"Is that you, grandfather Gnyphon? What do you want?" asked Krokala in a vexed voice.
Gnyphon was a little old man with cunning tearful eyes, which shone under eyebrows active as two white mice. He had the violet nose of a drunkard, wore Libyan breeches, patched and botched here and there, and on his head a Phrygian cap.
"You've come again for money," grumbled Krokala, "and you've been drinking again."
"It's a sin to use such language. You'll have to answer for my soul to God. Just think what you've brought me to. I am living now in the Smokatian quarter; I hire a little cellar from an image-carver, and every day I have to see him making his horrible idols in marble. There's a nice occupation for a Christian! I scarcely open my eyes in the morning, when tap, tap, tap,—my landlord's hammering his marble—bringing white devils into the world; damnable gods that stand laughing at me. How am I to keep out of the wine-shop? O Lord, have mercy on us! I'm simply weltering in Pagan horrors, like a pig in a sty, and it'll be reckoned against us ... and who'll be responsible, I'd like to know? Why, you! You're rolling in money, and yet you leave a poor miserable old man——"
"You lie, Gnyphon! You're not poor; you're a miser; you've got a money-box under the bed!"
Gnyphon made a despairing gesture: "Hush—hush!"
To change the subject he said: "Do you know where I'm going?"
"To the tavern, of course!"
"Worse than that. To the Temple of Dionysus! That temple, since the days of holy Constantine, has been buried under rubbish; but to-morrow, by the august order of the Emperor Julian, it will be all shining again. And I've hired myself out to do the sweeping, although I shall lose my soul and be packed off to hell for it. But I've allowed myself to be tempted because I'm poor and hungry. My granddaughter doesn't do anything to support me.... That's what I've come to!"
"You let me be, Gnyphon. Here you are! Now go! And don't come again when you're drunk!"