“Clearly the kyrios is mad,” was his own explanation, and growing frightened at following the strange movements of his lord, he crept from his retreat and tried to banish uncanny fears at a safe distance, by tying a thread to the leg of a gold-chafer[5] and watching its vain efforts at flight. Yet had he continued his eavesdropping he might have found—if not the key to all Democrates’s doings—at least a partial explanation. For the fourth time the papyrus had been written, for the fourth time the orator had torn it up. Then his eyes went down to the lump of clay before him on the table.
“Curses upon the miserable stuff!” he swore almost loudly; “it is this which has set the evil thoughts to racing. Destroy that, and the deed is beyond my power.”
He held up the clay and eyed it as a miser might his gold.
“What a little lump! Not very hard. I can dash it on the floor and it dissolves in dust. And yet, and yet—all Elysium, all Tartarus, are pent up for me in just this bit of clay.”
He picked at it with his finger and broke a small piece from the edge.
“A little more, the stamp is ruined. I could not use it. Better if it were ruined. And yet,—and yet,—”
He laid the clay upon the table and sat watching it wistfully.
“O Father Zeus!” he broke out after silence, “if I were not compelled by fear! Sicinnus is so sharp, Themistocles [pg 111]so unmerciful! It would be a terrible death to die,—and every man is justified in shunning death.”
He looked at the inanimate lump as if he expected it to answer him.
“Ah, I am all alone. No one to counsel me. In every other trouble when has it been as this? Glaucon? Cimon? Themistocles?—What would they advise?”—he ended with a laugh more bitter than a sob. “And I must save myself, but at such a price!”