Christian priest. They were standing at the door of a large house; and
close to the wall, in the shadow of the porch of a building opposite,
stood a youth, his hair covered by the hood of a long caracalla,
listening with breathless attention.

This was Alexander.

He had been standing here for some time already, waiting for the return
of Agatha, the fair Christian whom he had followed across the lake, and
who had vanished into that house under the guidance of a deaconess. The
door had not long closed on them when several men had also been admitted,
whom he could not distinguish in the darkness, for the street was narrow
and the moon still low.

It was sheer folly--and yet he fancied that one of them was his father,
for his deep, loud voice was precisely like that of Heron; and, what was
even more strange, that of the man who answered him seemed to proceed
from his brother Philip. But, at such an hour, he could more easily have
supposed them to be on the top of Mount Etna than in this quarter of the
town.

The impatient painter was very tired of waiting, so, seating himself on a
feeding-manger for asses which stood in front of the adjoining house, he
presently fell asleep. He was tired from the sleepless night he had last
spent, and when he opened his eyes once more and looked down the street
into which the moon was now shining, he did not know how long he had been
slumbering. Perhaps the damsel he wanted to see had already left the
house, and he must see her again, cost him what it might; for she was so
amazingly like the dead Korinna whom he had painted, that he could not
shake off the notion that perhaps--for, after Serapion's discourse, it