Story 5

One of the students was strikingly beautiful, and the teacher, being human, felt drawn to the boy's lovely face. When he found him alone, he would say: I am so absorbed in you, my heaven-faced one, that no thought of myself even crosses my mind. I cannot force my eyes to shut against your sight, even if I saw an arrow flying straight at me. One day the boy said: Just as you take care with the manners of my lessons, please look too at the manners of my character; if you see anything unpleasant in me that I mistake for good, let me know, so I can try to change it. He replied: My boy, ask that of someone else, for in the way I look at you, I see nothing but your beauty and talent. May the eye of the ill-wisher be plucked out: it sees a person's virtues as flaws. But if you have one gift and seventy faults, a friend will see nothing but that single gift.