for the reception of the offerings of the charitable. I had kept both my
hands close shut for so many years that the nails had grown into the
flesh, and the muscles had hardened so that I could no longer open them;
and I was looked upon as a very holy man. The words of the passers-by
were sweet in my ears, but I never spoke to them in return. Silent and
immovable, I stood there through the livelong day--and in my vision it
was always day. I had the power of looking back, and I knew that, in the
first instance, I had been led by religious enthusiasm to adopt that
mode of life. I should be in the world but not of it; I should have
more time for that introspective contemplation the aim and end of which
is mental absorption in the divine Brahma; besides which, people would
praise me, and all the world would know that I was a holy man. But the
strangest part of the affair remains to be told. In the eyes of the
people I had grown in sanctity from year to year; but in my own heart I
knew that instead of approaching nearer to Brahma, I was becoming more
depraved, more wicked, with a great inward wickedness, as time went on.
I struggled desperately against the slough of sin that was slowly
creeping over me, but in vain. It seemed to me as if the choice were
given me either to renounce my life of outward-seeming sanctity, and
becoming as other men were, to feel again that inward peace which had
been mine long years before; or else, while remaining holy in the eyes
of the multitude, to feel myself sinking into a bottomless pit of
wickedness from which I could never more hope to emerge. My mental
tortures while this struggle was going on I can never forget: they are
as much a real experience to me as if they had made up a part of my
genuine waking life. And still I stood with closed hands in the shade of
the tree; and the people cried out that I was holy, and placed their
offerings in my bowl; and I could not make up my mind to abnegate the
title they gave me and become as they were. And still I grew in inward
wickedness, till I loathed myself as if I were some vile reptile; and so