_Hilarion_--"Hypocrite! who plunges himself into solitude to free
himself the better from the outbreaks of his lusts! You deprive yourself
of meat, of wine, of stoves, of slaves, and of honours; but how you let
your imagination offer you banquets, perfumes, naked women, and
applauding crowds! Your chastity is but a more subtle kind of
corruption, and your contempt for the world is but the impotence of your
hatred against it! This is the reason that persons like you are so
lugubrious, or perhaps it is because they lack faith. The possession of
the truth gives joy. Was Jesus sad? He used to go about surrounded by
friends; He rested under the shade of the olive, entered the house of
the publican, multiplied the cups, pardoned the fallen woman, healing
all sorrows. As for you, you have no pity, save for your own
wretchedness. You are so much swayed by a kind of remorse, and by a
ferocious insanity, that you would repel the caress of a dog or the
smile of a child."

_Antony_, bursts out sobbing--"Enough! Enough! You move my heart too
much."

_Hilarion_--"Shake off the vermin from your rags! Get rid of your filth!
Your God is not a Moloch who requires flesh as a sacrifice!"

_Antony_--"Still, suffering is blessed. The cherubim bend down to
receive the blood of confessors."

_Hilarion_--"Then admire the Montanists! They surpass all the rest."

_Antony_--"But it is the truth of the doctrine that makes the martyr."

_Hilarion_--"How can he prove its excellence, seeing that he testifies
equally on behalf of error?"

_Antony_--"Be silent, viper!"

_Hilarion_--"It is not perhaps so difficult. The exhortations of
friends, the pleasure of outraging popular feeling, the oath they take,
a certain giddy excitement--a thousand things, in fact, go to help
them."

Antony draws away from Hilarion. Hilarion follows him--"Besides, this
style of dying introduces great disorders. Dionysius, Cyprian, and
Gregory avoided it. Peter of Alexandria has disapproved of it; and the
Council of Elvira ..."

_Antony_, stops his ears--"I will listen to no more!"

_Hilarion_, raising his voice--"Here you are again falling into your
habitual sin--laziness. Ignorance is the froth of pride. You say, 'My
conviction is formed; why discuss the matter?' and you despise the
doctors, the philosophers, tradition, and even the text of the law, of
which you know nothing. Do you think you hold wisdom in your hand?"

_Antony_--"I am always hearing him!