"How wert thou
dressed?" He was glad enough, again he confessed, to have any
clothes at all on his back. "Where didst thou sleep?" "Often
enough on the bare ground in the open air," was the answer. "Then,"
said the abbot, "thou art, by thy own confession, better off as a
monk than thou wast as a poor labouring man: and yet thou grudgest
a little comfort to one who has given up more luxury than thou hast
ever beheld. This man slept beneath silken canopies; he was carried
in gilded litters, by trains of slaves; he was clothed in purple and
fine linen; he fed upon all the delicacies of the great city: and
he has given up all for Christ. And what hast thou given up, that
thou shouldst grudge him a softer mat, or a little more food each
day?" And so the monk was abashed, and held his peace.
As for Arsenius's tears, it is easy to call his grief exaggerated or
superstitious: but those who look on them with human eyes will
pardon them, and watch with sacred pity the grief of a good man, who
felt that his life had been an utter failure. He saw his two
pupils, between whom, at their father's death, the Roman Empire was
divided into Eastern and Western, grow more and more incapable of
governing. He saw a young barbarian, whom he must have often met at
the court in Byzantium, as Master of the Horse, come down from his
native forests, and sack the Eternal City of Rome. He saw evil and
woe unspeakable fall on that world which he had left behind him,
till the earth was filled with blood, and Antichrist seemed ready to
appear, and the day of judgment to be at hand.
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