“Every child thinks his own mother the best of mothers,” murmured the sick man.

“Mine certainly was the best to me,” cried Paulus.  “And yet she was a heathen.  When my father hurt me with severe words of blame, she always had a kind word and loving glance for me.  There was little enough, indeed, to praise in me.  Learning was utterly distasteful to me, and even if I had done better at school, it would hardy have counted for much to my credit, for my brother Apollonius, who was about a year younger than I, learned all the most difficult things as if they were mere child’s play, and in dialectic exercises there soon was no rhetorician in Alexandria who could compete with him.  No system was unknown to him, and though no one ever knew of his troubling himself particularly to study, he nevertheless was master of many departments of learning.  There were but two things in which I could beat him—­in music, and in all athletic exercises; while he was studying and disputing I was winning garlands in the palaestra.  But at that time the best master of rhetoric and argument was the best man, and my father, who himself could shine in the senate as an ardent and elegant orator, looked upon me as a half idiotic ne’er-do-weel, until one clay a learned client of our house presented him with a pebble on which was carved an epigram to this effect:  ’He who would see the noblest gifts of the Greek race, should visit the house of Herophilus, for there he might admire strength and vigor of body in Menander, and the same qualities of mind in Apollonius.’  These lines, which were written in the form of a lute, passed from mouth to mouth, and gratified my father’s ambition; from that time he had words of praise for me when my quadriga won the race in the Hippodrome, or when I came home crowned from the wrestling-ring, or the singing match.  My whole life was spent in the baths and the palaestra, or in gay feasting.”

“I know it all,” exclaimed Stephanus interrupting him, “and the memory of it all often disturbs me.  Did you find it easy to banish these images from your mind?”

“At first I had a hard fight,” sighed Paulus.  “But for some time now, since I have passed my fortieth year, the temptations of the world torment me less often.  Only I must keep out of the way of the carriers who bring fish from the fishing towns on the sea, and from Raithu to the oasis.”

Stephanus looked enquiringly at the speaker, and Paulus went on:  “Yes, it is very strange.  I may see men or women—­the sea yonder or the mountain here, without ever thinking of Alexandria, but only of sacred things; but when the savor of fish rises up to my nostrils I see the market and fish stalls and the oysters—­”

“Those of Kanopus are famous,” interrupted Steplianus, “they make little pasties there—­“Paulus passed the back of his hand over his bearded lips, exclaiming, “At the shop of the fat cook—­Philemon—­in the street of Herakleotis.”  But he broke off, and cried with an impulse of shame, “It were better that I should cease telling of my past life.  The day does not dawn yet, and you must try to sleep.”