CHAP. VII.


The hut that Joseph was bidden to enter was the last left in the cenoby
for allotment, four proselytes having arrived last month.

No better commodity have we for the moment, the curator said, struck by
the precarious shelter the hut offered--a crazy door and a roof that let
the starlight through at one end of the wall. But the rains are over, he
added, and the coverlet is a warm one. On this he left Joseph, whom the
bell would call to orison, too tired to sleep, turning vaguely from side
to side, trying to hush the thoughts that hurtled through his clear
brain--that stars endure for ever, but the life of the palm-tree was as
the life of the man who fed on its fruit. The tree lived one hundred
years, and among the Essenes a centenarian was no rare thing, but of
what value to live a hundred years in the monotonous life of the cenoby?
And in his imagination, heightened by insomnia, the Essenes seemed to
him like the sleeping trees. If he remained he would become like them,
while his father lived alone in Galilee! Dan rose up before him and he
could find no sense in the assurances he had given the president that he
wished to be admitted into the order. He seemed no longer to desire
admission, and if he did desire it he could not, for his father's sake,
accept the admission. Then why had he talked as he had done to the
president? He could not tell: and it must have been while lying on his
right side, trying to understand himself, what he was and why he was in
the cenoby, that he fell into that deep and dreamless sleep from which
he was awakened by a bell, and so suddenly that it seemed to him that he
had not been asleep more than a few minutes. It was no doubt the bell
for morning prayer: and only half awake he repaired with the other