He repeated the name several times as if the sound pleased his ear and heart.  Then he shuddered again and again, and muttered to himself:  “Brrr!—­a cold shiver runs all over me—­it is of no use!—­The cut in my shoulder.—­It is my head that hurts worst, but the other—­it is bad luck that it should have fallen on the left side.  And yet, no; it is best so; for if he—­if it had damaged my right shoulder I could not write, and I must—­I must-before it is too late.  A tablet and stylus; quick, quick!  And when I have written, good mother, close the tablet and seal it—­close and tight.  Promise!  Only one person may read it, he to whom it must go.  —­Gibbus, do you hear, Gibbus?—­It is for Philippus the leech.  Take it to him.—­Your dream about a rose on your hump, if I read rightly, means that peace and joy in Heaven blossom from our misery on earth.—­Yes, to Philippus.  And listen my old school friend Christodorus, a leech too, lives at Doomiat.  Take my body to him—­mind me now?  He is to pack it with sand which will preserve it, and have it buried by the side of my mother at Alexandria.  Joanna and the child—­they can come and visit me there.  I have not much to leave; whatever that may cost. . . .”

“That is my affair, or the convent’s,” cried the abbess.

“Matters are not so bad as that,” said the old man smiling.  “I can pay for my own share of the business; your revenue belongs to the poor, noble Mother.—­You will find more than enough in this wallet, good Gibbus.  But now, quick, make haste—­the tablets.”

When he had one in his hand, and a stylus for writing with, he thought for some time, and then wrote with trembling fingers, though exerting all his strength.  How acutely he was suffering could be seen in his drawn mouth and sad eyes, but he would not allow himself to be interrupted, often as the abbess and the gardener entreated him to lay aside the stylus.  At last, with a deep sigh of relief, he closed the tablets, handed them to the abbess, and said: 

“There!  Close it fast.—­To Philippus the physician; into his own hand:  You hear, Gibbus?”

Here he fainted; but after they had bathed his forehead and wounds he came to himself, and softly murmured:  “I was dreaming of Joanna and the poor child.  They brought me a comic mask.  What can that mean?  That I have been a fool all my life for thinking of other folks’ troubles and forgetting myself and my own family?  No, no, no!  As surely as man is the standard of all things—­if it were so, then, then folly would be truth and right.—­I, I—­my desire—­the aim to which my life was devoted......”

He paused; then he suddenly raised himself, looked up with a bright light in his eyes, and cried aloud with joy:  “O Thou, most merciful Saviour!  Yes, yes—­I see it all now.  I thank thee—­All that I strove for and lived for, Thou, my Redeemer who art Love itself—­Ah how good, how comforting to think of that!—­It is for this that Thou grantest me to die!”