第4章 THE LOTUS(4)

"The hermit gives good advice," he said to himself; "the spirit of prudence is in him.And he doubts the wisdom of my intention.Yet it would be cruel to leave Thais any longer in the power of the demon who possesses her.May God advise and conduct me."As he was walking along, he saw a plover, caught in the net that a hunter had laid on the sand, and he knew that it was a hen bird, for he saw the male fly to the net, and tear the meshes one by one with its beak, until it had made an opening by which its mate could escape.

The holy man watched this incident, and as, by virtue of his holiness, he easily comprehended the mystic sense of all occurrences, he knew that the captive bird was no other than Thais, caught in the snares of sin, and that--like the plover that had cut the hempen threads with its beak--he could, by pronouncing the word of power, break the invisible bonds by which Thais was held in sin.Therefore he praised God, and was confirmed in his first resolution.But then seeing the plover caught by the feet, and hampered by the net it had broken, he fell into uncertainty again.

He did not sleep all night, and before dawn he had a vision.Thais appeared to him again.There was no expression of guilty pleasure on her face, nor was she dressed according to custom in transparent drapery.She was enveloped in a shroud, which hid even a part of her face, so that the Abbot could see nothing but the two eyes, from which flowed white and heavy tears.

At this sight he began to weep, and believing that this vision came from God, he no longer hesitated.He rose, seized a knotted stick, the symbol of the Christian faith, and left his cell, carefully closing the door, lest the animals of the desert and the birds of the air should enter, and befoul the copy of the Holy Scriptures which stood at the head of his bed.He called Flavian, the deacon, and gave him authority over the other twenty-three disciples during his absence;and then, clad only in a long cassock, he bent his steps towards the Nile, intending to follow the Libyan bank to the city founded by the Macedonian monarch.He walked from dawn to eve, indifferent to fatigue, hunger, and thirst; the sun was already low on the horizon when he saw the dreadful river, the blood-red waters of which rolled between the rocks of gold and fire.

He kept along the shore, begging his bread at the door of solitary huts for the love of God, and joyfully receiving insults, refusals, or threats.He feared neither robbers nor wild beasts, but he took great care to avoid all the towns and villages he came near.He was afraid lest he should see children playing at knuckle-bones before their father's house, or meet, by the side of the well, women in blue smocks, who might put down their pitcher and smile at him.All things are dangerous for the hermit; it is sometimes a danger for him to read in the Scriptures that the Divine Master journeyed from town to town and supped with His disciples.The virtues that the anchorites embroider so carefully on the tissue of faith, are as fragile as they are beautiful; a breath of ordinary life may tarnish their pleasant colours.For that reason, Paphnutius avoided the towns, fearing lest his heart should soften at the sight of his fellow men.

He journeyed along lonely roads.When evening came, the murmuring of the breeze amidst the tamarisk trees made him shiver, and he pulled his hood over his eyes that he might not see how beautiful all things were.After walking six days, he came to a place called Silsile.There the river runs in a narrow valley, bordered by a double chain of granite mountains.It was there that the Egyptians, in the days when they worshipped demons, carved their idols.Paphnutius saw an enormous sphinx carved in the solid rock.Fearing that it might still possess some diabolical properties, he made the sign of the cross, and pronounced the name of Jesus; he immediately saw a bat fly out of one of the monster's ears, and Paphnutius knew that he had driven out the evil spirits which had been for centuries in the figure.His zeal increased, and picking up a large stone, he threw it in the idol's face.Then the mysterious face of the sphinx expressed such profound sadness that Paphnutius was moved.In fact, the expression of superhuman grief on the stone visage would have touched even the most unfeeling man.Therefore Paphnutius said to the sphinx--"O monster, be like the satyrs and centaurs our father Anthony saw in the desert, and confess the divinity of Jesus Christ, and I will bless thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."When he had spoken a rosy light gleamed in the eyes of the sphinx; the heavy eyelids of the monster quivered and the granite lips painfully murmured, as though in echo to the man's voice, the holy name of Jesus Christ; therefore Paphnutius stretched out his right hand, and blessed the sphinx of Silsile.

That being done, he resumed his journey, and the valley having grown wider, he saw the ruins of an immense city.The temples, which still remained standing, were supported by idols which served as columns, and--by the permission of God--these figures with women's heads and cow's horns, threw on Paphnutius a long look which made him turn pale.

He walked thus seventeen days, his only food a few raw herbs, and he slept at night in some ruined palace, amongst the wild cats and Pharaoh's rats, with which mingled sometimes, women whose bodies ended in a scaly tail.But Paphnutius knew that these women came from hell, and he drove them away by making the sign of the cross.

On the eighteenth day, he found, far from any village, a wretched hut made of palm leaves, and half buried under the sand which had been driven by the desert wind.He approached it, hoping that the hut was inhabited by some pious anchorite.He saw inside the hovel--for there was no door--a pitcher, a bunch of onions, and a bed of dried leaves.

"This must be the habitation of a hermit," he said to himself.