any a
time the Emperor has kissed his injured eye. What folly! Moreover, the
Council had such worthless members! Theophilus, a bishop of Scythia;
John, another, in Persia; Spiridion, a cattle-drover. Alexander was too
old. Athanasius ought to have made himself more agreeable to the Arians
in order to get concessions from them!

"How is it they dealt with me? They would not even give me a hearing! He
who spoke against me--a tall young man with a curling beard--coolly
launched out captious objections; and while I was trying to find words
to reply to him, they kept looking at me with malignant glances, barking
at me like hyenas. Ah! if I could only get them all sent into exile by
the Emperor, or rather smite them, crush them, behold them suffering. I
have much to suffer myself!"

He sinks swooning against the wall of his cell.

"This is what it is to have fasted overmuch! My strength is going. If I
had eaten, only once, a morsel of meat!"

He half-closes his eyes languidly.

"Ah! for some red flesh ... a bunch of grapes to nibble, some curds that
would quiver on a plate!

"But what ails me now? What ails me now? I feel my heart dilating like
the sea when it swells before the storm. An overwhelming weakness bows
me down, and the warm atmosphere seems to waft towards me the odour of
hair. Still, there is no trace of a woman here."

He turns towards the little pathway amid the rocks.

"This is the way they come, poised in their litters on the black arms of
eunuchs. They descend, and, joining together their hands, laden with
rings, they kneel down. They tell me their troubles. The need of a
superhuman voluptuousness tortures them. They would like to die; in
their dreams they have seen gods who called them by name; and the edges
of their robes fall round my feet. I repel them. 'Oh! no,' they say to
me, 'not yet! What must I do?' Any penance will appear easy to them.
They ask me for the most severe: to share in my own, to live with me.

"It is a long time now since I have seen any of them! Perhaps, though,
this is what is about to happen? And why not? If suddenly I were to hear
the mule-bells ringing in the mountains. It seems to me ..."

Antony climbs upon a rock, at the entrance of the path, and bends
forward, darting his eyes into the darkness.

"Yes! down there, at the very end, there is a moving mass, like people
who are trying to pick their way. Here it is! They are making a
mistake."

Calling out:

"On th