And, besides, without the interest of animated conversation, without
festal scenes where, with garlanded head and intoxicating pleasure
soaring upward from the dust of earth, existence had seemed to him
shallow and not worth the trouble it imposed upon mortals, solitude now
offered him hours as happy as he had ever experienced while revelling
with gay companions.

At first many things had disturbed them, especially the dissatisfied,
almost gloomy disposition of his Egyptian slave, who, born in the city
and accustomed to its life, found it unbearable to stay in the desert
with the strange blind master, who lived like a porter, and ordered him
to prepare his wretched fare with the hands skilled in the use of the
pen.

But this living disturber of the peace was not to annoy the recluse long.
Scarcely a fortnight after Bias's departure, the slave Patran, who had
cost so extravagant a sum, vanished one morning with the sculptor's money
and silver cup.

This rascally trick of a servant whom he had treated with almost
brotherly kindness wounded Hermon, but he soon regarded the morose
fellow's disappearance as a benefit.

When for the first time he drank water from an earthen jug, instead of a
silver goblet, he thought of Diogenes, who cast his cup aside when he saw
a boy raise water to his lips in his hand, yet with whom the great
Macedonian conqueror of the world would have changed places "if he had
not been Alexander."

The active, merry son of Bias's Amalekite friend gladly rendered him the