After a night, as it seemed, of anxious and unsleeping thought, I rose from my bed and returned to the garden. I found the Christian alone,—seated, under the shade of one of his trees, at a small table, with a volume unrolled before him, while a beautiful antelope lay sleeping at his feet. Struck forcibly by the contrast which he presented to those haughty priests, whom I had seen surrounded by the pomp and gorgeousness of temples, “Is this, then,” thought I, “the faith, before which the world trembles—its temple the desert, its treasury a book, and its High Priest the solitary dweller of the rock!” He had prepared for me a simple, but hospitable, repast, of which fruits from his own garden, the white bread of Olyra, and the juice of the honey‐ cane were the most costly luxuries. His manner to me was even more cordial than before; but the absence of Alethe, and, still more, the ominous reserve, with which he not only, himself, refrained from all mention of her name, but eluded the few inquiries, by which I sought to lead to it, seemed to confirm all the fears I had felt in parting from her. She had acquainted him, it was evident, with the whole history of our flight. My reputation as a philosopher—my desire to become a Christian—all was already known to the zealous Anchoret, and the subject of my conversion was the very first on which he entered. O pride of philosophy, how wert thou then humbled, and with what shame did I stand, casting down my eyes, before that venerable man, as, with ingenuous trust in the sincerity of my intention, he welcomed me to a participation of his holy hope, and imprinted the Kiss of Charity on my infidel brow! Embarrassed as I felt by the consciousness of hypocrisy, I was even still more perplexed by my total ignorance of the real tenets of the faith to which I professed myself a convert. Abashed and confused, and with a heart sick at its own deceit, I heard the animated and eloquent gratulations of the Christian, as though they were words in a dream, without link or meaning; nor could disguise but by the mockery of a reverential bow, at every pause, the entire want of self‐possession, and even of speech, under which I laboured.