I cannot find what I strive after. But
how then--how? Enlighten me, O Lord, and reveal to me what I must do."

Thus thinking he rose, knelt down, and prayed fervently; when at last he
came to the 'Amen,' his head was burning, and his tongue parched.

The clouds had parted, though they still hung in black masses in the
west; from time to time gleams of lightning shone luridly on the horizon
and lighted up the jagged peak of mountain with a flare; the moon had
risen, but its waning disk was frequently obscured by dark driving
masses of cloud; blinding flashes, tender light, and utter darkness were
alternating with bewildering rapidity, when Paulus at last collected
himself, and went down to the spring to drink, and to cool his brow in
the fresh water. Striding from stone to stone he told himself, that ere
he could begin a new life, he must do penance--some heavy penance; but
what was it to be? He was standing at the very margin of the brook,
hemmed in by cliffs, and was bending down to it, but before he had
moistened his lips he drew back: just because he was so thirsty he
resolved to deny himself drink. Hastily, almost vehemently, he turned
his back on the spring, and after this little victory over himself, his
storm-tossed heart seemed a little calmer. Far, far from hence and from
the wilderness and from the Sacred Mountain he felt impelled to fly, and
he would gladly have fled then and there to a distance. Whither should
he flee? It was all the same, for he was in search of suffering, and
suffering, like weeds, grows on every road. And from whom? This question
repeated itself again and again as if he had shouted it in the very home
of echo, and the answer was not hard to find: "It is from yourself that
you would flee. It is your own inmost self that is your enemy; bury
yourself in what desert you will, it will pursue you, and it would be
easier for you to cut off your shadow than to leave that behind?"

His whole consciousness was absorbed by this sense of impotency, and
now, after the stormy excitement of the last few hours, the deepest
depression took possession of his mind. Exhausted, unstrung, full of
loathing of himself and life, he sank down on a stone, and thought over
the occurrences of the last few days with perfect impartiality.

"Of all the fools that ever I met," thought he, "I have gone farthest
in folly, and have thereby led things into a state of confusion which
I myself could not make straight again,