concealed. Neither the tears of his wife, the tie of blood, or God
who looks on all things from on high, could call him back from his
crime. He was at hand, ready to seize him, making piety a pretext
for cruelty. The boy discovered it, and fled into the desert hills.
Once there he changed need into pleasure, and going on, and then
stopping awhile, again and again, reached at last a stony cliff, at
the foot whereof was, nigh at hand, a great cave, its mouth closed
with a stone. Having moved which away (as man's longing is to know
the hidden), exploring more greedily, he sees within a great hall,
open to the sky above, but shaded by the spreading boughs of an
ancient palm; and in it a clear spring, the rill from which, flowing
a short space forth, was sucked up again by the same soil which had
given it birth. There were besides in that cavernous mountain not a
few dwellings, in which he saw rusty anvils and hammers, with which
coin had been stamped of old. For this place (so books say) was the
workshop for base coin in the days when Antony lived with Cleopatra.

Therefore, in this beloved dwelling, offered him as it were by God,
he spent all his life in prayer and solitude, while the palm-tree
gave him food and clothes; which lest it should seem impossible to
some, I call Jesus and his holy angels to witness that I have seen
monks one of whom, shut up for thirty years, lived on barley bread
and muddy water; another in an old cistern, which in the country
speech they call the Syrian's bed, was kept alive on five figs each
day. These things, therefore, will seem incredible to those who do
not believe; for to those who do believe all things are possible.

But to return thither whence I digressed. When the blessed Paul had
been leading the heavenly life on earth for 113 years, and Antony,
ninety years old, was dwelling in another solitude, this thought (so