Damis, to Antony, striking him on the elbow—"Eh? Just as I told you! What a man!"
Apollonius—"I have for four years in succession observed the complete silence of the Pythagoreans. The most unforeseen calamity did not draw one sigh from me; and, at the theatre, when I entered, they turned aside from me as from a phantom."
Damis—"Would you have done that—you?"
Apollonius—"The time of my ordeal ended, I undertook to instruct the priests who had lost the tradition."
Antony—"What tradition?"
Damis—"Let him continue. Be silent!"
Apollonius—"I have conversed with the Samaneans of the Ganges, with the astrologers of Chaldea, with the magi of Babylon, with the Gaulish druids, with the priests of the negroes. I have climbed the fourteen Olympi; I have sounded the Lakes of Sythia; I have measured the vastness of the desert!"
Damis—"All this is undoubtedly true. I was there myself!"
Apollonius—"At first, I went as far as the Hyrcanian Sea. I have gone all round it, and through the country of the Baraomatæ, where Bucephalus is buried. I have gone down to Nineveh. At the gates of the city a man came up to me."
Damis—"I! I! my good Master! I loved you from the very beginning. You were sweeter than a girl, and more beautiful than a god!"