"Well, I've heard. At Myrrha, in Phrygia, three young men, Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tertian, had burst into a Greek temple by night, and smashed the idols to the glory of God. The proconsul Amachius had them seized, stretched them on dripping-pans, and ordered fires to be lighted under them. The three martyrs said: 'If you want to taste cooked flesh, Amachius, turn us over on the other side, that we may not be served up to you half-cooked!' and all three laughed and spat in the face of the proconsul. And everybody saw an angel come down out of heaven with three crowns! _You_ wouldn't have spoken so! You're too fearful for your skins.... It's heart-breaking, just to look at you!" The She-wolf turned away in disgust. Cries rose from the street. "Perhaps they're breaking up idols?" suggested the shoemaker pleasantly. "Forward, citizens! Follow me!" shouted Strombix, waving his arms; but he slipped on the table, and would have fallen had not Aragaris caught him. Everybody rushed to the door. An enormous crowd was advancing down the principal street and, filling the narrow cross-roads, brought up before the baths. "Old Pamva! Old Pamva!" the idlers were shouting. "He's come from the desert to help the people; to pull down the great, and to save the humble and poor!" XI The old man had a coarse face, with high cheek-bones, bearded to the eyes. A patched piece of sacking served him as inner robe, and a hooded sheep's skin as cloak or chlamys. For twenty years, Pamva had never washed himself, considering cleanliness sinful, and believing that a special fiend presided over any acts of care for the body. He dwelt in a fearful desert, the Berean, round Chalybon, to the east of Antioch, where serpents and scorpions swarmed at the bottom of the arid water-courses. His lodging was the deep sandy hollow of a dried-up well, called _coubba_ in Syriac, where he used to feed himself on five stalks a day of a sweet and flowery kind of reed. He had nearly died of starvation. His disciples descended to feed him by means of ropes. Then, during seven years, he lived on a half-measure of boiled lentils. His sight grew feeble; his skin became leprous and scurvy; he therefore added a little oil to his lentils, and accused himself of worship of the belly. Pamva, learning from his disciples that the Emperor Julian, the fierce Anti-Christ, was persecuting the Christians, left his retreat and came to Antioch to strengthen weak-kneed believers-- "Listen! listen!... he's going to speak." Pamva climbed the staircase of the baths and halted on a broad landing. His eyes glittered with condensed ire. He stretched out his arms, pointing out to the people palaces, pagan temples, baths, shops, courts of justice, all the monuments of Antioch.