with
myself. I know that obedience is noble; but danger is nobler still.
If you have seen the world, why should not I? If you have fled from it
because you found it too evil to live in, why should not I, and return
to you here of my own will, never to leave you? And yet Cyril and his
clergy have not fled from it....'

Desperately and breathlessly did Philammon drive this speech out of his
inmost heart; and then waited, expecting the good abbot to strike him
on the spot. If he had, the young man would have submitted patiently;
so would any man, however venerable, in that monastery. Why not? Duly,
after long companionship, thought, and prayer, they had elected Pambo
for their abbot--Abba--father--the wisest, eldest-hearted and headed of
them--if he was that, it was time that he should be obeyed. And obeyed
he was, with a loyal, reasonable love, and yet with an implicit,
soldier-like obedience, which many a king and conqueror might envy. Were
they cowards and slaves? The Roman legionaries should be good judges on
that point. They used to say that no armed barbarian, Goth or Vandal,
Moor or Spaniard, was so terrible as the unarmed monk of the Thebaid.

Twice the old man lifted his staff to strike; twice he laid it down
again; and then, slowly rising, left Philammon kneeling there, and moved
away deliberately, and with eyes fixed on the ground, to the house of
the brother Aufugus.

Every one in the Laura honoured Aufugus. There was a mystery about him
which heightened the charm of his surpassing sanctity, his childlike
sweetness and humility. It was whispered--when the monks seldom and
cautiously did whisper together in their lonely walks--that he had been
once a great man; that he had come from a great city--perhaps from Rome
itself. And the simple monks were proud to think that they had among
them a man who had seen Rome. At least, Abbot Pambo respected him. He
was never beaten; never even reproved--perhaps he never required it; but
still it was the meed of all; and was not the abbot a little partial?
Yet, certainly, when Theophilus sent up a messenger from Alexandria,
rousing every Laura with the news of the sack of Rome by Alaric, did
not Pambo take him first to the cell of Aufugus, and sit with him there
three whole hours in secret consultation, before he told the awful story
to the rest of the brotherhood? And did not Aufugus himself give letters
to the messenger, written with his own hand, containing, as was said,