Something like this was what the voice said. For Knecht, this was the first time he heard the inner voice speaking thus, heard the seductive and imperative bidding of man's spirit. He had seen many a moon wander across the sky and heard many a nocturnal owl shrieking; and laconic though the Master was, he had heard many a word of ancient wisdom or of solitary reflection from his lips, but at this moment something new and different had struck him -- presentiment of wholeness, the feeling for connections and relations, for the order that included him and gave him a share in the responsibility for everything. If you had the key to that, you did not need to depend on footprints to recognize an animal, or roots or seeds to know a plant. You would be able to grasp the whole world, stars, spirits, men, animals, medicines, and poisons, to grasp everything in its wholeness and to discern, in every part and sign, every other part. There were good hunters who could read more than others in a track, in fewmets, a patch of fur and remains; they could say from a few tiny hairs not only what kind of animal these came from, but also whether it was old or young, male or female. From the shape of a cloud, a smell in the air, the peculiar behavior of animals or plants, others could foretell the weather for days in advance; his master was unsurpassed in this art, and nearly infallible. Still others had an inborn skill: there were boys who could hit a bird with a stone at thirty paces. They had not learned it; they could simply do it; it did not come by effort, but by magic or grace. The stone in their hand flew off by itself; the stone wanted to hit and the bird wanted to be hit. There were said to be others who knew the future, whether a sick man would live or die, whether a pregnant woman would give birth to a boy or a girl. The tribal mother's daughter was famous for this, and the Rainmaker too was said to possess some of this knowledge. There must, it seemed to Knecht at this moment, be a center in the vast net of associations; if you were at this center you could know everything, could see all that had been and all that was to come. Knowledge must pour in upon one who stood at this center as water ran to the valley and the hare to the cabbage. His word would strike sharply and infallibly as the stone in the sharpshooter's hand. By virtue of the mind's power he would unite all these wonderful gifts and abilities within himself, and use them at will. He would be the perfect, wise, insurpassable man. To become like him, to draw nearer to him, to be on the way to him: that was the way of ways, that was the goal, that gave sacredness and meaning to a life.
   Something like this was the way he felt, and our attempts to speak of it in our conceptual language, which he could never know, convey nothing of the awe and the passion of his experience. Rising at night, being led through the dark, still woods full of dangers and mysteries, waiting on the ledge in the chill of night and early morning, the appearance of the thin phantom of a moon, the wise Master's few words, being alone with the Master at so extraordinary an hour -- all this was experienced and preserved by Knecht as a solemn mystery, as a solemn initiation, as his admission into a league and a cult, into a humble but honorable relationship to the Unnamable, the cosmic mystery. This and many another similar experience could not be put into thoughts, let alone words. Even more remote from his way of thinking, even more impossible than any other thought, would have been words such as this: "Is it only I alone who have created this experience, or is it objective reality? Does the Master have the same feelings as I, or would mine amuse him? Are my thoughts new, unique, my own, or have the Master and many before him experienced and thought exactly the same?" No, for him there were no such analyses and differentiations. Everything was reality, was steeped in reality, full of it as bread dough is of yeast. The clouds, the moon, and the shifting scenes in the theater of the sky, the cold wet limestone under his bare feet, the damp, trickling cold dew in the pallid night air, the comforting homelike smell of hearth smoke and bed of leaves suffusing the skin the Master had slung around him, the dignity and the faint note of old age and readiness for death in his rough voice -- all that was beyond reality and penetrated almost violently into the boy's senses. And sense impressions are a deeper soil for growing memories than the best systems and analytical methods.
   Although the Rainmaker was one of the few members of the tribe who had an occupation, who had developed a special art and ability, his everyday life outwardly did not differ greatly from that of the other members of the tribe. He was an important man with considerable prestige; he also received payment from the tribe whenever he had to do some service for the community; but this happened only on special occasions. By far his most important and sacred function came in the spring when he determined the proper day for sowing every kind of fruit and plant. He did this by carefully considering the state of the moon, partly by handed-down rules, partly by his own experience. But the solemn act of opening the season of seeding -- the strewing of the first handful of grain and seeds on the community land -- was no longer part of his office. That task was too high for any mere man; it was performed every year by the tribal mother herself or by her oldest female relative. The Master became the principal person in the village only when he really had to function as Weathermaker. This happened when a long drought, or a long spell of damp and cold, struck the fields and threatened the tribe with famine. Then Turu had to apply the methods effective against drought and poor crops: sacrifices, exorcisms, processions. According to legend, in cases of obstinate drought or endless rain, when all other means failed and the spirits could not be moved by persuasion, pleas, or threats, there was a last infallible method used in the days of the mothers and grandmothers: sacrifice of the Weathermaker himself by the community. The tribal mother, it was said, had witnessed one such sacrifice.
   Aside from looking after the weather, the Master also had a kind of private practice as an exorcist, as a maker of amulets and charms, and in some cases as a doctor, wherever medical matters were not reserved to the tribal mother. But for the rest, Master Turu lived the life of every other tribesman. He helped to till the common land when his turn came, and also had his own small garden near the hut. He gathered and stored fruit, mushrooms, and firewood. He hunted and fished, and kept a goat or two. As a farmer he was like all the others, but as hunter, fisherman, and herb gatherer he was not like anyone else. Rather, he was a solitary genius with a reputation for knowing a great many natural and magical tricks, devices, knacks, and aids. It was said he could weave a willow noose which no animal could escape. He had special recipes for fish bait; he knew how to lure crayfish; and there were some who thought that he understood the language of many a beast. But his real specialty was more arcane: observation of the moon and the stars, knowledge of the weather signs, ability to forecast weather and growth, and a command of many magical effects. Thus he was a great collector of plant and animal materials efficacious for remedies and poisons, for working magic, for conferring blessings, and for fending off dangerous spirits. He knew where to find even the rarest plants; he knew when they blossomed and ripened seed, and the right time to dig their roots. He knew where to find all kinds of snakes and toads, knew how to use horns, hoofs, claws, hair. He knew what to do with growths, deformities, weird and horrible excrescences: knots, tumors, burls, and scales, of wood, of leaves, of grain, of nuts, of horns and hoofs.
   Knecht had more to learn with his feet and hands, his eyes, skin, ears, and nose, than with his intellect, and Turu taught far more by example and by dumbshow than by words and prescription. The Master rarely spoke coherently, and even when he did his words were only a supplement to his singularly impressive gestures. Knecht's apprenticeship differed little from the apprenticeship a young hunter or fisherman undergoes with a good master, and it gave him great pleasure, for he learned only the things that were already latent within him. He learned to be in wait, to listen, to stalk, to watch, to be on his guard, to be alert, to spy and sense; but the game that he and his master stalked was not only fox and badger, otter and toad, bird and fish, but essence, the whole, meaning, relationship. They sought to determine, to recognize, to guess and forecast the fleeting, unstable weather, to know the death lying hidden in a berry or snakebite, to eavesdrop on the secret relations between clouds or storms and the phases of the moon, relations that affected the growth of crops as they did the haleness or doom of man and beast. No doubt they were really seeking the same ends as the science and technology of later centuries, dominance over nature and a control over her laws; but they went about it in an entirely different way. They did not stand off from nature and try to penetrate into her secrets by violence. They were never opposed and hostile to nature, but always part of her and reverently devoted to her. It is quite likely that they knew her better and dealt more wisely with her. But one thing was utterly impossible for them: not even in their most audacious moments would it have occurred to them to meet nature and the world of spirits without fear, let alone to feel superior to them. Such hubris was unthinkable; they could not have imagined having any other attitude but fear toward the forces of nature, toward death and the demons. Fear loomed over the life of man. It could not be overcome. But it could be pacified, outwitted, masked, brought within bounds, placed within the orderly framework of life as a whole. The various systems of sacrifices served this purpose. Fear was the permanent pressure upon the lives of these people, and without this high pressure their life would have lacked stress, of course, but also lacked intensity. A man who had been able to ennoble his fear by transforming part of it into awe had gained a great deal. People of this sort, people whose fear had become a form of piety, were the good men and the progressive men of that age. There were many sacrifices and many kinds of sacrifice; and a certain portion of these sacrifices, with their accompanying rites, fell within the province of the Weathermaker.
   Alongside Knecht in the hut, little Ada grew up -- a pretty child, the old man's darling; and when he thought the time had come, he gave her to his disciple for a wife. From this point on Knecht was considered the Rainmaker's assistant. Turu presented him to the village Mother as his son-in-law and successor, and thereafter allowed him to carry out many official acts and functions as his deputy. Gradually, as the seasons and years passed, the old Rainmaker lapsed into the solitary meditativeness of age and left all his duties to Knecht. By the time the old man was found dead, crouched over some small pots of magic brew on the hearth, his white hair singed by the fire -- the boy, the disciple Knecht had long been familiar to the village as the Rainmaker. He demanded that the village council provide an impressive funeral for his teacher, and as a sacrifice burned a whole heap of precious medicinal herbs and roots over the grave. That, too, had happened long ago, and several of Knecht's children already crowded Ada's hut, among them a boy named Turu. In him the old man had returned from his death flight to the moon.
   Knecht fared much as had his teacher in times past. Part of his fear was transformed into piety and thought. Part of his youthful aspiration and his profound longings remained alive, part faded away and evaporated as he grew older in his work, in his love and solicitude for Ada and the children. His foremost passion was still for the moon and its influence upon the seasons and the weather; to this he devoted persistent study, and in knowledge of these matters he reached and ultimately surpassed his master, Turu. And because the waxing and waning of the moon are so closely bound up with the birth and death of men; because of all the fears in which men live, fear of having to die is the strongest, Knecht acquired from his adoration and knowledge of the moon a devout and purified attitude toward death. In his riper years he was less subject to the fear of death than other men. He could speak reverently with the moon, or supplicatingly or tenderly; he knew that he was linked to it by delicate spiritual bonds. He knew the moon's life with great precision, shared with all the force of his own soul in the episodes of the moon's destiny. He experienced its disappearance and rebirth like a mystery within himself, suffered with it, felt alarm when the dreaded event occurred and the moon seemed exposed to illness and dangers, change and harm, when it lost its brightness, changed color, darkened until it seemed on the verge of extinction. At such times, it was true, everyone sympathized with the moon, trembled for it, recognized menace and the imminence of disaster in its eclipse, and stared anxiously at its old, ravaged face. But precisely at such times Rainmaker Knecht showed that he was closer to the moon and knew more about it than others. For although he shared in its suffering, although his heart constricted with anxiety, his memory of similar experiences was keener, his confidence better founded. He had greater faith in eternity and a second coming, in the possibility of revising and conquering death. Greater, too, was the degree of his devotion; at such times he felt in himself a readiness to share the fate of the celestial orb to the point of doom and rebirth. At times he even felt something akin to temerity, a kind of rash courage and the resolution to defy death by the power of mind, to strengthen his own selfhood by surrender to superhuman destinies. Some trace of this was apparent in his manner; others sensed it and regarded him as knowing and devout, a man of great calm and little fear of death, one who stood well with the higher powers.

   He had to prove these gifts and virtues in many hard tests. Once he had to withstand a period of poor crops and adverse weather that extended over two years. It was the greatest trial of his life. Troubles and bad portents had begun with the repeatedly postponed sowing, and then every imaginable misfortune had affected the crops, until in the end they were virtually destroyed. The village had starved cruelly, and Knecht, the Rainmaker, with it. It was a considerable achievement in itself to have survived this bitter year without losing all credence and standing, so that he could still help the tribe bear the catastrophe with humility and some degree of composure. When the next year, after a hard winter in which many of the tribe perished, all the miseries of the preceding year were repeated, when during the summer the common land parched and cracked in a stubborn drought, the mice multiplied fearfully, and the solitary conjurations and sacrifices of the Rainmaker proved as vain as the public ceremonies, the drum choruses, and the processions of the whole community; when evidence mounted that this time the Rainmaker could not make rain, it was no small matter and more than ordinary strength was needed to bear the responsibility and hold up his head against the frightened and infuriated people. There were two or three weeks in which Knecht stood entirely alone confronting the entire village, confronting hunger and despair, confronting the ancient belief among the people that only sacrifice of the Weathermaker could propitiate the powers. He had won the victory by yielding. He had not opposed the idea, had offered himself as the sacrifice. Moreover, with enormous toil and devotion he had helped to alleviate distress, had repeatedly discovered sources of water, divining a spring here, a trickling stream there. Even in a time of greatest distress he had not allowed the villagers to slaughter all their livestock. Above all he had lent his support to the tribal mother, who had succumbed to fatalism and weakness in these difficult times. By advice, threat, magic, and prayer, by example and intimidation, he saved her from collapsing completely and letting everything drift wildly. In those times of calamity and universal anxiety it became apparent that a man is the more useful, the more his life and thinking is turned toward matters of the spirit, matters that go beyond the personal realm, the more he has learned to venerate, observe, worship, serve, and sacrifice. The two terrible years, which had almost cost him his life, ended with his being more highly regarded and trusted than ever, not by the thoughtless crowd, of course, but by the few who bore responsibility and were able to judge a man of his type.
   His life had passed through these and many other trials by the time he reached the best years of his maturity. He had officiated over the burial of two of the tribal mothers, had lost a charming six-year-old son who had been carried off by a wolf. He had survived a severe illness without outside help, acting as his own physician. He had suffered hunger and cold. All this had marked his face, and his soul no less. He had also made the discovery that, in a certain peculiar manner, men of thought gave offense and aroused the repugnance of their fellows. They might be valued at a distance and called on in emergencies, but others neither love them nor accept them, rather give them a wide berth. He had also learned that the sick and unfortunate are far more receptive to traditional magic spells and exorcisms than to sensible advice; that people more readily accept affliction and outward penances than the task of changing themselves, or even examining themselves; that they believe more easily in magic than reason, in formulas than experience. These are matters which in the several thousand years since his era have probably not changed so much as a good many history books claim. But he had also learned that a seeking, thoughtful man dare not forfeit love; that he must meet the wishes and follies of men halfway, not showing arrogance but also not truckling to them; that it is always only a single step from sage to charlatan, from priest to mountebank, from helpful brother to parasitic drone, and that the people would by far prefer to pay a swindler and be exploited by a quack than accept help given freely and unselfishly. They would much rather pay in money and goods than in trust and love. They cheat one another and expect to be cheated themselves. You had to learn to see man as a weak, selfish, and cowardly creature; you also had to realize how many of these evil traits and impulses you shared yourself; and nevertheless you allowed yourself to believe, and nourished your soul on the faith, that man is also spirit and love, that something dwells in him which is at variance with his instincts and longs to refine them. But all these thoughts are no doubt far too abstract and explicit for Knecht to have been capable of them. Let us say: he was on the way to them; his way would some day lead him to them and past them.
   While he went his way, longing for abstract thought but living far more in the senses, in the spell of the moon, in the pungency of an herb, the saltiness of a root, the taste of a piece of bark, in cultivating simples, blending salves, submitting to the whims of weather and atmosphere, he developed many abilities within himself, including some that we of a later generation no longer possess and only half understand. The most important of these abilities was, of course, rainmaking. Although there were a good many special times when the sky stayed obdurate and seemed to mock his efforts, Knecht nevertheless made rain hundreds of times, and almost every time in a slightly different way. He would, of course, never have dared to make the slightest change or omission in the sacrifices and the rite of processions, conjurations, and drumming. But that was only the official, the public part of his work, the priestly side, which was for show; and undoubtedly it was very fine and produced a fine exalted feeling when after a day of sacrifices and processions the sky gave way in the evening, the horizon clouded over, the wind began to smell damp, the first drops of rain splattered down. But it had taken the Weathermaker's art to choose the day well, not to strive blindly when the prospects were poor. You could implore the powers, even besiege them, but you had to do so with feeling and moderation, with submission to their will. Even more than those glorious triumphant experiences of felicitous intercession he preferred certain others that no one but himself knew about, and even he knew about them only timorously, more with his senses than his understanding. There were weather conditions, tensions of the atmosphere and of heat, cloud formations and winds, smells of water and earth and dust, threats and promises, moods and whims of the weather demons, which Knecht detected in advance with his skin, his hair, with all his senses, so that he could not be surprised by anything, could not be disappointed. He concentrated the very vibrations of the weather within himself, holding them within him in such a way that he could command the clouds and the winds -- not, to be sure, just as he pleased, but out of the very intimacy and attachment he had with them, which totally erased the difference between him and the world, between inside and outside. At such times he could stand rapt, listening, or crouch rapt, with all his pores open, and not only feel the life of the winds and clouds within his own self, but also direct and engender it, somewhat in the way we can awaken and reproduce within ourselves a phrase of music that we know by heart. Then he needed only to hold his breath -- and the wind or the thunder stopped; he needed only to nod or shake his head -- and the hail pelted down or ceased; he needed only to express by a smile the balance of the conflicting forces within himself -- and the billows of clouds would part, revealing the thin, bright blueness. There were many times of unusually pure harmony and composure in his soul when he carried the weather of the next few days within himself with infallible foreknowledge, as if the whole score were already written in his blood in such a way that the outside world must play every note exactly as it stood. Those were his best days, his reward, his delight.
   But when this intimate connection with the outside was broken, when the weather and the world were unfamiliar, incomprehensible, and unpredictable, then currents were interrupted and derangements occurred within him. Then he felt that he was not a real Rainmaker, that his responsibility for weather and crops was an error and nuisance. At such times he was domestic, behaved obediently and helpfully toward Ada, sedulously shared the household tasks with her, made toys and tools for the children, pottered about preparing medicines, craved love and wanted nothing better than to differ as little as possible from other men, to conform wholly to them in customs and morals, and even to listen to the otherwise vexatious gossip of his wife and the neighboring women about the life, health, and conduct of others. But in good times his family saw little of him, for then he roamed, fished, hunted, searched for roots, lay in the grass or crouched in trees, sniffed, listened, imitated the voices of animals, kindled little fires and compared the shapes of the smoke clouds with the clouds in the sky, drenched his skin and hair with fog, rain, air, sun, or moonlight, and incidentally gathered, as his Master and predecessor Turu had done in his lifetime, objects whose inner character and outward form seemed to belong to different realms, in which the wisdom or whimsicality of nature seemed to reveal some fragment of her rules and secrets of creation, objects which seemed to unite symbolically widely disparate ideas: gnarled branches with the faces of men or animals, water-polished pebbles grained like wood, petrified animals of the primordial world, misshapen or twinned fruit pits, stones shaped like kidneys or hearts. He read the veinings of a leaf, the pattern on a mushroom cap, and divined mysteries, relations, futures, possibilities: the magic of symbols, the foreshadowing of numbers and writing, the reduction of infinitudes and multiplicities to simplicity, to system, to concept. For all these ways of comprehending the world through the mind no doubt lay within him, nameless, unnamed, but not inconceivable, not beyond the bounds of presentiment, still in the germ, but essential to his nature, part of him, growing organically within him. And if we were to go still further back beyond this Rainmaker and his time which to us seems so early and primitive, if we were to go several thousands of years further back into the past, wherever we found man we would still find -- this is our firm belief -- the mind of man, that Mind which has no beginning and always has contained everything that it later produces.
   The Weathermaker was not destined to win immortality by any one of his premonitions, or to come any closer to proving their validity. For him, indeed, they scarcely needed proof. He did not become one of the many inventors of writing, nor of geometry, nor of medicine or astronomy. He remained an unknown link in the chain, but a link as indispensable as any other. He passed on what he had received, and he added what he had newly acquired by his own struggles. For he too had disciples. In the course of the years he trained two apprentices to be Rainmakers, one of whom was later to become his successor.
   For long years he had gone about his affairs and practiced his craft alone and unobserved. Then, shortly after a great crop failure and time of famine, a boy started appearing, watching him, spying on him, adoring him, and generally skulking about -- one who was drawn to rainmaking and the Master. With a strange, sorrowful tug at his heart he sensed the recurrence and reversal of the great experience of his youth, and at the same time had that austere feeling, at once constricting and stirring, that afternoon had set in, that youth was gone and noonday passed, that the blossom had become a fruit. And to his own surprise he behaved toward the boy exactly as old Turu had once behaved toward him. The stiff rebuff, the delaying, wait-and-see attitude, came of its own accord; it was neither an imitation of his deceased Master nor did it spring from moralistic and pedagogic considerations that a young man must be tested for a long time to see whether he is serious enough, that initiation into mysteries should not be made easy, and similar theories. On the contrary, Knecht simply behaved toward his apprentices the way every somewhat aging solitary and learned eccentric behaves toward admirers and disciples. He was embarrassed, shy, distant, ready for flight, fearful for his lovely solitude and his freedom to roam in the wilderness, to go hunting and collecting alone, to dream and listen. He was full of a jealous love for all his habits and hobbies, his secrets and meditations. There could be no question of his embracing the timid youth who approached him with worshipful curiosity, no question of helping him overcome this timidity by encouraging him, no question of his rejoicing and having a sense of reward, appreciation, and pleasant success because the world of the others was at last sending him an emissary and a declaration of love, because someone was courting him, someone felt drawn to him, and like himself called to the service of mysteries. On the contrary, at first he felt it merely as a troublesome disturbance, infringement on his rights and habits, loss of his independence. For the first time he realized how much he prized that independence. He resisted the wooing and became clever at outwitting the boy and hiding himself, at covering his tracks, evading and escaping. But what had happened to Turu now happened to him also: the boy's long, mute courtship slowly softened his heart, slowly, slowly wore down his resistance, so that the more the boy gained ground, the more Knecht learned to turn to him and open his mind to him, approve his longing, accept his courtship, and eventually come to regard the new and often vexatious duty of teaching and having a disciple as inevitable, imposed by fate, one of the requirements of a life of thought. More and more he had to bid farewell to the dream, the feeling and the pleasure of infinite potentialities, of a multiplicity of futures. Instead of the dream of unending progress, of the sum of all wisdom, his pupil stood by, a small, near, demanding reality, an intruder and nuisance, but no longer to be rebuffed or evaded. For the boy represented, after all, the only way into the real future, the one most important duty, the one narrow path along which the Rainmaker's life and acts, principles, thoughts, and glimmerings could be saved from death and continue their life in a small new bud. Sighing, gnashing his teeth, and smiling, he accepted the burden.

   But even in this important, perhaps most responsible aspect of his work, the passing on of tradition and the education of successors, the Weathermaker was not spared bitter disillusionment. The first apprentice who sued for his favor was named Maro; and when after long delay and every form of deterrence he accepted the boy, Maro disappointed him in a way he could never quite reconcile himself to. The boy was obsequious and wheedling, and for a long time pretended unconditional obedience, but he had certain faults. Above all he lacked courage. He was especially afraid of night and darkness, a fact he tried to hide. Knecht, when he noticed it at last, continued for a long time to regard it as lingering childishness which would eventually disappear. But it did not disappear. This disciple also completely lacked the gift of selfless devotion to observation for its own sake, to the procedures and processes of the Rainmaker's work, and to ideas and speculations. He was clever, had a quick, bright mind, and he learned easily and surely whatever could be learned without surrender of the self. But it became more and more apparent that he had self-seeking aims, and that it was for the sake of these that he wanted to learn rainmaking. Above all he wanted status; he wanted to count for something and make an impression. He had the vanity of talent but not of vocation. He longed for applause. As soon as he acquired some scraps of knowledge and a few tricks, he showed off to his fellows. This, too, could be considered childish and might be outgrown. But he wanted more than applause; he also strove for power and advantages over others. When the Master first began to notice this, he was alarmed and gradually withdrew his favor from the young man. Maro had been an apprentice for some years when Knecht caught him in serious misdemeanors. One time he was induced, in return for presents, to treat a sick child with medicines without his Master's knowledge and authorization. Another time he undertook on his own to rid a hut of rats by reciting spells. And when, in spite of all his Master's warnings and his own pledges, he was caught again in similar practices, the Master dismissed him, informed the tribal mother of the affair, and tried to banish the ungrateful and useless young man from his memory.
   His two later disciples compensated for this disappointment, especially the second, who was his own son Turu. He deeply loved this youngest and last of his apprentices, and believed the boy could become greater than himself. Plainly, his grandfather's spirit had returned in him. Knecht experienced the invigorating satisfaction of having passed on the sum of his knowledge and belief to the future, and of having a person who was his son twice over, to whom he could hand over his duties any time these became too heavy for him. But still that ill-favored first disciple could not be dismissed from his life and thoughts. In the village Maro became a man who while not especially enjoying high honor, was nevertheless extremely popular and wielded considerable influence. He had taken a wife, amused many people by his talents as a kind of mountebank and jester, and had even become chief drummer in the drum corps. He remained a secret enemy of the Rainmaker, consumed by envy and inflicting large and small injuries upon him whenever he could. Knecht had never had a gift for friendship and gregariousness. He needed solitude and freedom; he had never sought out respect or love, except for the time he was a boy seeking to win over Master Turu. But now he learned how it felt to have an enemy, someone who hated him. It spoiled a good many of his days.
   Maro had been one of those highly talented pupils who in spite of their talent are always unpleasant and a grief to their teachers because their talent has not grown from below and from within. It is not founded on organic strength, the delicate, ennobling mark of a good endowment, of sound blood and a sound character, but is in a curious way something adventitious, accidental, perhaps even usurped or stolen. A pupil of meager character but high intelligence or sparkling imagination invariably embarrasses the teacher. He is obliged to transmit to this pupil the knowledge and methodology he himself has inherited, and to prepare him for the life of the mind -- and yet he cannot help feeling that his real and higher duty should be to protect the arts and sciences against the intrusion of young men who have nothing but talent. For the teacher is not supposed to serve the pupil; rather, both are the servants of their culture. This is the reason teachers feel slightly repelled by certain glittering talents. A pupil of that type falsifies the whole meaning of pedagogy as service. All the help given to a pupil who can shine but cannot serve basically means doing harm to service and is, in a way, a betrayal of culture. We know of periods in the history of many nations in which profound upheavals in cultural processes led to a surge of the merely talented into leading positions in communities, schools, academies, and governments. Highly talented people sat in all sorts of posts, but they were people who wanted to rule without being able to serve. Certainly it is often very difficult to recognize such people in good time, before they have entrenched themselves in the intellectual professions. It is equally difficult to treat them with the necessary ruthlessness and send them back to other occupations. Knecht, too, had made mistakes; he had been patient far too long with his apprentice Maro. He had entrusted esoteric knowledge to a superficial climber. That was a pity, and the consequences for himself were far greater than he could ever have foreseen.
   A year came -- by then Knecht's beard was already quite gray -- in which the orderly relationships between heaven and earth seemed to have been distorted by demons of unusual strength and malevolence. These distortions began in the autumn with events of such fearful majesty that every soul in the village shook with terror. Shortly after the equinox, which the Rainmaker always observed with heightened attentiveness and celebrated with solemnity and reverent worship, there was a display in the heavens that had not occurred within the memory of man. An evening came that was dry, windy, and rather cool. The sky was crystal clear except for a few restless small clouds which floated at a very great height, holding the rosy light of the setting sun for an unusually long time. They looked like loose and foamy bundles of light drifting in cold, pale cosmic space. For several days past Knecht had sensed something that was stronger and more remarkable than the feeling he had every year at this time when the days began growing shorter: a seething of the powers in the sky, a sense of alarm in earth, plants and animals, a nervousness in the air, something inconstant, expectant, frightened, lowering in all of nature. The small clouds with their lingering, quivering flames formed part of the strangeness. Their fluttery movements did not correspond with the direction of the wind on the ground. After a long sad struggle against extinction, their piteous red light grew cold and faded, and suddenly they were invisible.
   It was quiet in the village. The circle of children before the tribal mother's hut had long scattered. A few boys were still chasing about and tussling, but all the rest of the tribe were in their huts. Everyone had eaten. Many were already asleep; scarcely anyone but the Rainmaker observed the twilit clouds. Knecht walked back and forth in the small garden behind his hut, pondering the weather, tense and restive. At times he sat down for a brief rest on a stump that stood among the nettles and served him for splitting wood. As soon as the last glimmer of cloud was extinguished the stars suddenly appeared against the greenish glow of the sky, and rapidly grew in number and brightness. Where there had been only two or three visible a moment before, there were now ten, twenty. The Rainmaker was familiar with many of them individually and in their groups and families. He had seen them many hundreds of times; there was always something reassuring about their unvarying reappearance. Stars were comforting. Though they hung so high, remote and cold, radiating no warmth, they were reliable, firmly aligned, proclaiming order, promising duration. Seemingly so aloof and far and opposed to life on earth, seemingly so untouched by the warmth, the writhings, the sufferings and ecstasies in the life of man, so superior in their cold majesty and eternity that they seemed to make mock of human things, the stars nevertheless had a relation to us. They guided and governed us perhaps, and if any human knowledge, any intellectual hold, any sureness and superiority of the mind over transitory things could be attained and retained, it would resemble the stars, shining like them in cool tranquility, comforting with chilly shivers of awe, looking down eternally and somewhat mockingly. That was how they had often seemed to the Rainmaker, and although he felt toward the stars nothing like the close, stimulating, constantly changing and recurring relationship he had toward the moon, the great, near, moist orb, the fat magic fish in the sea of heaven, he nevertheless revered them and attached many beliefs to them. To gaze at them for a long time and allow their influence to work upon him, to expose his intelligence, his warmth, his anxiety to their serenely cold gaze, often laved and assuaged him like a healing draft.
   Tonight, too, they looked as they always did, except that they were very bright and seemed highly polished in the taut, thin air; but he could not find within himself the repose to surrender to them. From unknown realms some power was tugging at him; it ached in his pores, sucked at his eyes, quietly and continually affected him. It was a current, a warning quiver. In the hut nearby the warm, dim light of the hearth-fire glimmered. Life flowed small and warm inside: a cry, a laugh, a yawn, human smells, skin warmth, motherhood, children's sleep. All that innocent presence seemed to deepen the night, to drive the stars still further back into the incomprehensible distances and heights.
   And now, while Knecht heard Ada's voice inside the hut crooning and humming a low melody as she quieted a child, there began in the sky the calamity that the village would remember for many years. A flickering and glimmering appeared here and there in the still, glittering network of stars, as if the usually invisible threads of the net were suddenly leaping into flame. Like hurled stones, glowing and guttering, a few stars fell slantwise across the sky, one here, two there, a few more here; and before the eye had turned from the first vanished falling star, before the heart, stilled at the sight, had begun to beat again, the lights falling or hurled at a slant or a slight arc across the sky began to come in swarms of dozens, hundreds. A countless host, borne on a vast, mute storm, they slanted across the silent night, as if a cosmic autumn were tearing all the stars like withered leaves from the tree of heaven and flinging them noiselessly into the void. Like withered leaves, like wafting snowflakes, they rushed away and down, thousands upon thousands, in fearful silence, vanishing beyond the wooded mountains to the southeast where never a star had set since time immemorial.
   With frozen heart and swimming eyes, Knecht stood, head tilted back, gazing horrified but insatiably at the transformed and accursed sky, mistrusting his eyes and yet only too certain of the direness of what they beheld. Like all who watched this nocturnal spectacle, he thought the familiar stars themselves were wavering, scattering, and plunging down, and he expected that if the earth itself did not swallow him first, the firmament would soon appear black and emptied. After a while, however, he recognized what others could not know -- that the well-known stars were still present, here and there and everywhere; that the frightful dispersion was taking place not among the old, familiar stars, but in the space between earth and sky, and that these new lights, fallen or flung, so swiftly appearing and swiftly vanishing, glowed with a fire of another sort from the old, the proper stars. This was somewhat reassuring and helped him regain his balance. But even if these were new, transitory, different stars scattering through the air, still it meant disaster and disorder. Deep sighs came from Knecht's parched throat. He looked toward the earth; he listened to find out whether this uncanny spectacle were appearing to him alone, or whether others were also seeing it. Soon he heard groans, screams, and cries of terror from other huts. Others had seen it too; their cries had alarmed the sleepers and the unaware; in a moment panic had seized the entire village. With a sigh, Knecht took the burden on himself. This misfortune affected him, the Rainmaker, above all others, for he was in a way responsible for order in the heavens. Always before he had known or sensed great catastrophes in advance: floods, hailstorms, tempests. Always he had warned the mothers and elders to be prepared. He had averted the worst evils. He had interposed himself, his knowledge, his courage, and his confidence in the powers above, between the village and consternation. Why had he foreknown nothing this time, so that he could take no measure? Why had he said not a word to anyone of the obscure foreboding he had, after all, felt?

   He lifted the mat hung over the entrance of the hut and softly called his wife's name. She came, her youngest at her breast. He took the baby from her and laid it on the pallet. Holding Ada's hand, he placed a finger to his lips, enjoining silence, and led her out of the hut. He saw her patiently tranquil face grow distorted by terror.
   "Let the children sleep; I don't want them to see this, do you hear?" he whispered intensely. "Don't let any of them come out, not even Turu. And you yourself stay inside."
   He hesitated, uncertain how much to say, how many of his thoughts he ought to reveal. Finally he added firmly: "Nothing will harm you and the children."
   She believed him at once, although her face and her mind had not yet recovered from the fright.
   "What is it?" she asked, again staring at the sky. "Is it, very bad?"
   "It is bad," he said gently. "I think it may be very bad. But it doesn't concern you and the children. Stay in the hut; keep the mat drawn. I must talk to the people. Go in, Ada."
   He pressed her through the opening, drew the mat carefully closed, and stood for the span of a few breaths with his face turned toward the continuing rain of stars. Then he bowed his head, sighed heavily once more, and walked swiftly through the night toward the tribal mother's hut.
   Half the village was already assembled there. A muted roar rose from them, a tumult half numbed by terror and choked by despair. There were women and men who surrendered with a kind of voluptuous rage to their sense of horror and impending doom. Some stood stiff, rapt. Others jerked about wildly with uncontrolled movements of their limbs. One woman was foaming at the mouth as she danced, alone, a despairing and obscene dance, at the same time pulling out whole handfuls of her long hair. Knecht realized that the effects were already at work. Almost all had succumbed to the intoxication; they were bewitched or driven mad by the falling stars, and an orgy of madness, fury, and self-destructiveness might follow. It was high time to collect the few brave and sensible members of the tribe, and support their courage.
   The ancient tribal mother was calm. She believed that the end of all things had come, and that there was nothing to be done about it. Toward the inevitable she showed a firm, hard face that looked almost mocking in its pinched astringency. He persuaded her to listen to him. He tried to show her that the old stars, the ones that had always been, were still in the sky. But she could not grasp it, either because her eyes no longer had the strength to discern them, or because her conception of the stars was too unlike the Rainmaker's. She shook her head and maintained her courageous grin, but when Knecht implored her not to abandon the people to their terror, she instantly was of his mind. A small group of frightened but not yet maddened villagers still willing to be led formed around her and the Weathermaker.
   Up to the moment he reached the group, Knecht had hoped to be able to check the panic by example, reason, speech, explanations, and encouragement. But his brief conversation with the tribal mother had shown him that it was too late for anything of the sort. He had hoped to let the others share in his own experience, to make them a gift of it. He had hoped to persuade them that the stars themselves were not falling, or not all of them, that no cosmic storm was sweeping them away. He had imagined that by such urging he would be able to move them from helpless dismay to active observation, so that they would be able to bear the shock. But he quickly saw that there were very few villagers who would hearken to him, and by the time he won them over all the others would have utterly given way to madness. No, as was so often the case, reason and sensible speech could accomplish nothing here.
   Fortunately there were other means. Although it was impossible to dispel their mortal terror by appeal to reason, this terror could still be guided, organized, given shape, so that the confusion of maddened people could be made into a solid unity, the wild, single voices merged into a chorus. But there was no time to be lost. Knecht stepped before the people, loudly crying the well-known prayers that opened public ceremonies of penance and mourning: the lament for the death of a tribal mother, or the ceremony of sacrifice and atonement in the face of perils such as epidemics and floods. He shouted the words in rhythm and reinforced the rhythm by clapping his hands; and in the same rhythm, shouting and clapping his hands all the while, he stooped almost to the ground, straightened up, stooped again, and straightened up. Almost at once ten or twenty others joined in his movements. The white-haired mother of the village murmured in the same rhythm and with tiny bows sketched the ritual movements. Those who were still flocking to the assemblage from the huts at once joined in the beat and the spirit of the ceremony; the few who had gone off their heads collapsed, and lay motionless, or else were caught up in the murmur of the chorus and the religious genuflections. His method was effective. Instead of a demoralized horde of madmen, there now stood a reverent populace prepared for sacrifice and penance, each one benefiting, each one encouraged by now having to lock his horror and fear of death within himself, or bellow it crazily for himself alone. Each now fitted into his place in the orderly chorus of the multitude, keeping to the rhythm of the exorcistic ceremony. Many mysterious powers are present in such a rite. Its greatest comfort is its uniformity, confirming the sense of community; its infallible medicine meter and order, rhythm and music.
   While the whole night sky was still covered by the host of falling stars like a rushing, silent cascade consisting of droplets of light -- for another two hours it went on squandering its great red globules of fire -- the horror in the village changed to submission and devotion, to prayers to the powers and penitential feelings. In their fear and weakness men met the disorder of the sky with order and religious concord. Even before the rain of stars began to slacken, the miracle had taken place; the inner miracle radiated healing powers; and by the time the sky seemed slowly to be quieting down and recovering, all the dead-tired penitents had the redeeming feeling that their worship had placated the powers and restored order in the heavens.
   That night of terror was not forgotten. The village talked about it all through the autumn and winter. But soon this was no longer done in timorous whispers, but in an everyday tone of voice and with that satisfaction that people feel when they look back upon a disaster faced and withstood, a peril successfully overcome. The villagers now battened on details; each had been surprised in his own way by the incredible event; each claimed to have been the first to discover it. Some ventured to make fun of those who had been particularly shaken by it. For a long time a certain amount of excitement persisted in the village. There had been a great event; something extraordinary had happened.
   Knecht did not share this mood, or feel the same gradual loss of interest in the phenomenon. For him, the whole uncanny experience remained an unforgettable warning, a thorn that continued to prick him. He could not dismiss it on the grounds that it had passed, that the danger had been averted by processions, prayers, and penances. The further it receded in time, in fact, the greater its importance became for him, because he filled it with meaning. It gave full scope to his tendency to brood and interpret. The event in itself, the whole of that miraculous natural spectacle, had been an enormously difficult problem involving many aspects. A man who had once seen it could probably spend a lifetime pondering it.
   Only one other person in the village would have watched the rain of stars from a kindred point of view, and on the basis of similar knowledge. That was his own son and disciple, Turu. Only what this one witness would have said, to bear out or to revise his own observation, would have mattered to Knecht. But he had let this son sleep; and the longer he wondered why he had done so, why he had refrained from sharing the sight of the incredible event with the only eyewitness whose judgment he would have taken seriously, the more convinced he became that he had acted rightly, obeying a wise instinct. He had wanted to spare his family the sight, including his apprentice and associate; had wanted to spare him especially, for he loved no one so much as Turu. For that reason he had concealed the rain of falling stars from him, had defrauded him of the sight. He believed in the good spirits of sleep, especially of the sleep of youth. Moreover, if he remembered rightly, the first sight of the heavenly sign had scarcely seemed to betoken any momentary danger to the lives of the villagers. Rather, he had instantly decided that the event was an omen of future disaster, and one that concerned no one so closely as himself, the Weathermaker. The calamity, when it came, would strike him alone. Something was in the offing, a threat from that realm with which his office linked him. No matter what the form in which it came, he would be the one who would chiefly bear its brunt. To keep himself alert to this danger, to oppose it resolutely when it came, to prepare his soul and accept it but not let it intimidate or dishonor him -- such was the resolve he came to, such was the command he thought he had received from the great omen. The danger that loomed would call for a mature and courageous man. For that reason it would not have been well to draw his son into it, to have him as a fellow sufferer, or even as a partner in the knowledge. For although he thought so highly of his son, he did not know whether a young and untested person would be able to cope with the menace.
   His son Turu, however, was most unhappy because he had slept through the great spectacle. No matter how it was interpreted, it had been a great thing in any case, and perhaps nothing of the sort would happen all the rest of his life. For quite a while he was resentful toward his father on that account. Knecht overcame the resentment by increased attentiveness and affection. He drew Turu more and more into all the duties of his office. In anticipation of things to come, he took greater pains to complete Turu's training and make him as perfect an initiate and successor as possible. Although he rarely spoke with him about the rain of stars, he admitted him with less and less restraint into his secrets, his practices, his knowledge and researches, and allowed the boy to accompany him on his walks and investigations of nature, and to join him in experiments. All this he had previously shared with no one.
   The winter came and passed, a damp and rather mild winter. No more stars fell, no great and unusual things happened. The village was reassured. Diligently, the hunters went out looking for game. On racks beside the huts hung stiffly frozen bundles of hides, clacking against one another in windy weather. Loads of wood were dragged in from the forest on long, smoothed boards that rode lightly over the snow. It happened that just during the brief period of hard frost an old woman died. She could not be buried at once; for some days, until the ground thawed again, the frozen corpse was laid out beside the door of her hut.

   The spring partly confirmed the Weathermaker's forebodings. It was a dreary, joyless spring, without ardor and sap, betrayed by the moon. The moon was always tardy; the various signs that determined the day of sowing never coincided. In the forest the flowers blossomed sparsely; buds shriveled on the twigs. Knecht was deeply troubled, but did not show it; only Ada and especially Turu could see how anxious he was. He not only undertook the usual incantations, but also made private sacrifices, boiling savory, aromatic brews and infusions for the demons, as well as cutting his beard short on the night of the new moon and burning it in a mixture of resin and damp bark that produced heavy smoke. He postponed as long as possible the public ceremonies, the village sacrifices, the processions, and the drum choruses. As long as possible he kept the accursed weather of this evil spring as his private concern. But eventually, when the usual time for sowing was already many days past, he had to report to the tribal mother. Sure enough, here too he encountered misfortune and trouble. The old tribal mother, who was his good friend and had rather maternal feelings for him, did not receive him. She was ill, lying in bed, and had handed over all her duties to her sister. This sister, as it happened, was distinctly cool toward the Rainmaker. She did not have the older woman's austere, straightforward character, was rather fond of distractions and frivolities, and hence had taken a liking to Maro, the drummer and mountebank, who knew how to entertain and flatter her. And Maro was Knecht's enemy. Knecht sensed at their first conversation her coolness and dislike, although she in no way questioned his proposals. He urged that they postpone the sowing for a while longer, as well as any sacrifices or processions. She agreed to this, but she had received him icily and treated him like a subordinate. She refused his request to see the sick tribal mother, or at least to be allowed to prepare medicine for her.
   Knecht returned from this interview dejected, feeling poorer, and with a bad taste in his mouth. For half a moon he tried in his own way to make weather which would permit sowing. But the weather, which had so often followed the same direction as the currents within him, remained unmanageable. It mocked all his efforts. Neither spells nor sacrifices worked. The Rainmaker had no choice; he had to go to the tribal mother's sister again. This time he was virtually pleading for patience, for postponement; and he realized at once that she must have spoken with that clown Maro about him and his affairs. For in the course of the conversation on the necessity of setting the day for sowing, or else ordering ceremonies of public prayer, the old woman showed off her knowledge and used a few expressions which she could only have learned from Maro, the former Rainmaker's apprentice. Knecht asked for three days' grace and then decided that the constellation was more favorable. He set the sowing for the first day of the third quarter of the moon. The old woman consented, and pronounced the ritual words. The decision was proclaimed to the village, and everyone prepared for the rite of sowing.
   But now, when everything seemed to be in hand for a while, the demons again showed their malice. On the very day of the longed-for and carefully prepared sowing, the old tribal mother died. The ritual sowing had to be postponed and her funeral prepared instead. It was celebrated with great solemnity; behind the new village mother, with her sisters and daughters, the Rainmaker took his place in the robes reserved for great processions, wearing his tall, pointed fox-fur headdress. He was assisted by his son Turu, who struck the two-toned hardwood clappers together. Great honors were shown to the deceased and to her sister, the new tribal mother. Maro, leading the drummers, kept in the forefront of the mourners and won much attention and applause. The village wept and celebrated, lamented and feasted, enjoyed the drum music and the sacrifices. It was a fine day for all, but the sowing had again been put off. Knecht stood through it all with dignity and composure, but he was profoundly saddened. It seemed to him that along with the tribal mother he was burying all the good days of his life.
   Soon afterward, at the request of the new tribal mother, the sowing was likewise celebrated with special magnificence. Solemnly, the procession marched around the fields; solemnly, the old woman scattered the first handfuls of seed on the common land. To either side of her walked her sisters, each carrying a pouch of grain into which the eldest dipped her hand. Knecht breathed a little easier when this ceremony was finally completed.
   But the seed sowed so festively was destined to bring no joy and no harvest. It was a merciless year. Beginning with a relapse into wintry frosts, the weather indulged in every imaginable caprice and spite that spring. In summer, when meager crops at last covered the fields thinly, half as tall as they should have been, the last blow of all came: an incredible drought, the worst anyone could remember. Week after week the sun blazed in a white haze of heat. The smaller brooks dried up. Only a muddy marsh remained of the village pond, a paradise for dragonflies and a monstrous brood of mosquitoes. Deep cracks gaped in the parched earth. The villagers could see the crops withering. Now and then clouds gathered, but the lightning storms remained dry. If a brief shower fell, it was followed by days of a parching east wind. Lightning often struck tall trees, setting fire to their withered tops.
   "Turu," Knecht said to his son one day, "this will not turn out well. We have all the demons against us. It began with the falling stars. I think it is going to cost me my life. Remember this: If I must be sacrificed, assume my office at once and insist that my body be burned and my ashes strewn on the fields. You will suffer great hunger through the winter. But the evil spells will be broken. You must see to it that no one touches the community's seed grain, under penalty of death. Next year will be better, and people will say: 'Good that we have the new young Weathermaker.' "
   There was despair in the village. Maro incited the people. Frequently, threats and curses were shouted at the Rainmaker. Ada fell sick and lay shaken by vomiting and fever. The processions, the sacrifices, the long, heart-throbbing drum choruses were useless. Knecht led them, for that was his duty, but when the people scattered again, he stood alone, shunned by all. He knew what was necessary, and he knew also that Maro had already besieged the tribal mother with demands that he be sacrificed. For his own honor and his son's sake, he took the last step himself. He dressed Turu in the ceremonial robes, went to the tribal mother with him, and proposed him as his successor, at the same time offering himself as a sacrifice. She looked at him for a short while with a curious, searching glance. Then she nodded and assented.
   The sacrifice was carried out that same day. The whole village would have attended, but many lay sick with dysentery. Ada, too, was gravely ill. Turu, in his robes, with the tall fox-fur headdress, all but collapsed from heatstroke. All the dignitaries and leaders of the village who were not ill joined in the procession, including the tribal mother with two of her oldest sisters, and Maro, the chief of the drum corps. Behind them followed the mass of the villagers. No one insulted the old Rainmaker; the procession was silent and dejected. They marched to the woods and sought out a large circular clearing that Knecht himself had appointed as the site of the sacrifice. Most of the men had their stone axes with them to cut wood for the funeral pyre.
   When they reached the clearing, they placed the Rainmaker in the center and the dignitaries of the village formed a small ring around him, with the rest of the crowd in a larger circle on the outside. There was an indecisive, embarrassed silence, until the Rainmaker himself spoke.
   "I was your Rainmaker," he said. "I did my work as well as I could for many years. Now the demons are against me; nothing I do succeeds. Therefore I have offered myself for a sacrifice. That will placate the demons. My son Turu will be your new Rainmaker. Now kill me, and when I am dead do exactly as my son says. Farewell! And now who will be my executioner? I recommend the drummer Maro; he is surely the right man for the task."
   He fell silent. No one stirred. Turu, flushed deeply under the heavy fur headdress, gave a tormented look around the circle. His father's mouth twisted mockingly. At last the tribal mother stamped her foot furiously, beckoned to Maro and shouted at him: "Go ahead! Take the axe and do it."
   Maro, axe clutched in his hands, posted himself before his former teacher. He hated him more than ever; the lines of scorn around those silent old lips irked him bitterly. He raised the axe and swung it over his head. Taking aim, he held it aloft, staring into the victim's face, waiting for him to close his eyes. But Knecht did not; he kept his eyes wide open, fixed steadily on the man with the axe. They were almost expressionless, but what expression there was hovered between pity and scorn.
   In fury, Maro flung the axe away. "I won't do it," he murmured, and pressing through the circle of dignitaries he lost himself in the crowd. Several villagers laughed softly. The tribal mother had turned pale with rage, as much at Maro's uselessness and cowardice as at the arrogance of the Rainmaker. She beckoned to one of the oldest men, a quiet, dignified person who stood leaning on his axe and seemed to be ashamed of this whole unseemly scene. He stepped forward and gave the victim a brief, friendly nod. They had known each other since boyhood. And now the victim willingly closed his eyes; Knecht closed them tightly, and bowed his head a little. The old man struck with the axe. Knecht fell. Turu, the new Rainmaker, could not say a word. He gave the necessary orders with gestures alone. Soon the pyre was heaped up and the body laid on it. The solemn ritual of making fire with two consecrated sticks was Turu's first official act

TWO
THE FATHER CONFESSOR

   IN THE DAYS when St. Hilarion was still alive, although far advanced in years, there lived in the city of Gaza a man named Josephus Famulus who until his thirtieth year or longer had led a worldly life and studied the books of the pagans. Then, through a woman whom he was pursuing, he had been instructed in the divine doctrine and the sweetness of the Christian virtues, had submitted to holy baptism, renounced his sins, and sat for several years at the feet of the presbyters of his city. In particular he listened with burning curiosity to the popular tales of the life of pious hermits in the desert, until one day, at the age of thirty-six, he set out on the path already taken by St. Paul and St. Anthony, and which so many devout souls have taken since. He gave his goods to the elders, to be distributed to the poor of the community, bade farewell to his friends at the city gate, and wandered out into the desert, out of this vile world, to take up the life of the penitent.
   For many years the sun seared and parched him. He scraped his knees on rock and sand as he prayed. He waited, fasting, for the sun to set before he chewed his few dates. Devils tormented him with temptations, mockery, and trials, but he struck them down with prayer, with penitence, with renunciation of self, in the ways we may find described in the Lives of the blessed Fathers. Through many sleepless nights he gazed at the stars, and even the stars provided temptations and confusions for him. He scanned the constellations, for he had learned to read in them stories of the gods and symbols of human nature. The presbyters held this science in abomination, but he was still engrossed by fantasies and ideas he had entertained in his pagan days.
   In those times eremites lived wherever the barren wilderness was broken by a spring, a patch of vegetation, a large or small oasis. Some dwelt entirely alone, some in small brotherhoods, as they are pictured in a painting in the Campo Santo of Pisa, practicing poverty and love of neighbor. They became adepts of a languishing ars moriendi, the art of dying: mortification of the ego and dying to the world, passing through death to Him, the Redeemer, to the inalienable reward. They were attended by angels and devils; they wrote hymns, expelled demons, healed and blessed, and seemed to have assumed the duty of making up for the pleasure-seeking, brutality, and sensuality of many past and future ages by engendering a mighty surge of enthusiasm and devotion, an ecstatic excess of renunciation. Many of them probably were acquainted with ancient pagan practices of purification, methods and exercises of spiritualization elaborated in Asia for centuries. But nothing was said of such matters. These methods and yoga exercises were no longer taught; they lay under the ban that Christianity more and more sternly imposed upon everything pagan.
   In some of these penitents the fervor of their life developed special gifts, gifts of prayer, of healing by laying on of hands, of prophecy, of exorcism, gifts of judging and punishing, comforting and blessing. In Josephus too a gift slumbered, and with the passing years, as his hair began to gray, it slowly came to flower. It was the gift of listening. Whenever a brother from one of the hermitages, or a child of the world harried and troubled of soul, came to Joseph and told him of his deeds, sufferings, temptations, and missteps, related the story of his life, his struggle for goodness and his failures in the struggle, or spoke of loss, pain, or sorrow, Joseph knew how to listen to him, to open his ears and his heart, to gather the man's sufferings and anxieties into himself and hold them, so that the penitent was sent away emptied and calmed. Slowly, over long years, this function had taken possession of him and made an instrument of him, an ear that people trusted.
   His virtues were patience, a receptive passivity, and great discretion. More and more frequently people came to him to pour out their hearts, to relieve their pent-up distress; but many of them, even though they had come a long way to his reed hut, would find they lacked the courage to confess. They would writhe in shame, be coy about their sins, sigh heavily, and remain silent for hours. But he behaved in the same way toward all, whether they spoke freely or reluctantly, fluently or hesitantly, whether they hurled out their secrets in a fury, or basked in self-importance because of them. He regarded every man in the same way, whether he accused God or himself, whether he magnified or minimized his sins and sufferings, whether he confessed a killing or merely an act of lewdness, whether he lamented an unfaithful sweetheart or the loss of his soul's salvation. It did not alarm Josephus when someone told of converse with demons and seemed to be on the friendliest terms with the devil. He did not lose patience when someone talked at great length while obviously concealing the main issue. Nor was he stern when someone charged himself with delusory and invented sins. All the complaints, confessions, charges, and qualms of conscience that were brought to him seemed to pour into his ears like water into the desert sands. He seemed to pass no judgment upon them and to feel neither pity nor contempt for the person confessing. Nevertheless, or perhaps for that very reason, whatever was confessed to him seemed not to be spoken into the void, but to be transformed, alleviated, and redeemed in the telling and being heard. Only rarely did he reply with a warning or admonition, even more rarely did he give advice, let alone any order. Such did not seem to be his function, and his callers apparently sensed that it was not. His function was to arouse confidence and to be receptive, to listen patiently and lovingly, helping the imperfectly formed confession to take shape, inviting all that was dammed up or encrusted within each soul to flow and pour out. When it did, he received it and wrapped it in silence.
   His response was always the same. At the end of every confession, the terrible ones and the innocuous ones, the contrite ones and the vain ones, he would tell the penitent to kneel beside him and recite the Lord's Prayer. Then he would dismiss him, kissing him on the brow. Imposing penances and punishments was not his business, nor did he even feel empowered to pronounce a proper priestly absolution. Neither judging nor forgiving sin was his affair. By listening and understanding he seemed to take upon himself a share of the transgression; he seemed to help to bear it. By remaining silent, he seemed to bury what he had heard and consign it to the past. By praying with the penitent after the confession, he seemed to receive him as his brother and acknowledge him as his fellow. By kissing him, he seemed to bless him in a more brotherly than priestly, a more affectionate than ceremonial manner.
   His reputation spread through the whole neighborhood of Gaza and beyond. Sometimes he was even mentioned in the same breath as the great hermit and father confessor Dion Pugil. The latter's fame, however, was already some ten years older, and was founded on quite different abilities. For Father Dion was celebrated for being able to read the souls of those who sought him out without recourse to words. He often surprised a faltering penitent by charging him bluntly with his still unconfessed sins. Joseph had heard a hundred amazing stories about his acuity, and would never had ventured to compare himself with him. Father Dion was also a wise counselor of erring souls, a great judge, chastiser, and rectifier. He assigned penances, castigations, and pilgrimages, ordered marriages, compelled enemies to make up, and enjoyed the authority of a bishop. Although he lived in the vicinity of Ascalon, people came to him from as far away as Jerusalem and places even more remote.
   Like most eremites and penitents, Josephus Famulus had lived through long years of passionate and exhausting struggle. Although he had abandoned his life in the world, had given away his house and possessions and left the city with its manifold invitations to the pleasures of the senses, he was still saddled with his old self. Within his body and soul were all those instincts which can lead a man into distress and temptation. At first he had struggled primarily against his body; he had been stern and harsh with it, subjecting it to hunger and thirst, to scars and calluses, until it had gradually withered. But even in its gaunt ascetic's shell the old Adam could shamefully catch him by surprise and vex him with foolish cravings and desires, dreams and hallucinations. We know well that the devil lays special siege to penitents and fugitives from this world. When, therefore, people seeking consolation and confession occasionally visited him, he gratefully acknowledged their coming as a sign of grace, and a consolation to him in his ascetic's life. For he had been given a meaning beyond himself. A task had been conferred upon him. He could serve others, or serve God as an instrument for drawing souls to Him.
   That had been a wonderful and elevating feeling. But in the course of time he had learned that even the goods of the soul belong to the earthly realm and can become temptations and snares. For often, when such a traveler arrived, either on foot or riding, stopped at his cave for a drink of water, and asked the hermit to hear his confession, a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure would creep over our Joseph. He felt well pleased with himself. As soon as he recognized this vanity and self-love, he was profoundly alarmed. Often he knelt to beg God's forgiveness and ask that no more penitents be sent him in his unworthiness, neither from the huts of the ascetic brethren in the vicinity nor from the villages and towns of the world. But when for a while no one came to confess, he found himself not much better off, and on the other hand when the stream of penitents resumed, he caught himself sinning once more. After a time, listening to some confessions, he found himself subject to spasms of coldness and lovelessness, even to contempt for the penitents. With a sigh he accepted these struggles too, and there were periods during which he inflicted solitary humiliations and penances upon himself after each confession. Moreover, he made it a rule to treat all penitents not only as brothers, but also with a kind of special deference. The less he liked the person, the more respectfully he behaved toward him, for he regarded each one as a messenger from God, sent to test him. Belatedly, after many years, when he was already approaching old age, he arrived at a certain equanimity. To those who lived in the vicinity he seemed to be a man without faults who had found his peace in God.
   But peace, too, is a living thing and like all life it must wax and wane, accommodate, withstand trials, and undergo changes. Such was the case with the peace Josephus Famulus enjoyed. It was unstable, visible one moment, gone the next, sometimes near as a candle carried in the hand, sometimes as remote as a star in the wintry sky. And in time a new and special kind of sin and temptation more and more often made life difficult for him. It was not a strong, passionate emotion such as indignation or a sudden rush of instinctual urges. Rather, it seemed to be the opposite. It was a feeling very easy to bear in its initial stages, for it was scarcely perceptible; a condition without any real pain or deprivation, a slack, lukewarm, tedious state of the soul which could only be described in negative terms as a vanishing, a waning, and finally a complete absence of joy. There are days when the sun does not shine and the rain does not pour, but the sky sinks quietly into itself, wraps itself up, is gray but not black, sultry, but not with the tension of an imminent thunderstorm. Gradually, Joseph's days became like this as he approached old age. Less and less could he distinguish the mornings from the evenings, feast days from ordinary days, hours of rapture from hours of dejection. Everything ran sluggishly along in limp tedium and joylessness. This is old age, he thought sadly. He was sad because he had expected aging and the gradual extinction of his passions to bring a brightening and easing of his life, to take him a step nearer to harmony and mature peace of soul, and now age seemed to be disappointing and cheating him by offering nothing but this weary, gray, joyless emptiness, this feeling of chronic satiation. Above all he felt sated: by sheer existence, by breathing, by sleep at night, by life in his cave on the edge of the little oasis, by the eternal round of evenings and mornings, by the passing of travelers and pilgrims, camel riders and donkey riders, and most of all by the people who came to visit him, by those foolish, anxious, and childishly credulous people who had this craving to tell him about their lives, their sins and their fears, their temptations and self-accusations. Sometimes it all seemed to him like the small spring of water that collected in its stone basin in the oasis, flowed through grass for a while, forming a small brook, and then flowed on out into the desert sands, where after a brief course it dried up and vanished. Similarly, all these confessions, these inventories of sins, these lives, these torments of conscience, big and small, serious and vain, all of them came pouring into his ear, by the dozens, by the hundreds, more and more of them. But his ear was not dead like the desert sands. His ear was alive and could not drink, swallow, and absorb forever. It felt fatigued, abused, glutted. It longed for the flow and splashing of words, confessions, anxieties, charges, self-condemnations to cease; it longed for peace, death, and stillness to take the place of this endless flow.

   That was it, he wished for the end. He was tired, had had enough and more than enough. His life had become stale and worthless. Things went so far with him that at times he felt tempted to put an end to it, to punish and extinguish himself, as the traitor Judas had done when he hanged himself. Just as the devil had plagued him in the earlier stages of his ascetic's life by smuggling into his soul the desires, notions, and dreams of sensual and worldly pleasures, so the evil one now assailed him with ideas of self-destruction, so that he found himself considering every tree with the view to its holding a noose, every cliff in the vicinity with a view to casting himself from its top. He resisted the temptation. He fought. He did not yield. But day and night he lived in a fire of self-hatred and craving for death. Life had become unbearable and hateful.
   To such a pass had Joseph come. One day, when he was again standing on one of the cliffs, he saw in the distance between earth and sky two or three tiny figures. Obviously they were travelers, perhaps pilgrims, perhaps visitors who intended to call on him for the usual reason. And suddenly he was seized by an irresistible craving to leave as fast as possible, to get away from this place at once, to escape from this life. The craving that seized him was so overpowering, so instinctive, that it swept away all the thoughts, objections, and scruples that naturally came to him -- for how could a pious penitent have obeyed an impulse without twinges of conscience? But he was already running. He sped back to the cave where he had dwelt through so many years of struggle, where he had experienced so many exaltations and defeats. In reckless haste he gathered up a few handfuls of dates and a gourd of water, stuffed them into his old traveling pouch, slung it over his shoulder, took up his staff, and left the green peace of his little home, a fugitive and restless roamer, fleeing away from God and man, and most of all fleeing from what he had formerly thought the best he had to offer, his function and his mission.
   At first he tore on frantically, as if those figures in the distance whom he had seen from the cliff were enemies who would pursue him. But after an hour of tramping, his anxious haste ebbed away. Movement tired him pleasantly, and he stopped to rest, although he did not allow himself to eat -- it had become a sacred habit for him to take no food before sunset. While he rested, his reason, skilled in self-examination, once more asserted itself. It looked into his instinctive action, seeking to form a judgment. And it did not disapprove, wild though the action might seem, but rather viewed it with benevolence. His reason decided that for the first time in a long while he was doing something harmless and innocent. This was flight, a sudden and rash flight, granted, but not a shameful one. He had abandoned a post which he was no longer fit for. By running away he had admitted his failure to himself and to Him who might be observing him. He had given up a daily repeated, useless struggle and confessed himself beaten. There was nothing grand, heroic, and saintly about that, his reason decided, but it was sincere and seemed to have been inescapable. Now he found himself wondering that he had attempted this flight so late, that he had held on for so long. It now seemed to him that the doggedness with which he had for so long defended a lost position had been a mistake. Or rather that it had been prompted by his egotism, his old Adam. Now he thought he understood why this obstinacy had led to such evil, to such diabolic consequences; to such division and lethargy in his soul, and even to demonic possession, for what else could he call his urge toward death and self-destruction? Certainly a Christian ought to be no enemy of death; certainly a penitent and saint ought to regard his life as an offering; but the thought of suicide was utterly diabolic and could arise only in a soul no longer ruled and guarded by God's angels, but by evil demons.
   For a while he sat lost in thought and deeply crestfallen, and finally, shaken and profoundly contrite. For from the perspective that a few miles of tramping had given him, he saw the life he had been living with fuller awareness, the miserable life of an aging man who had gone astray, so much so that he had been haunted by the gruesome temptation of hanging himself from the branch of a tree like the Saviour's betrayer. If the idea of voluntary death so horrified him, there certainly lingered in this horror a remnant of primeval, pre-Christian, ancient pagan knowledge: knowledge of the age-old custom of human sacrifice, whereby the king, the saint, the chosen man of the tribe gave up his life for the general welfare, often by his own hand. But this echo of forbidden heathen practices was only one aspect of the matter that made it so horrifying. Even more terrible was the thought that after all the Redeemer's death on the cross had also been a voluntary human sacrifice. As he thought about it he realized that a germ of this awareness had indeed been present in that longing for suicide: a bold-faced urge to sacrifice himself and thus in an outrageous manner to imitate the Saviour -- or outrageously to imply that His work of redemption had not been enough. He was deeply shocked by this thought, but also grateful that he had now escaped that peril.
   For a long time he considered the penitent Joseph who now, instead of imitating Judas or Christ, had taken flight and thus once again put himself into God's hand. Shame and dejection grew in him the more plainly he recognized the hell from which he had just escaped. After a while his misery lumped in his throat like a choking morsel. It grew into an unbearable sense of oppression, and suddenly found release in a torrent of tears that miraculously helped him. How long he had been unable to weep! The tears flowed, his eyes were blurred, but the deadly strangulation was eased, and when he became aware of himself again, tasted the salt on his lips, and realized that he had been weeping, he felt for a moment as if he had become a child again and knew nothing of evil. He smiled, slightly ashamed of his weeping. At last he rose and continued his journey. He felt uncertain, for he did not know where his flight was leading him and what would become of him. He was like a child, he thought, but there was no longer any conflict or will within him. He moved on easily, as if he were being led, as if a distant, kind voice were calling and coaxing him, as if his journey were not a flight but a homecoming. Now he was growing tired, and reason too fell still, or rested, or decided that it was dispensable.
   Joseph spent the night at a water hole where several camels and a small company of travelers were camped. Since there were two women among them, he contented himself with a gesture of greeting and avoided falling into talk. After he had eaten a few dates at sunset, prayed, and lain down to rest, he overheard the conversation between two men, one old and one somewhat younger, for they were lying close by him. It was only a fragment of their talk that he could hear; the rest was lost in whispers. But even this small passage stirred his interest. It gave him matter for thought through half the night.
   "All right," he heard the old man's voice saying. "It's fine that you want to go to a pious man and make your confession. These people understand many things, let me tell you. They know a thing or two, and some of them are skilled in magic. When they just call out a word to a springing lion, the beast crouches, tucks his tail between his legs, and slinks away. They can tame lions, I tell you. One of them was so holy that his tame lions actually dug him his grave when he died, neatly scraped the earth into a mound over him, and for a long time two of them kept watch over the grave day and night. And it isn't only lions they can tame, these people. One of them gave a Roman centurion a piece of his mind. That was a cruel bastard, that soldier, and the worst whoreson in all Ascalon. But the hermit so kneaded his wicked heart that the man stole away frightened as a mouse and looked for a hole to hide in. Afterward he was almost unrecognizable, he'd become so quiet and meek. On the other hand, the man died soon afterward -- that's something to think about."
   "The holy man?"
   "Oh no, the centurion. His name was Varro. After the holy man gave him such a jolt, he went to pieces fast -- had the fever twice and was a dead man three months later. Oh well, no great loss. But still, I've often thought the hermit didn't just drive the devil out of him. He probably said a little spell that put the man six feet under."
   "Such a pious man? I can't believe that."
   "Believe it or not, my friend, but from that day on the man was changed, not to say bewitched, and three months later. . ."
   There was silence for a little while. Then the younger man revived the conversation: "There's a holy man who must live somewhere right around here. They say he lives all alone near a small spring on the Gaza road. His name is Josephus, Josephus Famulus. I've heard a lot about him."
   "Have you now? Like what?"
   "He's supposed to be awfully pious and never to look at a woman. If a few camels happen to come by his place and there's a woman on one of them, no matter how heavily veiled, he just bolts into his cave. Lots of people have gone to confess to him -- thousands."
   "I guess he can't be so famous or else I would have heard of him. What kind of thing does he do, this Famulus of yours?"
   "Oh, you just go to confess to him, and I suppose people wouldn't go if he wasn't good and didn't understand things. The story is he hardly says a word, doesn't scold or bawl anyone out, doesn't order penances or anything like that. He's supposed to be gentle and shy."
   "But if he doesn't scold and doesn't punish and doesn't open his mouth, what does he do?"
   "They say he just listens and sighs marvelously and makes the sign of the cross."
   "Sounds like a quack saint to me. You wouldn't be so foolish as to apply to this silent Joe, would you?"
   "Yes, that's what I mean to do. I'll find him. It can't be much farther from here. This evening there was a poor monk standing around the waterhole here, you know. I'm going to ask him tomorrow morning. He looks like a hermit himself."
   The old man flared up. "You'd be wasting your time. A man who only listens and sighs and is afraid of women can't do or understand anything. No, I'll tell you the one to go to. It's a bit far from here, beyond Ascalon, but he's the best hermit and confessor there is. Dion is his name, and he's called Dion Pugil -- that means 'the boxer,' because he piles right into all the devils, and when somebody confesses his sins, my friend, Pugil doesn't sigh and keep his counsel. He sounds off and gives it to the man straight from the shoulder. They say he actually beats some till they're black and blue. He made one man kneel bare-kneed on the rocks all night long and on top of that ordered him to give forty pennies to the poor. There's a hermit for you, my boy, he'll make you sit up and take notice. When he looks at you, you'll shake; his eyes go right through you. None of this sighing business. That man has the stuff. If a man can't sleep or has bad dreams and visions, Pugil will put him on his feet again, let me tell you. I don't say this on hearsay; I know because I've been to him myself. Yes I have -- I may be a poor fool, but I betook myself to the hermit Dion, the man of God, God's boxer. I went there in misery, nothing but filth and shame on my conscience, and I left clean and bright as the morning star, and that's as true as my name is David. Remember what I tell you: the name is Dion, called Pugil. You go see him as soon as you can, and you'll be amazed. Prefects, presbyters, and bishops have gone to him for advice."
   "Yes," the younger man said, "next time I'm in that neighborhood I'll consider it. But today is today and here is here, and since I'm here today and the hermit Josephus is located in these parts and I've heard so much good about him. . ."

   "Good? What so commends this Famulus to you?"
   "I like the way he doesn't scold and make a fuss. I just like that, I tell you. I'm not a centurion and I'm not a bishop either; I'm just a nobody and I'm sort of timid myself. I couldn't stand a lot of fire and brimstone. God knows, I don't have anything against being treated gently -- that's just the way I am."
   "Treated gently -- I like that! When you've confessed and done penance and taken your punishment and purged yourself, all right, maybe then it's time to treat you gently. But not when you're unclean and stand before your confessor and judge stinking like a jackal."
   "All right, all right. Not so loud -- the others want to sleep."
   Suddenly the younger man chuckled. "By the way, I just remembered a funny story I heard about him."
   "About whom?"
   "About the hermit Josephus. You see, after somebody's told his story and confessed, the hermit blesses him and before he leaves gives him a kiss on the cheek or the brow."
   "Does he now? He certainly has peculiar habits."
   "And, you see, he's so shy of women. They say that a harlot from the neighborhood once went to him in man's clothing and he didn't notice and listened to her lies, and when she was finished confessing he bowed to her and solemnly gave her a kiss."
   The old man burst into titters; the other hastily shushed him, and thereafter Joseph heard nothing more than half-suppressed laughter that went on for a while.
   He looked up at the sky. The crescent moon hung thin and keen beyond the tops of the palm trees. He shivered in the cold of the night. It had been strange, like looking into a distorting mirror, listening to the camel drivers talking about him and the office which he had just abandoned. Strange but instructive. And so a harlot had played this joke on him. Well, that was not the worst, though it was bad enough. He lay for a long time pondering the conversation between the two men. And when, very late, he was at last able to fall asleep, it was because his meditations had not been fruitless. He had come to a conclusion, to a resolve, and with this new resolve fixed firmly in his heart he slept deeply until dawn.
   His resolve was the very one that the younger of the two camel drivers had not taken. He had decided to take the older man's advice and pay a visit to Dion, called Pugil, of whom he had heard for so many years and whose praises had been so emphatically sung this very night. That famous confessor, adviser, and judge of souls would surely have advice, judgment, punishment for him, would surely know the proper way for him. Josephus would go to him as a spokesman of God and willingly obey whatever course he prescribed.
   He left while the two men were still asleep, and after a tiring tramp reached a spot which he knew was inhabited by pious brethren. From there he hoped he would be able to reach the usual caravan route to Ascalon.
   The place he reached toward evening was a small, lovely green oasis. He saw towering trees, heard a goat bleating, and thought he detected the outlines of roofs amid the green shadows. It seemed to him too that he could scent the presence of men. As he hesitantly drew closer, he felt as if he were being watched. He stopped and looked around. Under one of the outermost trees, he saw a figure sitting bolt upright. It was an old man with a hoary beard and a dignified but stern and rigid face, staring at him. The man had evidently been looking at him for some time. His eyes were keen and hard, but without expression, like the eyes of a man who is used to observing but without either curiosity or sympathy, who lets people and things approach him and tries to discern their nature, but neither attracts nor invites them.
   "Praise be to Jesus Christ," Joseph said.
   The old man answered in a murmur.
   "I beg your pardon," Joseph said. "Are you a stranger like myself, or are you an inhabitant of this beautiful oasis?"
   "A stranger," the white-bearded man said.
   "Perhaps you can tell me, your Reverence, whether it is possible to reach the road to Ascalon from here?"
   "It is possible," the old man said. Now he slowly stood up, rather stiffly, a gaunt giant. He stood and gazed out into the empty expanse of desert. Joseph felt that this aged giant had little wish for conversation, but he ventured one more query.
   "Permit me just one other question, your Reverence," he said politely, and saw the man's eyes return from his abstraction and focus on him. Coolly, attentively, they looked at him.
   "Do you by any chance know where Father Dion, called Dion Pugil, may be found?"
   The stranger's brows contracted and his eyes became a trace colder.
   "I know him," he said curtly.
   "You know him?" Joseph exclaimed. "Oh, then tell me, for it is to Father Dion I am journeying."
   From his superior height the old man scrutinized him. He took his time answering. At last he stepped backward to his tree trunk, slowly settled to the ground again, and sat leaning against the trunk in his previous position. With a slight movement of his hand he invited Joseph to sit also. Submissively, Joseph obeyed the gesture, feeling as he sat down the great weariness in his limbs; but he forgot this promptly in order to focus his full attention on the old man, who seemed lost in meditation. A trace of unfriendly sternness appeared upon his dignified countenance. But that was overlaid by another expression, virtually another face that seemed like a transparent mask: an expression of ancient and solitary suffering which pride and dignity would not allow him to express.
   A long time passed before the old man's eyes returned to him. Then he again scrutinized Joseph sharply and suddenly asked in a commanding tone: ""Who are you?"
   "I am a penitent," Joseph said. "I have led a life of withdrawal from the world for many years."
   "I can see that. I asked who you are."
   "My name is Joseph, Joseph Famulus."
   When Joseph gave his name, the old man did not stir, but his eyebrows drew together so sharply that for a while his eyes became almost invisible. He seemed to be stunned, troubled, or disappointed by the information he had received. Or perhaps it was only a tiring of the eyes, a distractedness, some small attack of weakness such as old people are prone to. At any rate he remained utterly motionless, kept his eyes shut for a while, and when he opened them again their gaze seemed changed, seemed to have become still older, still lonelier, still flintier and long-suffering, if that were possible. Slowly, his lips parted and he asked: "I have heard of you. Are you the one to whom the people go to confess?"
   Abashed, Joseph said he was. He felt this recognition as an unpleasant exposure. For the second time on his journey he was ashamed to encounter his reputation.
   Again the old man asked in his terse way: "And so now you are on your way to Dion Pugil? What do you want of him?"
   "I would like to confess to him."
   "What do you expect to gain by that?"
   "I don't know. I trust him, and in fact it seems to me that a voice from above has sent me to him."
   "And after you have confessed to him, what then?"
   "Then I shall do what he commands."
   "And suppose he advises or commands you wrongly?"
   "I shall not ask whether it is right or wrong, but simply obey."
   The old man said no more. The sun had moved far down toward the horizon. A bird cried among the leaves of the tree. Since the old man remained silent, Joseph stood up. Shyly, he reverted to his request.
   "You said you knew where Father Dion can be found. May I ask you to tell me the place and describe the way to it?"
   The old man's lips contracted in a kind of feeble smile. "Do you think you will be welcome to him?" he asked softly.
   Strangely disconcerted by the question, Joseph did not reply. He stood there abashed. At last he said: "May I at least hope to see you again?"
   The old man nodded. "I shall be sleeping here and stay until shortly after sunrise," he replied. "Go now, you are tired and hungry."
   With a respectful bow, Joseph walked on, and as dusk fell arrived at the little settlement. Here, much as in a monastery, lived a group of so-called cenobites, Christians from various towns and villages who had built shelters in this solitary place in order to devote themselves without disturbance to a simple, pure life of quiet contemplation. Joseph was given water, food, and a place to sleep, and since it was apparent how tired he was, his hosts spared him questions and conversation. One cenobite recited a prayer while the others knelt; all pronounced the Amen together.
   At any other time the community of these pious men would have been a joy to him, but now he had only one thing in mind, and at dawn he hastened back to the place where he had left the old man. He found him lying asleep on the ground, rolled in a thin mat, and sat down under the trees off to one side, to await the man's awakening. Soon the sleeper became restive. He awoke, unwrapped himself from the mat, and stood up awkwardly, stretching his stiffened limbs. Then he knelt and made his prayer. When he rose again, Joseph approached and bowed silently.

   "Have you already eaten?" the stranger asked.
   "No. It is my habit to eat only once a day, and only after sunset. Are you hungry, your Reverence?"
   "We are on a journey," the man replied, "and we are both no longer young men. It is better for us to eat a bite before we go on."
   Joseph opened his pouch and offered some of his dates. He had also received a millet roll from the friendly folk with whom he had spent the night, and he now shared this with the old man.
   "We can go," the old man said after they had eaten.
   "Oh, are we going together?" Joseph exclaimed with pleasure.
   "Certainly. You have asked me to guide you to Dion. Come along."
   Joseph looked at him in happy astonishment. "How kind you are, your Reverence!" he exclaimed, and began framing ceremonious thanks. But the stranger silenced him with a curt gesture.
   "God alone is kind," he said. "Let us go now. And stop calling me 'your Reverence.' What is the point of civilities and courtesies between two old hermits?"
   The tall man set off with long strides, and Joseph kept pace with him. The sun had risen fully. The guide seemed sure of his direction, and promised that by noon they would reach a shady spot where they could rest during the hours of hottest sun. Thereafter they spoke no more on their way.
   When they reached the resting place after several strenuous hours in the baking heat, and lay down in the shade of some vast boulders, Joseph again addressed his guide. He asked how many days' marches they would need to reach Dion Pugil.
   "That depends on you alone," the old man said.
   "On me?" Joseph exclaimed. "Oh, if it depended on me alone I would be standing before him right now."
   The old man did not seem any more inclined to conversation than before.
   "We shall see," he said curtly, turning on his side and closing his eyes. Joseph did not like to be in the position of observing him while he slumbered; he moved quietly off to one side, lay down, and unexpectedly fell asleep, for he had lain long awake during the night. His guide roused him when the time for resuming their journey had come.
   Late in the afternoon they arrived at a camping place with water, trees, and a bit of grass. Here they drank and washed, and the old man decided to make a halt. Joseph timidly objected.
   "You said today," he pointed out, "that it depended on me how soon or late I would reach Father Dion. I would gladly press on for many hours if I could actually reach him today or tomorrow."
   "Oh no," the other man replied. "We have gone far enough for the day."
   "Forgive me," Joseph said, "but can't you understand my impatience?"
   "I understand it. But it will not help you."
   "Why did you say it depends on me?"
   "It is as I said. As soon as you are sure of your desire to confess and know that you are ready to make the confession, you will be able to make it."
   "Even today?"
   "Even today."
   Astonished, Joseph stared at the quiet old face.
   "Is it possible?" he cried, overwhelmed. "Are you yourself Father Dion?"
   The old man nodded.
   "Rest here under the trees," he said in a kindly voice, "but don't sleep. Compose yourself, and I too will rest and compose myself. Then you may tell me what you crave to tell me."
   Thus Joseph suddenly found himself at his goal. Now he could scarcely understand how it was that he had not recognized the venerable man sooner, after having walked beside him for an entire day. He withdrew, knelt and prayed, and rallied his thoughts. After an hour he returned and asked whether Dion was ready.
   And now he could confess. Now all that he had lived through for years, all that for a long time seemed to have totally lost meaning, poured from his lips in the form of narrative, lament, query, self-accusation -- the whole story of his life as a Christian and ascetic, which he had intended for purification and sanctification and which in the end had become such utter confusion, obscuration, and despair. He spoke also of his most recent experiences, his flight and the feeling of release and hope that this flight had given him, how it was that he had decided to go to Dion, the encounter of the previous evening, his feeling of instant trust and affection for the older man, but also how in the course of this day he had several times condemned him as cold and peculiar, or at any rate moody.
   The sun was already low by the time he had finished speaking. Old Dion had listened with unflagging attentiveness, refraining from the slightest interruption or question. And even now, when the confession was over, not a word fell from his lips. He rose clumsily, looked at Joseph with great friendliness, then stooped, kissed him on the brow, and made the sign of the cross over him. Only later did it occur to Joseph that this was the same brotherly gesture of forbearance with which he himself had dismissed so many penitents.
   Soon afterward they ate, said their prayers, and lay down to sleep. Joseph reflected for a while. He had actually counted on a strong upbraiding and a strict sermon. Nevertheless he was neither disappointed nor uneasy. Dion's look and fraternal kiss had comforted him. He felt inwardly tranquil, and soon fell into a beneficial sleep.
   Without wasting words, the old man took him along next morning. They covered a good deal of ground that day, and after another four or five days reached Dion's cell. There they dwelt. Joseph helped Dion with his daily chores, became acquainted with his routine and shared it. It was not so very different from the life he himself had led for so many years, except that now he was no longer alone. He lived in the shadow and protection of another man, and for that reason it was after all a totally different life. From the surrounding settlements, from Ascalon and from even further away, came seekers of advice and penitents eager to confess. At first Joseph hastily withdrew each time such visitors came along, and reappeared only after they had left. But more and more often Dion called him back, as one calls a servant, ordered him to bring water or perform some other menial task; and after this had gone on for some time Joseph grew accustomed to attending a confession every so often, and listening unless the penitent himself objected. But most of them were glad not to have to sit or kneel before the dreaded confessor Pugil alone; there was something reassuring about the presence of this quiet, kind-looking, and assiduous helper. In this way Joseph gradually became familiar with Dion's way of listening to confession, offering consolation, intervening and scolding, punishing and advising. Only rarely did Joseph venture to question Dion as he did one day after a scholar or literary man paid a call, since he was passing by.
   This man, as became apparent from his stories, had friends among the magi and astrologers. Since he was stopping for a rest, he sat for a while with the two old ascetics, a civil and loquacious guest. He talked long, learnedly, and eloquently about the stars and about the pilgrimage which man as well as all his gods must make through all the signs of the zodiac from the beginning to the end of every aeon. He spoke of Adam, the first man, maintaining that he was one and the same as the crucified Jesus, and he called the Redemption Adam's passage from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life. The serpent of Paradise, he contended, was the guardian of the Sacred Fount, of the dark depths from whose night-black waters all forms, all men and gods, arose.
   Dion listened attentively to this man, whose Syrian was heavily sprinkled with Greek, and Joseph wondered at his patience. It bothered him, in fact, that Dion did not lash out against these heathen errors. On the contrary, the clever monologues seemed to entertain Dion and engage his sympathy, for he not only listened with keen attention, but also smiled and nodded at certain phrases, as though he were highly pleased.
   After the man had left, Joseph asked, in a zealot's tone, with something bordering on rebuke: "How could you have listened so calmly to the false doctrines of this unbelieving heathen? It seemed to me that you listened not only with patience, but actually with sympathy and a certain amount of appreciation. How could you fail to oppose him? Why didn't you try to refute this man, to strike down his errors and convert him to faith in our Lord?"
   Dion's head swayed on his thin, wrinkled neck. "I did not refute him because it would have been useless, or rather, because I would not have been able to. In eloquence and in making associations, in knowledge of mythology and the stars, this man is far ahead of me. I would not have prevailed against him. And furthermore, my son, it is neither my business nor yours to attack a man's beliefs and tell him these are lies and errors. I admit that I listened to this clever man with a good measure of appreciation. I enjoyed him because he spoke so well and knew a great deal, but above all because he reminded me of my youth. For in my younger days I devoted a great deal of my time to just such studies. Those stories from mythology, which the stranger charted about so gracefully, are by no means benighted. They are the ideas and parables of a religion which we no longer need because we have acquired faith in Jesus, the sole Redeemer. But for those who have not yet found our faith, perhaps never can find it, their own faith, deriving from the ancient wisdom of their fathers, is rightly deserving of respect. Of course our faith is different, entirely different. But because our faith does not need the doctrine of constellations and aeons, of the primal waters and universal mothers and similar symbols, that does not mean that such doctrines are lies and deception."

   "But our faith is superior," Joseph exclaimed. "And Jesus died for all men. Therefore those who know Him must oppose those outmoded doctrines and put the new, right teaching in their place."
   "We have done so long ago, you and I and so many others," Dion said calmly. "We are believers because the faith, the power of the Redeemer and His death for the salvation of all men, has overwhelmed us. But those others, those who construct mythologies and theologies of the zodiac and out of ancient doctrines, have not been overwhelmed by that power, not yet, and it is not for us to compel them. Didn't you notice, Joseph, how gracefully and skillfully this mythologist could talk and compose his metaphors, and how comfortable he was in doing so, how serenely he lives in his wisdom of images and symbols? That is a token that this man is not oppressed by suffering, that he is content, that all is well with him. Such as we have nothing to say to men for whom all goes well. Before a man needs redemption and the faith that redeems, before his old faith departs from him and he stakes all he has on the gamble of belief in the miracle of salvation, things must go ill for him, very ill indeed. He must have experienced sorrow and disappointment, bitterness and despair. The waters must rise up to his neck. No, Joseph, let us leave this learned pagan in the happiness of his philosophy, his ideas, and his eloquence. Tomorrow perhaps, or perhaps in a year or in ten years something may happen that will shatter his arts and his philosophy; perhaps the woman he loves will die or his only son will be killed, or he will fall into sickness and poverty. Should that occur and we meet him again, we will try to help him; we will tell him how we have tried to master suffering. And if he then asks us: 'Why didn't you tell me that yesterday or ten years ago?' we will reply: 'You were too fortunate at the time.' "
   He subsided into a grave silence for a while. Then, as if rousing himself from reveries of the past, he added: "I myself once amused myself with the philosophies of the fathers, and even after I was aiready on the way of the Cross, playing with theology often gave me pleasure, though grief enough too. My thoughts dwelt mostly on the Creation of the world, and with the fact that at the end of the work of Creation everything in the world should have been good, for we are told: 'God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.' But in reality it was good and perfect only for a moment, the moment of Paradise, and by the very next moment guilt and a curse had entered into the perfection, for Adam had eaten of the tree which he was forbidden to eat of. There were teachers who said: the God who made the Creation and along with it Adam and the Tree of Knowledge is not the sole and highest God, but only a part of him, or an inferior god, the Demiurge. Creation was not good, they said, but a failure; and therefore created being was accursed and given over to evil for an aeon until He himself, God the One Spirit, decided to put an end to the accursed aeon by means of his Son. Thereafter, they taught, and I thought as they did, the Demiurge and his Creation began to perish, and the world will continue gradually to fade away until in a new aeon there will be no Creation, no world, no flesh, no lust and sin, no carnal begetting, bearing, and dying, but a perfect, spiritual, and redeemed world will arise, free of the curse of Adam, free of eternal damnation and the urges of cupidity, generation, birth, and death. We blamed the Demiurge more than the. first man for the present evils of the world. We thought that if the Demiurge had really been God, he would have made Adam differently or have spared him temptation. And so at the end of our reasoning we had two Gods, the Creator God and God the Father, and we did not blanch at passing judgment on the first. There were even some among us who went a step further and contended that the Creation was not God's work at all, but the devil's. We thought all our clever ideas were going to be helpful to the Redeemer and the coming aeon of the Spirit, and so we reasoned out gods and worlds and cosmic plans. We disputed and theologized, until one day I fell into a fever and became deathly ill. In my deliriums the Demiurge continually filled my mind. I had to wage war and spill blood, and the visions and nightmares grew more and more ghastly, until one night when my fever was raging I thought I had to kill my own mother in order to undo my carnal birth. Yes, in those deliriums the devil harried me with all his hounds. But I recovered, and to the disappointment of my former friends I returned to life a silent, stupid, and dull person who soon regained physical strength but never recovered his pleasure in philosophizing. For during the days and nights of my convalescence, when those horrible fevered visions had vanished and I was sleeping almost all the time, I felt the Redeemer with me in every waking moment. I felt strength pouring in and out of me from Him, and when I was well again I was aware of a deep sadness that I could no longer feel His presence. I then felt a great longing for that presence, and regarded this longing as my most precious possession. But as soon as I began listening to disputations again, I could feel how this longing was in danger of vanishing, of sinking into thoughts and words as water sinks into sand. To make a long story short, my friend, that was the end of my cleverness and theology. Since then I have been one of the simple souls. But I do not despise and do not like to bait those who know how to philosophize and mythologize and play those games I myself once indulged in. Just as I had to rest content with letting the incomprehensible relations and identities of Demiurge and Spirit-God, Creation and Redemption, remain unsolved riddles for me, so I must also rest content with the fact that I cannot convert philosophers into believers. That is not my province."


   Once, after a man had confessed to murder and adultery, Dion said to his assistant: "Murder and adultery -- it sounds atrocious and grandiose, and certainly it is bad enough, I grant you. But I tell you, Joseph, in reality these people in the world are not real sinners at all. Whenever I attempt to put myself entirely into the minds of any of them, they strike me as absolutely like children. They are not decent, good, and noble; they are selfish, lustful, overbearing, and wrathful, but in reality and at bottom they are innocent, innocent in the same way as children."
   "And yet," Joseph said, "you often belabor them mightily and paint them a vivid picture of hell."
   "Exactly. They are children, and when they have pangs of conscience and come to confess, they want to be taken seriously and reprimanded seriously. At least that is my view. You went about it differently; you didn't scold and punish and deal out penances, but were friendly and sent the penitents off with a brotherly kiss. I don't mean to criticize you, but that wouldn't be my way."
   "No doubt," Joseph said hesitantly. "But then tell me why, after I made my confession, you did not treat me as you would your other penitents, but silently kissed me and said not a word about penances?"
   Dion Pugil fixed his piercing eyes upon him. "Was what I did not right?" he asked.
   "I am not saying it was not right. It was surely right, for otherwise that confession would not have done me so much good."
   "Well then, let it be. In any case, I did impose a long and stern penance on you, without calling it such. I took you with me and treated you as my servant, and led you back to your duty, forcing you to hear confessions when you had tried to escape from that."
   He turned away; the conversation had already been too long for his liking. But this time Joseph was pressing.
   "You knew in advance that I would follow your orders; I'd pledged that before the confession and even before I knew who you were. No, tell me, was it really for this reason that you treated me so?"
   Dion Pugil took a few steps back and forth. Then he stopped in front of Joseph and laid his hand on his shoulder. "Worldly people are children, my son. And saints -- well, they do not come to confess to us. But you and I and our kind, we ascetics and seekers and eremites -- we are not children and are not innocent and cannot be set straight by moralizing sermons. We are the real sinners, we who know and think, who have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, and we should not treat one another like children who are given a few blows of the rod and left to go their way again. After a confession and penance we do not run away back to the world where children celebrate feasts and do business and now and then kill one another. We do not experience sin like a brief bad dream which can be thrown off by confession and sacrifice; we dwell in it. We are never innocent; we are always sinners; we dwell in sin and in the fire of conscience, and we know that we can never pay our great debt unless after our departure God looks mercifully upon us and receives us into His grace. That, Joseph, is the reason I cannot deliver sermons and dictate penances to you and me. We are not involved in one or another misstep or crime, but always and forever in original sin itself. This is why each of us can only assure the other that he shares his knowledge and feels brotherly love; neither of us can cure the other by penances. Surely you must have known this?"
   Softly, Joseph replied: "It is so. I knew it."
   "Then let us not waste our time in talk," the old man said curtly. He turned to the stone in front of his hut, on which he was accustomed to pray.


   Several years passed. Every so often Father Dion was subject to spells of weakness, so that Joseph had to help him in the mornings, for otherwise he could not stand up by himself. Then he would go to pray, and after prayer he was again unable to rise without aid. Joseph would help him, and then Father Dion would sit all day long staring into space. This happened on some days; on others the old man would manage to stand up by himself. He also could not hear confessions every day; and sometimes, after Joseph had acted as his substitute, Dion would want a few words with the visitor and would tell him: "My end is nearing, my child, my end is nearing. Tell the people that Joseph here is my successor." And when Joseph demurred at such talk, the old man would fix him with that terrible look of his that penetrated like an icy ray.
   One day, when he had been able to stand without help, and seemed stronger, he called Joseph and led him to a spot at the edge of their small garden.
   "Here is where you will bury me," he said. "We will dig the grave together; we have a little time, I think. Bring me the spade."
   Thereafter he had Joseph dig a little early in the morning every day. If Dion was feeling stronger, he would himself scoop out a few spadefuls of earth with great difficulty, but also with an air of gaiety, as though he enjoyed the work. All through the day this gaiety would persist. From the time he started the project, he remained in continual good humor.