It was at Athens that Julian was about to take his vows and finally become a monk. One fresh spring morning, before the sun was up, Julian, issuing from the church where he had officiated at matins, followed for a few miles the banks of the Ilissus, in the shadow of plane-trees and wild vine. Not far from Athens he had lighted upon a solitary place, on the edge of a torrent which poured, like a scarf of silver, upon a sandy bottom. Thence he used often to gaze with wonder through the mists at the ruddy cliff of the Acropolis and the haughty lines of the Parthenon, half-illumined by the dawn.
On this particular morning Julian took off his shoes and walked along the reaches of the Ilissus barefoot. The air was full of the smell of flowers and of the rich-scented muscat grape—that aroma in which there is a foretaste of wine, faint as the promise of first love, stealing into the soul of youth.
Julian, with feet in the water, sat down upon a platan-root, opened the Phædrus and began to read at the passage in the dialogue in which Socrates says to Phædrus: "Let us go this way, and follow the course of the Ilissus; we will choose a solitary place and there sit down.
"Phædrus: Luckily, I'm unshod this morning, and as for you, Socrates, you always go barefoot. We'll walk in the bed of the river. Look, how smiling and pellucid the water is!
"Socrates: By Pallas! here's a wonderful nook; it must be sacred to the nymphs and to the god Acheloüs—to judge by these little statues. Doesn't it seem to you as if here the breeze were softer and of sweeter odour? Here, even in the hum of the crickets there's something of the sweetness of summer. But what I love best of all is this deep grass!"
Julian turned from the book with a smile. All was as it had been eight centuries before. Even the crickets set up their song.
"Socrates actually touched this ground with his feet!" he thought, and burying his head among the reeds he kissed the spot with adoration.
"Good-day, Julian! you've chosen a lovely corner there to read in. May I sit down near you?"
"Sit, sit; I shall be delighted. Poets never violate a solitude."
Julian looked up at a meagre personage, draped in an enormously long cloak (it was the poet Publius Porphyrius), thinking to himself—