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