Lucius was wandering alone. Solitude had become dear to him, like rest after a severe illness, especially because he doubted his cure. He doubted; he doubted the certainty.
Did he know the truth? He was doubting now, after a sleepless night, and asking himself, did he know the truth? And, if he knew the truth, was he really cured, cured in his sick soul, cured of his suffering?
He did not know; he no longer knew anything. He wandered beside the Nile, alone, without knowing, without knowing. A dulness filled his brain, like a mist. Life was awaking on the farms with cheerful rural activity. The grain burst under the mill-stones; and the women on their knees rubbed with powerful palms the dough which the men beside them had already kneaded with the vigorous dance of their feet. Lucius stopped to look on; and they laughed; and he laughed back. The men danced and the women rubbed; and they laughed and were happy. A jealousy of their happiness rose hotly in the young Roman.
"Will you give me some milk?" he asked a girl who was milking a splendid, snow-white cow.
The girl handed the stranger the milk in the hollow leaf of a cyamus-plant. Lucius did not know whether to give her any money. He drank and handed back the reed goblet:
"Thank you," he said; and she laughed and went on milking.
He gave her no money and went on. How beautiful the world was and the morning! How rosy this first light over the silvering stream! How grey and colossal the past, yonder, of that dying, sinking city! How beautiful and impressive were every form and tint! How lovely was the world! Even the people down there, those labourers, those shepherdesses, those men and women baking, had a calm rustic, idyllic beauty in their simplicity and naturalness. How good the world was and how happy people could be, if the gods did not pour grief into their hearts!
Grief! Did he feel grief? Or had the mere thought that Ilia had proved unworthy of his great love already cured him of the disease that was grief? But was he cured and did he know?
He was approaching the hamlet of Troia. And he remembered reading in Thrasyllus' notes that Menelaus had come past here with his band of Trojan captives and generously permitted them to settle here. They had founded their colony. Behind Troia stood a rocky mountain-range; and behold, there was the ancient quarry from which, years ago, the blocks of stone were hewn to build the pyramids, block upon block, without cement! And Lucius' feet rattled through the curious fossils which strewed the ground like pebbles with the shapes of long lentils and pea-pods and which were thought to be the petrified remnants of the meals served to the many thousand slaves who had worked at the pyramids.
