Cyprian; and after gazing reflectively before him
for a few seconds, he commenced as follows:--

"You know that, some years ago I spent a considerable time in B----, a
place in one of the pleasantest districts of the South of Germany. As
my habit is, I used to take long walks in the surrounding country by
myself, without any guide, though I should often have been the better
for one. On one of these occasions I got into a piece of thickly wooded
country and lost my way; the farther I went, the less could I discover
the smallest vestige of a human footstep. At last the wood grew less
thick, and I saw, not far from me, a man in a brown hermit's robe, with
a broad straw hat on his head, and a long, wild black beard, sitting on
a rock, by the side of a deep ravine gazing, with folded hands,
thoughtfully into the distance. This sight had something so strange,
unexpected, and out of the common about it that I felt a shiver of
eeriness and awe. One can scarcely help such a feeling when what one
has only heretofore seen in pictures, or read of in books, suddenly
appears before one's eyes in actual, every-day life. Here was an
anchorite of the early ages of Christianity, in the body, seated in one
of Salvator Rosa's wild mountain scenes. But it soon occurred to me
that probably a monk on his peregrinations was nothing uncommon in that
part of the country. So I walked up to him, and asked if he could tell
me the shortest way out of the wood to the high road leading to B----.
He looked at me from head to foot with a gloomy glance, and said, in a
hollow and solemn voice:

"'I know well that it is merely an idle curiosity to see me, and to
hear me speak which has led you to this desert. But you must perceive
that I have no time to talk with you now. My friend Ambrosius of
Camaldoli is returning to Alexandria. Travel with him.'

"With which he arose and walked down into the ravine.

"I felt as if I must be in a dream. Presently I heard the sound of
wheels close by, I made my way through the thickets, and found myself
in a forest track, where I saw a countryman going along in a cart. I
overtook him, and he shortly brought me to the high road leading to
B----. As we went along I told him my adventure, and asked if he knew
who the extraordinary man in the forest was?

"'Oh, sir,' he said, 'that was the worthy man who calls himself Priest
Serapion, and has been living in these woods for some years, in a
little hut which he built him