Homo Sum -- Volume 05

lessened as the bearers went farther and farther towards the valley. They lighted the way for the wounded sculptor, w

s rosy lips. I shall find it harder to forget. The ladder which for so many years I had labored to construct, on which I thought to scale heaven, and which looked to me so lofty and so safe, there it lies broken to pieces, and the hand that struck

my head burns as if I were a baker and had to draw the bread out of the oven; a child might knock me down, and my eyes are heavy. I have not even the energy to collect my thoughts for a prayer, of which I am in such sore need. My goal is undoubtedly the right one, but so soon as I seem to be nearing it, my weakness snatches it from me, as the wind swept back the fruit-laden boughs which Tantalus, parched with thirst, tried to grasp. I fled from the world to this mount

step by step. And poor Stephanus too had a fall when he was so near the goal! He failed in strength to forgive, and the senator who has just now left me, and whose innocent son I had so badly hurt,

that there was in Alexandria a man even more perfect than himself; Phabis was his name, and he was a shoemaker, dwelling in the White road near the harbor of Kibotos. The anchorite at once went to the capital and found the shoemaker, and when he asked him, 'How do you serve the Lord? How d

proached the cold was so keen that he endeavored to light a fire.

d he grasped his hand, stroked his rough hair and thanked him with deep and tender emotion for the gre

, until it was light, and the young man prepared to go down to the oasis to pay the las

er like a rotten wineskin full of fermenting wine; a swarm of bees is buzzing

us, Petrus, and Dorothea, and then returned to the Alexandrian, with w

poke to him more lovingly than he had ever done before. At night they

in tones of keen anguish, "In vain-all in vain-" and

down to the well, knelt down near it, and felt as th

e that the miserable, brown-skinned shepherdess Miriam seemed to him a thousand-fold mor

who managed the business of his father's house; he caused him to be bountifully supplied wit

tears and felt his hands tremble, he said, "Do not be troubled about me,

I look for. He who succeeds in making the sorrows of the whole world his own-he whose soul is

ed to feel how burning the anchorite's li

dly: To serve false gods, to covet your neighbor's wife, and to raise your hands to kill; keep yourself from them. And of all virtues two are the least conspicuous, and at the same time the greatest:

then he went across the sand of the shore

his strong friend tottered like a drunken man, and often pressed

inction in the army he met again with Petrus' son, Polykarp, whom the emperor had sent for to Byzantium w

to offer him pardon and consolation in his own person. At last, ten days after, Orion the Saite found him in a remote cave. The angel of death had called him only a few hours before while in the act of prayer, for he was scarcely col

m to his last resting-place stretched to an invisible distance; in front of all walked Agapitus with the elders and deacons, and behind them Petrus with his wife and family, to which Sirona now belonged. Polykarp, who wa

sed the words which Paulus' trembling fingers had traced just be

miserable man-

ITOR'S B

e can easily boast

miserable man