And he took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.

Thou shalt go, my son.
But first come after me, and speak with Aufugus.' Philammon, like everyone else, loved Aufugus; and when the abbot retired and left the two alone together, he felt no dread or shame about unburdening his whole heart to him.

Long and passionately he spoke, in answer to the gentle questions of the old man, who, without the rigidity or pedantic solemnity of the monk, interrupted the youth, and let himself be interrupted in return, gracefully, genially, almost playfully.

And yet there was a melancholy about his tone as he answered to the youth's appeal-- 'Tertullian, Origen, Clement, Cyprian--all these moved in the world; all these and many more beside, whose names we honour, whose prayers we invoke, were learned in the wisdom of the heathen, and fought and laboured, unspotted, in the world; and why not I?
Cyril the patriarch himself, was he not called from the caves of Nitria to sit on the throne of Alexandria ?' Slowly the old man lifted his band, and putting back the thick locks of the kneeling youth, gazed, with soft pitying eyes, long and earnestly into his face.
'And thou wouldst see the world, poor fool?
And thou wouldst see the world ?' 'I would convert the world!' 'Thou must know it first.

And shall I tell thee what that world is like, which seems to thee so easy to convert?
Here I sit, the poor unknown old monk, until I die, fasting and praying, if perhaps God will have mercy on my soul: but little thou knowest how I have seen it.