_This woman is still very beautiful, although faded, and pale as a sepulcher. They look at one another; and their eyes send to each other waves, as it were, of thoughts, bearing drift of a thousand ancient things, confused, mysterious. At last_--)
"I was in the last chamber of the baths; and the rumbling sounds of the street caused a sleep to fall upon me.
"Suddenly I heard a clamour of voices. Men were shouting--'It is a magician!--it is the Devil!' And the crowd stopped before our house, in front of the Temple Æsculapius. I drew myself up with my hands to the little window.
"Upon the peristyle of the temple, there stood a man who wore about his neck a collar of iron. He took burning coals out of a chafing-dish, and with them drew lines across his breast, the while crying out--'Jesus! Jesus!' The people shouted--'This is not lawful! let us stone him!' But he continued. Oh! those were unheard of marvels--things which transported men who beheld them! Flowers broad as suns circled before my eyes, and I heard in the spaces above me the vibrations of a golden harp. Day died. My hands loosened their grasp of the window-bars; my body fell back, and when he had led me away to his house...."
ANTHONY. "But of whom art thou speaking?"
(_Anthony turns; and sees upon the bench near him, on the opposite side, another woman sitting; she is fair, and even paler than the other; there are swellings under her eyes, as though she had wept a long time. She speaks without being questioned_:)
MAXIMILLA. "We were returning from Tarsus by way of the mountains, when, at a turn in the road, we saw a man under a fig tree.
"He cried from afar off: 'Stop! stop!' and rushed toward us, uttering words of abuse. The slaves ran up; he burst into a loud laugh. The horses reared; the molossi all barked.
"He stood before us. The sweat streamed from his forehead; his mantle napped in the wind.
"And calling us each by our names, he reproached us with the vanity of our work, the infamy of our bodies; and he shook his fist at the dromedaries because of the silver bells hanging below their mouths.
"His fury now filled my very entrails with fear and yet there was a strange pleasure in it which fascinated me, intoxicated me!