Now then, well schooled, I strove no more against my Nature, and worked with all my Will. Thou knowest well how greatly I was rewarded. Yet in this last Initiation to the Grade of Magus, wherein three-and-seventy Days, as Men count Days, is but One Day, the Ordeal grew so fierce and intolerable that I gave back a Step. I did not utterly renounce the Work, but I swore not to continue unless mine Agony were abated. But after fifteen Days, I came to myself in a certain Ordeal, wherein I knew myself finally, that I could do no other than take up that fearful Burden that had broken my Spirit. And for these fifteen Days have I not suffered infinite Things? Was not the Tree of my Work frozen, one Branch withered, and on blasted? Look no more, o my Son, upon thy Father's Shame!
