conversation, for a monk read aloud during the repast. Basil
surveyed with interest the assembly before him. Most of the faces
glowed with health, and on all was manifest a simple contentment such
as he had hitherto seen only in the eyes of children. Representatives
were here of every social rank, but the majority belonged to honourable
families: high intelligence marked many countenances, but not one
showed the shadow of anxious or weary thought.

These are men, said Basil to himself, who either have never known the
burden of life, or have utterly cast it off; they live without a care,
without a passion. And then there suddenly flashed upon his mind what
seemed an all-sufficient explanation of this calm, this happiness. Here
entered no woman. Woman's existence was forgotten, alike by young and
old; or, if not forgotten, had lost all its earthly taint, as in the
holy affection (of which Marcus had spoken to him) cherished by the
abbot for his pious sister Scholastica. Here, he clearly saw, was the
supreme triumph of the religious life. But, instead of quieting, the
thought disturbed him. He went away thinking thoughts which he would
fain have kept at a distance.

The ninth hour found him in the oratory, and later he attended vespers,
at which office the monks sang an evening hymn of the holy Ambrosius:--

'O lux, beata Trinitas, et principalis Uuitas,
Jam sol recedit igneus; infunde lumen cordibus.

Te mane laudum carmine, te deprecemur vesperi,
Te nostra supplex gloria per cuncta laudet saecula.'

The long sweet notes lingered in Basil's mind when he lay down to rest.
And, as he crossed himself before sleeping, the only prayer he breathed
was: '_Infunde lumen cordi meo_.'

CHAPTER XXV

THE ABBOT'S TOWER

On the morrow he rose earlier, talking the while with his servant
Deodatus. This good fellow continued to exhibit so deep an affection
for the life of the monastery that Basil was at length moved to ask him
whether, if he had the choice, he would veritably become a monk.
Deodatus looked at his master with eyes of pathetic earnestness, tried
in vain to speak, and burst into tears. Instructed by a vocation so
manifest, Basil began to read more clearly in his own heart, where, in
spite of the sorrows he had borne and of the troublous uncertainties
that lay before him, he found no such readiness to quit the world. He
could approve the wisdom of those who renounced the flesh, to be
rewarded with tr