“What is the monastic life if not peculiar?  And ought not the deeds of a monk to be as eccentric as he is himself?  It was a sign from God that caused me to ascend here; it is a sign from God that will make me descend.”

Every day religious men came to join the disciples of Paphnutius, and they built for themselves shelters round the aerial hermitage.  Several of them, to imitate the saint, mounted the ruins of the temple; but, being reproved by their brethren, and conquered by fatigue, they soon gave up these attempts.

Pilgrims flocked from all parts.  There were some who had come long distances, and were hungry and thirsty.  The idea occurred to a poor widow of selling fresh water and melons.  Against the foot of the column, behind her bottles of red clay, her cups and her fruit under an awning of blue-and-white striped canvas, she cried, “Who wants to drink?” Following the example of this widow, a baker brought some bricks and made an oven close by, in the hope of selling loaves and cakes to visitors.  As the crowd of visitors increased unceasingly, and the inhabitants of the large cities of Egypt began to come, some man, greedy of gain, built a caravanserai to lodge the guests and their servants, camels, and mules.  Soon there was, in front of the column, a market to which the fishermen of the Nile brought their fish, and the gardeners their vegetables.  A barber, who shaved people in the open air, amused the crowd with his jokes.  The old temple, so long given over to silence and solitude was filled with countless sights and sounds of life.  The innkeepers turned the subterranean vaults into cellars and nailed on the old pillars signs surmounted by the figure of the holy Paphnutius, and bearing this inscription in Greek and Egyptian—­“Pomegranate wine, fig wine, and genuine Cilician beer sold here.”  On the walls, sculptured with pure and graceful carvings, the shop-keepers hung ropes of onions, and smoked fish, dead hares, and the carcases of sheep.  In the evening, the old occupants of the ruins, the rats, scuttled in a long row to the river, whilst the ibises, suspiciously craning their necks, perched on the high cornices, to which rose the smoke of the kitchens, the shouts of the drinkers, and the cries of the tapsters.  All around, builders laid out streets, and masons constructed convents, chapels, and churches.  By the end of six months a city was established with a guardhouse, a tribunal, a prison, and a school, kept by an old blind scribe.

The pilgrims were innumerable.  Bishops and other Church dignitaries, came, full of admiration.  The Patriarch of Antioch, who chanced to be in Egypt at that time, came with all his clergy.  He highly approved of the extraordinary conduct of the stylite, and the heads of the Libyan Church followed, in the absence of Athanasius, the opinion of the Patriarch.  Having learned which, Abbots Ephrem and Serapion came to the feet of Paphnutius to apologise for their former mistrust.  Paphnutius replied—­