But how was she to reach it? The space before her was packed with men
as a quiver is packed with arrows; there was not room for a pin
between. The only chance of getting forward was by forcing her way, and
nine-tenths of the crowd were men--angry and storming men, whose wild
and strange demeanor filled her with terror and disgust. Most of
them were monks who had flocked in at the Bishop's appeal from the
monasteries of the desert, or from the Lauras and hermitages of Kolzum
by the Red Sea, or even from Tabenna in Upper Egypt, and whose hoarse
voices rent the air with vehement cries of: "Down with the idols! Down
with Serapis! Death to the heathen!"

This army of the Saviour whose very essence was gentleness and whose
spirit was love, seemed indeed to have deserted from his standard of
light and grace to the blood-stained banner of murderous hatred. Their
matted locks and beards fringed savage faces with glowing eyes; their
haggard or paunchy nakedness was scarcely covered by undressed hides of
sheep and goats; their parched skins were scarred and striped by the use
of the scourges that hung at their girdles. One--a "crown bearer"--had
a face streaming with blood, from the crown of thorns which he had
vowed to wear day and night in memory and imitation of the Redeemer's
sufferings, and which on this great occasion he pressed hard into the
flesh with ostentatious martyrdom. One, who, in his monastery, had
earned the name of the "oil-jar," supported himself on his neighbors'
arms, for his emaciated legs could hardly carry his dropsical carcass
which, for the last ten years, he had fed exclusively on gourds, snails,
locusts and Nile water. Another was chained inseparably to a comrade,
and the couple dwelt together in a cave in the limestone hills near
Lycopolis. These two had vowed never to let each other sleep, that so
their time for repentance might be doubled, and their bliss in the next
world enhanced in proportion to their mortifications in this.

One and all, they were allies in a great fight, and the same hopes,
ideas, and wishes fired them all. The Abominable Thing--which imperilled
hundreds of thousands of souls, which invited Satan to assert his
dominion in this world--should fall this day and be annihilated forever!
To them the whole heathen world was the "great whore;" and though the
gems she wore were beautiful to see and rejoiced the mind and heart of
fools, they must be snatched from her painted brow; they wo