were the son of that rich Herophilus, whose business in
Antioch was conducted by the worthy Jew Urbib?"

"Yes indeed," replied Paulus, looking down at the ground in some
confusion. "Our mode of life was almost royal, and the multitude of our
slaves quite sinful. When I look back on all the vain trifles that my
father had to care for, I feel quite giddy. Twenty sea-going ships in
the harbor of Eunostus, and eighty Nile-boats on Lake Mareotis belonged
to him. His profits on the manufacture of papyrus might have maintained
a cityfull of poor. But we needed our revenues for other things. Our
Cyraenian horses stood in marble stalls, and the great hall, in which my
father's friends were wont to meet, was like a temple. But you see
how the world takes possession of us, when we begin to think about it!
Rather let us leave the past in peace. You want me to tell you more of
myself? Well; my childhood passed like that of a thousand other rich
citizens' sons, only my mother, indeed, was exceptionally beautiful and
sweet, and of angelic goodness."

"Every child thinks his own mother the best of mothers," murmured the
sick man.

"Mine certainly was the best to me," cried Paulus. "And yet she was a
heathen. When my father hurt me with severe words of blame, she always
had a kind word and loving glance for me. There was little enough,
indeed, to praise in me. Learning was utterly distasteful to me, and
even if I had done better at school, it would hardy have counted for
much to my credit, for my brother Apollonius, who was about a year
younger than I, learned all the most difficult things as if they
were mere child's play, and in dialectic exercises there soon was no
rhetorician in Alexandria who could compete with him. No system was
unknown to him, and though no one ever knew of his troubling himself
particularly to study, he nevertheless was master of many departments of
learning. There were but two things in which I could beat him--in music,
and in all athletic exercises; while he was studying and disputing I was
winning garlands in the palaestra. But at that time the best master of
rhetoric and argument was the best man, and my father, who himself could
shine in the senate as an ardent and elegant orator, looked upon me as a
half idiotic ne'er-do-weel, until one clay a learned client of our
house presented him with a pebble on which was carved an epigram to this
effect: 'He who would see the noblest gifts of the Greek race, shou