other people. They spent their days and nights in contemplation, in
reading and in healing disease, looked upon everything else as trivial,
and had no time to waste a word. The inhabitants of the town understood
this, and tried not to worry him with their visits and empty chatter.
They were very glad that God had sent them at last a man who could heal
diseases, and were proud that such a remarkable man was living in their
town. 'He knows everything,' they said about him.

"But that was not enough. They ought to have also said, 'He loves
everyone.' In the breast of that learned man there beat a wonderful
angelic heart. Though the people of that town were strangers and not his
own people, yet he loved them like children, and did not spare himself
for them. He was himself ill with consumption, he had a cough, but when
he was summoned to the sick he forgot his own illness he did not spare
himself and, gasping for breath, climbed up the hills however high they
might be. He disregarded the sultry heat and the cold, despised thirst
and hunger. He would accept no money and strange to say, when one of his
patients died, he would follow the coffin with the relations, weeping.

"And soon he became so necessary to the town that the inhabitants
wondered how they could have got on before without the man. Their
gratitude knew no bounds. Grown-up people and children, good and bad
alike, honest men and cheats--all in fact, respected him and knew his
value. In the little town and all the surrounding neighborhood there
was no man who would allow himself to do anything disagreeable to him;
indeed, they would never have dreamed of it. When he came out of his
lodging, he never fastened the doors or windows, in complete confidence
that there was no thief who could bring himself to do him wrong.
He often had in the course of his medical duties to walk along the
highroads, through the forests and mountains haunted by numbers of
hungry vagrants; but he felt that he was in perfect security.

"One night he was returning from a patient when robbers fell upon him
in the forest, but when they recognized him, they took off their hats
respectfully and offered him something to eat. When he answered that he
was not hungry, they gave him a warm wrap and accompanied him as far as
the town, happy that fate had given them the chance in some small way
to show their gratitude to the benevolent man. Well, to be sure, my
grandmother told me that even the horse