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| Chapter IV.
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Chapter IV.
I therefore bent my steps
toward the hut which I had beheld from a distance. There I find an old
man, in a garment made of skins, turning a mill with his hand. He
saluted and received us kindly. We explain to him that we had been
forced to land on that coast, and were prevented by the continued
raging of the sea90
from being able at once
to pursue our voyage; that, having made our way on shore, we had
desired, as is in keeping with ordinary human
nature, to become acquainted with the
character of the locality, and the manners of the inhabitants. We added
that we were Christians, and that the principal object of our enquiry
was whether there were any Christians amid these solitudes. Then,
indeed, he, weeping for joy, throws himself at our feet; and, kissing
us over and over again, invites us to prayer, while, spreading on the
ground the skins of sheep, he makes us sit down upon them. He then
serves up a breakfast truly luxurious,91
| 91 “Prandium sane
locupletissimum”: of course there is a friendly irony in the
words. | consisting of the
half of a barley cake. Now, we were four, while he himself constituted
the fifth. He also brought in a bundle of herbs, of which I forget the
name, but they were like mint, were rich in leaves, and yielded a taste
like honey. We were delighted with the exceedingly sweet taste of this
plant, and our hunger was fully satisfied.”
Upon this I smiled, and said to my friend the Gaul,
“What, Gaul, do you think of this? Are you pleased with a bundle
of herbs and half a barley cake as a breakfast for five men?”
Then he, being an exceedingly modest person, and
blushing somewhat, while he takes my92
| 92
“fatigationem,” a late sense of the word. | joke in good
part, says, “You act, Sulpitius, in a way like yourself, for you
never miss any opportunity which is offered you of joking us on the
subject of our fondness for eating. But it is unkind of you to try to
force us Gauls to live after the fashion of angels; and yet, through my
own liking for eating, I could believe that even the angels are in the
habit of eating; for such is my appetite that I would be afraid even
singly to attack that half barley cake. However, let that man of Cyrene
be satisfied with it, to whom it is either a matter of necessity or
nature always to feel hungry; or, again, let those be content with it
from whom, I suppose, their tossing at sea had taken away all desire
for food. We, on the other hand, are at a distance from the sea; and,
as I have often testified to you, we are, in one word, Gauls. But
instead of wasting time over such matters, let our friend here rather
go on to complete his account of the
Cyrenian.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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