"For," said the hermit, "to this we must all come." Because rosemary is the herb they scatter over the dead.

And he knew where almost everything grew, and what he did not know the boy told him.
Yet for all this, and though he had embraced poverty and solitude with joy, in the service of GOD and man, yet so bitter was blindness to him, that he bewailed the loss of his sight, with a grief that never lessened.
"For," said he, "if it had pleased our Lord to send me any other affliction, such as a continual pain or a consuming sickness, I would have borne it gladly, seeing it would have left me free to see these herbs, which I use for the benefit of the poor.

But now the sick suffer through my blindness, and to this boy also I am a continual burden." And when the boy called him at the hours of prayer, paying, "My Father, it is now time for the Nones office, for the marigold is closing," or, "The Vespers bell will soon sound from the valley, for the bindweed bells are folded," and the hermit recited the appointed prayers, he always added, "I beseech Thee take away my blindness, as Thou didst heal Thy servant the son of Timaeus." And as the boy and he sorted herbs, he cried, "Is there no balm in Gilead ?" And the boy answered, "The balm of Gilead grows six full paces from the gate, my Father." But the hermit said, "I spoke in a figure, my Son.

I meant not that herb.

But, alas! Is there no remedy to heal the physician?
No cure for the curer ?" And the boy's heart grew heavier day by day, because of the hermit's grief.