e not called from the caves of Nitria to sit on the throne
of Alexandria?'

Slowly the old man lifted his band, and putting back the thick locks of
the kneeling youth, gazed, with soft pitying eyes, long and earnestly
into his face.

'And thou wouldst see the world, poor fool? And thou wouldst see the
world?'

'I would convert the world!'

'Thou must know it first. And shall I tell thee what that world is like,
which seems to thee so easy to convert? Here I sit, the poor unknown old
monk, until I die, fasting and praying, if perhaps God will have mercy
on my soul: but little thou knowest how I have seen it. Little thou
knowest, or thou wouldst be well content to rest here till the end. I
was Arsenius.... Ah! vain old man that I am! Thou hast never heard
that name, at which once queens would whisper and grow pale. Vanitas
vanitatum! omnia vanitas! And yet he, at whose frown half the world
trembles, has trembled himself at mine. I was the tutor of Arcadius.'

'The Emperor of Byzantium?'

'Even so, my son, even so. There I saw the world which thou wouldst see.
And what saw I? Even what thou wilt see. Eunuchs the tyrants of their
own sovereigns. Bishops kissing the feet of parricides and harlots.
Saints tearing saints in pieces for a word, while sinners cheer them on
to the unnatural fight. Liars thanked for lying, hypocrites taking pride
in their hypocrisy. The many sold and butchered for the malice, the
caprice, the vanity of the few. The plunderers of the poor plundered in
their turn by worse devourers than themselves. Every attempt at reform
the parent of worse scandals; every mercy begetting fresh cruelties;
every persecutor silenced, only to enable others to persecute him in
their turn: every devil who is exorcised, returning with seven others
worsethan himself; falsehood and selfishness, spite and lust, confusion
seven times confounded, Satan casting out Satan everywhere--from the
emperor who wantons on his throne, to the slave who blasphemes beneath
his fetters.'

'If Satan cast out Satan, his kingdom shall not stand.'

'In the world to come. But in this world it shall stand and conquer,
even worse and worse, until the end. These are the last days spoken of
by the prophets,--the beginning of woes such as never have been on
the earth before--"On earth distress of nations with perplexity, men's
hearts failing them for fear, and for the dread of those things which
are coming on the earth." I have seen it long