heer folly--and yet he fancied that one of them was his father,
for his deep, loud voice was precisely like that of Heron; and, what was
even more strange, that of the man who answered him seemed to proceed
from his brother Philip. But, at such an hour, he could more easily have
supposed them to be on the top of Mount Etna than in this quarter of the
town.
The impatient painter was very tired of waiting, so, seating himself on a
feeding-manger for asses which stood in front of the adjoining house, he
presently fell asleep. He was tired from the sleepless night he had last
spent, and when he opened his eyes once more and looked down the street
into which the moon was now shining, he did not know how long he had been
slumbering. Perhaps the damsel he wanted to see had already left the
house, and he must see her again, cost him what it might; for she was so
amazingly like the dead Korinna whom he had painted, that he could not
shake off the notion that perhaps--for, after Serapion's discourse, it
seemed quite likely--perhaps he had seen the spirit of the departed girl.
He had had some difficulty in persuading Glaukias, who had come across
the lake with him, to allow him to follow up the fair vision
unaccompanied; and his entreaties and prohibitions would probably alike
have proved vain, but that Glaukias held taken it into his head to show
his latest work, which a slave was carrying, to some friends over a jar
of wine. It was a caricature of Caesar, whom he had seen at the Kanopic
Gate, modeled while he was in the house of Polybius, with a few happy
touches.
When Alexander woke, he crept into the shadow of the porch opposite to
the house into which Korinna's double had disappeared, and he now had no
lack of entertainment. A man came out of the tall white house and looked
into the street, and the moonlight enabled the artist to see all that
took place.
The tall youth who had come to the door wore the robe of a Christian
priest. Still, it struck Alexander that he was too young for such a
calling; and he soon detected that he was certainly not what he seemed,
but that there was some treachery in the wind; for no sooner had a woman
joined him, whom he evidently expected, than she blamed him for his want
of caution. To this he laughingly replied that he was too hot in his
disguise, and, pulling out a false beard, he showed it to the woman, who
was dressed as a Christian deaconess, exclaiming, "That will do it!"
He wen
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