Had Lucius slept? Had he dreamed? Had the fragrant cloud drugged his senses? Had a strange mystic power spread over him? Had Serapis descended upon him? Had the dreams surrounded him?
It seemed to him that a golden thunder roused him from his heavy, motionless lethargy. The gong-strokes rolled through the temple and far away into the starry night. Harp-chords sounded, a hymn was intoned. He felt his veil wet with thick-rising dew....
Round and round the terraces, singing, moved the long procession of the priests. It was still night. Everywhere around Lucius the dreamers arose, drunk with sleep and dreaming. In the reflections of the lamps and torches their faces were ghostly, spiritualized as after a long prayer, after protracted adoration and ecstasy, wherein their thoughts, desires and souls had been refined.
On the topmost terrace, round which the whole city shimmered visibly with light—on the one side the nocturnal blue of the sea, on the other the silvery forking of the Nile’s mouths through the Delta—the learned hierogrammats, the keepers of the sacred writings, sat each on his throne. In their hands they held unrolled the sacred scrolls, whose hieroglyphics gave answer to all things. Temple-slaves behind them lifted high the coloured lanterns. In front of them the multitudinous dreamers thronged.
Great was the thronging. The dreamers wanted to know the interpretation of their dreams. But those who had dreamed were so many that the priests did not answer save with a few words full of dark meaning.
Many, disappointed, went down the terraces. Orgy awaited them in the taverns and brothels along the canal....
Lucius had risen, in the midst of all his followers. He stood stiff, motionless, veiled in the gold net, like a god entranced.
“Lucius,” Thrasyllus asked, “my dear child and master, tell me: have you dreamed?”
“Yes,” replied Lucius, in a trance.
“I too,” said Uncle Catullus. “It was a nightmare, most unpleasant! I had dined too heavily. My stomach was overloaded. And I am now shivering with this chilly dew. Egypt is most interesting, but Egypt will positively be the death of me!”