“I will obey you as briefly as possible. I fled, as you know, one sorrowful night from Rome, accompanied by a man”—his voice choked him.
“I know, I know whom you mean,—Eurotas,” interrupted Fabiola.
“The same, the curse of our house, the author of all mine, and my dear sister’s, sufferings. We had to charter a vessel at great expense from Brundusium, whence we sailed for Cyprus. We attempted commerce and various speculations, but all failed. There was manifestly a curse on all that we undertook. Our means melted away, and we were obliged to seek some other country. We crossed over to Palestine, and settled for a while at Gaza. Very soon we were reduced to distress; every body shunned us, we knew not why; but my conscience told me that the mark of Cain was on my brow.”
Orontius paused and wept for a time, then went on:
“At length, when all was exhausted, and nothing remained but a few jewels, of considerable price indeed, but with which, I knew not why, Eurotas would not part, he urged me to take up the odious office of denouncing Christians; for a furious persecution was breaking out. For the first time in my life I rebelled against his commands, and refused to obey. One day he asked me to walk out of the gates; we wandered far, till we came to a delightful spot in the midst of the desert. It was a narrow dell, covered with verdure, and shaded by palm-trees; a little clear stream ran down, issuing from a spring in a rock at the head of the valley. In this rock we saw grottoes and caverns; but the place seemed uninhabited. Not a sound could be heard but the bubbling of the water.
“We sat down to rest, when Eurotas addressed me in a fearful speech. The time was come, he told me, when we must both fulfil the dreadful resolution he had taken, that we must not survive the ruin of our family. Here we must both die; the wild beasts would consume our bodies, and no one would know the end of its last representatives.
“So saying, he drew forth two small flasks of unequal sizes, handed me the larger one, and swallowed the contents of the smaller.
“I refused to take it, and even reproached him for the difference of our doses; but he replied that he was old, and I young; and that they were proportioned to our respective strengths. I still refused, having no wish to die. But a sort of demoniacal fury seemed to come over him; he seized me with a giant’s grasp, as I sat on the ground, threw me on my back, and exclaiming, ‘We must both perish together,’ forcibly poured the contents of the phial, without sparing me a drop, down my throat.
“In an instant, I was unconscious; and remained so, till I awoke in a cavern, and faintly called for drink. A venerable old man, with a white beard, put a wooden bowl of water to my lips. ‘Where is Eurotas?’ I asked. ‘Is that your companion?’ inquired the old monk. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘He is dead,’ was the reply. I know not by what fatality this had happened; but I bless God with all my heart, for having spared me.
“That old man was Hilarion, a native of Gaza, who, having spent many years with the holy Anthony in Egypt, had that year[242] returned to establish the cenobitic and eremitical life in his own country, and had already collected several disciples. They lived in the caves hard by, and took their refection under the shade of those palms, and softened their dry food in the water of that fountain.