“I will go,” replied Olbasanus. “It is cheap and convenient to accuse me of crime. But I ask one question, Caius Bononius: how many of the countless throng that follow me along the road of error would be my companions, if I attempted to lead them with earnestness and zeal into the domain of truth? One in a thousand! Delusion is brilliant and magnificent; its sultry breezes intoxicate; the air on the heights of truth blows keen and cold, and humanity is a poor, freezing beggar.”
Caius Bononius unceremoniously turned his back upon the speaker, and Olbasanus, holding his head proudly erect, left the _exedra_.
Six weeks later, early in the month of December, Heliodorus’ house glittered in the splendor of festal array. Garlands of leaves and flowers twined around the Corinthian pillars; countless lamps adorned the wide halls of the atrium and peristyle. A select company attired in fashionable costume, ladies in gaily-flowered pallas, with glittering diadems and gold pins among their curls, senators in purple-bordered holiday robes, rich merchants in Tyrian syntheses, and laurel-crowned poets, thronged the gleaming colonnades. Heliodorus was celebrating the marriage of his daughter Hero to Lucius Rutilius. The worthy Bononius, who had not shrunk from taking the long journey to distant Massilia to bring his friend back to the scene of his newly-restored happiness, was treated by the bride with almost greater attention than she bestowed upon the bridegroom--an incomprehensible enigma--and Lucius Rutilius, far from being seized with jealousy at this apparent neglect, also strove to show the young philosopher every token of the most cordial affection. Caius Bononius was evidently absent-minded. His heart had for some time been divided between satisfaction at the successful breaking of the spell which had weighed upon Hero and Rutilius, and another feeling that had ripened during the few days of his intercourse with Lydia. How it happened was doubtless known to Eros, the sole enchanter in whose omnipotence the sceptical Bononius found himself henceforth compelled to believe. In short, the young man desired nothing better than to gaze into Lydia’s deep, dark eyes, listen to her voice, or brush against her flowing stola while walking through the colonnades of the peristyle. Considering his past, it was extremely unphilosophical--but the fact could not be denied.