t of victory; he walked on
dreaming, and composed poems and hymns, and reached the end of his
journey without noticing it.

But his voice quivered, his eyes flashed, and he was full of wrath
when he came to speak of the town and of the men in it. Never in
his life had he seen or even dared to imagine what he met with when
he went into the town. Only then for the first time in his life,
in his old age, he saw and understood how powerful was the devil,
how fair was evil and how weak and faint-hearted and worthless were
men. By an unhappy chance the first dwelling he entered was the
abode of vice. Some fifty men in possession of much money were
eating and drinking wine beyond measure. Intoxicated by the wine,
they sang songs and boldly uttered terrible, revolting words such
as a God-fearing man could not bring himself to pronounce; boundlessly
free, self-confident, and happy, they feared neither God nor the
devil, nor death, but said and did what they liked, and went whither
their lust led them. And the wine, clear as amber, flecked with
sparks of gold, must have been irresistibly sweet and fragrant, for
each man who drank it smiled blissfully and wanted to drink more.
To the smile of man it responded with a smile and sparkled joyfully
when they drank it, as though it knew the devilish charm it kept
hidden in its sweetness.

The old man, growing more and more incensed and weeping with wrath,
went on to describe what he had seen. On a table in the midst of
the revellers, he said, stood a sinful, half-naked woman. It was
hard to imagine or to find in nature anything more lovely and
fascinating. This reptile, young, longhaired, dark-skinned, with
black eyes and full lips, shameless and insolent, showed her
snow-white teeth and smiled as though to say: "Look how shameless,
how beautiful I am." Silk and brocade fell in lovely folds from her
shoulders, but her beauty would not hide itself under her clothes,
but eagerly thrust itself through the folds, like the young grass
through the ground in spring. The shameless woman drank wine, sang
songs, and abandoned herself to anyone who wanted her.

Then the old man, wrathfully brandishing his arms, described the
horse-races, the bull-fights, the theatres, the artists' studios
where they painted naked women or moulded them of clay. He spoke
with inspiration, with sonorous beauty, as though he were playing
on unseen chords, while the monks, petrified, greedily drank in his
words an