more were they overloaded with image and metaphor;
all simplicity of statement was lost, and yet the disputants prided
themselves on the brilliancy of their language and the wealth of their
ideas. They believed that they had brought the transcendental within
the grasp of intelligent sense, and that their empty speculations had
carried them far beyond the narrow limits of the Ancients.

Karnis was in raptures; Porphyrius only wished for Gorgo by his side,
for, like all fathers, he would rather that his child should have
enjoyed this supreme intellectual treat than himself.

........................

In Porphyrius' house, meanwhile, all was gloom and anxiety. In spite
of the terrific heat Damia would not be persuaded to come down from the
turret-room where she had collected all the instruments, manuals and
formulas used by astrologers and Magians. A certain priest of Saturn,
who had a great reputation as a master of such arts, and who, for many
years, had been her assistant whenever she sought to apply her science
to any important event, was in attendance--to give her the astrological
tables, to draw circles, ellipses or triangles at her bidding, to
interpret the mystical sense of numbers or letters, which now and then
escaped her aged memory; he made her calculations or tested those
she made herself, and read out the incantations which she thought
efficacious under the circumstances. Occasionally, too, he suggested
some new method or fresh formula by which she might verify her results.

She had fasted, according to rule, the whole forenoon, and was
frequently so far overcome by the heat as to drop asleep in the midst
of her studies; then, when she woke with a start, if her assistant
had meanwhile worked out his calculation to a result contrary to her
anticipations, she took him up sharply and made him begin again from the
beginning. Gorge, went up from time to time; but, though she offered the
old woman refreshment prepared by her own hand, she could not persuade
her even to moisten her lips with a little fruitsyrup, for to break the
prescribed fast might endanger the accuracy of her prognostications
and the result of all her labor. However, when she seemed to doze, her
granddaughter sprinkled strong waters about the room to freshen the
air, poured a few drops on the old lady's dress, wiped the dews from
her brow, and fanned her to cool her. Damia submitted to all this; and
though she had only closed her weary