o
many centuries had placed her foot; and she, awed by the place and the
man, retreated with all her captains, soldiers, courtiers, and pages
from that one hoary hermit. At Basle Clement found fresh materials,
especially with respect to German and English anchorites; and he had
even prepared a "Catena Eremitarum" from the year of our Lord 250, when
Paul of Thebes commenced his ninety years of solitude, down to the year
1470. He called them Angelorum amici et animalium, i.e.

FRIENDS OF ANGELS AND ANIMALS.

Thus, though in those days he never thought to be a recluse, the road
was paved, so to speak; and when the dying hermit of Gouda blessed the
citadel of Solitude, where he had fought the good fight and won it, and
invited him to take up the breast-plate of faith that now fell off his
own shrunken body, Clement said within himself: "Heaven itself led my
foot hither to this end." It struck him, too, as no small coincidence
that his patron, St. Bavon, was a hermit, and an austere one, a
cuirassier of the solitary cell.

As soon as he was reconciled to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, he went eagerly
to his abode, praying Heaven it might not have been already occupied in
these three days. The fear was not vain; these famous dens never wanted
a human tenant long. He found the rude stone door ajar; then he made
sure he was too late; he opened the door and went softly in. No; the
cell was vacant, and there were the hermit's great ivory crucifix, his
pens, ink, seeds, and, memento mori, a skull; his cilice of hair, and
another of bristles; his well-worn sheepskin pelisse and hood; his
hammer, chisel, and psaltery, etc. Men and women had passed that
way, but none had ventured to intrude, far less to steal. Faith and
simplicity had guarded that keyless door more securely than the houses
of the laity were defended by their gates like a modern gaol, and think
iron bars at every window, and the gentry by moat, bastion, chevaux de
frise, and portcullis.

As soon as Clement was fairly in the cell there was a loud flap, and a
flutter, and down came a great brown owl from a corner, and whirled out
of the window, driving the air cold on Clement's face, He started and
shuddered.

Was this seeming owl something diabolical? trying to deter him from his
soul's good? On second thoughts, might it not be some good spirit
the hermit had employed to keep the cell for him, perhaps the hermit
himself? Finally he concluded that it was just an owl, and