"What! No; it is impossible; I must have been mistaken!
"Yet why?... Perhaps my cabin, these stones, this sand, have no real existence. I am becoming mad! Let me be calm! Where was I? What was it that happened?
"Ah! the gymnosophist!... Such a death is frequent among the sages of India. Kalanos burned himself before Alexander; another did likewise in the time of Augustus. What hatred of life men must have to do thus! Unless, indeed, they are impelled by pride alone?... Yet in any event they have the intrepidity of martyrs.... As for the latter, I can now well believe what has been told me regarding the debauchery they cause.
"And before that? Yes: I remember now! the host of the Heresiarchs! What outcries! What eyes! Yet why so much rebellion of the flesh, so much dissoluteness, so many aberrations of the intellect.
"They claim, nevertheless, to seek God through all those ways! What right have I to curse them—I, who stumble so often in mine own path? I was perhaps about to learn more of them at the moment when they disappeared. Too rapid was the whirl; I had no time to answer. Now I feel as though there were more space, more light in my understanding. I am calm. I even feel myself able to.... What is this? I thought I had put out the fire!"
(A flame flits among the rocks; and soon there comes the sound of a voice—broken, convulsed as by sobs—from afar off, among the mountains.)
"Can it be the cry of a hyena, or the lamentation of some traveler that has lost his way?"
(Anthony listens. The flame draws nearer.
And he beholds a weeping woman approach, leaning upon the shoulder of a white-bearded man.