urvive the schism. It may be, too,
that I return to Alexandria. No man knows his destiny; but if you be
minded, he said, to hear me, I will reserve a place near to me. My mind
is distracted, Paul replied, by fears for the safety of Timothy; and
perhaps to save himself from Mathias' somewhat monotonous discourse he
spoke of his apostolic mission, interesting Mathias at once, who began
to perceive that Paul, however crude and elementary his conceptions
might be (so crude did they appear to Mathias that he was not inclined
to include them in his code of philosophical notions at all), was a
story in himself, and one not lacking in interest; his ideas though
crude were not common, and their talk had lasted long enough for him to
discern many original turns of speech in Paul's incorrect Greek,
altogether lacking in construction, but betraying constantly an abrupt
vigour of thought. He was therefore disappointed when Paul, dropping
suddenly the story of the apostolic mission, which he had received from
the apostles, who themselves had received it from the Lord Jesus Christ,
began to tell suddenly that on his return from his mission to Cyprus
with Barnabas he had preached in Derbe and Lystra. It was in Lystra, he
cried, that I met Timothy, whom I circumcised with my own hand; he was
then a boy of ten, and his mother, who was a pious, God-fearing woman,
foresaw in him a disciple, and said when we left, after having been
cured by her and her mother of our wounds, when thou returnest to the
Galatians he will be nearly old enough to follow thee, but tarry not so
long, she added. But it was a long while before I returned to Lystra,
and then Timothy was a young man, and ever since our lives have been
spent in the Lord's service, suffering tortures from robbers that sought
to obtain ransom. We have been scourged and shipwrecked. But, said
Mathias, interrupting him, I know not of what you are speaking, and Paul
was obliged to go over laboriously in words the story that he had
dreamed in a few seconds. And when it was told Mathias said: your story
is worth telling. After my lecture the brethren will be glad to listen
to you. But, said Paul, what I have told you is nothing to what I could
tell; and Mathias answered: so much the better, for I shall not have to
listen to a twice-told story. And now, he added, I must leave you, for I
have matter that must be carefully thought out, and in those ruins
yonder my best thinking is done.

Speak t