them. I will question him;
for if it is so, it would be neither just nor prudent to blame him. Some
caution is needed even in giving a warning; for many a one, who would
never have thought of stealing, has become a thief through false
suspicion. A young heart that is beginning to love, is like a wild boy
who always would rather take the road he is warned to avoid, and when
I was a girl, I myself first discovered how much I liked you, when the
Senator Aman’s wife--who wanted you for her own daughter--advised me to
be on my guard with you. A man who has made such good use of his time,
among all the temptations of the Greek Sodom, as Polykarp, and who has
won such high praise from all his teachers and masters, cannot have been
much injured by the light manners of the Alexandrians. It is in a man’s
early years that he takes the bent which he follows throughout his later
life, and that he had done before he left our house. Nay--even if I did
not know what a good fellow Polykarp is--I need only look at you to say,
‘A child that was brought up by this father, could never turn out a bad
man.’”

Petrus sadly shrugged his shoulders, as though he regarded his wife’s
flattering words as mere idle folly, and yet he smiled, as he asked,
“Whose school of rhetoric did you go to? So be it then; speak to the
lad when he returns from Raithu. How high the moon is already; come to
rest--Antonius is to place the altar in the early dawn, and I wish to be
present.”




CHAPTER IX.

Miriam’s ears had not betrayed her. While she was detained at supper,
Hermas had opened the courtyard-gate; he came to bring the senator
a noble young buck, that he had killed a few hours before, as a
thank-offering for the medicine to which his father owed his recovery.
It would no doubt have been soon enough the next morning, but he could
find no rest up on the mountain, and did not--and indeed did not care
to--conceal from himself the fact, that the wish to give expression to
his gratitude attracted him down into the oasis far less than the hope
of seeing Sirona, and of hearing a word from her lips.

Since their first meeting he had seen her several times, and had even
been into her house, when she had given him the wine for his father,
and when he had taken back the empty flask. Once, as she was filling
the bottle which he held, out of the large jar, her white fingers had
touched his, and her enquiry whether he were afraid of her, or if not,
why his hands which looked so strong should tremble so violently, dwelt
still in his mind. The nearer he approached Petrus’s house the more
vehemently his heart beat; he stood still in front of the gate-way, to
take breath, and to collect himself a little, for he felt that, agitated
as he was, he would find it difficult to utter any coherent words.

At last he laid his hand on the latch and entered the yard. The
watch-dogs already knew him, and only barked once as he stepped over the
threshold.

He brought a gift in his hand, and he wanted to take nothing away, and
yet he appeared to himself just like a thief as he looked round, first
at the main building lighted up by the moon, and then at the Gaul’s
dwelling-house, which, veiled in darkness, stood up as a vague
silhouette, and threw a broad dark shadow on the granite flags of the
pavement, which was trodden to shining smoothness. There was not a soul
to be seen, and the reek of the roast sheep told him that Petrus and his
household were assembled at supper.

“I might come inopportunely on the feasters,” said he to himself, as he
threw the buck over from his left to his right shoulder, and looked up
at Sirona’s window, which he knew only too well.

It was not lighted up, but a whiter and paler something appeared within
its dark stone frame, and this something, attracted his gaze with an
irresistible spell; it moved, and Sirona’s greyhound set up a sharp
barking.

It was she--it must be she! Her form rose before his fancy in all its
brilliant beauty, and the idea flashed through his mind that she must
be alone, for he had met her husband and the old slave woman among the
worshippers of Mithras on their way to the mountain. The pious youth,
who so lately had punished his flesh with the scourge to banish
seductive dream-figures, had in these few days become quite another man.
He would not leave the mountain, for his father’s sake, but he was quite
determined no longer to avoid the way of the world; nay, rather to seek
it. He had abandoned the care of his father to the kindly Paulus, and
had wandered about among the rocks; there he had practised throwing the
discus, he had hunted the wild goats and beasts of prey, and from time
to time--but always with some timidity--he had gone down into the oasis
to wander round the senator’s house, and catch a glimpse of Sirona.

Now that he knew that she was alone, he was irresistibly drawn to her.
What he desired of her, he himself could not have said; and nothing was
clear to his mind beyond the wish to touch her fingers once more.

Whether this were a sin or not, was all the same to him; the most
harmless play was called a sin, and every thought of the world for which
he longed, and he was fully resolved to take the sin upon himself, if
only he might attain his end. Sin after all was nothing but a phantom
terror with which they frighten children, and the worthy Petrus had
assured him that he might be a man capable of great deeds. With a
feeling that he was venturing on an unheard of act he went towards
Sirona’s window, and she at once recognized him as he stood in the
moonlight.

“Hermas!” he heard her say softly. He was seized with such violent
terror that he stood as if spellbound, the goat slipped from his
shoulders, and he felt as if his heart had ceased to beat. And again the
sweet woman’s voice called, “Hermas, is it you? What brings you to us at
such a late hour?”

He stammered an incoherent answer, and “I do not understand; come a
little nearer.” Involuntarily he stepped forward into the shadow of the
house and close up to her window. She wore a white robe with wide, open
sleeves, and her arms shone in the dim light as white as her garment.
The greyhound barked again; she quieted it, and then asked Hermas how
his father was, and whether he needed some more wine. He replied
that she was very kind, angelically kind, but that the sick man was
recovering fast, and that she had already given him far too much.
Neither of them said anything that might not have been heard by
everybody, and yet they whispered as if they were speaking of some
forbidden thing.

“Wait a moment,” said Sirona, and she disappeared within the room, she
soon reappeared, and said solid and sadly, “I would ask you to come into
the house but Phoebicius has locked the door. I am quite alone, hold the
flask so that I may fill it through the open window.”

With these words she leaned over with the large jar--she was strong, but
the wine-jar seemed to her heavier than on other occasions, and she said
with a sigh, “The amphora is too heavy for me.”

He reached up to help her; again his fingers met hers, and again he
felt the ecstatic thrill which had haunted his memory day and night ever
since he first had felt it. At this instant there was a sudden noise in
the house opposite; the slaves were coming out from supper. Sirona knew
what was happening; she started and cried out, pointing to the senator’s
door, “For all the gods’ sake! they are coming out, and if they see you
here I am lost!”

Hermas looked hastily round the court, and listened to the increasing
noise in the other house, then, perceiving that there was no possible
escape from the senator’s people, who were close upon him, he cried
out to Sirona in a commanding tone, “Stand back,” and flung himself up
through the window into the Gaul’s apartment. At the same moment the
door opposite opened, and the slaves streamed out into the yard.

In front of them all was Miriam, who looked all round the wide
space-expectant; seeking something, and disappointed. He was not there,
and yet she had heard him come in; and the gate had not opened and
closed a second time, of that she was perfectly certain. Some of the
slaves went to the stables, others went outside the gate into the street
to enjoy the coolness of the evening; they sat in groups on the ground,
looking up at the stars, chattering or singing. Only the shepherdess
remained in the court-yard seeking him on all sides, as if she were
hunting for some lost trinket. She searched even behind the millstones,
and in the dark sheds in which the stone-workers’ tools were kept.

Then she stood still a moment and clenched her hands; with a few light
bounds she sprang into the shadow of the Gaul’s house. Just in front
of Sirona’s window lay the steinbock; she hastily touched it with her
slender naked toes, but quickly withdrew her foot with a shudder, for
it had touched the beast’s fresh wound, wet with its blood. She rapidly
drew the conclusion that: he had killed it, and had thrown it down
here, and that he could not be far off. Now she knew where he was in
hiding-and she tried to laugh, for the pain she felt seemed too acute
and burning for tears to allay or cool it. But she did not wholly lose
her power of reflection. “They are in the dark,” thought she, “and they
would see me, if I crept under the window to listen; and yet I must know
what they are doing there together.”

She hastily turned her back on Sirona’s house, slipped into the clear
moonlight, and after standing there for a few minutes, went into
the slaves’ quarters. An instant after, she slipped out behind the
millstones, and crept as cleverly and as silently as a snake along the
ground under the darkened base of the centurion’s house, and lay close
under Sirona’s window.

Her loudly beating heart made it difficult for even her sharp ears
to hear, but though she could not gather all that he said, she
distinguished the sound of his voice; he was no longer in Sirona’s room,
but in the room that looked out on the street.

Now she could venture to raise herself, and to look in at the open
window; the door of communication between the two rooms was closed, but
a streak of light showed her that in the farther room, which was the
sitting-room, a lamp was burning.

She had already put up her hand in order to hoist herself up into the
dark room, when a gay laugh from Sirona fell upon her ear. The image of
her enemy rose up before her mind, brilliant and flooded with light as
on that morning, when Hermas had stood just opposite, bewildered by her
fascination. And now--now--he was actually lying at her feet, and saying
sweet flattering words to her, and he would speak to her of love, and
stretch out his arm to clasp her--but she had laughed.

Now she laughed again. Why was all so still again?

Had she offered her rosy lips for a kiss? No doubt, no doubt. And Hermas
did not wrench himself from her white arms, as he had torn himself from
hers that noon by the spring-torn himself away never to return.

Cold drops stood on her brow, she buried her hands in her thick, black
hair, and a loud cry escaped her--a cry like that of a tortured animal.
A few minutes more and she had slipped through the stable and the gate
by which they drove the cattle in; and no longer mistress of herself,
was flying up the mountain to the grotto of Mithras to warn Phoebicius.

The anchorite Gelasius saw from afar the figure of the girl flying up
the mountain in the moonlight, and her shadow flitting from stone to
stone, and he threw himself on the ground, and signed a cross on his
brow, for he thought he saw a goblin-form, one of the myriad gods of
the heathen--an Oread pursued by a Satyr. Sirona had heard the girl’s
shriek.

“What was that?” she asked the youth, who stood before her in the
full-dress uniform of a Roman officer, as handsome as the young god of
war, though awkward and unsoldierly in his movements.

“An owl screamed--” replied Hermas. “My father must at last tell me from
what house we are descended, and I will go to Byzantium, the new Rome,
and say to the emperor, ‘Here am I, and I will fight for you among your
warriors.’”

“I like you so!” exclaimed Sirona.

“If that is the truth,” cried Hermas, “prove it to me! Let me once press
my lips to your shining gold hair. You are beautiful, as sweet as a
flower--as gay and bright as a bird, and yet as hard as our mountain
rock. If you do not grant me one kiss, I shall long till I am sick and
weak before I can get away from here, and prove my strength in battle.”

“And if I yield,” laughed Sirona, “you will be wanting another and
another kiss, and at last not get away at all. No, no, my friend--I am
the wiser of us two. Now go into the dark room, I will look out and see
whether the people are gone in again, and whether you can get off unseen
from the street window, for you have been here much too long already. Do
you hear? I command you.”

Hermas obeyed with a sigh; Sirona opened the shutter and looked out. The
slaves were coming back into the court, and she called out a friendly
word or two, which were answered with equal friendliness, for the
Gaulish lady, who never overlooked even the humblest, was dear to them
all. She took in the night-air with deep-drawn breaths, and looked up
contentedly at the moon, for she was well content with herself.

When Hermas had swung himself up into her room, she had started back in
alarm; he had seized her hand and pressed his burning lips to her arm,
and she let him do it, for she was overcome with strange bewilderment.

Then she heard Dame Dorothea calling out, “Directly, directly, I will
only say good night first to the children.” These simple words,
uttered in Dorothea’s voice, had a magical effect on the warm-hearted
woman--badly used and suspected as she was, and yet so well formed for
happiness, love and peace. When her husband had locked her in, taking
even her slave with him, at first she had raved, wept, meditated revenge
and flight, and at last, quite broken down, had seated herself by
the window in silent thought of her beautiful home, her brothers and
sisters, and the dark olive groves of Arelas.

Then Hermas appeared. It had not escaped her that the young anchorite
passionately admired her, and she was not displeased, for she liked him,
and the confusion with which he had been overcome at the sight of her
flattered her and seemed to her doubly precious because she knew that
the hermit in his sheepskin, on whom she had bestowed a gift of wine,
was in fact a young man of distinguished rank. And how truly to be
pitied was the poor boy, who had had his youth spoilt by a stern father.
A woman easily bestows some tender feeling on the man that she pities;
perhaps because she is grateful to him for the pleasure of feeling
herself the stronger, and because through him and his suffering she
finds gratification for the noblest happiness of a woman’s heart--that
of giving tender and helpful care; women’s hands are softer than ours.
In men’s hearts love is commonly extinguished when pity begins,
while admiration acts like sunshine on the budding plant of a woman’s
inclination, and pity is the glory which radiates from her heart.

Neither admiration nor pity, however, would have been needed to induce
Sirona to call Hermas to her window; she felt so unhappy and lonely,
that any one must have seemed welcome from whom she might look for a
friendly and encouraging word to revive her deeply wounded self-respect.
And there came the young anchorite, who forgot himself and everything
else in her presence, whose looks, whose movement, whose very silence
even seemed to do homage to her. And then his bold spring into her room,
and his eager wooing--“This is love,” said she to herself. Her cheeks
glowed, and when Hermas clasped her hand, and pressed her arm to his
lips, she could not repulse him, till Dorothea’s voice reminded her of
the worthy lady and of the children, and through them of her own far-off
sisters.

The thought of these pure beings flowed over her troubled spirit like a
purifying stream, and the question passed through her mind, “What should
I be without these good folks over there, and is this great love-sick
boy, who stood before Polykarp just lately looking like a school-boy,
is he so worthy that I should for his sake give up the right of looking
them boldly in the face?” And she pushed Hermas roughly away, just as he
was venturing for the first time to apply his lips to her perfumed gold
hair, and desired him to be less forward, and to release her hand.

She spoke in a low voice, but with such decision, that the lad, who was
accustomed to the habit of obedience, unresistingly allowed her to push
him into the sitting-room. There was a lamp burning on the table, and
on a bench by the wall of the room, which was lined with colored stucco,
lay the helmet, the centurion’s staff, and the other portions of the
armor which Phoebicius had taken off before setting out for the feast of
Mithras, in order to assume the vestments of one of the initiated of the
grade of “Lion.”

The lamp-light revealed Sirona’s figure, and as she stood before him in
all her beauty with glowing cheeks, the lad’s heart began to beat high,
and with increased boldness he opened his arms, and endeavored to draw
her to him; but Sirona avoided him and went behind the table, and,
leaning her hands on its polished surface while it protected her like a
shield, she lectured him in wise and almost motherly words against his
rash, intemperate, and unbecoming behavior.

Any one who was learned in the heart of woman might have smiled at such
words from such lips and in such an hour; but Hermas blushed and cast
down his eyes, and knew not what to answer. A great change had come
over the Gaulish lady; she felt a great pride in her virtue, and in the
victory she had won over herself, and while she sunned herself in the
splendor of her own merits, she wished that Hermas too should feel and
recognize them. She began to expatiate on all that she had to forego and
to endure in the oasis, and she discoursed of virtue and the duties of a
wife, and of the wickedness and audacity of men.

Hermas, she said, was no better than the rest, and because she had shown
herself somewhat kind to him, he fancied already that he had a claim on
her liking; but he was greatly mistaken, and if only the courtyard had
been empty, she would long ago have shown him the door.

The young hermit was soon only half listening to all she said, for his
attention had been riveted by the armor which lay before him, and which
gave a new direction to his excited feelings. He involuntarily put
out his hand towards the gleaming helmet, and interrupted the pretty
preacher with the question, “May I try it on?”

Sirona laughed out loud and exclaimed, much amused and altogether
diverted from her train of thought, “To be sure. You ought to be a
soldier. How well it suits you! Take off your nasty sheepskin, and let
us see how the anchorite looks as a centurion.”

Hermas needed no second telling; he decked himself in the Gaul’s armor
with Sirona’s help. We human beings must indeed be in a deplorable
plight; otherwise how is it that from our earliest years we find such
delight in disguising ourselves; that is to say, in sacrificing our
own identity to the tastes of another whose aspect we borrow. The child
shares this inexplicable pleasure with the sage, and the stern man who
should condemn it would not therefore be the wiser, for he who wholly
abjures folly is a fool all the more certainly the less he fancies
himself one. Even dressing others has a peculiar charm, especially for
women; it is often a question which has the greater pleasure, the maid
who dresses her mistress or the lady who wears the costly garment.

Sirona was devoted to every sort of masquerading. If it had been needful
to seek a reason why the senator’s children and grandchildren were so
fond of her, by no means last or least would have been the fact that
she would willingly and cheerfully allow herself to be tricked out in
colored kerchiefs, ribands, and flowers, and on her part could contrive
the most fantastic costumes for them. So soon as she saw Hermas with
the helmet on, the fancy seized her to carry through the travesty he
had begun. She eagerly and in perfect innocence pulled the coat of armor
straight, helped him to buckle the breastplate and to fasten on the
sword, and as she performed the task, at which Hermas proved himself
unskilful enough, her gay and pleasant laugh rang out again and again.
When he sought to seize her hand, as he not seldom did, she hit him
sharply on the fingers, and scolded him.

Hermas’ embarrassment thawed before this pleasant sport, and soon he
began to tell her how hateful the lonely life on the mountain was to
him. He told her that Petrus himself had advised him to try his strength
out in the world, and he confided to her that if his father got well,
he meant to be a soldier, and do great deeds. She quite agreed with him,
praised and encouraged him, then she criticised his slovenly deportment,
showed him with comical gravity how a warrior ought to stand and walk,
called herself his drill-master, and was delighted at the zeal with
which he strove to imitate her.

In such play the hours passed quickly. Hermas

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