awakening from his long trance, Plotinus's first sensation was one of
bodily hunger, the second of an even keener appetite for news of his
philosophical Republic. In both respects it promised well to perceive that
his chamber was occupied by his most eminent scholar, Porphyry, though he
was less gratified to observe his disciple busied, instead of with the
scrolls of the sages, with an enormous roll of accounts, which appeared to
be occasioning him much perplexity.

"Porphyry!" cried the master, and the faithful disciple was by his couch in
a moment.

We pass over the mutual joy, the greetings, the administration of
restoratives and creature comforts, the eager interrogations of Porphyry
respecting the things his master had heard and seen in his trance, which
proved to be unspeakable.

"And now," said Plotinus, who with all his mysticism was so good a man of
business that, as his biographers acquaint us, he was in special request as
a trustee, "and now, concerning this roll of thine. Is it possible that the
accounts connected with the installation of a few abstemious lovers of
wisdom can have swollen to such a prodigous bulk? But indeed, why few?
Peradventure all the philosophers of the earth have flocked to my city."

"It has, indeed," said Porphyry evasively, "been found necessary to incur
certain expenses not originally foreseen."

"For a library, perhaps?" inquired Plotinus. "I remember thinking, just
before my ecstasy, that the scrolls of the divine Plato, many of them
autographic, might require some special housing."

"I rejoice to state," rejoined Porphyry, "that it is not these volumes that
have involved us in our present difficulties with the superintendent of the
Imperial treasury, nor can they indeed, seeing that they are now
impignorated with him."

"Plato's manuscripts pawned!" exclaimed Plotinus, aghast. "Wherefore?"

"As part collateral security for expenses incurred on behalf of objects
deemed of more importance by the majority of the philosophers."

"For example?"

"Repairing bath and completing amphitheatre."

"Bath! Amphitheatre!" gasped Plotinus.

"O dear master," remonstrated Porphyry, "thou didst not deem that
philosophers could be induced to settle in a spot devoid of these
necessaries? Not a single one would have stayed if I had not yielded to
their demands, which, as regarded the bath, involved the addition of
exedrae and of a sphaeristerium."

"And what can they want with an am