The Good Humor of the Saints [pp. 127-138]

136 THE GOOD HUMOR OF THE SAJivTS. [Oct.,
martyrdom, which he endured with a mingled resignation and
hopefulness pathetic to behold. Driven from his see through
the hostility of an empress, and sent in his old age into a bleak
and desolate country; subject to the harsh treatment of bruta~
guards, and suffering miserably from the inclement weather;
forced ever further and further from his home and friends by the
unrelenting hatred of his enemies, and finally, when exhausted
nature could bear no more, yielding up his life near the inhospitable shores of the "strange and mysterious." Euxine-such
were the last years of this feeble old man, whose letters breathe
not only a spirit of patience but of cheerful hope for himself
and kindly thoughts for others.
Writing from C~sarea to Theodora, he is forced to confess
that he is utterly spent and wretched, that he has "died a thousand deaths" in his miserable journey, and that he has been
prostrated by continual fever. Yet, ever inclined to make the
best of things, he is able to take a half-humorous comfort in the
thought that now, at least, he has clean water to drink and bread
that can be chewed. "Moreover," he adds triumphantly, "I no
longer wash myself in broken crockery, but have contrived some
sort of bath; also I have got a bed to which I can confine myself."
A bath and a bed! Behold the crowning luxuries of an exiled
Christian bishop, who considers himself fortunate that even
these comforts should be allowed him by his enemies.
But the saint who of all others best illustrates the truth
of Father Faber's assertion, he who unites great gentleness of
heart with a delightful spirit of raillery, is Gregory of Nazianzus,
the friend and fellow-laborer of St. Basil. St. Gregory was indeed a man of letters and a poet, grave enough when the occasion demanded gravity, a defender of the true faith am~d the
rage and hatred of an heretical city, an eloquent preacher at all
times, yet nevertheless a humorist, from the shafts of whose
witty satire not even the grave and austere St. Bazil escaped unwounded. There are two letters written by him after his visit
to Basil's solitude at Pontus, both of which are quoted by Newman, and which illustrate the graver and the lighter side of
Gregory's character. In one he expresses the real sentiments of
his heart, the joy he felt at sharing this holy retreat with his
dearest friend; but the other-well, the other is plainly written
with the laudable intention of teasing Basil to the utmost by
ridiculing the many discomforts which attended their hermit
life.
"I have remembrance," he writes, of the bread and of the broth-so