clean room behind a curtain of light material; I could not raise myself,
but just as if I had been sleeping so many minutes instead of days, I
thought again directly of my quails. In their last fight my best cock
had severely handled handsome Nikander's, and yet he wanted to dispute
the stakes with me, but I would assert my rights! At least the quails
should fight again, and if Nikander should refuse I would force him to
fight me with his fists in the Palaestra, and give him a blue reminder of
his debt on the eye. My hands were still weak, and yet I clenched them
as I thought of the vexatious affair. 'I will punish him,' I muttered to
myself.

"Then I heard the door of the room open, and I saw three men respectfully
approaching a fourth. He greeted them with dignity, but yet with
friendliness, and rolled up a scroll which he had been reading, I would
have called out, but I could not open my parched lips, and yet I saw and
heard all that was going on around me in the room.

"It all seemed strange enough to me then; even the man's mode of greeting
was unusual. I soon perceived that he who sat in the chair was a judge,
and that the others had come as complainants; they were all three old and
poor, but some good men had left them the use and interest of a piece of
land. During seed-time one of them, a fine old man with long white hair,
had been ill, and he had not been able to help in the harvest either;
'and now they want to withhold his portion of the corn,' thought I; but
it was quite otherwise. The two men who were in health had taken a third
part of the produce to the house of the sick man, and he obstinately
refused to accept the corn because he had helped neither to sow nor to
reap it, and he demanded of the judge that he should signify to the other
two that he had no right to receive goods which he had not earned.