n the breast descended two brown streaks, relics
of the last miraculous manifestation. The face of the young Roman
centurion who had suffered martyrdom for his conversion to Christianity
was smiling very sweetly and looking upwards, and in that part of his
work the sculptor had been very happy. But the rest of the carving
was gruesome and the anatomy was gross and bad, the figure being so
disproportionately broad as to convey the impression of a stunted dwarf.

The big book standing upon the pulpit of plain deal proved, as I had
expected, to be a missal; and it became my custom to recite from it each
morning thereafter the office for the day.

In a rude cupboard I found a jar of baked earth that was half full of
oil, and another larger jar containing some cakes of maize bread and
a handful of chestnuts. There was also a brown bundle which resolved
itself into a monkish habit within which was rolled a hair-shirt.

I took pleasure in this discovery, and I set myself at once to strip off
my secular garments and to don this coarse brown habit, which, by reason
of my great height, descended but midway down my calves. For lack of
sandals I went barefoot, and having made a bundle of the clothes I had
removed I thrust them into the cupboard in the place of those which I
had taken thence.

Thus did I, who had been vowed to the anchorite order of St. Augustine,
enter upon my life as an unordained anchorite. I dragged out the wattles
upon which my blessed predecessor had breathed his last, and having
swept the place clean with a bundle of hazel-switches which I cut for
the purpose, I went to gather fresh boughs and rushes by the swollen
torrent, and with these I made myself a bed.

My existence became not only one of loneliness, but of grim privation.
People rarely came my way, save for a few faithful women from Casi or
Fiori who solicited my prayers in return for the oil and maize-cakes
which they left me, and sometimes whole days would pass without the
sight of a single human being. These maize-cakes formed my chief
nourishment, together with a store or nuts from the hazel coppice that
grew before my door and some chestnuts which I went further afield to
gather in the woods. Occasionally, as a gift, there would be a jar of
olives, which was the greatest delicacy that I savoured in those days.
No flesh-food or fish did I ever taste, so that I grew very lean and
often suffered hunger.

My days were spent partly in prayer and