The Hermit and the Wild Woman | Page 5

flesh looked when devils' pincers tore it, how the shrieks of

the damned sounded, and how roasting bodies smelled. How could a
Christian spare one moment of his days and nights from the long long
struggle to keep safe from the wrath to come?
Gradually the horror faded, leaving only a tranquil pleasure in the
minute performance of his religious duties. His mind was not naturally
given to the contemplation of evil, and in the blessed solitude of his
new life his thoughts dwelt more and more on the beauty of holiness.
His desire was to be perfectly good, and to live in love and charity with
his fellow-men; and how could one do this without fleeing from them?
At first his life was difficult, for in the winter season he was put to
great straits to feed himself; and there were nights when the sky was
like an iron vault, and a hoarse wind rattled the oakwood in the valley,
and a great fear came on him that was worse than any cold. But in time
it became known to his townsfolk and to the peasants in the
neighbouring valleys that he had withdrawn to the wilderness to lead a
godly life; and after that his worst hardships were over, for pious
persons brought him gifts of oil and dried fruit, one good woman gave
him seeds from her garden, another spun for him a hodden gown, and
others would have brought him all manner of food and clothing, had he
not refused to accept anything but for his bare needs. The good woman
who had given him the seeds showed him also how to build a little
garden on the southern ledge of his cliff, and all one summer the
Hermit carried up soil from the streamside, and the next he carried up
water to keep his garden green. After that the fear of solitude quite
passed from him, for he was so busy all day long that at night he had
much ado to fight off the demon of sleep, which Saint Arsenius the
Abbot has denounced as the chief foe of the solitary. His memory kept
good store of prayers and litanies, besides long passages from the Mass
and other offices, and he marked the hours of his day by different acts
of devotion. On Sundays and feast days, when the wind was set his way,
he could hear the church bells from his native town, and these helped
him to follow the worship of the faithful, and to bear in mind the
seasons of the liturgical year; and what with carrying up water from the
river, digging in the garden, gathering fagots for his fire, observing his
religious duties, and keeping his thoughts continually upon the
salvation of his soul, the Hermit knew not a moment's idleness.
At first, during his night vigils, he had felt a great fear of the stars,

which seemed to set a cruel watch upon him, as though they spied out
the frailty of his heart and took the measure of his littleness. But one
day a wandering clerk, to whom he chanced to give a night's shelter,
explained to him that, in the opinion of the most learned doctors of
theology, the stars were inhabited by the spirits of the blessed, and this
thought brought great consolation to the Hermit. Even on winter nights,
when the eagle's wings clanged among the peaks, and he heard the long
howl of wolves about the sheep-cotes in the valley, he no longer felt
any fear, but thought of those sounds as representing the evil voices of
the world, and hugged himself in the solitude of his cave. Sometimes,
to keep himself awake, he composed lauds in honour of Christ and the
saints, and they seemed to him so pleasant that he feared to forget them,
so after much debate with himself he decided to ask a friendly priest
from the valley, who sometimes visited him, to write down the lauds;
and the priest wrote them down on comely sheepskin, which the Hermit
dried and prepared with his own hands. When the Hermit saw them
written down they appeared to him so beautiful that he feared to
commit the sin of vanity if he looked at them too often, so he hid them
between two smooth stones in his cave, and vowed that he would take
them out only once in the year, at Easter, when our Lord has risen and
it is meet that Christians should rejoice. And this vow he faithfully kept;
but, alas, when Easter drew near, he found he was looking forward to
the blessed festival less because of our Lord's rising than because he
should then be able to read his pleasant lauds written on fair sheepskin;
and thereupon he