an coated over with cows' dung, completely naked, more dried-up than a
mummy. His joints form knots at the extremities of his bones, which are
like sticks. He has clusters of shells in his ears, his face is very
long, and his nose is like a vulture's beak. His left arm is held erect
in the air, crooked, and stiff as a stake; and he has remained there so
long that birds have made a nest in his hair.

At the four corners of his pile four fires are blazing. The sun is right
in his face. He gazes at it with great open eyes, and without looking at
Antony.

"Brahmin of the banks of the Nile, what sayest thou?"

Flames start out on every side through the partings of the beams; and
the gymnosophist resumes:

"Like a rhinoceros, I am plunged in solitude. I dwelt in the tree that
was behind me."

In fact, the large fig-tree presents in its flutings a natural
excavation of the shape of a man.

"And I fed myself on flowers and fruits with such an observance of
precepts that not even a dog has seen me eat.

"As existence proceeds from corruption, corruption from desire, desire
from sensation, and sensation from contact, I have avoided every kind of
action, every kind of contact, and--without stirring any more than the
pillar of a tombstone--exhaling my breath through my two nostrils,
fixing my glances upon my nose; and, observing the ether in my spirit,
the world in my limbs, the moon in my heart, I pondered on the essence
of the great soul, whence continually escape, like sparks of fire, the
principles of life. I have, at last, grasped the supreme soul in all
beings, all beings in the supreme soul; and I have succeeded in making
my soul penetrate the place into which my senses used to penetrate.

"I receive knowledge directly from Heaven, like the bird Tchataka, who
quenches his thirst only in the droppings of the rain. From the very
fact of my having knowledge of things, things no longer exist. For me
now there is no hope and no anguish, no goodness, no virtue, neither
day nor night, neither thou nor I--absolutely nothing.

"My frightful austerities have made me superior to the Powers. A
contraction of my brain can kill a hundred kings' sons, dethrone gods,
overrun the world."

He utters all this in a monotonous voice. The leaves all around him are
withered. The rats fly over the ground.

He slowly lowers his eyes towards the flames, which are rising, then
adds:

"I have become disgusted with form, disgusted with pe