"Do you mean to say that you, even you, have never come near Him?"
"Thrice in my life have I borne the ecstacy of feeling myself wholly at one with Him. Plotinus felt it four times, Porphyrius five times. But as for me, the moments in my existence in which life was worth living were precisely three."
"I have questioned your pupils on this subject; they knew nothing."
"Have they the courage to know? The shell of wisdom is enough for them; the kernel, for almost everybody, is deadly."
"Well, let me die, Master! Give the core to me!"
"Have you courage?"
"Yes; but speak—speak!"
"And what can I tell you? I do not know, ... and need I tell you? Listen to the calmness of the evening, and the secret will be yours without words of mine...."
He kept stroking Julian's head; the boy was dreaming, "This, this is what I waited for," and clasping the knees of Iamblicus he falteringly entreated—
"Master, have pity!... Reveal it all!... Do not desert me!"