f Macedonian
origin, but my mother was an Egyptian. I was born in an evil hour, on
the twenty-seventh day of the month of Paophi, a day which it is said in
the sacred books that it is an evil day and that the child that is
born in it must be kept shut up or else it will die of a snake-bite. In
consequence of this luckless prediction many of those born on the same
day as myself were, like me, shut up at an early age in this cage. My
father would very willingly have left me at liberty, but my uncle, a
caster of horoscopes in the temple of Ptah, who was all in all in my
mother's estimation, and his friends with him, found many other evil
signs about my body, read misfortune for me in the stars, declared that
the Hathors had destined me to nothing but evil, and set upon her so
persistently that at last I was destined to the cloister--we lived here
at Memphis. I owe this misery to my dear mother and it was out of pure
affection that she brought it upon me. You look enquiringly at me--aye,
boy! life will teach you too the lesson that the worst hate that can
be turned against you often entails less harm upon you than blind
tenderness which knows no reason. I learned to read and write, and all
that is usually taught to the priests' sons, but never to accommodate
myself to my lot, and I never shall.--Well, when my beard grew I
succeeded in escaping and I lived for a time in the world. I have been
even to Rome, to Carthage, and in Syria; but at last I longed to drink
Nile-water once more and I returned to Egypt. Why? Because, fool that I
was, I fancied that bread and water with captivity tasted better in
my own country than cakes and wine with freedom in the land of the
stranger.

"In my father's house I found only my mother still living, for my father
had died of grief. Before my flight she had been a tall, fine woman,
when I came home I found her faded and dying. Anxiety for me, a
miserable wretch, had consumed her, said the physician--that was the
hardest thing to bear. When at last the poor, good little woman, who
could so fondly persuade me--a wild scamp--implored me on her death-bed
to return to my retreat, I yielded, and swore to her that I would stay
in my prison patiently to the end, for I am as water is in northern
countries, a child may turn me with its little hand or else I am as hard
and as cold as crystal. My old mother died soon after I had taken this
oath. I kept my word as you see--and you have seen too how I end