"Seek them all," was Agrippa's charge, "but Peter, the usurer. Him, thou hadst better avoid."
The young Essene laid aside the prince's dress, with its embroidery of precious metal, and, getting into a simpler garment affected by the stewards to men of rank, went out into the city to borrow twenty thousand drachmæ.
He did not get the twenty thousand drachmæ, but he found, instead, that Herod Agrippa was the most notorious bankrupt in the world. Being a Jew and by heritage thrifty, the discovery shook him in his respect for the prince, but at the same time a resolution shaped itself in him against the usurers. But, on a certain day, he returned to the little house in the suburbs of the city to report that he had been placidly refused by every money-lending Jew or Gentile, except Peter, in the seaport.
"Be of hope," he said to Cypros, whose head drooped at the news; "there are many untried ways."
He went again into the city, and visited the khans. There might be new-comers who were money-lenders in other cities.
There were such as guests in Ptolemais, but from their lips he learned that Agrippa was black-listed from the Adriatic to the Euphrates; but Marsyas did not return to the house in the suburbs that night. The weight of his obligation was too heavy to endure the added burden which the sight of Agrippa's suspense had become.
He went to the rabbis of Ptolemais; they told him that they were not money-lenders. He applied to the prefect of the city, who laughed at him. Hoping that the name of Agrippa as a bankrupt had not penetrated into the fields he journeyed into the country-side of Syria and tried an oil-merchant, a rustic, rich and unlettered. But the oil-merchant came up to Ptolemais and made inquiry, shrugged his shoulders, glowered at Marsyas and went back to his groves.
An Egyptian seller of purple landed at Ptolemais from Alexandria. The name of the city of hope attracted Marsyas and he met the merchant at the wharves. But the seller of purple had been to Rome and the topmost name on his list of debtors was Herod Agrippa.
At the end of three days, Marsyas returned to the house in the suburbs to assure the prince that he had not deserted and went again on his search.