lonely Laura, or lane of rude Cyclopean cells, under the perpetual shadow of the southern wall of crags, amid its grove of ancient date-trees. A branching cavern in the cliff supplied the purposes of a chapel, a storehouse, and a hospital; while on the sunny slope across the glen lay the common gardens of the brotherhood, green with millet, maize, and beans, among which a tiny streamlet, husbanded and guided with the most thrifty care, wandered down from the cliff foot, and spread perpetual verdure over the little plot which voluntary and fraternal labour had painfully redeemed from the inroads of the all-devouring sand. For that garden, like everything else in the Laura, except each brother’s seven feet of stone sleeping-hut, was the common property, and therefore the common care and joy of all. For the common good, as well as for his own, each man had toiled up the glen with his palm-leaf basket of black mud from the river Nile, over whose broad sheet of silver the glen’s mouth yawned abrupt. For the common good, each man had swept the ledges clear of sand, and sown in the scanty artificial soil, the harvest of which all were to share alike. To buy clothes, books, and chapel furniture for the common necessities, education, and worship, each man sat, day after day, week after week, his mind full of high and heavenly thoughts, weaving the leaves of their little palm-copse into baskets, which an aged monk exchanged for goods with the more prosperous and frequented monasteries of the opposite bank. Thither Philammon rowed the old man over, week by week, in a light canoe of papyrus, and fished, as he sat waiting for him, for the common meal. A simple, happy, gentle life was that of the Laura, all portioned out by rules and methods, which were held hardly less sacred than those of the Scriptures, on which they were supposed (and not so wrongly either) to have been framed. Each man had food and raiment, shelter on earth, friends and counsellors, living trust in the continual care of Almighty God; and, blazing before his eyes, by day and night, the hope of everlasting glory beyond all poets’ dreams. … And what more would man have had in those days? Thither they had fled out of cities, compared with which Paris is earnest and Gomorrha chaste—out of a rotten, infernal, dying world of tyrants and slaves, hypocrites and wantons—to ponder undisturbed on duty and on judgment, on death and eternity, heaven and hell; to find a common creed, a common interest, a common hope, common duties, pleasures, and sorrows. … True, they had many of them fled from the post where God had placed them, when they fled from man into the Thebaid waste. … What sort of post and what sort of an age they were, from which those old monks fled, we shall see, perhaps, before this tale is told out.
‘Thou art late, son,’ said the abbot, steadfastly working away at his palm-basket, as Philammon approached.
‘Fuel is scarce, and I was forced to go far.’
‘A monk should not answer till he is questioned. I did not ask the reason. Where didst thou find that wood?’
‘Before the temple, far up the glen.’
‘The temple! What didst thou see there?’
No answer. Pambo looked up with his keen black eye.
‘Thou hast entered it, and lusted after its abominations.’
‘I—I did not enter; but I looked—’
‘And what didst thou see? Women?’
Philammon was silent.
‘Have I not bidden you never to look on the face of women? Are they not the firstfruits of the devil, the authors of all evil, the subtlest of all Satan’s snares? Are they not accursed for ever, for the deceit of their first mother, by whom sin entered into the world? A woman first opened the gates of hell; and, until this day, they are the portresses thereof. Unhappy boy! What hast thou done?’
‘They were but painted on the walls.’
‘Ah!’ said the abbot, as if suddenly relieved from a heavy burden. ‘But how knewest thou them to be women, when thou hast never yet, unless thou liest—which I believe not of thee—seen the face of a daughter of Eve?’
‘Perhaps—perhaps,’ said Philammon, as if suddenly relieved by a new suggestion—‘perhaps they were only devils. They must have been, I think, for they were so very beautiful.’
‘Ah! how knowest thou that devils are beautiful?’
‘I was launching the boat, a week ago, with Father Aufugus; and on the bank, … not very near, … there were two creatures … with long hair, and striped all over the lower half of their bodies with black, and red, and yellow … and they were gathering flowers on the shore. Father Aufugus turned away; but I. … I could not help thinking them the most beautiful things that I had ever seen … so I asked him why he turned away; and he said that those were the same sort of devils which tempted the blessed St. Anthony. Then I recollected having heard it read aloud, how Satan tempted Anthony in the shape of a beautiful woman. … And so … and so … those figures on the wall were very like … and I thought they might be. …’
And the poor boy, who considered that he was making confession of a deadly and shameful sin, blushed scarlet, and stammered, and at last stopped.
‘And thou thoughtest them beautiful? Oh utter corruption of the flesh!—oh subtilty of Satan! The Lord forgive thee, as I do, my poor child; henceforth thou goest not beyond the garden walls.’
‘Not beyond the walls! Impossible! I cannot! If thou wert not my father, I would say, I will not!—I must have liberty!—I must see for myself—I must judge for myself, what this world is of which you all talk so bitterly. I long for no pomps and vanities. I will promise you this moment, if you will, never to re-enter a heathen temple—to hide my face in the dust whenever I approach a woman. But I must—I must see the world; I must see the great mother-church in Alexandria, and the patriarch, and his clergy. If they can serve God in the city, why not I? I could do more for God there than here. … Not that I despise this work—not that I am ungrateful to you—oh, never, never that!—but I pant for the battle. Let me go! I am not discontented with you, but with myself. I know that obedience is noble; but danger is nobler still. If you have seen the world, why should not I? If you have fled from it because you found it too evil to live in, why should not I, and return to you here of my own will, never to leave you? And yet Cyril and his clergy have not fled from it. …’
Desperately and breathlessly did Philammon drive this speech out of his inmost heart; and then waited, expecting the good abbot to strike him on the spot. If he had, the young man would have submitted patiently; so would any man, however venerable, in that monastery. Why not? Duly, after long companionship, thought, and prayer, they had elected Pambo for their abbot—Abba—father—the wisest, eldest-hearted and headed of them—if he was that, it was time that he should be obeyed. And obeyed he was, with a loyal, reasonable love, and yet with an implicit, soldier-like obedience, which many a king and conqueror might envy. Were they cowards and slaves? The Roman legionaries should be good judges on that point. They used to say that no armed barbarian, Goth or Vandal, Moor or Spaniard, was so terrible as the unarmed monk of the Thebaid.
Twice the old man lifted his staff to strike; twice he laid it down again; and then, slowly rising, left Philammon kneeling there, and moved away deliberately, and with eyes fixed on the ground, to the house of the brother Aufugus.
Every one in the Laura honoured Aufugus. There was a mystery about him which heightened the charm of his surpassing sanctity, his childlike sweetness and humility. It was whispered—when the monks seldom and cautiously did whisper together in their lonely walks—that he had been once a great man; that he had come from a great city—perhaps from Rome itself. And the simple monks were proud to think that they had among them a man who had seen Rome. At least, Abbot Pambo respected him. He was never beaten; never even reproved—perhaps he never required it; but still it was the meed of all; and was not the abbot a little partial? Yet,
