physiognomy preserved even in manhood the round and beautiful curves of
youth. His eyes, large and black as the deepest night, shone with no
varying and uncertain lustre. A deep, thoughtful, and half-melancholy
calm seemed unalterably fixed in their majestic and commanding gaze.
His step and mien were peculiarly sedate and lofty, and something
foreign in the fashion and the sober hues of his sweeping garments added
to the impressive effect of his quiet countenance and stately form.
Each of the young men, in saluting the new-comer, made mechanically, and
with care to conceal it from him, a slight gesture or sign with their
fingers; for Arbaces, the Egyptian, was supposed to possess the fatal
gift of the evil eye.

'The scene must, indeed, be beautiful,' said Arbaces, with a cold though
courteous smile, 'which draws the gay Clodius, and Glaucus the all
admired, from the crowded thoroughfares of the city.'

'Is Nature ordinarily so unattractive?' asked the Greek.

'To the dissipated--yes.'

'An austere reply, but scarcely a wise one. Pleasure delights in
contrasts; it is from dissipation that we learn to enjoy solitude, and
from solitude dissipation.'

'So think the young philosophers of the Garden,' replied the Egyptian;
'they mistake lassitude for meditation, and imagine that, because they
are sated with others, they know the delight of loneliness. But not in
such jaded bosoms can Nature awaken that enthusiasm which alone draws
from her chaste reserve all her unspeakable beauty: she demands from
you, not the exhaustion of passion, but all that fervor, from which you