He rushed up and down his cell like a wounded tiger, he flung himself
against the walls, and then, with his body hanging far out of the window,
had looked out to see if the girl--who could not possibly have returned
yet--were not come back again. The darker it grew, the more his anguish
rose, and the more hideous were the pictures that stood before his fancy;
and when, presently, a pilgrim in the Pastophorium who had fallen into
convulsions screamed out loud, he was no longer master of himself--he
kicked open the door which, locked on the outside and rotten from age,
had been closed for years, hastily concealed about him some silver coins
he kept in his chest, and let himself down to the ground.

There he stood, between his cell and the outer wall of the temple, and
now it was that he remembered his vows, and the oath he had sworn, and
his former flight from his retreat. Then he had fled because the
pleasures and joys of life had tempted him forth--then he had sinned
indeed; but now the love, the anxious care that urged him to quit his
prison were the same as had brought him back to it. It was to keep faith
that he now broke faith, and mighty Serapis could read his heart, and his
mother was dead, and while she lived she had always been ready and
willing to forgive.

He fancied so vividly that he could see her kind old face looking at him
that he nodded at her as if indeed she stood before him.

Then, he rolled an empty barrel to the foot of the wall, and with some
difficulty mounted on it. The sweat poured down him as he climbed up the
wall built of loose unbaked bricks to the parapet, which was much more
than a man's height; then, sliding and tumbling, he found himself in the
ditch which ran round it on the outside, scrambled up its outer slope,
and set out at last on his walk to Memphis.