“You may rely on my honor,” said the Roman, “not to involve you in any of the fellow’s inventions. Slippery as he is, I have a hold on him, too, that he will not venture to shake off. And now, to let you into full confidence, I expect him back this very night, when he will relieve your city of an inhabitant unworthy of remaining among so polished a people; and your house, my prince, of an inmate than whom none on earth can be more grateful for your hospitality.”
He concluded this mixture of levity, address, and frankness with a smile, and in a tone of elegance, that compelled me to take it all on the more favorable side. But against suffering the step of his strange emissary to pollute the threshold in which I lived, I expressed my plain determination.
Secret Preparations for Departure
“For that, too, I have provided,” said he. “My intercourse with the reprobate is to take place at another quarter of the city, as far as possible from this dwelling,” and he laughed, “for reasons equally of mine and yours. I have managed matters so as not to compromise any of my friends; and to make my arrangements on that point still more secure, may I express a wish that neither Constantius nor any other person of your house may be acquainted with my intention of leaving them, and I may sincerely say, leaving everything that could gratify my best feelings—this very evening.”
This was an easy and graceful avoidance of the difficulties which his longer residence threatened. I gave him the promise of secrecy, cautioning him against reposing any dangerous confidence in his emissary, of whom I had an irrepressible abhorrence, and was about to leave the chamber when he caught my hand and said in unusual emotion:
“Prince of Naphtali, I have but one word more to say. You are a man of the world and can make allowance for the giddiness of human passions. Some of them are uncontrollable, or at least I have never learned to control them, and in me perhaps they belong to inferiority of mind. But if on my departure you should hear calumnies against me——”
“Impossible, my young friend; or if I should, you may rely on my giving the calumniators a very brief answer.”
“Or if even yourself should be disposed to think severely of me, you know the circumstances under which a man of birth and fortune must be placed in our profession.”
“Fully, and am much more disposed to regret than to wonder at the consequences.”