That the better sort would avoid him after such an act was self-evident--
they had already refused to eat with him. On the other hand, it had
brought nearer to him the favorites whom he had attracted to his person.
Theocritus and Pandion, Antigonus and Epagathos, the priest of Alexander,
who at Rome was overwhelmed with debt, and who in Egypt had become a rich
man again, would cling to him more closely.

"Base wretches!" he muttered to himself.

If only Philostratus would come back to him! But he scarcely dared hope
it. The evil took so much more care for their own well-being and
multiplication than the good. If one of the righteous fell away, all the
others forthwith turned their backs on him; and when the penitent desired
to return to the fold, the immaculate repelled or avoided him. But the
wicked could always find the fallen man at once, and would cling to him
and hinder him from returning. Their ranks were always open to him,
however closely he might formerly have been attached to the virtuous.
To live in exclusive intercourse with these reprobates was an odious
thought. He could compel whom he chose to live with him; but of what use
were silent and reluctant companions? And whose fault was it that he had
sent away Philostratus, the best of them all? Hers--the faithless
traitoress, from whom he had looked for peace and joy, who had declared
that she felt herself bound to him, the trickster in whom he had believed
he saw Roxana--But she was no more. On the table by his bed, among his
own jewels, lay the golden serpent he had given her--he fancied he could
see it in the dark--and she had worn it even in death. He shuddered; he
felt as though a woman's arm, all black and charred, was stretched out to
him in the night, and the golden snake uncurled from it and reached forth
as though to bite him.