The Equinox (Volume I, Number VIII)

THE EQUINOX hundred words, and by wild beasts. The next scene is of attempted robbery and murder, and P.’s successful defence. Then comes one of the wildest journeys possible to take on this planet, packed with every kind of adventure and privation. After this, practically continuous ill-health, only interrupted by the most shocking domestic tragedies. Through all this, Fra. P. remains in perfect literal simplicity with his devotion to the Augoeides and his “invoking often.” He never flags, never falters, never faints, never fails. Impassive and inexorable as that Nature whom he had defied, he went steadily on with his work. Wealth and health had been torn from him; he was like Job, but even worse tor- mented; greater than Job, he resisted all without a murmur, and conquered all without a glimmer of self-satisfaction. When the Books are opened and the deeds of men are known, who dare say that there shall be found aught to surpass these marvellous months which Fra. P. set to the Operation of the Sacred Magic, the obtaining of the Know- ledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel ? We return to the Diary—— Oct. 2. (Fra. Ρ. has now retired into the Adytum of God- nourished Silence to some purposel We tran- scribe this day‘s entry; it is probably most important to us. The rest of the year's entries are nearly all of the same kind.) The Stooping Dragon—the Floor of the . . . Vide Alexandra. The Critical Converse. 36