“Indeed, a noble gentleman, a very grand gentleman!” said the recluse, bowing deeply out of his window.  “But I knew that beforehand, for at your age and with such slender ankles to his long legs only a nobleman could walk as you walk.  Then Publius Cornelius—­”

“Nay, call me Scipio, or rather by my first name only, Publius,” the youth begged him.  “You are called Serapion, and I will tell you what you wish to know.  When I was told that in this temple there were people who had themselves locked into their little chambers never to quit them, taking thought about their dreams and leading a meditative life, I thought they must be simpletons or fools or both at once.”

“Just so, just so,” interrupted Serapion.  “But there is a fourth alternative you did not think of.  Suppose now among these men there should be some shut up against their will, and what if I were one of those prisoners?  I have asked you a great many questions and you have not hesitated to answer, and you may know how I got into this miserable cage and why I stay in it.  I am the son of a good family, for my father was overseer of the granaries of this temple and was of Macedonian origin, but my mother was an Egyptian.  I was born in an evil hour, on the twenty-seventh day of the month of Paophi, a day which it is said in the sacred books that it is an evil day and that the child that is born in it must be kept shut up or else it will die of a snake-bite.  In consequence of this luckless prediction many of those born on the same day as myself were, like me, shut up at an early age in this cage.  My father would very willingly have left me at liberty, but my uncle, a caster of horoscopes in the temple of Ptah, who was all in all in my mother’s estimation, and his friends with him, found many other evil signs about my body, read misfortune for me in the stars, declared that the Hathors had destined me to nothing but evil, and set upon her so persistently that at last I was destined to the cloister—­we lived here at Memphis.  I owe this misery to my dear mother and it was out of pure affection that she brought it upon me.  You look enquiringly at me—­aye, boy! life will teach you too the lesson that the worst hate that can be turned against you often entails less harm upon you than blind tenderness which knows no reason.  I learned to read and write, and all that is usually taught to the priests’ sons, but never to accommodate myself to my lot, and I never shall.—­Well, when my beard grew I succeeded in escaping and I lived for a time in the world.  I have been even to Rome, to Carthage, and in Syria; but at last I longed to drink Nile-water once more and I returned to Egypt.  Why?  Because, fool that I was, I fancied that bread and water with captivity tasted better in my own country than cakes and wine with freedom in the land of the stranger.