But hereby every religious man will learn to restrain his appetite, and not to eat meat at forbidden seasons, little regarding what ignorant and foolish men are wont to do. CHAPTER XXIV. _How in his Journey to Rome he Found the Staff of Jesus._ And being desirous that his journey and all his acts should by the apostolic authority be sanctioned, he was earnest to travel unto the city of Saint Peter, and there more thoroughly to learn the canonical institutes of the holy Roman Church. And when he had unfolded his purpose unto Germanus, the blessed man approved thereof, and associated unto him that servant of Christ, Sergecius the presbyter, as the companion of his journey, the solace of his labor, and the becoming testimony of his holy conversation. Proceeding, therefore, by the divine impulse, or by the angelic revelation, he went out of his course unto a solitary man who lived in an island in the Tuscan Sea; and the solitary man was pure in his life, and he was of great desert and esteemed of all, and in his name and in his works he was Just; and after their holy greetings were passed, this man of God gave unto Patrick a staff which he declared himself to have received from the hands of the Lord Jesus. And there were in the island certain other solitary men, who lived apart from him, some of whom appeared to be youths, and others decrepit old men, with whom when Patrick had conversed, he learned that the oldest of them were the sons of the youths; and when Saint Patrick, marvelling, enquired of them the cause of so strange a miracle, they answered unto him, saying: "We from our childhood were continually intent on works of charity, and our door was open to every traveller who asked for victual or for lodging in the name of Christ, when on a certain night we received a stranger having in his hand a staff; and we showed unto him so much kindness as we could, and in the morning he blessed us, and said, I am Jesus Christ, unto whose members ye have hitherto ministered, and whom ye have last night entertained in His own person. Then the staff which He bore in His hand gave He unto yonder man of God, our spiritual father, commanding him that he should preserve it safely, and deliver it unto a certain stranger named Patrick, who would, after many days were passed, come unto him. Thus saying, He ascended into heaven; and ever since we have continued in the same youthful state, but our sons, who were then infants, have, as thou seest, become decrepit old men."