"Is it the glow of dawn, or only an effect of moonlight?"
(He tries to rise, falls back,—his teeth chattering):
"I feel such a helplessness of weakness, as though all my bones were broken!
"Why?
"Ah! the Devil!—I remember!—he even repeated to me all that I learned from the aged Didymus respecting the opinions of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, of Melissus, of Anaxagoras,—concerning the infinite, the creation, the impossibility of knowing anything!
"And yet I believed that I could unite myself to God!"
(Laughing bitterly):
"Ah! madness! madness! Is the fault mine? Prayer has become intolerable to me! My heart is dry as a rock! Once, it was wont to overflow with love!...
"The sand used to smoke of mornings like the odourous dust of a censer;—at sunset flowers of fire used to bloom upon the cross; and in the middle of the night, it often seemed as though all beings and all things, lying under the same awful silence, were adoring the Lord with me. O charms of prayer, felicities of ecstasy, gifts of heaven,—what have become of you?
"I remember a voyage I made with Ammon in search of a solitary place suited for the establishment of a monastery. It was the last evening; we hastened our steps, walked side by side, murmuring hymns, without conversing. As the sun sank, the shadows of our bodies lengthened like two obelisks, continually growing taller, and moving before us. Here and there we planted crosses, made with fragments of our sticks, to mark the site of a future cell. Night was tardy in her coming; and waves of darkness overspread the earth, even while a vast rose-coloured light still glowed in heaven.