Pagina 291 di 490

There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of

self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose

result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that

fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had

sought to escape; Nature, in her wonderful irony, driving out the

anchorite to feed with the wild animals of the desert and giving

to the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.