made me turn aside from pleasures. I fled.
I went a-begging on high-ways, covered with rags collected in the
sepulchres; and, as there was a very learned hermit, I offered myself as
his servant. I guarded his door; I washed his feet. All sensation, all
joy, all languor, were annihilated. Then, concentrating my thoughts on
a larger field of meditation, I came to know the essence of things, the
illusion of forms. I speedily abandoned the science of the Brakhmans.
They are eaten up with lusts beneath their austere exterior; they anoint
themselves with filth, and sleep upon thorns, believing that they arrive
at happiness through the path of death!"

_Hilarion_--"Pharisees, hypocrites, whited sepulchres, race of vipers!"

_The Buddha_--"I, too, have done astonishing things--eating for a day
only a single grain of rice--and at that time grains of rice were not
bigger than they are now--my hair fell off; my body became black; my
eyes, sunken in their sockets, seemed like stars seen at the bottom of a
well. For six years I never moved, remaining exposed to flies, to lions,
and to serpents; and I subjected myself to burning suns, heavy showers,
snow, lightning, hail, and tempest, without even shielding myself with
my hand. The travellers who passed, assuming that I was dead, flung
clods of earth at me from a distance.

"There only remained for me to be tempted by the Devil.

"I invoked him.

"His sons came--hideous, covered with scales, nauseous as charcoal,
howling, hissing, bellowing, flinging at each other armour and dead
men's bones. Some of them spirted out flames through their nostrils;
others spread around darkness with their wings; others carried chaplets
of fingers that had been cut off; others drank the venom of serpents out
of the hollows of their hands. They have the heads of pigs,
rhinoceroses, or toads--all kinds of figures calculated to inspire
respect or terror."

_Antony_, aside--"I endured that myself in former times."

_The Buddha_--"Then he sent me his daughters--beautiful, well-attired
with golden girdles, teeth white as the jasmine, and limbs round as an
elephant's trunk. Some of them stretched up their arms when they yawned
to display the dimples in their elbows; others blinked their eyes;
others began to laugh and others unfastened one another's garments.
Amongst them were blushing virgins, matrons full of pride, and queens
with great trains of baggage and attendants."

_Antony, aside_--"Ah! that