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 it down
was my own weakness. It would almost seem as if this weakness of mine had
more power than what we call moral strength for that which it took the
one years to build up, was wrecked by the other in a' moment. In weakness
only am I a giant."

Paulus shivered at these words, for he was cold. Early in that morning
when he had taken upon himself Hermas' guilt he had abjured wearing his
sheepskin; now his body, accustomed to the warm wrap, suffered severely,
and his blood coursed with fevered haste through his veins since the
efforts, night-watches, and excitement of the last few days. He drew his
little coat close around him with a shiver and muttered, "I feel like a
sheep that has been shorn in midwinter, and 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 mountain, and the world has pursued me and has flung
its snares round my feet. I must seek a lonelier waste in which I may be
alone--quite alone with my God and myself. There, perhaps I may find the
way I seek, if indeed the fact that the creature that I call 'I,' in
which the whole world with all its agitations in little finds room--and
which will accompany me even there--does not once again frustrate all my
labor. He who takes his Self with him into the desert, is not alone."

Paulus sighed deeply and then pursued his reflections: "How puffed up
with pride I was after I had tasted the Gaul's rods in place of Hermas,
and then I was like a drunken man who falls down stairs 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, when we parted forgivingly gave me his
hand. I could see that he did forgive me with all his heart, and this
Petrus stands in the midst of life, and is busy early and late