"Yet an hour," thought the anchorite, "and the mother will have her son
again, yet a week and Polykarp will rise from his bed, yet a year and he
will remember nothing of yesterday but a scar--and perhaps a kiss that he
pressed on the Gaulish woman's rosy lips. I shall find it harder to
forget. The ladder which for so many years I had labored to construct,
on which I thought to scale heaven, and which looked to me so lofty and
so safe, there it lies broken to pieces, and the hand that struck it down
was my own weakness. It would almost seem as if this weakness of mine
had more power than what we call moral strength for that which it took
the one years to build up, was wrecked by the other in a' moment. In
weakness only am I a giant."

Paulus shivered at these words, for he was cold. Early in that morning
when he had taken upon himself Hermas' guilt he had abjured wearing his
sheepskin; now his body, accustomed to the warm wrap, suffered severely,
and his blood coursed with fevered haste through his veins since the
efforts, night-watches, and excitement of the last few days. He drew his
little coat close around him with a shiver and muttered, "I feel like a
sheep that has been shorn in midwinter, and my head burns as if I were a
baker and had to draw the bread out of the oven; a child might knock me
down, and my eyes are heavy. I have not even the energy to collect my
thoughts for a prayer, of which I am in such sore need. My goal is
undoubtedly the right one, but so soon as I seem to be nearing it, my
weakness snatches it from me, as the wind swept back the fruit-laden
boughs which Tantalus, parched with thirst, tried to grasp. I fled from
the world to this mountain, and the world has pursued me and has flung
its snares round my feet. I must seek a lonelier waste in which I may
be alone--quite alone with my God and myself. There, perhaps I may find
the way I seek, if indeed the fact that the creature that I call "I," in