"It irritated me and then tired me. I turned from the Temple of Venus and sought that of Apollo, where I rested a little time in peace. Then I went to the house of my agent, with whom I was to lodge until I had taken a house for my own use. The man was kindly, but tactless; his tedious anxiety to please distracted and irritated me, he was so much at my service that I could find no possible use for him. I said I wished to bathe, and my host insisted on coming with me. It was amusing to watch his air of importance as he conducted me through the crowded ways, for he was a notable person in the city, and every other man we met greeted us; as we paused a moment before a funeral procession I heard a voice saying: 'That is Serenus, a cousin of Acte's Serenus,' and once again I felt the intolerable stare of curious eyes, that dropped obsequiously when I met them. After my bath, my host led me to the Prefect's palace, for I had letters to Gallio, and then at last he left me. Gallio received me charmingly; his manners are those of a man who has known and forgotten everything. He begged me to dine, and to stay with him until I had found a house; but I excused myself on the score of business and fatigue. He smiled, answered that he would always be glad of my company, and I left him.
"Once again in the streets, that vivid and passionate life appealed to me with a new sympathy; I read beneath the superficial gaiety and glitter, the human tragedy, the flight of pleasures and the irrevocable advance of death; women passed me in soft murmuring draperies, smiled at me languorously and passed on leaving the air tainted with Eastern perfumes. I noticed that even as they smiled their eyes were wistful. The delicate winter sunset began. I called a boy to me and asked him to guide me to the house of Caius, whom I wished to see personally on some business connected with the outfit of my ship. He led me to a house in the Jews' quarter and I tapped at the door. A freedwoman admitted me, looked at me with surprise, and was just going to speak but changed her mind and led me toward the doorway of a room whence came a sound of some one reading. Light fell through the doorway as she drew back the curtain; and she motioned me to enter; but I drew back in astonishment, for a voice was reading aloud these words: 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And if I give away in food all my goods, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.'