He kept along the shore, begging his bread at the door of solitary huts for the love of God, and joyfully receiving insults, refusals, or threats.  He feared neither robbers nor wild beasts, but he took great care to avoid all the towns and villages he came near.  He was afraid lest he should see children playing at knuckle-bones before their father’s house, or meet, by the side of the well, women in blue smocks, who might put down their pitcher and smile at him.  All things are dangerous for the hermit; it is sometimes a danger for him to read in the Scriptures that the Divine Master journeyed from town to town and supped with His disciples.  The virtues that the anchorites embroider so carefully on the tissue of faith, are as fragile as they are beautiful; a breath of ordinary life may tarnish their pleasant colours.  For that reason, Paphnutius avoided the towns, fearing lest his heart should soften at the sight of his fellow men.

He journeyed along lonely roads.  When evening came, the murmuring of the breeze amidst the tamarisk trees made him shiver, and he pulled his hood over his eyes that he might not see how beautiful all things were.  After walking six days, he came to a place called Silsile.  There the river runs in a narrow valley, bordered by a double chain of granite mountains.  It was there that the Egyptians, in the days when they worshipped demons, carved their idols.  Paphnutius saw an enormous sphinx carved in the solid rock.  Fearing that it might still possess some diabolical properties, he made the sign of the cross, and pronounced the name of Jesus; he immediately saw a bat fly out of one of the monster’s ears, and Paphnutius knew that he had driven out the evil spirits which had been for centuries in the figure.  His zeal increased, and picking up a large stone, he threw it in the idol’s face.  Then the mysterious face of the sphinx expressed such profound sadness that Paphnutius was moved.  In fact, the expression of superhuman grief on the stone visage would have touched even the most unfeeling man.  Therefore Paphnutius said to the sphinx—­

“O monster, be like the satyrs and centaurs our father Anthony saw in the desert, and confess the divinity of Jesus Christ, and I will bless thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

When he had spoken a rosy light gleamed in the eyes of the sphinx; the heavy eyelids of the monster quivered and the granite lips painfully murmured, as though in echo to the man’s voice, the holy name of Jesus Christ; therefore Paphnutius stretched out his right hand, and blessed the sphinx of Silsile.

That being done, he resumed his journey, and the valley having grown wider, he saw the ruins of an immense city.  The temples, which still remained standing, were supported by idols which served as columns, and—­by the permission of God—­these figures with women’s heads and cow’s horns, threw on Paphnutius a long look which made him turn pale.  He walked thus seventeen days, his only food a few raw herbs, and he slept at night in some ruined palace, amongst the wild cats and Pharaoh’s rats, with which mingled sometimes, women whose bodies ended in a scaly tail.  But Paphnutius knew that these women came from hell, and he drove them away by making the sign of the cross.