Essenes, however, did not exclude marriage because they
believed the end of the world was drawing nigh, but because they wished
to exclude all pleasure from life. To do this, to conceive the duty of
man to be a cheerful exclusion of all pleasure, seemed to Joseph
wonderful, an exaltation of the spirit that he had not hitherto believed
man to be capable of: and one night, while thinking of these things, he
fell on a resolve that he would go to Jericho on the morrow to see for
himself if all the tales he heard about the brethren were true. At the
same time he looked forward to getting away from the seven windy hills
where the sun had not been seen for days, only grey vapour coiling and
uncoiling and going out, and where, with a patter of rain in his ears,
he was for many days crouching up to a fire for warmth.

But in Jericho he would be as it were back in Galilee: a pleasant winter
resort, to be reached easily in a day by a path through the hills, so
plainly traced by frequent usage that a guide was not needed. A servant
he could not bring with him, for none was permitted in the cenoby, a
different mode and colour of life prevailing there from any he ever
heard of, but he hoped to range himself to it, and--thinking how this
might be done--he rode round the hillside, coming soon into view of
Bethany over against the desert. From thence he proceeded by long
descents into a land tossed into numberless hills and torn up into such
deep valleys that it seemed to him to be a symbol of God's anger in a
moment of great provocation. Or maybe, he said to himself, these valleys
are the ruts of the celestial chariot that passed this way to take
Elijah up to heaven? Or maybe ... His mind was wandering, and--forgetful
of the subject of his meditation--he looked round and could see little
else but strange shapes of cliffs and boulders, rocks and lofty scarps
enwrapped in mist so thick that he fell to thinking whence came the
fume? For rocks are breathless, he said, and there are only rocks here,
only rocks and patches of earth in which the peasants sow patches of
barley. At that moment his mule slid in the slime of the path to within
a few inches of a precipice, and Joseph uttered a cry before the gulf
which startled a few rain-drenched crows that went away cawing, making
the silence more melancholy than before. A few more inches, Joseph
thought, and we should have been over, though a mule has never been
known to walk or to slide over a