foresee that if I do not attack him there he will attack me here. As if the
Empire were not large enough for us all! What an ass the fellow must be!"

And so Gallienus changed his silk for steel, and departed for his Gallic
campaign, where he bore himself more stoutly than his light talk would
have led those who judged him by it to expect. Plotinus, provided with an
Imperial rescript, undertook the regulation of his philosophical
commonwealth in Campania, where a brief experience of architects and
sophists threw him into an ecstasy, not of joy, which endured an unusually
long time.



II


On awakening from his long trance, Plotinus's first sensation was one of
bodily hunger, the second of an even keener appetite for news of his
philosophical Republic. In both respects it promised well to perceive that
his chamber was occupied by his most eminent scholar, Porphyry, though he
was less gratified to observe his disciple busied, instead of with the
scrolls of the sages, with an enormous roll of accounts, which appeared to
be occasioning him much perplexity.

"Porphyry!" cried the master, and the faithful disciple was by his couch in
a moment.

We pass over the mutual joy, the greetings, the administration of
restoratives and creature comforts, the eager interrogations of Porphyry
respecting the things his master had heard and seen in his trance, which