Indeed, the loves of Basil and Veranilda made a tumult in his soul; at times it seemed to him that he hated his friend, so intolerable was the jealousy that racked him.

Veranilda he had never seen, but the lover's rapture had created in his imagination a face and form of matchless beauty which he could not cease from worshipping.

He took this for a persecution of the fiend, and strove against it by all methods known to him.

About his body he wore things that tortured; he fasted to the point of exhaustion; he slept--if sleep came to him--on a bare stone floor; some hours of each day he spent in visiting churches, where he prayed ardently.
Basil, when he had rushed forth from the Anicianum, rode straightway to the Via Lata, and presented himself at Marcian's door.

The porter said that his master had been absent since dawn, but Basil none the less entered, and, in the room where he and his friend were wont to talk, threw himself upon a couch to wait.