interview with his old friend Karnis, and while the girls were in the
garden, amusing little Papias by showing him the swans and tame gazelles,
the philosopher had made enquiries as to the Christian girl's history and
then had heard a full account of the old musician's past life. Karnis
felt it as a great favor that his old friend, famous now for his
learning--the leader of his fellow-thinkers in the second city of the
world, the high-priest of Serapis, to whose superior intellect he himself
had bowed even in their student days--should remember his insignificant
person and allow him to give him the history of the vicissitudes which
had reduced him--the learned son of a wealthy house--to the position of a
wandering singer.

Olympius had been his friend at the time when Karnis, on leaving college,
instead of devoting himself to business and accounts, as his father
wished, had thrown himself into the study of music, and at once
distinguished himself as a singer, lute-player and leader of heathen
choirs. Karnis was in Alexandria when the news reached him of his
father's death. Before quitting the city he married Herse, who was
beneath him alike in birth and in fortune, and who accompanied him on his
return to Tauromenium in Sicily, where he found himself the possessor of
an inheritance of which the extent and importance greatly astonished him.

At Alexandria he had been far better acquainted with the theatre than
with the Museum or the school of the Serapeum; nay, as an amateur, he had
often sung in the chorus there and acted as deputy for the regular
leader. The theatre in his native town of Tauromenium had also been a
famous one of old, but, at the time of his return, it had sunk to a very
low ebb. Most of the inhabitants of the beautiful city nestling at the
foot off Etna, had been converted to Christianity; among them the wealthy
citizens at whose cost the plays had been performed and the chorus