Dost thou not
know that pride angers the Lord and hardens the heart and brings
men to the fire?' Then they laid me in fetters and returned me to
my place, which was a dungeon under the earth. Every three days,
they threw me down a cake of barley-bread and a draught of water;
and every month or two, came Decianus to the hermitage, with his
daughter Temathil, who is now grown up, for when I first saw her,
she was nine years old, and I abode fifteen years in the dungeon,
so that she must be now four-and twenty years of age. There is
not in our land nor in the land of the Greeks a fairer than she,
and her father feared lest the King (of Constantinople) should
take her from him; for she had vowed herself to the service of
the Messiah and rode with Decianus in the habit of a cavalier, so
that none who saw her knew her for a woman. In this hermitage her
father had laid up his treasures, for all who had aught of price
were wont to deposit it there, and I saw there all manner of gold
and silver and jewels and precious vessels and rarities, none may
keep count of them save God the Most High. Ye are more worthy of
these riches than the infidels; so do ye lay hands on that which
is in the hermitage and divide it among the Muslims, and
especially among those who wage the holy war. When these
merchants came to Constantinople and sold their merchandise, the
image on the wall spoke to them, by God's special grace to me; so
they made for the hermitage and tortured Metrouhena, after the
most grievous fashion, and dragged him by the beard, till he
showed them where I was, when they took me and fled for fear of
death.
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