The expression that began to move over Mathias’ face told Paul that he was asking himself once again what his life would have been if he had remained in Alexandria.  Talking, he said, to these Essenes who stand midway between Jerusalem and Alexandria my life has gone by.  Why I remained with them so long is a question I have often asked myself.  Why I came hither with them from the cenoby on the eastern bank, that, too, is a matter that I have never been able to decide.  You have heard, he continued, of the schism of the Essenes.  How those on the eastern bank believe that the order can only be preserved by marriage, while those on the western bank, the traditionalists up there on that rock in that aerie, would rather the order died than that any change should be made in the rule of life.  In answer to a question from Paul he said he did not believe that the order would survive the schism.  It may be, too, that I return to Alexandria.  No man knows his destiny; but if you be minded, he said, to hear me, I will reserve a place near to me.  My mind is distracted, Paul replied, by fears for the safety of Timothy; and perhaps to save himself from Mathias’ somewhat monotonous discourse he spoke of his apostolic mission, interesting Mathias at once, who began to perceive that Paul, however crude and elementary his conceptions might be (so crude did they appear to Mathias that he was not inclined to include them in his code of philosophical notions at all), was a story in himself, and one not lacking in interest; his ideas though crude were not common, and their talk had lasted long enough for him to discern many original turns of speech in Paul’s incorrect Greek, altogether lacking in construction, but betraying constantly an abrupt vigour of thought.  He was therefore disappointed when Paul, dropping suddenly the story of the apostolic mission, which he had received from the apostles, who themselves had received it from the Lord Jesus Christ, began to tell suddenly that on his return from his mission to Cyprus with Barnabas he had preached in Derbe and Lystra.  It was in Lystra, he cried, that I met Timothy, whom I circumcised with my own hand; he was then a boy of ten, and his mother, who was a pious, God-fearing woman, foresaw in him a disciple, and said when we left, after having been cured by her and her mother of our wounds, when thou returnest to the Galatians he will be nearly old enough to follow thee, but tarry not so long, she added.  But it was a long while before I returned to Lystra, and then Timothy was a young man, and ever since our lives have been spent in the Lord’s service, suffering tortures from robbers that sought to obtain ransom.  We have been scourged and shipwrecked.  But, said Mathias, interrupting him, I know not of what you are speaking, and Paul was obliged to go over laboriously in words the story that he had dreamed in a few seconds.  And when it was told Mathias said:  your story is worth telling.  After my lecture the brethren will be glad to listen to you.  But, said Paul, what I have told you is nothing to what I could tell; and Mathias answered:  so much the better, for I shall not have to listen to a twice-told story.  And now, he added, I must leave you, for I have matter that must be carefully thought out, and in those ruins yonder my best thinking is done.