arts to forsake her husband and child, and fly with him into the wide
world; and at this moment a bewildering illusion made him fancy that he
was the Tribune Servianus, and yet at the same time himself. Every hour
of pain, and the whole bitter anguish that his betrayed benefactor had
suffered through his act when he had seduced Glycera, he himself now
seemed to realize, and at the same time the enemy that had betrayed him,
Servianus, was none other than himself, Phoebicius, the Gaul. He tried
to protect himself and meditated revenge against the seducer, and still
he could not altogether lose the sense of his own identity.

This whirl of mad imagining, which he vainly endeavored to make clear to
himself, threatened to distract his reason, and he groaned aloud; the
sound of his own voice brought him back to actuality.

He was Phoebicius again and not another, that he knew now, and yet he
could not completely bring himself to comprehend the situation. The
image of the lovely Glycera, who had followed him to Alexandria, and whom
he had there abandoned, when he had squandered his last piece of money
and her last costly jewels in the Greek city, no longer appeared to him
alone, but always side by side with his wife Sirona.

Glycera had been a melancholy sweetheart, who had wept much, and laughed
little after running away from her husband; he fancied he could hear her
speaking soft words of reproach, while Sirona defied him with loud
threats, and dared to nod and signal to the senator's son Polykarp.

The weary dreamer angrily shook himself, collected his thoughts, doubled
his fist, and lifted it angrily; this movement was the first sign of
returning physical energy; he stretched his limbs like a man awaking from
sleep, rubbed his eyes, pressed his hands to his temples; by degrees full