ith great respect. After their prayer together, one of the
company begged of the saint to be cured of the tertian ague. He
answered: "You desire to be freed from a sickness which is beneficial to
you. As nitre cleanses the body, so distempers and other chastisements
purify the soul." However, he blessed some oil and gave it to him: he
vomited plentifully after it, and was from that moment perfectly cured.
They returned to their lodgings, where, by his orders, they were treated
with all proper civility, and cordial hospitality. When they went to him
again, he received them with joyfulness in his countenance, which
evidenced the interior spiritual joy of his soul; he bade them sit down,
and asked them whence they came. They said, from Jerusalem. He then made
them a long discourse, in which he first endeavored to show his own
baseness; after which he explained the means by which pride and vanity
are to be banished out of the heart, and all virtues to be acquired. He
related to them the examples of many monks, who, by suffering their
hearts to be secretly corrupted by vanity, at last fell also into
scandalous irregularities; as of one, who, after a most holy and austere
life, by this means fell into fornication, and then by despair into all
manner of disorders: also of another, who, from vanity, fell into a
desire of leaving his solitude; but by a sermon he preached to others,
in a monastery on his road, was mercifully converted, and became an
eminent penitent. The blessed John thus entertained Petronius and his
company for three days, till the hour of None. When they were leaving
him, he gave them his blessing, and said: "Go in peace, my children; and
know that the news of the victory which the religious prince Theodosius
has gained over the tyrant Eugenius, is this day come to Alexandria: but
this excellent emperor will soon end his life by a natural death." Some
days after their leaving him to return home, they were informed he had
departed this life. Having been favored by a foresight of his death, he
would see nobody for the last three days. At the end of this term he
sweetly expired, being on his knees at prayer, towards the close of the
year 394, of the beginning of 395. It might probably be on the 17th of
October, on which day the Copths, or Egyptian Christians, keep his
festival: the Roman and other Latin Martyrologies mark it on the 27th of
March.

* * * * *

The solitude which the