“I have not much to tell,” said Paulus.  “But a man never forgets what he once has been.  We may cast the old man from us, and believe we have shaken ourselves free, when lo! it is there again and greets us as an old acquaintance.  If a frog only once comes down from his tree he hops back into the pond again.”

“It is true, memory can never die!” cried the sick man.  “I can not sleep any more; tell me about your early life and how you became a Christian.  When two men have journeyed by the same road, and the moment of parting is at hand, they are fain to ask each other’s name and where they came from.”

Paulus gazed for some time into space, and then he began:  “The companions of my youth called me Menander, the son of Herophilus.  Besides that, I know for certain very little of my youth, for as I have already told you, I have long since ceased to allow myself to think of the world.  He who abandons a thing, but clings to the idea of the thing, continues—­”

“That sounds like Plato,” said Stephanus with a smile.

“All that heathen farrago comes back to me today,” cried Paulus.  “I used to know it well, and I have often thought that his face must have resembled that of the Saviour.”

“But only as a beautiful song might resemble the voice of an angel,” said Stephanus somewhat drily.  “He who plunges into the depths of philosophic systems—­”

“That never was quite my case,” said Paulus.  “I did indeed go through the whole educational course; Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic and Music—­”

“And Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy,” added Stephanus.

“Those were left to the learned many years since,” continued Paulus, “and I was never very eager for learning.  In the school of Rhetoric I remained far behind my fellows, and if Plato was dear to me I owe it to Paedonomus of Athens, a worthy man whom my father engaged to teach us.”

“They say he had been a great merchant,” interrupted Stephanus.  “Can it be that you were the son of that rich Herophilus, whose business in Antioch was conducted by the worthy Jew Urbib?”

“Yes indeed,” replied Paulus, looking down at the ground in some confusion.  “Our mode of life was almost royal, and the multitude of our slaves quite sinful.  When I look back on all the vain trifles that my father had to care for, I feel quite giddy.  Twenty sea-going ships in the harbor of Eunostus, and eighty Nile-boats on Lake Mareotis belonged to him.  His profits on the manufacture of papyrus might have maintained a cityfull of poor.  But we needed our revenues for other things.  Our Cyraenian horses stood in marble stalls, and the great hall, in which my father’s friends were wont to meet, was like a temple.  But you see how the world takes possession of us, when we begin to think about it!  Rather let us leave the past in peace.  You want me to tell you more of myself?  Well; my childhood passed like that of a thousand other rich citizens’ sons, only my mother, indeed, was exceptionally beautiful and sweet, and of angelic goodness.”