the censer within hung above us. The holy atmosphere mantled the dread silence of the place. And the slow, insinuating smell of incense, like the fumes of gunga, weighed heavy on my eyelids and seemed to brush from my memory the cobwebs of time. A drowsiness possessed me; I felt like one awaking from a dream. I asked for the water jug, which the Hermit hastened to bring. And looking through the door of the chapel, I saw on the altar a burning cresset flickering like the planet Mercury on a December morning. How often did I light such a cresset when a boy, I mused. Yes, I was an acolyte once. I swang the censer and drank deep of the incense fumes as I chanted in Syriac the service. And I remember when I made a mistake one day in reading the Epistle of Paul, the priest, who was of an irascible humour, took me by the ear and made me spell the words I could not pronounce. And the boys in the congregation tittered gleefully. In my mortification was honey for them. Such was my pride, nevertheless, such the joy I felt, when, of all the boys that gathered round the lectern at vespers, I was called upon to read in the sinksar (hagiography) the Life of the Saint of the day.
“I knew then that to steal, for instance, is a sin; and yet, I emptied the box of wafers every morning after mass and shared them with the very boys who laughed at my mistakes.
One day, in the purest intention, I offered one of these wafers to my donkey and he would not eat it. I felt insulted, and never after did I pilfer a wafer.
Now, as I muse on these sallies of boyish waywardness I am impressed with the idea that the certainty and daring of Ignorance, or might I say Innocence, are great. Indeed, to the pure everything is pure.
But strange to relate that as I sat in the corridor of the Hermitage and saw the light flickering on the altar, I hankered for a wafer, and was tempted to go into the chapel and filch one. What prevented me?