My mother and I were the only persons who slept in the church. There were a number of insane patients in the monastery itself. St George of the Bells is renowned for the number of cures of insanity which he effects. The head monk, as a rule, is a man of considerable education and shrewdness, with no mean knowledge of medicine. The insane patients are under his care for forty days, with the grace of St George. They practically live out of doors, take cold baths, dress lightly, and eat food of the simplest. In addition to this they received mystic shocks to help on their recovery, and, I believe, usually regain their mental equilibrium.
While I was staying at the monastery a young man was brought there from Greece. He was a great student of literature, and very dissipated. The two combined had sent him to St George. He was a handsome fellow, with long white hands, and a girlish mouth. He was permitted to go about free, and I met him under the arcade of the monastery, declaiming a passage from Homer. When his eyes met mine, he stopped and addressed me.
“I am coming from Persia, and my land is Ithaca. I am Ulysses, the king of Ithaca.” Then he threw out his hands toward me and screamed, “Penelope!”
One may imagine that I was frightened, but before I had time to answer, he burst into a peal of laughter, and exclaimed:
“Why, you are Achilles, dressed in girl’s clothes. But you will come with us to fight, will you not?”
Much to my relief a monk came up and said, “Don’t stay here and listen to him. It only excites him.”
I became quite interested in the young man after this, and later learned that when his forty days were at an end, by a sign St George intimated that he was to remain longer; and a few months later the young man returned to his country entirely cured.
There was one of the monks, Father Arsenius, who was as devout as my mother. To him I really owe all my pleasure while in the monastery. He was an old man, but strong and active. He took me every day for rambles about the mountains, and never would let me walk uphill. He would pick me up and set me on his shoulder, as if I were a pitcher of water, and then, chanting his Gregorian chants, we would make the ascents. One day we were sitting on one of the big rocks surrounding the monastery. Miles below we could see the blue waters of the Marmora, and far beyond it the Asiatic coast of Turkey. The air was filled with the smell of the pine forest below. Father Arsenius had been telling me of the miracles performed by St George.
“It is curious, Father Arsenius,” I commented, “that they should have built the monastery so high up. It is so difficult to get to, especially when one comes on foot, the way we did. How did they think of building it up here?”
“No one thought of it. The saint himself chose this spot. Don’t you know about it, little one?”