And what had he not known in his city experience? The events of half a
century had followed each other with intoxicating rapidity in the course
of the thirty months he had spent there. The greater the excitement, the
greater the pleasure was the watchword of his time; and though he had
rioted and revelled on the shores of the Bosphorus if ever man did,
still the pleasures of feasting and of love, or of racing with his own
victorious horses--all of which he had enjoyed there to the full--were
as child's play compared with the nervous tension to which he had been
strung by the appalling events he had witnessed on all sides. How petty
was the excitement of an Alexandrian horse-race! Whether Timon or
Ptolemy or he himself should win--what did it matter? It was a fine
thing no doubt to carry off the crown in the circus at Byzantium, but
there were other and soul-stirring crises there beyond those which were
bound up with horses or chariots. There a throne was the prize, and
might cost the blood and life of thousands!--What did a man bring home
from the churches in the Nile valley? But if he crossed the threshold
of St. Sophia's in Constantinople he often might have his blood curdled,
or bring home--what matter?--bleeding wounds, or even be carried home
--a corpse.

Three times had he seen the throne change masters. An emperor and an
empress had been stripped of the purple and mutilated before his eyes.

Aye, then and there he had had real and intense excitement to thrill him
to the marrow and quick. As for the rest! Well, yes, he had had more
trivial pleasures too. He had not been received as other Egyptians were:
half-educated philosophers--who called themselves Sages and assumed a
mystic and pompously solemn demeanor, Astrologers, Rhetoricians, poverty-
stricken but witty and venemous satirists, physicians making a display of