The wretched poet sat among his scrolls looking for a victim.  All his forty-eight children were equally dear to his parental heart.  The cries of applause and derision from the spectators, and the formidable bellowings of the exasperated monks who surrounded Pachymius, did not tend to steady his nerves, or render the task of critical discrimination the easier.

“I won’t!  I won’t!” he exclaimed at last, starting up defiantly.  “Let the bishopric go to the devil!  Any one of my similes is worth all the bishoprics in Egypt!”

“Out on the vanity of these poets!” exclaimed the disappointed Governor.

“It is not vanity,” said Apollo, “it is paternal affection; and being myself a sufferer from the same infirmity, I rejoice to find him my true son after all.”

“Well,” said the Governor, turning to the demon:  “it is thy man’s turn now.  Trot him out!”

“Brethren,” said the demon to the assembly, “it is meet that he who aspires to the office of bishop should be prepared to give evidence of extraordinary self-denial.  Ye have seen even our weak brother Nonnus adoring what he hath burned, albeit as yet unwilling to burn what he hath adored.  How much more may be reasonably expected of our brother Pachymius, so eminent for sanctity!  I therefore call upon him to demonstrate his humility and self-renunciation, and effectually mortify the natural man, by washing himself in this ample vessel provided for the purpose”

“Wash myself!” exclaimed Pacyhmius, with a vivacity of which he had previously shown no token.  “Destroy at one splash the sanctity of fifty-seven years!  Avaunt! thou subtle enemy of my salvation!  I know thee who thou art, the demon who brought me hither on his back yesterday.”

“I thought it had been an angel,” said the Governor.

“A demon in the disguise of an angel of light,” said Pachymius.

A tumultuous discussion arose among Pachymius’s supporters, some extolling his fortitude, others blaming his wrongheadedness.

“What!” said he to the latter, “would ye rob me of my reputation?  Shall it be written of me, The holy Pachymius abode in the precepts of the eremites so long as he dwelt in the desert where no water was, but as soon as he came within sight of a bath, he stumbled and fell?”

“Oh, father,” urged they, “savoureth not this of vaingloriousness?  The demon in the guise of an angel of light, as thou so well saidest even now.  Be strong.  Quit thyself valiantly.  Think of the sufferings of the primitive confessors.”

“St. John was cast into a caldron of boiling oil,” said one.

“St. Apocryphus was actually drowned,” said another.

“I have reason to believe,” said a third, “that the loathsomeness of ablution hath been greatly exaggerated by the heretics.”

“I know it has,” said another.  “I have washed myself once, though ye might not think it, and can assert that it is by no means as disagreeable as one supposes.”