CHAPTER I: THE LAURA
In the four hundred and thirteenth year of the Christian Era, some threehundred miles above Alexandria, the young monk Philammon was sitting onthe edge of a low range of inland cliffs, crested with drifting sand.Behind him the desert sand-waste stretched, lifeless, interminable,reflecting its lurid glare on the horizon of the cloudless vault ofblue. At his feet the sand dripped and trickled, in yellow rivulets,from crack to crack and ledge to ledge, or whirled past him in tiny jetsof yellow smoke, before the fitful summer airs. Here and there, upon theface of the cliffs which walled in the opposite side of the narrowglen below, were cavernous tombs, huge old quarries, with obelisksand half-cut pillars, standing as the workmen had left them centuriesbefore; the sand was slipping down and piling up around them, theirheads were frosted with the arid snow; everywhere was silence,desolation-the grave of a dead nation, in a dying land. And there hesat musing above it all, full of life and youth and health and beauty--ayoung Apollo of the desert. His only clothing was a ragged sheep-skin,bound with a leathern girdle. His long black locks, unshorn fromchildhood, waved and glistened in the sun; a rich dark down on cheek andchin showed the spring of healthful manhood; his hard hands and sinewysunburnt limbs told of labour and endurance; his flashing eyes andbeetling brow, of daring, fancy, passion, thought, which had no sphereof action in such a place. What did his glorious young humanity aloneamong the tombs?
So perhaps he, too, thought, as he passed his hand across his brow, asif to sweep away some gathering dream, and sighing, rose and wanderedalong the cliffs, peering downward at every point and cranny, in searchof fuel for the monastery from whence he came.
Simple as was the material which he sought, consisting chiefly of thelow arid desert shrubs, with now and then a fragment of wood from somedeserted quarry or ruin, it was becoming scarcer and scarcer round AbbotPambo's Laura at Scetis; and long before Philammon had collected hisdaily quantity, he had strayed farther from his home than he had everbeen before.
Suddenly, at a turn of the glen, he came upon a sight new to him....atemple carved in the sandstone cliff; and in front a smooth platform,strewn with beams and mouldering tools, and here and there a skullbleaching among the sand, perhaps of some workman slaughtered at hislabour in one of the thousand wars of old. The abbot, his spiritualfather--indeed, the only father whom he knew, for his earliestrecollections were of the Laura and the old man's cell-had strictlyforbidden him to enter, even to approach any of those relics of ancientidolatry: but a broad terrace-road led down to the platform from thetable-land above; the plentiful supply of fuel was too tempting to bepassed by.... He would go down, gather a few sticks, and then return, totell the abbot of the treasure which he had found, and consult him as tothe propriety of revisiting it.
So down he went, hardly daring to raise his eyes to the alluringiniquities of the painted imagery which, gaudy in crimson and blue,still blazed out upon the desolate solitude, uninjured by that rainlessair. But he was young, and youth is curious; and the devil, at least inthe fifth century, busy with young brains. Now Philammon believed mostutterly in the devil, and night and day devoutly prayed to be deliveredfrom him; so he crossed himself, and ejaculated, honestly enough,'Lord, turn away mine eyes, lest they behold vanity!'.... and lookednevertheless....
And who could have helped looking at those four colossal kings, who satthere grim and motionless, their huge hands laid upon their knees ineverlasting self-assured repose, seeming to bear up the mountain ontheir stately heads? A sense of awe, weakness, all but fear, came overhim. He dare not stoop to take up the wood at his feet, their greatstern eyes watched him so steadily.
Round their knees and round their thrones were mystic charactersengraved, symbol after symbol, line below line--the ancient wisdom ofthe Egyptians, wherein Moses the man of God was learned of old--whyshould not he know it too? What awful secrets might not be hidden thereabout the great world, past, present, and future, of which he knew onlyso small a speck? Those kings who sat there, they had known it all;their sharp lips seem parting, ready to speak to him.... Oh that theywould speak for once!.... and yet that grim sneering smile, that seemedto look down on him from the heights of their power and wisdom, withcalm contempt.... him, the poor youth, picking up the leaving and ragsof their past majesty .... He dared look at them no more.
So he looked past them into the temple halls; into a lustrous abyss ofcool green shade, deepening on and inward, pillar after pillar, vistaafter vista, into deepest night. And dimly through the gloom he coulddescry, on every wall and column, gorgeous arabesques, long lines ofpictured story; triumphs and labours; rows of captives in foreign andfantastic dresses, leading strange animals, bearing the tributes ofunknown lands; rows of ladies at feasts, their heads crowned withgarlands, the fragrant lotus-flower in every hand, while slaves broughtwine and perfumes, and children sat upon their knees, and husbands bytheir side; and dancing girls, in transparent robes and golden girdles,tossed their tawny limbs wildly among the throng.... What was themeaning of it all? Why had it all been? Why had it gone on thus, thegreat world, century after century, millennium after millennium, eatingand drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and knowing nothingbetter.... how could they know anything better? Their forefathers hadlost the light ages and ages before they were born.... And Christ hadnot come for ages and ages after they were dead.... How could theyknow?.... And yet they were all in hell.... every one of them. Every oneof these ladies who sat there, with her bushy locks, and garlands, andjewelled collars, and lotus-flowers, and gauzy dress, displaying all herslender limbs-who, perhaps, when she was alive, smiled so sweetly, andwent so gaily, and had children, and friends, and never once thought ofwhat was going to happen to her--what must happen to her.... She was inhell.... Burning for ever, and ever, and ever, there below his feet. Hestared down on the rocky floors. If he could but see through them....and the eye of faith could see through them.... he should behold herwrithing and twisting among the flickering flame, scorched, glowing....in everlasting agony, such as the thought of enduring for a moment madehim shudder. He had burnt his hands once, when a palm-leaf but caughtfire.... He recollected what that was like.... She was enduring tenthousand times more than that for ever. He should hear her shriekingin vain for a drop of water to cool her tongue.... He had never heard ahuman being shriek but once.... a boy bathing on the opposite Nile bank,whom a crocodile had dragged down.... and that scream, faint and distantas it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable in his earsfor days.... and to think of all which echoed through those vaults offire-for ever! Was the thought bearable!--was it possible! Millionsupon millions burning forever for Adam's fall .... Could God be just inthat?....
It was the temptation of a fiend! He had entered the unhallowedprecincts, where devils still lingered about their ancient shrines; hehad let his eyes devour the abominations of the heathen, and given placeto the devil. He would flee home to confess it all to his father. Hewould punish him as he deserved, pray for him, forgive him. And yetcould he tell him all? Could he, dare he confess to him the wholetruth--the insatiable craving to know the mysteries of learning--to seethe great roaring world of men, which had been growing up in him slowly,month after month, till now it had assumed this fearful shape? Hecould stay no longer in the desert. This world which sent all souls tohell--was it as bad as monks declared it was? It must be, else how couldsuch be the fruit of it? But it was too awful a thought to be taken ontrust. No; he must go and see.
Filled with such fearful questionings, half-inarticulate and vague, likethe thoughts of a child, the untutored youth went wandering on, tillhe reached the edge of the cliff below which lay his home. It laypleasantly enough, that lonely Laura, or lane of rude Cyclopean cells,under the perpetual shadow of the southern wall of crags, amid its groveof ancient date-trees. A branching cavern in the cliff supplied thepurposes of a chapel, a storehouse, and a hospital; while on the sunnyslope across the glen lay the common gardens of the brotherhood, greenwith millet, maize, and beans,
among which a tiny streamlet, husbandedand guided with the most thrifty care, wandered down from the clifffoot, and spread perpetual verdure over the little plot which voluntaryand fraternal labour had painfully redeemed from the inroads of theall-devouring sand. For that garden, like everything else in the Laura,except each brother's seven feet of stone sleeping-hut, was the commonproperty, and therefore the common care and joy of all. For the commongood, as well as for his own, each man had toiled up the glen with hispalm-leaf basket of black mud from the river Nile, over whose broadsheet 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 scantyartificial soil, the harvest of which all were to share alike. Tobuy 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 theirlittle palm-copse into baskets, which an aged monk exchanged for goodswith the more prosperous and frequented monasteries of the oppositebank. Thither Philammon rowed the old man over, week by week, in a lightcanoe of papyrus, and fished, as he sat waiting for him, for the commonmeal. A simple, happy, gentle life was that of the Laura, all portionedout by rules and methods, which were held hardly less sacred than thoseof the Scriptures, on which they were supposed (and not so wronglyeither) to have been framed. Each man had food and raiment, shelter onearth, friends and counsellors, living trust in the continual care ofAlmighty God; and, blazing before his eyes, by day and night, the hopeof everlasting glory beyond all poets' dreams.... And what more wouldman have had in those days? Thither they had fled out of cities,compared with which Paris is earnest and Gomorrha chaste,--out of arotten, infernal, dying world of tyrants and slaves, hypocrites andwantons,--to ponder undisturbed on duty and on judgment, on death andeternity, heaven and hell; to find a common creed, a common interest,a common hope, common duties, pleasures, and sorrows.... True, they hadmany of them fled from the post where God had placed them, when theyfled from man into the Thebaid waste.... What sort of post and whatsort 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 hispalm-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 thereason. 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 notthe firstfruits of the devil, the authors of all evil, the subtlest ofall Satan's snares? Are they not accursed for ever, for the deceit oftheir first mother, by whom sin entered into the world? A woman firstopened the gates of hell; and, until this day, they are the portressesthereof. 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. 'Buthow knewest thou them to be women, when thou hast never yet, unless thouliest--which I believe not of thee--seen the face of a daughter of Eve?'
'Perhaps--perhaps,' said Philammon, as if suddenly relieved by a newsuggestion--'perhaps they were only devils. They must have been, Ithink, 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 thebank,....not very near,....there were two creatures....with long hair,and striped all over the lower half of their bodies with black, andred, and yellow....and they were gathering flowers on the shore. FatherAufugus turned away; but I.... I could not help thinking them the mostbeautiful things that I had ever seen....so I asked him why he turnedaway; and he said that those were the same sort of devils which temptedthe blessed St. Anthony. Then I recollected having heard it read aloud,how Satan tempted Anthony in the shape of a beautiful woman.... Andso.... and so.... those figures on the wall were very like.... and Ithought they might be....'
And the poor boy, who considered that he was making confession of adeadly and shameful sin, blushed scarlet, and stammered, and at laststopped.
'And thou thoughtest them beautiful? Oh utter corruption of theflesh!--oh subtilty of Satan! The Lord forgive thee, as I do, my poorchild; 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--Imust judge for myself, what this world is of which you all talk sobitterly. I long for no pomps and vanities. I will promise you thismoment, if you will, never to re-enter a heathen temple--to hide myface in the dust whenever I approach a woman. But I must--I must seethe world; I must see the great mother-church in Alexandria, and thepatriarch, and his clergy. If they can serve God in the city, why notI? I could do more for God there than here .... Not that I despise thiswork--not that I am ungrateful to you--oh, never, never that!--but Ipant for the battle. Let me go! I am not discontented with you, but withmyself. 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 itbecause you found it too evil to live in, why should not I, and returnto you here of my own will, never to leave you? And yet Cyril and hisclergy have not fled from it....'
Desperately and breathlessly did Philammon drive this speech out of hisinmost heart; and then waited, expecting the good abbot to strike himon 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 Pambofor their abbot--Abba--father--the wisest, eldest-hearted and headed ofthem--if he was that, it was time that he should be obeyed. And obeyedhe was, with a loyal, reasonable love, and yet with an implicit,soldier-like obedience, which many a king and conqueror might envy. Werethey cowards and slaves? The Roman legionaries should be good judges onthat 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 downagain; and then, slowly rising, left Philammon kneeling there, and movedaway deliberately, and with eyes fixed on the ground, to the house ofthe brother Aufugus.
Every one in the Laura honoured Aufugus. There was a mystery about himwhich heightened the charm of his surpassing sanctity, his childlikesweetness and humility. It was whispered--when the monks seldom andcautiously did whisper together in their lonely walks--that he had beenonce a great man; that he had come from a great city--perhaps from Romeitself. And the simple monks were proud to think that they had amongthem a man who had seen Rome. At least, Abbot Pambo respected him. Hewas never beaten; never even reproved--perhaps he never required it; butstill it was the meed of all; and was not the abbot a little partial?Yet, certainly, when Theophilus sent up a messenger from Alexandria,rousing every Laura with the news of the sack of Rome by Alaric, didnot Pambo take him first to the cell of Aufugus, and sit with him therethree whole hours in secret consultation, before he told the awful storyto the rest of the brotherhood? And did not Aufugus himself give lettersto the messenger, written with his own hand, containing, as was said,deep secrets of worldly policy, known only to himself? So, when thelittle lane of holy men, each peering stealthily over his plaitingwork from the doorway of his sandstone cell, saw the abbot, after hisunwonted passion, leave the culprit kneeling, and take his way towardthe sage's dwelling, they judged that something strange and delicate hadbefallen the common weal, and each wished, without envy, that he were aswise as the man whose counsel was to solve the difficulty.
For an hour or mo
re the abbot remained there, talking earnestly andlow; and then a solemn sound as of the two old men praying with sobs andtears; and every brother bowed his head, and whispered a hope that Hewhom they served might guide them for the good of the Laura, and of HisChurch, and of the great heathen world beyond; and still Philammon kneltmotionless, awaiting his sentence; his heart filled-who can tell how?'The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth notwith its joy.' So thought he as he knelt; and so think I, too, knowingthat in the pettiest character there are unfathomable depths, which thepoet, all-seeing though he may pretend to be, can never analyse, butmust only dimly guess at, and still more dimly sketch them by theactions which they beget.
At last Pambo returned, deliberate, still, and slow, as he had gone, andseating himself within his cell, spoke--
'And the youngest said, Father, give me the portion of goods thatfalleth to my share.... And he took his journey into a far country, andthere wasted his substance with riotous living. Thou shalt go, my son.But first come after me, and speak with Aufugus.'
Philammon, like everyone else, loved Aufugus; and when the abbotretired and left the two alone together, he felt no dread or shame aboutunburdening his whole heart to him. Long and passionately he spoke, inanswer to the gentle questions of the old man, who, without the rigidityor pedantic solemnity of the monk, interrupted the youth, and lethimself be interrupted in return, gracefully, genially, almostplayfully. And yet there was a melancholy about his tone as he answeredto the youth's appeal--
'Tertullian, Origen, Clement, Cyprian--all these moved in the world;all these and many more beside, whose names we honour, whose prayerswe invoke, were learned in the wisdom of the heathen, and fought andlaboured, unspotted, in the world; and why not I? Cyril the patriarchhimself, was he not called from the caves of Nitria to sit on the throneof Alexandria?'
Slowly the old man lifted his band, and putting back the thick locks ofthe kneeling youth, gazed, with soft pitying eyes, long and earnestlyinto his face.
'And thou wouldst see the world, poor fool? And thou wouldst see theworld?'
'I would convert the world!'
'Thou must know it first. And shall I tell thee what that world is like,which seems to thee so easy to convert? Here I sit, the poor unknown oldmonk, until I die, fasting and praying, if perhaps God will have mercyon my soul: but little thou knowest how I have seen it. Little thouknowest, or thou wouldst be well content to rest here till the end. Iwas Arsenius.... Ah! vain old man that I am! Thou hast never heardthat name, at which once queens would whisper and grow pale. Vanitasvanitatum! omnia vanitas! And yet he, at whose frown half the worldtrembles, has trembled himself at mine. I was the tutor of Arcadius.'
'The Emperor of Byzantium?'
'Even so, my son, even so. There I saw the world which thou wouldst see.And what saw I? Even what thou wilt see. Eunuchs the tyrants of theirown sovereigns. Bishops kissing the feet of parricides and harlots.Saints tearing saints in pieces for a word, while sinners cheer them onto the unnatural fight. Liars thanked for lying, hypocrites taking pridein their hypocrisy. The many sold and butchered for the malice, thecaprice, the vanity of the few. The plunderers of the poor plundered intheir turn by worse devourers than themselves. Every attempt at reformthe parent of worse scandals; every mercy begetting fresh cruelties;every persecutor silenced, only to enable others to persecute him intheir turn: every devil who is exorcised, returning with seven othersworsethan himself; falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusionseven times confounded, Satan casting out Satan everywhere--from theemperor who wantons on his throne, to the slave who blasphemes beneathhis fetters.'
'If Satan cast out Satan, his kingdom shall not stand.'
'In the world to come. But in this world it shall stand and conquer,even worse and worse, until the end. These are the last days spoken ofby the prophets,--the beginning of woes such as never have been onthe earth before--"On earth distress of nations with perplexity, men'shearts failing them for fear, and for the dread of those things whichare coming on the earth." I have seen it long. Year after year I havewatched them coming nearer and ever nearer in their course like thewhirling sand-storms of the desert, which sweep past the caravan, andpast again, and yet overwhelm it after all--that black flood of thenorthern barbarians. I foretold it; I prayed against it; but, likeCassandra's of old, my prophecy and my prayers were alike unheard.My pupil spurned my warnings. The lusts of youth, the intrigues ofcourtiers, were stronger than the warning voice of God; then I ceasedto hope; I ceased to pray for the glorious city, for I knew that hersentence was gone forth; I saw her in the spirit, even as St. John sawher in the Revelations; her, and her sins, and her ruin. And I fledsecretly at night, and buried myself here in the desert, to await theend of the world. Night and day I pray the Lord to accomplish His elect,and to hasten His kingdom. Morning by morning I look up trembling, andyet in hope, for the sign of the Son of man in heaven, when the sunshall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, and the starsshall fall from heaven, and the skies pass away like a scroll, and thefountains of the nether fire burst up around our feet, and the end ofall shall come. And thou wouldst go into the world from which I fled?'
'If the harvest be at hand, the Lord needs labourers. If the times beawful, I should be doing awful things in them. Send me, and let thatday find me, where I long to be, in the forefront of the battle of theLord.'
'The Lord's voice be obeyed! Thou shalt go. Here are letters to Cyrilthe patriarch. He will love thee for my sake: and for thine own sake,too, I trust. Thou goest of our free will as well as thine own. Theabbot and I have watched thee long, knowing that the Lord bad need ofsuch as thee elsewhere. We did but prove thee, to see by thy readinessto obey, whether thou wert fit to rule. Go, and God be with thee. Covetno man's gold or silver. Neither eat flesh nor drink wine, but live asthou hast lived--a Nazarite of the Lord. Fear not the face of man; butlook not on the face of woman. In an evil hour came they into the world,the mothers of all mischiefs which I have seen under the sun. Come; theabbot waits for us at the gate.'
With tears of surprise, joy, sorrow, almost of dread, Philammon hungback.
'Nay--come. Why shouldst thou break thy brethren's hearts and ours bymany leave-takings! Bring from the storehouse a week's provision ofdried dates and millet. The papyrus boat lies at the ferry; thou shaltdescend in it. The Lord will replace it for us when we need it. Speakwith no man on the river except the monks of God. When thou hastgone five days' journey downward, ask for the mouth of the canalof Alexandria. Once in the city, any monk will guide thee to thearchbishop. Send us news of thy welfare by some holy mouth. Come.'
Silently they paced together down the glen to the lonely beach of thegreat stream. Pambo was there already, his white hair glittering in therising moon, as with slow and feeble arms he launched the light canoe.Philammon flung himself at the old men's feet, and besought, with manytears, their forgiveness and their blessing.'We have nothing to forgive.Follow thou thine inward call. If it be of the flesh, it will avengeitself; if it be of the Spirit, who are we that we should fight againstGod? Farewell.' A few minutes more, and the youth and his canoe werelessening down the rapid stream in the golden summer twilight. Again aminute, and the swift southern night had fallen, and all was dark butthe cold glare of the moon on the river, and on the rock-faces, and onthe two old men, as they knelt upon the beach, and with their heads uponeach other's shoulders, like two children, sobbed and prayed togetherfor the lost darling of their age.