e war against the
Persians who had done me no harm--not, indeed, as a soldier, but as a
surgeon eager for experience. To confess the truth I was quite as eager
to see and treat fractures and wounds and injuries in great numbers,
as I was to exercise benevolence. I came home with a broken hip-bone,
tolerably patched up, and again, a few years later, I could not keep
still in one place. The bird of passage must need drag wife and child
from the peace of hearth and homestead, and take them to where he could
go to the high school. A husband, a father, and already grey-headed,
I was a singular exception among the youths who sat listening to the
lectures and explanations of their teachers; but as sure as man is the
standard of all things, they none of them outdid me in diligence and
zeal, though many a one was greatly my superior in gifts and intellect,
and among them the foremost was our friend Philippus. Thus it came
about, noble Paula, that the old man and the youth in his prime were
fellow-students; but to this day the senior gladly bows down to his
young brother in learning and feeling. To straighten, to comfort, and
to heal: this is the aim of his life too. And even I, an old man, who
started long before Philippus on the same career, often long to call
myself his disciple."

Here Rufinus paused and rose; Paula, too, got up, grasped his hand
warmly, and said:

"If I were a man, I would join you! But Philippus has told me that even
a woman may be allowed to work with the same purpose.--And now let me
beg of you never to call me anything but Paula--you will not refuse me
this favor. I never thought I could be so happy again as I am with you;
here my heart is free and whole. Dame Joanna, do you be my mother! I
have lost the best of fathers, and till I find him again, you, Rufinus,
must fill his place!"

"Gladly, gladly!" cried the old man; he clasped both her hands and went
on vivaciously: "And in return I ask you to be an elder sister to Pul.
Make that timid little thing such a maiden as you are yourself.--But
look, children, look up quickly; it is beginning!--Typhon, in the form
of a boar, is swallowing the eye of Horns: so the heathen of old in this
country used to believe when the moon suffered an eclipse. See how the
shadow is covering the bright disk. When the ancients saw this happening
they used to make a noise, shaking the sistrum with its metal rings,
drumming and trumpeting, shouting and yelling, to scare off