“God will protect me,” said Paphnutius.  “May He also illumine thy heart, O Nicias, and draw thee out of the abyss in which thou art plunged.”

And he stalked out of the room.  But Nicias followed him, and overtook him on the threshold, and placing his hand on his shoulder whispered into his ear the same words—­

“Beware of offending Venus; her vengeance is terrible.”

Paphnutius, disdainful of these trivial words, left without turning his head.  He felt only contempt for Nicias; but what he could not bear was the idea that his former friend had received the caresses of Thais.  It seemed to him that to sin with that woman was more detestable than to sin with any other.  To him this appeared the height of iniquity, and he henceforth looked upon Nicias as an object of execration.  He had always hated impurity, but never before had this vice appeared so heinous to him; never before had it so seemed to merit the anger of Jesus Christ and the sorrow of the angels.

He felt only a more ardent desire to save Thais from the Gentiles, and that he must hasten to see the actress in order to save her.  Nevertheless, before he could enter her house, he must wait till the heat of the day was over, and now the morning had hardly finished.  Paphnutius wandered through the most frequented streets.  He had resolved to take no food that day, in order to be the less unworthy of the favours he had asked of the Lord.  To the great grief of his soul, he dared not enter any of the churches in the city, because he knew they were profaned by the Arians, who had overturned the Lord’s table.  For, in fact, these heretics, supported by the Emperor of the East, had driven the patriarch Athanasius from his episcopate, and sown trouble and confusion among the Christians of Alexandria.

He therefore wandered about aimlessly, sometimes with his eyes fixed on the ground in humility, and sometimes raised to heaven in ecstasy.  After some time, he found himself on the quay.  Before him lay the harbour, in which were sheltered innumerable ships and galleys, and beyond them, smiling in blue and silver, lay the perfidious sea.  A galley, which bore a Nereid at its prow, had just weighed anchor.  The rowers sang as the oars struck the water; and already the white daughter of the waters, covered with humid pearls, showed no more than a flying profile to the monk.  Steered by her pilot, she cleared the passage leading from the basin of the Eunostos, and gained the high seas, leaving a glittering trail behind her.

“I also,” thought Paphnutius, “once desired to embark singing on the ocean of the world.  But I soon saw my folly, and the Nereid did not carry me away.”