There was also a brown bundle which resolved itself into a
monkish habit within which was rolled a hair-shirt.
I took pleasure in this discovery, and I set myself at once to strip off my
secular garments and to don this coarse brown habit, which, by reason of my
great height, descended but midway down my calves. For lack of sandals I
went barefoot, and having made a bundle of the clothes I had removed I
thrust them into the cupboard in the place of those which I had taken
thence.
Thus did I, who had been vowed to the anchorite order of St. Augustine,
enter upon my life as an unordained anchorite. I dragged out the wattles
upon which my blessed predecessor had breathed his last, and having swept
the place clean with a bundle of hazel-switches which I cut for the
purpose, I went to gather fresh boughs and rushes by the swollen torrent,
and with these I made myself a bed.
My existence became not only one of loneliness, but of grim privation.
People rarely came my way, save for a few faithful women from Casi or Fiori
who solicited my prayers in return for the oil and maize-cakes which they
left me, and sometimes whole days would pass without the sight of a single
human being. These maize-cakes formed my chief nourishment, together with
a store or nuts from the hazel coppice that grew before my door and some
chestnuts which I went further afield to gather in the woods.
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