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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.
