vigil at his tomb. Then through a vast and horrible wilderness, he
went for three days to a very high mountain, and found there two
monks, Isaac and Pelusianus, of whom Isaac had been Antony's
interpreter.

A high and rocky hill it was, with fountains gushing out at its
foot. Some of them the sand sucked up; some formed a little rill,
with palms without number on its banks. There you might have seen
the old man wandering to and fro with Antony's disciples. "Here,"
they said, "he used to sing, here to pray, here to work, here to sit
when tired. These vines, these shrubs, he planted himself; that
plot he laid out with his own hands. This pond to water the garden
he made with heavy toil; that hoe he kept for many years." Hilarion
lay on his bed, and kissed the couch, as if it were still warm.
Antony's cell was only large enough to let a man lie down in it; and
on the mountain top, reached by a difficult and winding stair, were
two other cells of the same size, cut in the stony rock, to which he
used to retire from the visitors and disciples, when they came to
the garden. "You see," said Isaac, "this orchard, with shrubs and
vegetables. Three years since a troop of wild asses laid it waste.
He bade one of their leaders stop; and beat it with his staff. 'Why
do you eat,' he asked it, 'what you did not sow?' And after that
the asses, though they came to drink the waters, never touched his
plants."

Then Hilarion asked them to show him Antony's grave. They led him
apart; but whether they showed it to him, no man knows. They hid
it, they said, by Antony's command, lest one Pergamius, who was the
richest man of those parts, should take the corpse to his villa, and
build a chapel over it.