After his parting from Hermas, Paulus disappeared.  The other anchorites long sought him in vain, as well as bishop Agapitus, who had learned from Petrus that the Alexandrian had been punished and expelled in innocence, and who desired to offer him pardon and consolation in his own person.  At last, ten days after, Orion the Saite found him in a remote cave.  The angel of death had called him only a few hours before while in the act of prayer, for he was scarcely cold.  He was kneeling with his forehead against the rocky wall and his emaciated hands were closely clasped over Magdalena’s ring.  When his companions had laid him on his bier his noble, gentle features wore a pure and transfiguring smile.

The news of his death flew with wonderful rapidity through the oasis and the fishing-town, and far and wide to the caves of the anchorites, and even to the huts of the Amalekite shepherds.  The procession that followed him to his last resting-place stretched to an invisible distance; in front of all walked Agapitus with the elders and deacons, and behind them Petrus with his wife and family, to which Sirona now belonged.  Polykarp, who was now recovering, laid a palm-branch in token of reconcilement on his grave, which was visited as a sacred spot by the many whose needs he had alleviated in secret, and before long by all the penitents from far and wide.

Petrus erected a monument over his grave, on which Polykarp incised the words which Paulus’ trembling fingers had traced just before his death with a piece of charcoal on the wall of his cave: 

“Pray for me, a miserable man—­for I was a man.”

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     He out of the battle can easily boast of being unconquered
     Pray for me, a miserable man—­for I was a man

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks for the entire ‘homo sum’: 

     Action trod on the heels of resolve
     Can such love be wrong? 
     He who wholly abjures folly is a fool
     He out of the battle can easily boast of being unconquered
     Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto
     I am human, nothing that is human can I regard as alien to me
     Love is at once the easiest and the most difficult
     Love overlooks the ravages of years and has a good memory
     No judgment is so hard as that dealt by a slave to slaves
     No man is more than man, and many men are less
     Overlooks his own fault in his feeling of the judge’s injustice
     Pray for me, a miserable man—­for I was a man
     Sky as bare of cloud as the rocks are of shrubs and herbs
     Sleep avoided them both, and each knew that the other was awake
     Some caution is needed even in giving a warning
     The older one grows the quicker the hours hurry away
     To pray is better than to bathe
     Wakefulness may prolong the little term of life
     Who can point out the road that another will take