The old man’s vehemence was contagious; the lad’s spirit was roused, and he exclaimed warmly:  “What do you say? that I am afraid of struggles and trouble?  I am ready to stake everything, even my life, only to win fame.  But to measure stone, to batter defenceless blocks with a mallet and chisel, or to join the squares with accurate pains—­that does not tempt me.  I should like to win the wreath in the Palaestra by flinging the strongest to the ground, or surpass all others as a warrior in battle; my father was a soldier too, and he may talk as much as he will of ‘peace,’ and nothing but ‘peace,’ all the same in his dreams he speaks of bloody strife and burning wounds.  If you only cure him I will stay no longer on this lonely mountain, even if I must steal away in secret.  For what did God give me these arms, if not to use them?”

Petrus made no answer to these words, which came is a stormy flood from Hermas’ lips, but he stroked his grey beard, and thought to himself, “The young of the eagle does not catch flies.  I shall never win over this soldier’s son to our peaceful handicraft, but he shall not remain on the mountain among these queer sluggards, for there he is being ruined, and yet he is not of a common sort.”

When he had given a few orders to the overseer of his workmen, he followed the young man to see his suffering father.

It was now some hours since Hermas and Paulus had left the wounded anchorite, and he still lay alone in his cave.  The sun, as it rose higher and higher, blazed down upon the rocks, which began to radiate their heat, and the hermit’s dwelling was suffocatingly hot.  The pain of the poor man’s wound increased, his fever was greater, and he was very thirsty.  There stood the jug, which Paulus had given him, but it was long since empty, and neither Paulus nor Hermas had come back.  He listened anxiously to the sounds in the distance, and fancied at first that he heard the Alexandrian’s footstep, and then that he heard loud words and suppressed groans coming from his cave.  Stephanus tried to call out, but he himself could hardly hear the feeble sound, which, with his wounded breast and parched mouth, he succeeded in uttering.  Then he fain would have prayed, but fearful mental anguish disturbed his devotion.  All the horrors of desertion came upon him, and he who had lived a life overflowing with action and enjoyment, with disenchantment and satiety, who now in solitude carried on an incessant spiritual struggle for the highest goal—­this man felt himself as disconsolate and lonely as a bewildered child that has lost its mother.

He lay on his bed of pain softly crying, and when he observed by the shadow of the rock that the sun had passed its noonday height, indignation and bitter feeling were added to pain, thirst and weariness.  He doubled his fists and muttered words which sounded like soldier’s oaths, and with them the name now of Paulus, now of his son.  At last anguish gained the upperhand of his anger, and it seemed to him, as though he were living over again the most miserable hour of his life, an hour now long since past and gone.