Evander was one of the greatest dogmatists of his time; a man of profound and lucid intellect. He had lost his health, and grown prematurely old, over his books; he was almost blind, and his short-sighted eyes worn out with fatigue. Innumerable heresies besieged his brain, leaving him no sleep, or tormenting him in dreams, ever tempting him by their dread subtleties. Evander used to collect heresies, as one might collect jewels or scientific rarities, in an immense manuscript entitled _Against Heresy_. He hunted for them greedily, imagined those that might be in existence, and the better he refuted the more he was attracted towards them. Sometimes he would entreat God to grant him simple faith, and God would refuse him simplicity. In ordinary life he was timid, simple, and offenceless as a child. For rascals to deceive Evander was as easy as breathing, and on this score the mockers told a hundred stories against him. Plunged in doctrinal dreams, the bishop continually found himself in awkward situations. In one of these fits of abstraction he had come to this singular council, without thinking why he went thither, but attracted by the hope of lighting on a new heresy. Now his face was twitching with annoyance, and he shaded his weak eyes against the too bright rays of the sun, longing to be back amongst his books in his little twilight chamber. Evander kept Juventinus at his side, and warned him against temptation by criticising various heresies. In the centre of the hall a vigorous old man was striding up and down. He had high cheek-bones and thick grey hair. It was the septuagenarian bishop Purpuris, recalled from exile by Julian. Neither Constantine nor Constantius had succeeded in stifling the Donatist heresy. For fifty years past streams of blood had flowed in Africa, by reason of the unjust deposition of a Donatist in favour of a Cæcilian, or of a Cæcilian in favour of a Donatist. Nor could any augury be made as to the final issue of this fratricidal strife. Juventinus noticed that the Cæcilian bishop who was passing in front of Purpuris brushed the vestments of the Donatist with the corner of his chasuble. The latter turned fiercely round, with a growl of disgust, and, taking the stuff between two fingers, shook it several times before the eyes of everybody. Evander informed Juventinus in a low voice that when a Cæcilian happened to enter a Donatist congregation he was hunted out and the flags touched by his feet were washed with salt water.