l goodness; Thou wouldst please me, reassure me and comfort me
by the sight of her whom I have given to Thee. Thou; presentest her to
my eyes with her smile now disarmed; her grace, now become innocent; her
beauty from which I have extracted the sting. To please me, my God, thou
showest her to me as I have prepared and purified her for Thy designs,
as one friend pleasantly reminds another of the rich gift he has
received from him. Therefore I see this woman with delight, being
assured that the vision comes from Thee. Thou dost not forget that I
have given her to Thee, Jesus. Keep her, since she pleases Thee, and
suffer not her beauty to give joy to any but Thyself."

He could not sleep all night, and he saw Thais more distinctly than he
had seen her in the Grotto of Nymphs. He commended himself, saying--

"What I have done, I have done to the glory of God."

Yet, to his great surprise, his heart was not at ease. He sighed.

"Why art thou sad, O my soul, and why dost thou trouble me?"

And his mind was still perturbed. Thirty days he remained in that
condition of sadness which precedes the sore trials of a solitary monk.
The image of Thais never left him day or night. He did not try to banish
it, because he still thought it came from God, and was the image of a
saint. But one morning she visited him in a dream, her hair crowned with
violets, and her very gentleness seemed so formidable, that he uttered a
cry of fright, and woke in an icy sweat. His eyes were still heavy with
sleep, when he felt a moist warm breath on his face. A little jackal,
its two paws placed on the side of the bed, was panting its stinking
breath in his face, and grinning at him.

Paphnutius was greatly astonished, and it seemed to him as though a
tower had given way under his feet. And, in fact, he had fallen, for his
self-confidence had gone. For some time he was incapable of thought
and when he did recover himself, his meditations only increased his
perplexity.

"It is one of two things," he said to himself; "either this vision, like
the preceding ones, came from God, and was a good vision, and it is my
natural perversity which has misrepresented it, as wine turns sour in
a dirty cup. I have, by my unworthiness, changed instruction into
reproach, of which this diabolical jackal immediately took advantage.
Or else this vision came, not from God, but, on the contrary, from the
devil, and was evil. In that case I should doubt whether the forme