"You were born there, and they say you had been a rich young man."

"Do they say so?" said Paulus. "Perhaps they are right; but you must
know that I am glad that nothing any longer belongs to me of all the
vanities that I possessed, and I thank my Saviour that I can now turn my
back on the turmoil of men. What was it that seemed to you so
particularly tempting in all that whirl?"

Hermas hesitated. He feared to speak, and yet something urged and drove
him to say out all that was stirring his soul. If any one of all those
grave men who despised the world and among whom he had grown up, could
ever understand him, he knew well that it would be Paulus; Paulus whose
rough beard he had pulled when he was little, on whose shoulders he had
often sat, and who had proved to him a thousand times how truly he loved
him. It is true the Alexandrian was the severest of them all, but he was
harsh only to himself. Hermas must once for all unburden his heart, and
with sudden decision he asked the anchorite:

"Did you often visit the baths?"

"Often? I only wonder that I did not melt away and fall to pieces in the
warm water like a wheaten loaf."

"Why do you laugh at that which makes men beautiful?" cried Hermas
hastily. "Why may Christians even visit the baths in Alexandria, while
we up here, you and my father and all anchorites, only use water to
quench our thirst? You compel me to live like one of you, and I do not
like being a dirty beast."

"None can see us but the Most High," answered Paulus, "and for him we