The Paulus of my story must not be confounded with the “first hermit,” Paulus of Thebes, whom Weingarten has with good reason struck out of the category of historical personages.  He, with all the figures in this narrative is a purely fictitious person, the vehicle for an idea, neither more nor less.  I selected no particular model for my hero, and I claim for him no attribute but that of his having been possible at the period; least of all did I think of Saint Anthony, who is now deprived even of his distinguished biographer Athanasius, and who is represented as a man of very sound judgment but of so scant an education that he was master only of Egyptian.

The dogmatic controversies which were already kindled at the time of my story I have, on careful consideration, avoided mentioning.  The dwellers on Sinai and in the oasis took an eager part in them at a later date.

That Mount Sinai to which I desire to transport the reader must not be confounded with the mountain which lies at a long day’s journey to the south of it.  It is this that has borne the name, at any rate since the time of Justinian; the celebrated convent of the Transfiguration lies at its foot, and it has been commonly accepted as the Sinai of Scripture.  In the description of my journey through Arabia Petraea I have endeavored to bring fresh proof of the view, first introduced by Lepsius, that the giant-mountain, now called Serbal, must be regarded as the mount on which the law was given—­and was indeed so regarded before the time of Justinian—­and not the Sinai of the monks.

As regards the stone house of the Senator Petrus, with its windows opening on the street—­contrary to eastern custom—­I may remark, in anticipation of well founded doubts, that to this day wonderfully well-preserved fire-proof walls stand in the oasis of Pharan, the remains of a pretty large number of similar buildings.

But these and such external details hold a quite secondary place in this study of a soul.  While in my earlier romances the scholar was compelled to make concessions to the poet and the poet to the scholar, in this one I have not attempted to instruct, nor sought to clothe the outcome of my studies in forms of flesh and blood; I have aimed at absolutely nothing but to give artistic expression to the vivid realization of an idea that had deeply stirred my soul.  The simple figures whose inmost being I have endeavored to reveal to the reader fill the canvas of a picture where, in the dark background, rolls the flowing ocean of the world’s history.

The Latin title was suggested to me by an often used motto which exactly agrees with the fundamental view to which I have been led by my meditations on the mind and being of man; even of those men who deem that they have climbed the very highest steps of that stair which leads into the Heavens.

In the Heautontimorumenos of Terence, Chremes answers his neighbor Menedemus (Act I, SC.  I, v. 25) “Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto,” which Donner translates literally: