given to Hermas. In his hand he held the key of the church, which he had
promised the door-keeper to deliver to Petrus; but all was so still in
the senator's house, that he shrank from rousing the sleepers.

"What a strange night this has been!" he muttered to himself, as he drew
his short and tattered tunic closer together. "Even if it were warmer,
and if, instead of this threadbare rag, I had a sack of feathers to wrap
myself in, still I should feel a cold shiver if the spirits of hell that
wander about here were to meet me again. Now I have actually seen one
with my own eyes. Demons in women's form rush up the mountain out of the
oasis to tempt and torture us in our sleep. What could it have been that
the goblin in a white robe and with flowing hair held in its arms? Very
likely the stone with which the incubus loads our breast when he torments
us. The other one seemed to fly, but I did not see its wings. That
side-building must be where the Gaul lives with his ungodly wife, who has
ensnared my poor Hermas. I wonder whether she is really so beautiful!
But what can a youth who has grown up among rocks and caves know of the
charms of women. He would, of course, think the first who looked kindly
at him the most enchanting of her sex. Besides she is fair, and
therefore a rare bird among the sunburnt bipeds of the desert. The
centurion surely cannot have found the sheepskin or all would not be so
still here; once since I have been here an ass has brayed, once a camel
has groaned, and now already the first cock is crowing; but not a sound
have I heard from human lips, not even a snore from the stout senator or
his buxom wife Dorothea, and it would be strange indeed if they did not
both snore."

He rose, went up to the window of Phoebicius dwelling, and listened at
the half open shutters, but all was still.